RFK Jr. Testifies Before Senate, Fed Confirmation Hearing, Harvard's Legal Victory

0:02Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies before the Senate today. The hearing is meant to be about the president's health agenda, but it comes on the heels of upheaval at the CDC. So what are lawmakers expected to ask about? I'm E. Martinez. That is Michelle Martin. And this is Up First from NPR News. President Trump wants to install more of his own people at the Federal Reserve. We'll have a majority very shortly, so that'll be great. Once we have a majority, housing is going to swing and it's going to be great. A Senate committee hearing to fill a vacant seat on the Fed's governing board could get the president one step closer to reaching that majority.

0:39And a federal judge in Boston has handed Harvard University a legal victory, ruling the Trump administration's freeze on funding to the university unlawful. Stay with us. We'll give you news you need to start your day.

0:55This message comes from BetterHelp. As a dad, BetterHelp president Fernando Madera relates to needing flexibility when it comes to scheduling therapy. I have kids under 18, so time is very limited. That's why at BetterHelp, our therapists try to have sessions sometimes at night, depending on the therapist or during the weekend. So I think that's what we need to tell the parents. You're not alone. We can help you out. If a flexible schedule would help you, visit BetterHelp.com slash NPR for 10 % off your first month of online therapy. This message comes from NPR sponsor Adobe. Introducing the all-new Adobe Acrobat Studio, now with AI-powered PDF spaces.

1:39Need to turn 100 pages of market research into five insights with a click? Templates for a sales proposal that'll close that deal? or an AI specialist to tailor the tone of your market report. You can do all that with the all-new Adobe Acrobat Studio. Learn more at adobe.com slash do that with Acrobat. I kind of miss being back in school. I mean, you get assigned to read great books and then you have time to talk about them. It seems like a dream. If you're in the same boat, NPR's Book of the Day has a whole week of interviews with authors big on high school syllabi. Toni Morrison, Sandra Cisneros, Jason Reynolds, and more.

2:18So listen to NPR's Book of the Day podcast on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will be testifying in the Senate today after a week of upheaval at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Last week, Kennedy pressured the brand new CDC director, Susan Minaris, to resign. And when she refused, the White House fired her. Then three top CDC officials resigned in protest. NPR's Selina Simmons-Duffin is here to tell us what to expect at the hearing today. So, Selina, technically this hearing is not about the turnover of leadership of the CDC.

2:54Right. This is a Senate Finance Committee hearing announced last week to go over the president's 2026 health care agenda. OK, so that's the stated topic. But what do you think senators might ask Secretary Kennedy about? Yeah, I'm expecting it's going to be like a lot of hearings in recent years where there's kind of a split screen depending on the party of the senator doing the questioning. When Democrats are asking the questions, I think they're going to hammer Kennedy about what happened last week at CDC and about vaccine policy. Kennedy has replaced a key vaccine advisory panel with his own handpicked roster of people who have a history of anti-vaccine activism.

3:32They are set to shake up recommendations on a variety of vaccines later this month. Several Democratic lawmakers, a variety of public health groups, and more than a thousand current and former HHS employees have all called on Kennedy to resign in the last few days. And some Democratic states are now making moves to try and run public health without relying on CDC, given all of the chaos there. Yesterday, California, Washington, and Oregon launched the West Coast Health Alliance to coordinate their own health guidance and vaccine recommendations. OK, so that's what you expect to hear from Democrats.

4:07What about Republicans? Republicans are moving in the opposite direction. Florida announced plans to end all vaccine mandates for children and adults yesterday. I think Republican senators will talk a lot about Kennedy's Make America Healthy Again agenda. He's been traveling all around the country with governors who are signing state laws related to some of his food-related priorities, like limiting food dyes and ultra-processed foods. There may be Republicans asking about the drastic cuts in biomedical research funding. I think a lot of people are really going to be wondering what Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana is going to say in this hearing in particular.

4:46Ooh, Bill Cassidy. Why him? Why is that? Well, Cassidy is a physician. He chairs the health committee, which oversees HHS, and he believes strongly in vaccines. Kennedy won Cassidy's vote by promising he wouldn't change that CDC vaccine advisory panel. Obviously, Kennedy broke that promise. He fired everyone on that committee and replaced them. So I'll be watching to see whether Cassidy is going to call Kennedy out for all of the aggressive changes he's been making when it comes to vaccine policy. What do you expect to hear from Kennedy? Well, you know, in interviews over the last week, he seemed kind of unbothered by the upheaval at CDC.

5:23He wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend defending his actions. And in the piece, he places the blame for the high COVID-19 deaths in those early years of the pandemic squarely on CDC, even though I think you could argue that politics and incomplete information about an emerging virus deserve a fair share of the blame. I know what he wants to talk about are his Maha efforts and what he calls the chronic disease epidemic. So I think he's going to try to keep that the focus as much as possible. All right. That's NPR's Selena Simmons-Duffin. Thanks a lot. Thank you.

6:02President Trump is trying to exert more control over the Federal Reserve. One test of that effort will come this morning when a Senate committee holds a hearing on Trump's nominee to fill a vacant seat on the Fed's governing board. Trump is also hoping to fill a second seat by getting rid of Fed Governor Lisa Cook. That move is being challenged in court. The potential shakeup at the Fed is seen as a serious threat to the central bank's independence. NPR chief economics correspondent Scott Horsey is with us now to tell us more about this. Good morning, Scott. Good morning. Scott, what are the stakes here?

6:33Is this mainly about Trump wanting lower interest rates? Interest rates are certainly part of the story, but more broadly, this is about power and who gets to control decision-making at the Federal Reserve. Trump has made no secret of the fact he wants lower borrowing costs, and he's likely to get that wish when policymakers meet in a couple of weeks. That's because the job market is showing signs of softening, and lower interest rates might help to cushion that a little bit. But Trump wants more. He wants to install more of his own people at the central bank. He's nominated a White House economic advisor, Stephen Myron, to fill one vacancy on the Fed's board.

7:09And if he's successful in pushing Fed Governor Lisa Cook aside, he'll get a chance to put another ally on the board. That would mean four out of seven Fed governors would be Trump appointees. And the president told reporters last week he's looking forward to that. We'll have a majority very shortly, so that'll be great. Once we have a majority, housing is going to swing and it's going to be great. people are paying too high an interest rate. Now, two caveats. One, the Fed does not directly control mortgage rates. Those are set in the bond market. So this move could actually backfire if investors come to think a Trump-dominated Fed might let inflation get out of control.

7:45And two, Congress set up the Fed to be insulated from exactly this kind of political pressure from the White House. So Scott, what's your sense of how this is going to play out? Right now, the fight's being waged on two fronts. One's in the courts, where Lisa Cook has filed a lawsuit to prevent the president from firing her from the Fed board. Trump and his allies have accused Cook of mortgage fraud, but Cook denies that and says that's just a pretext to muscle her off the board. While that's being sorted out in the courts, the Senate has a chance to weigh in. We will hear in particular if any Senate Republicans stand up for Fed independence.

8:19They have done so in the past. We will see if they're willing to challenge the president this time. Is Fed independence likely to come up at today's confirmation hearing? Yeah, I'm sure we'll hear a lot of questions, at least from Democrats on the committee. Trump's nominee, Stephen Myron, co-authored a paper last year in which he argued the president should have more control over the Fed's board of governors. Now, he also suggested a ban on people moving from the White House to the Fed, although obviously that is not in effect right now. Most other advanced economies have decided it's a good idea to insulate their central banks from meddling by politicians.

8:56Fed Chairman Jerome Powell says it just makes for better long-term decision-making. If you were not to have that, it would be a great temptation, of course, to use interest rates to affect elections, for example. And that's something that we don't want to do. Powell's own term as Fed chairman runs out next May. And at that time, Trump will have the opportunity to name a new chairman. Powell could remain on the board as a Fed governor, however, through 2028. So far, the Fed chairman has not said whether he plans to stick around that long. That is NPR Scott Horsley. Scott, thank you. You're welcome.

9:38A federal judge in Boston handed Harvard University a big win on Wednesday. The judge says the Trump administration unlawfully froze more than$2 billion in research funding to the school. The administration put the freeze in place in what it says was a response to allegations of anti-Semitism on campus, which prompted Harvard to sue. NPR education correspondent Corey Turner has been looking over the judge's 84-page ruling and is with us now to tell us more about it. Corey, good morning. Good morning, Michelle. So what can you tell us about how the funding freeze, according to the judge, ran afoul of the law?

10:11Yeah, Judge Allison Burroughs offered really not one argument, but several. For starters, she pointed out that the research being defunded at Harvard included studies of Alzheimer's, cancer, Lou Gehrig's disease, heart disease, autism. There was even a study to help emergency room doctors better serve suicidal veterans, none of which, the judge said, had any clear connection to anti-Semitism on campus. Burroughs also said the freeze violated Harvard's First Amendment rights. And that's because at the same time the Trump administration claimed it was doing this to fight anti-Semitism, President Trump was excoriating Harvard more broadly on Truth Social for being a, quote, liberal mess and for fighting back against the administration.

10:56So the judge said she found it, quote, difficult to conclude anything other than that the administration used anti-Semitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically motivated assault. You know, Corey, it's interesting. Harvard has said that anti-Semitism had become a problem on campus. Does the judge speak to that? Yeah, in a ruling, Judge Burroughs was kind of hard on Harvard, saying, quote, it had been plagued by anti-Semitism in recent years and could and should have done a better job of dealing with the issue. But she said Harvard was already taking steps to do just that when the Trump administration froze its funding.

11:36In fact, this was actually another way the administration, she said, had run afoul of federal law. It had accused Harvard of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the landmark law that protects Americans from discrimination based on race, color, and national origin. But Title VI requires a very clear step-by-step process for the government to follow to bring a school into compliance. And the judge said jumping straight to this huge funding freeze essentially skipped most of those steps. So what happens now? Well, White House spokesperson Liz Houston said, quote, we will immediately move to appeal this egregious decision, and we're confident we will ultimately prevail.

12:20Meanwhile, Harvard President Alan Garber's statement was notably subdued, pledging to, quote, continue to assess the implications of the opinion, monitor further legal developments, and be mindful of the changing landscape. And I think, Michelle, that's a nod to the fact that Harvard and the White House have been battling on multiple fronts here, while also talking behind the scenes about a potential settlement agreement like the ones already signed by Columbia and Brown University. It's hard to know what effect this ruling is ultimately going to have, but I think it's pretty clear it strengthens Harvard's bargaining position.

12:56That is NPR education correspondent Corey Turner. Corey, thank you. You're welcome, Michelle.

13:05And that's Up First for Thursday, September 4th. I'm Michelle Martin. And I'm A Martinez. Consider This could be your next listen. It's from NPR. We here at Up First give you the three big stories of the day. Our Consider This colleagues take a different approach. They dive into a single news story and what it means to you in less than 15 minutes. Listen now on the NPR app or wherever you get those podcasts. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Diane Weber, Raphael Nam, Lauren McGaughy, Lisa Thompson, and Alice Wolfley. It was produced by Zia Butch, Nia Dumas, and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Nisha Hines, and our technical director is Carly Strange.

13:40We hope you'll join us again tomorrow.

13:49World news is important, but it can feel far away. not on the State of the World podcast. With journalists around the world, you'll hear firsthand the effects of U.S. trade actions in Canada and China and meet a Mexican street sweeper who became a pop star. We don't go around the world. We're already there. Listen to the State of the World podcast from NPR every weekday. Maybe you're wondering, how do I escape quicksand? Or how do I break up with my dentist? Well, Season 2 of NPR's How to Do Everything podcast is launching this fall, and we will attempt to answer your questions. Sometimes we'll actually succeed.

14:30Send us your questions at howto at npr.org. That's howto at npr.org. I'm Rachel Martin. If you're tired of small talk, check out the Wild Card podcast. I invite your favorite celebrities to open up about the big topics we all think about but rarely talk about. Tune in this fall to hear Matthew McConaughey, Shonda Rhimes, and Padma Lakshmi talk about everything from grief and God to ambition and forgiveness. Watch or listen on the NPR app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.