The Week In Politics, The Week In Free Speech, The Week In Vaccines

0:02Consult your doctor. That's a familiar tagline to medication ads on TV. Now it's coming to COVID shots. New recommendations could discourage people from getting vaccinated. I'm Scott Simon. And I'm Aisha Roscoe. This is Up First from NPR News. Experts say COVID-19 vaccines are safe and highly effective. So they say new steps recommended by a government advisory panel are unnecessary. More on that in a few minutes. Plus, as Congress all but assured, a government shutdown. We've got the numbers. And increasingly blurry lines separate free speech and cancel culture and censorship. Our media correspondent takes a look.

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2:18This American Life. First, the week in politics. A government shutdown looks likely after Senate Republicans and Democrats blocked each other's plans Friday to keep the government open beyond the end of this month. Congress is now on recess with many Republicans, including President Trump and Vice President Vance, heading to Arizona for a memorial service tomorrow for Charlie Kirk. We're joined now by NPR senior political contributor Ron Elving. Ron, thanks for being with us. Good to be with you, Scott. And we'll turn quite soon to the developments and divisions following the Charlie Kirk assassination.

2:54But let's begin with the basic question of funding the government. Can the Congress do it? At this moment, a shutdown is the default scenario for the end of this month. The House has passed a stopgap spending measure and gone on recess until October. The Senate tried to match that measure yesterday, but it needed 60 votes, which meant it needed some Democrats to go along, and just one did. Most of the Democrats stood firm against this bill, which they say will be a disaster for people on Obamacare or Medicaid or relying on rural hospitals. So the stopgap failed, and unless the Senate can gather itself again and find a way forward, the fiscal year will end in 10 days without a new set of directives for spending, and much of the government will shut down.

3:40Country, of course, is deeply divided. Divisions appear to have been hardened in the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination. What stood out to you this week? The divisions and the depths of those divisions, Scott, it's not just right and left. Republican, Democrat, we're in an attitude of grievance, reactions of outrage. It's becoming all too familiar. A large portion of the country is enraged about the killing of Charlie Kirk and another about the suspension of TV personality Jimmy Kimmel. And a third group is wondering why these two events are tearing the country apart. There are millions of Americans who don't live to argue on social media.

4:18They don't want to be at odds with their neighbors. And polls show the national mood in the wake of these events is plummeting. And that's all across the political spectrum. President Trump applauded ABC's decision to take Jimmy Kimmel off the air indefinitely after he made comments after the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The president also said federal regulators ought to consider revoking licenses of other broadcasters who have reported or said things he believes to be critical of him. Presidents of both parties have groused about what they consider to be unfair reporting and ridicule. But have we ever seen anything like this before?

4:55We have seen presidents sue newspapers before. They have not had much luck with that, and Trump has not either, at least so far. We have also heard presidents rail against the broadcast media. Richard Nixon in particular battled the press and the TV news. He looked for ways he could withdraw broadcast licenses owned by newspapers he considered hostile, such as the Washington Post. But, of course, for every story of a brave newsroom standing up to bullying, there are many more we never hear about, how newsrooms have been intimidated or constrained. And in the contemporary media landscape where we live today, with this fragmentation, it's getting harder and harder to control the narrative for anyone, especially if it's driven by individuals on social media.

5:38And tomorrow, the memorial service for Charlie Kirk. What do you think we can expect? In a democracy, people of all political sympathies are entitled to express those feelings and most especially to grieve their fallen heroes. For Charlie Kirk's supporters, it will be an occasion for their sense of righteous anger and is likely to fuel their determination to pursue Kirk's ideas and agenda. And it will also be an occasion for other prominent figures to identify with Kirk and try to capture some of what he had, his message, and his following as well. NPR's Ron Elvin, thanks so much. Thank you, Scott.

6:26We'll go a little deeper now into the questions of coverage that Ron just touched on. The First Amendment protects freedom of speech, and yet just this week, a late-night host suspended after a federal regulator's threat, a newspaper sued by the president for reporting into how he made his money, and the vice president encouraging podcast listeners to seek and report people who have criticized the late Charlie Kirk. Quite a week. NPR media correspondent David Folkenflit joins us. David, thanks for being with us. Pleasure. And let's begin with the news from last night. A pledge being required of reporters credentialed to report at the Pentagon.

7:05What do we know? So, Scott, this was a policy that was released late last night by the leadership of the Pentagon, which is run, of course, by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former Fox and Friends weekend host. And it says that journalists to be credentialed at the Pentagon have to sign a pledge agreeing that they're not going to report on or to publicly report or disclose any information that hasn't been authorized by the Pentagon for release. And by the way, that includes non-classified information, stuff that's not top secret. So that's called prior restraint when the government tries to tell you ahead of time what you can and can't publish or broadcast.

7:38A half century ago, the New York Times, Washington Post went to the Supreme Court and won over the Pentagon paper saying that the government can't exercise prior restraint. And here we are again. So I talked to NPR's editor-in-chief, Tommy Evans, and asked him about this. He said NPR is taking it very seriously. We'll be working with other news organizations to push back. We're big fans of the First Amendment and transparency, and we want the American public to understand what's being done in their name. Maybe we should remind ourselves, what do we mean in America when we say free speech? Well, it's embedded in our Bill of Rights, the very First Amendment.

8:10Part of it, as you alluded to, is the freedom of speech. The federal government cannot tell you what you can or can't say publicly with some very small limitations like defamation and other things like that. This is protection from the government, not just of journalists but of any citizen, any person in the public sphere. And the idea is that it's not just that speech that is pleasing is protected. It's not just that speech that is tidy or kind. It's to protect dissent and to protect in – as the years evolved, reporting that people in power might not want to be public. President Trump came to office promising to protect free speech.

8:45What has that meant in practice? Well, the president and his allies have gone after what they call cancel culture, wokeism. They've used the power of the government to go after language about diversity and corporate suites, for example, equity and inclusion. It's been seeking to unleash speech that has been seen as offensive or off limits and using the power of government to do so. But let's be clear. That's the kind of speech the president likes. The administration at his direction is also going after major institutions where you find critics or people challenging the administration and its policies.

9:13So think of universities. Think of law firms. Think of corporations and, yes, especially the media. Just this week, Trump sued the New York Times as a private citizen for reporting that goes against his narrative that he's a self-made billionaire. The judge threw out the case yesterday with some pretty strong language. He said Trump was using his legal complaint as a PR megaphone, though he said the president could refile it. And let's not forget, after the parent companies of ABC and CBS each paid$16 million to settle lawsuits by Trump against them that legal scholars told me were pretty flimsy, They've since pulled their late-night comics.

9:44That's CBS's Stephen Colbert and ABC's Jimmy Kimmel, at least temporarily. Those are two of the most acerbic public critics of the president that the broader public gets to see on a regular basis. David, what about the argument from the president and many of his supporters that the mainstream media has brought this on themselves by being selective about its outrage and has excluded dissident viewpoints that question liberal norms from J .K. Rowling to Dave Chappelle? And I've been hearing that too from folks, from conservative friends, from people online getting into my direct messages. I'm reporting this week in South Dakota.

10:20I'm hearing it as I go out and talk to people. You know, look, I think that once Trump arrived on the scene and you had shortly after Me Too movement and then you had the 2020 social justice movements, those affected a lot of newsrooms as well as it affected a lot of different figures in corporations in public life. And I think that's something the press has to reckon with. People seeking to report broadly and reach broad audiences have to reach them and treat them respectfully in ways they recognize even as they report things factually and truthfully. But that's a very different thing from arguing the government needs to be the one to enforce the right balance of political speech and we've seen that in a variety of ways.

10:57Where does that leave us in the idea of free speech right now in America? Well, you've seen, for example, the president's chief broadcast regulator, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, be sort of his warrior against the free speech of media outlets that have aggrieved the president. And there's a chilling effect when federal government makes demands, as Brendan Carr does, or watches investigations, as he has done. That's the antithesis of the First Amendment. Maybe offending voices won't be found in late night. Maybe news outlets will pull their punches from hard-hitting reporting or commentaries we've already seen from the billionaire-owned Washington Post and Los Angeles Times.

11:33How will we know what we don't hear? The First Amendment only really means something if it is exercised and if it is defended. The First Amendment isn't meant only to cover people when the speech is kind or inoffensive, when news reporting is flattering or accepted by everybody or is perfectly accurate. It's meant to cover, as I mentioned before, kind of this boisterous, roiling, untidy and often impolitic discussion of public life and especially about the nation's most powerful and prominent public officials. And here's David Fokenflick. Thanks so much. You bet.

12:12COVID shots weren't the only vaccines under the microscope this week as a panel that advises the federal government held chaotic and at times tense meetings in Atlanta. The committee guards the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on who should get vaccines and when and they've been embroiled in controversy under the leadership of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And Piers Will Stone spent the last couple of days watching the meeting and joins us now. Will, thanks for being with us. Thanks for having me. Did the committee make any changes to the vaccine schedule? They did. The biggest concrete change was a decision to stop children under four from getting a combination shot for measles, mumps, rubella, and chickenpox.

12:55This is the MMRV vaccine, Scott, and at issue with some data from the CDC showing a slightly increased risk of fever-related seizures in some infants after getting that shot. Now, the vast majority of children do not get this single shot. Instead, they get the MMR vaccine and a separate one to cover chickenpox. And representatives from medical groups who were at the meeting said the changes were unnecessary, could limit access. But ultimately, the committee went ahead and decided to limit the shots anyways. Was this a surprise, Will? Because there's been speculation we could see much bigger changes in that policy.

13:30Yeah, that's right. Remember, Kennedy fired all the existing members of this influential vaccine committee and handpicked the replacements. Some of them have a history of being critical of vaccines. And there was a push to remove the recommendation that children get the hepatitis B vaccine right after they're born. This has been in place for a long time. and CDC scientists at the meeting emphasized it's helped cut rates of this disease dramatically. The debate, I would say, was just one example of the broader tensions here between the medical establishment and these new committee members. Take a listen to Dr.

14:07Flora Munoz, who is not on the committee but spoke during the meeting. She's with the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Why? Why are we addressing this hepatitis B vaccine recommendation? Is there really a reason that the committee can provide for making a change. You heard some variation of this question throughout the two-day meeting from many experts who were there. Now, in the case of the hepatitis B vaccine, that proposal did end up failing after the committee voted to table it to get more information. Any changes made to the COVID-19 vaccine? There were some changes, though the committee ultimately backed away from its most controversial proposal They called for states to require a prescription for the COVID-19 vaccine.

14:53There were a series of votes, and I'll have to say, Scott, the whole process was pretty convoluted. For most of the day, it wasn't clear what the committee would even be voting on. In the end, they decided that anyone over six months old can get the shot, but they did call for patients to speak with a clinician about the risks and benefits. They also called on the information sheets about the vaccines to include more information about possible risks and uncertainty about the effectiveness of the vaccines. Even though CDC scientists shared data showing the vaccines still offer protection against severe disease, there was considerable time devoted to presentations about safety concerns, including some unproven theories about links to cancer.

15:35All of this was really troubling to the medical experts there who worry it will fuel more doubts and confusion around the vaccines. Well, you've monitored a lot of these meetings over the years. How was this one different? Well, it was striking to see how many experts representing major medical organizations have really been sidelined from the process in ways that you did not see under previous administrations. Here's Dr. Sandra Fryhofer. She spoke on behalf of the American Medical Association on Friday ahead of the COVID-19 votes. It's troubling to see the erosion of the committee's integrity.

16:11We're concerned about how vaccine recommendations are being developed by this new panel. Data is being selectively used to justify specific conclusions rather than considering all of the available evidence. So this gathering underscored the turbulent, highly politicized nature of vaccine policy under the leadership of Health Secretary Kennedy, which is now at odds with the medical establishment. And Pierre's Will Stone, thanks so much. Thank you.

16:42And that's up first for September 20th, 2025. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. And I'm Scott Simon. Michael Radcliffe produced today's podcast with help from Elena Twork and Andy Craig. Our editor was Ed McNulty, along with Martin Patience, Dee Parvaz, Emily Kopp, and Jane Greenhalgh. Fernando Naro directed. Our technical director has been David Greenberg with engineering support from Nisha Heines, Sovang Genhoven, and Ted Meebe. Our senior supervising editor is Shannon Rhodes. Evie Stone is our executive producer, and Jim Kane is our deputy managing editor. Tomorrow on the Sunday story, higher education and the second Trump term.

17:24That will be in this podcast feed. There's a ton more on the radio. So find your local NPR station at stations.npr.org. And you can get a whole bunch of stuff from that. I mean, just turn it on right now. Turn it on right now. And spend the weekend in front of your radio. Why not? Exactly. We're demanding it. All right, an occasional bathroom break.

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