Trump And Free Speech, CDC On Childhood Vaccines, Antifa Terror Designation

0:02President Trump suggests the FCC should go after other late night hosts who make fun of him. I would think maybe their license should be taken away. It'll be up to Brendan Cook. What power does the government have over broadcasters? I'm Steve Inskeep with Layla Faddle, and this is Up First from NPR News. Ignoring the pleas of medical professionals, a CDC panel wants to roll back vaccine guidance for children. I urge this committee not to change the recommendations if they truly want to give the power to the parents. How is RFK Jr. reshaping vaccine policy? And in the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder, President Trump says he's going to designate Antifa a terrorist organization.

0:43But Antifa isn't a cohesive group, and there's no known connection between the left-wing activist and Kirk's alleged killer. Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your day.

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1:54This is Eric Glass. On This American Life, we like stories that surprise you. For instance, imagine finding a new hobby and realizing... To do this hobby right, according to the ways of the masters, there's a pretty good chance that you're going to have to bend the law to get the materials that you need. If not break it. Yeah, to break international laws. Your life stories, really good ones. This American Life. How much further can the government go in policing speech? President Trump said Thursday that broadcasters allowing criticism of him should, quote, maybe lose their license. The Federal Communications Commission licenses TV and radio stations.

2:32This week, Trump's chairman, Brendan Carr, threatened retaliation against ABC stations, and ABC stopped the show of comedian Jimmy Kimmel over a monologue relating to the murder of Charlie Kirk. On Fox News last night, Carr promised more. I don't think this is the last shoe to drop. This is a massive shift that's taking place in the media ecosystem. And I think the consequences are going to continue to flow. The campaign against speech is a reversal for Republicans, including Carr, who wrote in 2019, quote, the FCC does not have a roving mandate to police speech in the name of the public interest.

3:06Carr's words. NPR senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith has been following all this and she joins me now. Good morning. Good morning. OK, so can the FCC chair, Carr, in this case, just pull broadcast licenses because the administration doesn't like a joke or criticism? The one Democratic member of the commission said Carr doesn't have the legal authority to do this, but that may not matter. The FCC has significant power to investigate and find stations and, yes, even pull broadcast licenses. It also has jurisdiction over mergers and acquisitions, which has given Carr significant leverage.

3:42In Kimmel's case, two conglomerates that own local stations put pressure on ABC after Carr said the Kimmel situation could be handled the easy way or the hard way. One of those companies is seeking FCC approval for a merger. Is Carr doing the president's bidding here? Certainly, they are fully aligned and Trump is thrilled with the results. The president has been publicly campaigning against Kimmel for months for his scathing criticisms of Trump and bad ratings, he says. On Air Force One, Trump was asked whether he wanted the FCC chairman to go after other late night hosts he doesn't like. And Trump broadened it out even further, saying the networks are too negative about him.

4:27If they're 97 percent against, they give me wholly bad publicity or press. I mean, if they're getting a license, I would think maybe their license should be taken away. It will be up to Brendan Carr. I think Brendan Carr is outstanding. He's a patriot. He loves our country and he's a tough guy. I mean, Tam, I mean, how does that square with First Amendment protections for free speech and a free press? Advocates and scholars are raising alarms. Trump and his allies have long bemoaned cancel culture on the left. and he came into office promising to restore free speech, but his administration has been sued by law firms and universities for various actions they say are using the power of the government to punish them for speech.

5:12Earlier this week, Attorney General Pam Bondi said hate speech isn't free speech, which made a lot of conservatives uncomfortable. She walked it back. Ilya Soman is a constitutional law expert at the Libertarian Cato Institute, and he told me government power is very obviously being weaponized against speech. There are some legal and political issues that are complicated and difficult. Here, sort of the bald-faced nature of what the administration is doing is not difficult at all. And therefore, I want to be clear and unequivocal about it. Soman told me the First Amendment doesn't guarantee you a job, but it does prevent the government from trying to get you fired for something you've said.

5:51I mean, what does the Trump administration say to this very real alarm that they're wielding government power to silence people. The White House says, quote, free speech is alive and well. But there are many examples of Trump and his administration using the power they have to go after the media. Trump has filed lawsuits against ABC and CBS, which settled. There are suits against The New York Times and Wall Street Journal, which they are fighting. And that barely scratches the surface. In the first term, he complained about his coverage. This time, he is actively working to change it. NPR's Tamara Keith, thank you, Tam.

6:26You're welcome.

6:35A federal vaccine advisory committee is following through with a pledge to change vaccine policy. The panel advising the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was chosen by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. NPR's Ping Huang is attending the meeting in Atlanta and joins me now. Good morning, Peng. Good morning, Leila. Tell us about the changes in this panel and why that matters. Yeah, so this has been a highly unusual meeting, Leila. There are 12 members. They're new since June when Kennedy fired all the previous members, and they have come with a new approach. They're challenging years of established vaccine science, and they're digging deep into old data to try and find evidence of harms.

7:15And throughout the meeting, there's been clashes between the new members and with members of the medical establishment like Dr. Jason Goldman, who's president of the American College of Physicians. I urge this committee not to change the recommendations if they truly want to give the power to the parents to decide what is best for their child. But the committee did vote to change a long-standing recommendation on the MMRV vaccine. Okay, so that's the measles, mumps, rubella, and chickenpox vaccine diseases that are very contagious in kids. How did the recommendation change? Yeah, that's the combo shot for all of them.

7:51And they voted to recommend that kids under four should no longer be able to get it. Instead, they should be getting the MMR vaccine and the chickenpox vaccines separately. So that's a subtle change because most kids, 85 % of them already do get the shot separately. And that's because of a slightly higher risk of something called febrile seizures, which come with the combo shot. That's something that's been known for a long time. And while I know they sound scary, pediatricians say they're mostly harmless. Here's Dr. Cody Meissner from Dartmouth. He's the only member who served on this committee before.

8:24This discussion is really a deja vu for me because we had extensive discussions on this very topic 15 years ago, approximately. And he was one of three members who voted against the change, but he was overruled and this recommendation could have implications for insurance coverage. Like what kind of implications? So they're still sorting it out. I mean, this vote could mean that the combo shot is no longer covered by Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program for kids under four. It could also mean that private insurers can maybe choose whether they covet or not. Now, HHS did send out a statement after the meeting saying they were going to review what this means for insurance coverage before the final decision is made by the CDC's acting director.

9:06And what do you expect to happen today? So today they're going to be voting on making changes to the hepatitis B vaccine, which is also a vaccine that's been around for decades. It's been recommended at birth for every baby since 1991, and it seems like they're going to try to delay that first dose. They're also going to be voting on COVID vaccines. So these discussions are going to be led by committee member Retsev Levy, who's a professor of operations management at MIT. He's said that COVID vaccines are killing people, despite safety monitoring programs that have found this not to be true. So the committee could agree with the FDA's current recommendations for people 65 and older or those at higher risk.

9:46They could expand on it. But based on yesterday's discussions, doctors' groups are worried that they're going to be voting to make them harder to get. That's NPR's Ping Huang in Atlanta. Thank you, Ping. You're welcome.

10:05The president's talk about Antifa has raised some questions. Yeah, Trump said on social media he will designate it a, quote, major terrorist organization. So what is the group really and what can the government do to it? NPR domestic extremism correspondent Odette Youssef is covering this. Good morning. Good morning. I want to remind people of the backdrop. Charlie Kirk was murdered. There is a suspect in custody in Utah. Republicans, some of them, though, were immediately saying, quote, they killed Charlie Kirk. and the administration began talking of rolling up its political critics, critical groups.

10:37Where does Antifa fit into all that? Well, Antifa is shorthand for anti-fascist, and it's really more of a movement than a cohesive organization. But top Republican leaders, including President Trump and Senator Ted Cruz, have suggested without evidence that Antifa or purported funders of Antifa may be involved in the Kirk killing. Now, the man who is charged with that crime does not have any known affiliation with Antifa. And so far, he's the only person charged in connection with the killing. But the focus on funders is notable because it distinguishes this round of scrutiny from what happened in 2020.

11:17You may recall, Steve, back then, President Trump called for Antifa to be designated a terrorist group. that failed in large part because, again, it's not a centralized organization, but also because there is simply no legal mechanism to do this. What do you mean by that? Because when he says designate them as a terrorist group, it sounds very legal. So there is a process to designate certain groups as foreign terrorist organizations. So think ISIS, Al Qaeda, that process lies with the State Department and it requires proof of a foreign connection. But there is no such process or legal authority right now to do the same with domestic groups.

11:55And the reason is that such a designation could infringe on Americans' First Amendment rights. So much discussion of the First Amendment now. So when the president uses his First Amendment right to say this on social media, are there any teeth behind it? Well, there are still a couple of reasons to track this, I'm told. You know, first, in 2020, Trump was also calling for the designation of Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. It didn't happen then, but it has happened now. And so this expansion in the application of the term terrorist is already underway. Also, even a rhetorical conflation of Antifa with terrorism has been shown to have real world consequences.

12:34I spoke with Faiza Patel at the Brennan Center for Justice. She said when that happened in 2020, law enforcement at every level turned their attention and resources toward finding Antifa at protests and trying to establish that it was a national organization, those efforts failed. But this time, Patel says the impacts could be even broader. It's pretty clear from the president's tweet that he is focused on the funding of these groups, right? And what that means is that there's potentially a broad array of civil society organizations that can be caught up in this as being potentially linked to anti-fascism in some way or the other.

13:15And I'll add, Steve, yesterday on Air Force One, NPR asked the president how he would go after Antifa since it's more of an ideology than a formal organization. He said, we're going to find out, and then asked our colleague if Antifa had anything to do with NPR. Okay, that's NPR domestic extremism correspondent Odette Youssef. Thanks so much. Thank you.

13:40And that's a first for Friday, September 19th. I'm Leila Falded. And I'm Steve Inskeep. NPR News brings you stories from across the country thanks to NPR station reporters who are in your community. They live there. They cover it. They're supported by the community. And they cover many others as well. You can keep that network strong by visiting donate.npr.org slash upfirst in order to contribute. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Roberta Rampton, Jane Greenhalgh, Andrew Sussman, Mohamed El-Berdisi, and Olivia Hampton. It was produced by Ziad Batch, Anna Perez, and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Nisha Hines, and our technical director is David Greenberg, and our executive producer is Jay Shaler.

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