It's the Brian Laris show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone.

Many of you know we've had a health and climate Tuesdays section of the show for the first 100 days of the Trump administration to make sure the big changes

in those areas didn't get lost in the crush of headlines about other things that might seem

more pressing on any given day, right? So today, on day 107, the first Tuesday outside that

first 100 day window, we're announcing simply that we're going to keep it up.

Health and Climate Tuesdays will continue. Later, how they're canceling environmental justice

programs and how that's affecting high pollution communities in New York. But first, new developments

on RFK Jr. and vaccines. New York Times Food and Drug Administration reporter

Christina Jewett is with us. She's very much on the RFK Jr. Beat. Her latest article is called

Kennedy issues demands for vaccine approvals that could affect fall COVID boosters. Some of you

heard the basic headline on this, maybe just as much as I just said.

Last Thursday, Kennedy announced that all new vaccines would need to be tested against

placebos. The question is, will each new annual tweak to the existing COVID vaccines,

like you do with flu vaccines, now be treated like a brand new vaccine, which

might make them impossible to produce. Let's see what's happening. We'll touch on a few other things

too. Christina, thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC. Glad to be here, Brian. Start at the beginning. What was

this announcement last Thursday in a little more detail than I just gave?

Sure. Yeah, there was a bit of a kerfuffle with a vaccine by Nova Vax that sort of caused some journalists to ask some more questions of the administration about what they were, you know, really looking for in terms of these updated COVID vaccines, which, you know, a lot like the flu vaccine,

the viruses evolve, and the formula has changed each year to sort of, you know, attack the most recent strain of the virus. And so the administration came back and basically said there's not going to be sort of a blank

check of approval based on, you know, large studies from a few years ago. We're going to, you know,

be requiring, you know, placebo-controlled clinical trials. And so that, you know, really alarmed some

public health experts, because as you sort of

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