The Childhood Vaccine Under Threat, and Trump’s Newest Push for Gas-Powered Cars

0:02From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Thursday, December 4th. Here's what we're covering.

0:14Today I'm in Atlanta for the meeting of a very important committee. This is a vaccine committee that makes recommendations, essentially guidelines, for all the shots that adults and children in America get. And this week, it seems like they are about to make some very big changes. My colleague Aporva Mondavilli is covering the meeting of a CDC committee today that seems poised to make a major switch-up involving a vaccine that's been recommended for all newborns in the U.S. for decades, the hepatitis B vaccine. It protects against the highly contagious disease that can severely damage the liver.

0:49And after babies began getting vaccinated in the early 90s, acute infection rates for kids dropped by 99 percent. But the committee now seems likely to decide that vaccine should be delayed or no longer offered to children at all, as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has cast doubt on whether it's necessary. Aporva says they're also going to discuss revising the use of other common childhood vaccines. The committee doesn't make laws or rules, but the guidelines that they come up with are very important because they essentially determine whether insurance companies and government insurance programs will cover the shots.

1:27So what they decide could affect people's ability to afford these shots or even have access to them. More broadly, the public health experts that I talk to are concerned that this committee is really elevating some anti-vaccine tropes that have been circulating for decades. The committee members were all handpicked by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has made many unfounded claims about vaccines over the years, that they were not tested properly, that they are toxic to children's brains, that they cause conditions like autism. So beyond any decisions that this committee makes, just having these conversations in this very public format by this important committee gives these fringe theories legitimacy.

2:08And that makes public health experts worry that it will further erode confidence in vaccines and we'll start to see the return of some diseases that we have not seen in a very long time.

2:23Today on Capitol Hill, two U.S. military commanders are expected to face sharp questions about one of the U.S.'s deadly boat strikes in the Caribbean and whether it was a war crime. For months, the administration has been targeting boats it claims are carrying drugs, killing over 80 people so far. While many use-of-force experts and lawmakers have criticized that overall campaign as illegal, today the focus will be on one strike in particular. On September 2nd, SEAL Team 6 operators launched a strike on a vessel from Venezuela, carrying 11 people. After the smoke cleared, surveillance video showed two people still alive in the wreckage.

3:05According to officials the Times talked with, the military intercepted communications from the survivors who were radioing suspected cartel members for help. Officials say the military interpreted that distress call as meaning the survivors were still in the fight, and Admiral Frank Bradley, who was overseeing the operation, ordered a follow-up strike that killed both people. Lawmakers are expected to scrutinize these details of the attack since the Pentagon's Law of War manual prohibits firing on shipwrecked people who aren't still actively fighting. There's also the question of who bears the ultimate responsibility for the second strike.

3:47Bradley, who ordered it, or Hegseth, who signed off on the lethal operation more broadly. The defense secretary, who was watching the mission live on video, said he, quote, didn't stick around for the second strike and denied that he ordered it, but said Bradley made the right call.

4:07Meanwhile, after an eight-month investigation, the Pentagon is set to release its report today on the Signalgate scandal. The Times has learned that the inquiry found that Hegseth risked endangering U.S. troops back in March when he discussed military operations in Yemen in a group chat that accidentally included a journalist. Investigators also said that not all of the messages were properly preserved in compliance with federal law and that Hegseth refused to sit down for an interview during the inquiry.

4:43At the White House yesterday. My administration has taken historic action to lower costs for American consumers, protect American auto jobs, and make buying a car much more affordable for countless American families and also safer. President Trump moved to significantly weaken federal fuel efficiency standards, getting rid of a Biden-era rule that had encouraged automakers to sell more efficient vehicles and more electric vehicles. It's the administration's latest move to gut policy aimed at addressing climate change and double down on gas-powered cars. The White House claims the new rules will save consumers money by lowering manufacturing costs.

5:25Economists told The Times that could happen to some extent, but it would come at the expense of public health and the environment. Additionally, Trump's own tariff policies, along with inflation, have helped drive up the cost of many cars. As Trump announced the new lowered standards, he was flanked by top auto executives who publicly celebrated the changes. In private, though, many have expressed concerns about the whiplash of changing federal policies, as during the Biden administration, they already spent billions of dollars pivoting to electric vehicles.

6:05Earlier this year, when a 26-year-old woman got some blood work results back showing hormone imbalances, she pasted her full medical report into ChatGPT to ask what the problem could be. The chatbot told her it was, quote, most likely related to a tumor. That was wrong. But when a 63-year-old man who'd been feeling some discomfort while exercising asked ChatGPT for advice, he used the info the chatbot gave him to persuade his doctor to take a closer look at his heart, where they found a significant blockage. These kinds of mixed results are the reality for millions of people around the world who have started using chatbots for health advice.

6:46Considering the bot's well-deserved reputation for getting all kinds of things wrong, experts are concerned about the potential for misinformation. People thinking they're dying when they're not, or thinking that something's not serious when it might be. The other big concern around this trend is privacy. Some people are uploading their whole medical histories to chatbots, which can include a ton of sensitive information. And HIPAA, the federal health privacy law in the U.S., doesn't apply to companies that operate the bots. One professor who specializes in biomedical tech told The Times, you're basically waiving any rights that you have with respect to medical privacy.

7:24Still, there are some perhaps unexpected benefits that people point to. One woman, who has metastatic appendix cancer, told the Times it's been helpful to get ChatGPT's immediate overview of her test results, especially when they're bad. She felt like she could process the devastating news before her doctor's visit and then use her time with the doctor more effectively.

7:52And finally, there is a race on to save music history. Well, I thought there's a rain would cool things down. A lot of artists' studio recordings were originally captured on magnetic tapes, which are now decaying. And the times followed how one man in New Jersey, Kelly Pribble, has been at the forefront of audio restoration, working to save unique recordings from icons like Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen.

8:26All analog recordings get more and more fragile over time. But some of the most vulnerable recordings are from the 70s and 80s, when changes in manufacturing introduced problems that have only become obvious over time. Pribble has his own glossary for how to describe those problems, everything from loss of lubricant syndrome to adhesion syndrome, where spools of tape get fused together into a huge, solid chunk. And Pribble's been pioneering various Rube Goldberg-esque techniques to save them, using products that you'd usually find in a waxing salon, for example, or drying out wet tape on a hand-built rack of carefully angled hair dryers.

9:08One audio expert at the Library of Congress said Pribble is known as the magician. He's salvaged tapes from hundreds of artists. But the work is expensive. One record executive whose company owns a huge catalog of old recordings said it would cost millions of dollars to process and preserve all of their old tapes. So it becomes a difficult question of what is and isn't worth saving.

9:37Those are the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow with the latest and the Friday News Quiz.