It's The Brian Lair Show on WNYC.

I'm producer Amina Serna filling in for Brian today.

Welcome back, everyone.

We now turn to our health and climate stories of the week. As some listeners know,

the Brian Lear Show is building on its climate story of the week series from past years. It's an effort

to keep stories about the environment and public health from getting lost in the shuffle during

Trump's first 100 days in office. So we'll start now on health. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

recently completed his so-called Make America Healthy Again tour, designed to highlight his plan

to fight chronic disease and promote a healthy diet. The tour took place amid massive cuts to

the Department of Health and Human Services. Brian covered them last week

with NPR health reporter, Selena Simmons-Duffin. And as the week has gone on, the scope of

cutbacks to vital public health programs has become clear. Kennedy has claimed, since his Senate

confirmation hearings, that infectious diseases receive far more federal funding than chronic diseases.

And yet, Kennedy's purge of federal workers has halted the very programs that track public health problems.

Joining us now with a roundup of all the news coming out of HHS is Julie Rovner, Chief Washington

correspondent at KFF Health News, and host of the What the Health podcast. Julie, welcome back to WMIC.

Thanks for having me. In your weekly What the Health podcast episode, you referred to the

Health Secretary's cuts to HHS as

the Great Dismantling. So for listeners that missed the story or missed Brian's segment last week,

can you refresh our memories? What happened earlier this month? Yes. Well, first, when the

Trump administration came in, even before RFK Jr. had been confirmed, they offered this big buyout to basically all federal workers. So you had a number of people, I think as many as 10,000, either taking the buyout or retiring early or simply leaving because they could see the handwriting on the wall.

Then in February and again in April, there were these enormous cuts.

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