Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at Background Briefing.org.

I'm Ian Masters, and today we'll examine a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with today's contentious hearings before the Senate Finance Committee

where Health and Human Services Secretary, RFK Jr., was grilled by Democrats who want him

fired and Republicans he had lied to in his confirmation when he promised not to mess with

vaccines.

Joining us is Thomas Boyke, Director of the Global Health Program and Senior Fellow for Global

Health, Economics and Developments at the Council on Foreign Relations.

He is also a professor at George Han University and is the author of Plagues and the Paradox

of Progress, Why the World is Getting Health in Warrowsome Ways, and the founder and managing paradox of progress, why the world is getting healthier in worrisome ways,

and the founder and managing editor of Think Global Health, an online magazine that examines

the way health shapes economies, societies, and everyday lives around the world. And he has a recent

article at Foreign Affairs, America's pill problem. Tariffs won't fix the country's reliance on foreign

medicines. Then we'll speak with a congressional reporter who covered yesterday's press

conference in front of the Capitol where women who had been sexually abused and trafficked by

Epstein and Maxwell spoke at a bipartisan event organized by Congressman Rohana and Tom Massey aimed at pressuring the

House Speaker into releasing all of the Epstein files, the DOJ and Trump, are fighting to keep

from the public.

Joining us is Julie Grace Brufke, who is a congressional reporter covering the Washington

landscape for 24-site news,

whose work has appeared in the Washington Examiner, the Daily Beast, the New York Post, and the Hill,

and she has appeared as a political commentator on CNN, CNBC, C-SPAN, and Fox News.

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