RFK Jr. Under Fire Following Vaccine Changes And CDC Shakeup
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.5 • 24.9K Ratings
🗓️ 9 September 2025
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode: political correspondent Ashley Lopez, health correspondent Selena Simmons-Duffin, and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson.
This podcast was produced by Casey Morell & Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.
Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | These days, with all the information coming at you, it can be hard to know what's accurate, what's not, and what's worth your time. |
| 0:07.7 | Here to help you navigate it all is 1A. |
| 0:10.2 | Five days a week, the 1A podcast provides a forum for Curate's Minds to explore different angles on the biggest headlines and give you a more balanced take on what's happening. |
| 0:19.3 | Listen to the 1A podcast from NPR and WAMU. |
| 0:24.3 | Good morning. |
| 0:25.5 | This is Melissa. |
| 0:26.7 | I'm in the barn milking my dairy sheep. |
| 0:29.1 | We finally got a break from the heat wave, |
| 0:31.5 | and I'm not pouring sweat while milking the sheep. |
| 0:34.3 | This podcast was recorded at 12.17 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, September 9th, |
| 0:39.9 | 2025. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I'll go back inside and get this milk |
| 0:46.1 | processed into cheese. I didn't know you could milk sheep. Yeah. And that sounds like so lovely. And now it's nice out. Congratulations. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. And I'm Mara Liason, Senior National Political Correspondent. We also have on the show today NPR health correspondent, Selena Simmons-Duffin, joining us. Welcome back to the show, Selena. Thank you so much for having me. And today we're going to be |
| 1:14.8 | talking about the drama surrounding Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the federal health |
| 1:19.9 | agencies he oversees, and the so-called Make America Healthy again, known as Maha Movement. |
| 1:25.3 | So, Selena, why don't you set the stage for this Senate hearing late last week where Kennedy testified? |
| 1:31.3 | Yeah, so there have been a lot of really big changes at HHS since Kennedy took over. |
| 1:38.0 | And senators were looking for answers. |
| 1:40.4 | So just to recap some of the big changes, we have Kennedy overseeing a dramatic shrinking of the federal workforce at HHS. So 20,000 staff are now no longer working at HHS. That's about a quarter of the workforce. |
| 1:57.2 | Kennedy said that he wasn't going to fire this advisory panel that consults with CDC on vaccine policy, |
| 2:04.6 | and then he fired all 17 members of that panel and replaced them with his own handpicked roster of people who have a history of anti-vaccine rhetoric. |
| 2:15.4 | Also, he announced that he was canceling $500 million in MRNA research. |
| 2:21.6 | He said that the rules for who can get COVID-19 vaccines are changing this year |
... |
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