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Hello and welcome to USA Today's The Excerpt.

I'm Dana Taylor.

Today is Sunday, September 7, 2025.

For Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., it was never going to be a smooth road as Secretary of Health and Human Services,

given the controversy surrounding

as well-documented vaccine hesitancy. But a stewardship of the agency is now at a crisis point,

as the nearly 80-year-old CDC or Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reels from a series

of worrying red flags, is this cornerstone agency created to safe keep American public health crumbling? Here to help me

dig into all of this is USA Today White House correspondent Swapna Vanugapal. Swapna, thanks for joining me.

Thank you for having me, Dana. Let's start with the heated Senate Finance Committee hearing that

took place this past Thursday,

Senators grilled Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over what some are calling his

politicization of vaccine policy and his past promises not to interfere in scientific decisions.

What happened? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was a very controversial figure,

even at the very start of this administration, when he was being confirmed, there were a lot of

misgivings from the scientific community because of a lot of the controversial theories that he had

peddled in the past.

...