from WNYC studios. I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Friday, January 31st.

Here is maybe the moment of the biggest concern for RFK Jr. from the two days of confirmation hearings

he just sat through to be Health and Human Services Secretary. This is from yesterday's

hearing in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. The speaker is Republican

Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who was also a physician.

Now, my responsibility is to learn, try and determine if you can be trusted to support the best public health.

A worthy movement called Maha to improve the health of Americans or to undermine it always asking for more evidence and never accepting the evidence that is there.

And that is why I've been struggling with your nomination.

There are issues we are, man, ultra-processed food, obesity, we are, we are sympathetic.

We're completely aligned. And as someone

who has discussed immunizations with thousands of people, I understand that mothers want reassurance

that the vaccine their child is receiving is necessary, safe, and effective. We agree on that point,

the two of us, but we've approached it differently.

And I think I can say that I've approached it using the preponderance of evidence to reassure,

and you've approached using selected evidence to cast doubt.

Republican Senator Bill Cassidy with RFK Jr. yesterday in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing.

With us now is another member of that committee who also got to question RFK.

And that's not the only thing we'll talk about with him because our guest is New Jersey's brand new U.S. Senator Andy Kim,

Democrat who had been in the House of Representatives the last six years

and got elected to the Senate in November after Senator Bob Menendez faced corruption charges and withdrew.

Coincidentally, some of you have heard Menendez was sentenced this week to 11 years in prison.

But Senator Kim, congratulations on joining the Senate, and we really appreciate

...