← Here's the Scoop
Here's the Scoop
A former CDC official on why she resigned in protest; Federal judges are critical of SCOTUS
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So, folks, you might have noticed the weather's changing out there. The sun appears to be out, the days are longer. This is in the northern hemisphere, of course, and it's got me excited for road trips, days out exploring and long walks to castles on windswept crags. And if you're looking forward to all that, too, I've got the perfect companion podcast to join you on your adventures this summer. I'm Dan Snow, host of the Dan Snow's History Hit podcast where I whisk you away into the greatest stories in history. Join me on the high seas as we follow the swashbuckling escapades of Francis Drake. On the Spanish Main, we unravel the myths of the Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae. I'll tell you everything you need to know about how the American Revolution started and what it would have taken for you to survive the Black Death in medieval Europe. Rackets, luck. This is the podcast you need if you seek to escape into history. And we can all use a little escape at the moment. Check out Dan Snow's history wherever you get your podcasts.
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Foreign.
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Welcome to here's the scoop from NBC News. I'm Yasmin Vesugian. Today on the show, we have got exclusive reporting on how federal judges are handling attacks on the judicial system, plus the new lawsuits that could further threaten abortion access in Texas. And holiday shopping estimates are already in. Sleigh bells ring. Cha ching, Cha ching. Up first, though, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Was on Capitol Hill today where lawmakers on the Senate Finance Committee grilled him about the turmoil at his department. Plus his recent moves to slash vaccine research funding and install anti vaccine activists in key positions. Here's Senator Maggie Hassan, New Hampshire Democrat.
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When have you produced the data that you relied on and that this FDA relied on to change those parameters? You did it behind closed doors. Now parents who decide that they do want their children down.
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You're just making stuff up, Senator.
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I'm not.
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You're just making stuff up.
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You know, sometimes when you make an accusation, it's kind of a confession. Mr. Kennedy.
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Kennedy even got some heat from Republicans like Senator Thom Tillis, who criticized RFK for the ouster of Susan Monarch, former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Her firing prompting several other officials at CDC to resign in protest, including Deborah Howery. Dr. Howery is an emergency physician and until last week she was the chief medical officer and deputy director for program and science at CDC. And she's joining me now. Dr. Houry welcome. Thanks for joining us.
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My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
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It's been quite a few weeks for you, to say the least. And I think probably capping it with the hearing today with RFK Jr. On the hill. I'm sure you were watching alongside many Americans, what has been your thinking in watching the back and forth so far?
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D
The hearing was really something else. And many things struck me, including, you know, initially he said he didn't know anything about the number of COVID deaths because he doesn't know the data. And you think as secretary, you'd want to hear from your senior career scientists. And I can tell you I briefed prior secretaries such as Price and Azar and Becerra, but did not have the opportunity with this secretary. So that struck me. Another thing that really stood out to me was he kept talking about his focus on chronic disease and wanting to make America healthy again. That's certainly laudable. But in the president's budget, almost the entire chronic disease center is wiped out. So that's just not true either.
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C
You talk about briefings. You have been at the CDC since 2014. As you mentioned, you are no longer there because you quit. Normally, would HHS secretaries be taking briefings from you on a daily basis, on a weekly basis? And how did that compare to what you've been dealing with with rfk?
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So it really varies on the circumstance. Some, you know, health secretaries would want the leadership team to brief on a monthly basis, you know, and if it was certainly a crisis or an outbreak, that would be much more regular. So I thought during the measles outbreak, you know, when we have set the record for measles cases, you know, in the US in 30 years, that would be a good time to brief the secretary on measles and prevention. And we offered that and it was not accepted as an offer. But in the usual circumstance, we would have been having more reg regular briefings. And we did in prior administrations, you know, on like H5N1, certainly Covid.
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C
What has been the mood like inside the CDC since RFK Jr took office, especially when it comes to the worry surrounding misinformation and what is being put out there.
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So I was actually the transition lead for the agency. And so I had read RFK's books and was aware of his priorities and had really briefed our staff and had them come together around how we could work with the secretary on his priorities. So we were optimistic and willing to have change. But when he talks about measles vaccines and says things like there's fetal parts in them or after the shooting. He said, don't trust the experts. That type of misinformation certainly decreases morale at the agency. And it's very hard for us to message to the public when the health secretary is saying things in contrast to what we are saying.
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C
When you say open to change, where do you think there was a point in which the CDC needed change? What were areas in which you felt as if RFK Jr and his kind of goals lined up with the potential changes that needed to happen at the cdc?
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Yeah, and I'll even take a step back further. So, you know, during COVID there were missteps and we learned a lot. And so since then, data became much more timely. We posted dashboards, we were tracking things differently. We also addressed lab quality as well as readiness of our staff to ensure that if there's an outbreak, they were trained and knew how to respond. So over the past few years, we had tried to address many of those issues under the secretary. He had a significant interest in big data and artificial intelligence. To us, that was exciting to look at new data sets and new ways to analyze data. He also wanted to ask tough questions. That's what we do in science. But you shouldn't know the answer before you ask the question. And we saw that. And sometimes it seemed like the administration is trying to retrofit answers into the data.
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Dr. Monara has actually wrote an op ed in the Wall Street Journal today that before she was fired, she was told to pre approve recommendations that came from a vaccine advisory panel made up of vaccine skeptics. At the hearing today, Secretary RFK Jr denied that that actually happened. He in fact went on the record at this hearing and said she lied. Were you there for that conversation? Do you have any knowledge as to what actually happened in that exchange?
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I was not there for that meeting, but I did speak to her afterwards and she was very upset and had relayed exactly that, that he had wanted her to rubber stamp recommendations. And she has said from the beginning that science and data are her North Star. And that's why I wanted to work for and with her, because, same thing. We are open to change and to asking tough questions, but you have to let science and data drive that.
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C
You know, a lot of folks would then say, well, Dr. Houry, Dr. Manarez, why would you even continue to work for an administration that, you know is leading with an HHS secretary like RFK Jr. Who has been a notable and outspoken vaccine skeptic from the jump?
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Yeah. And you know, what I would say is I Did what I could for as long as I could. I think everybody has the right to question vaccines and if it's right for them. But when we have good science and data that vaccines are protective, we need to lean into that more. For me, over the past few months, it became more difficult to work as I saw many of these issues around scientific integrity, like having to take a transparent document down on thimerosal and additive and flu vaccines. That was wrong.
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We'd explain that again, so. Because, you know, remember who you're speaking to, Dr. Howard.
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So at the last vaccine committee meeting, there was a presentation on this additive that's in flu vaccines. It's called thimerosal. About 20 years ago, there was a concern that it could cause autism, and there's been many studies since then that have shown that it doesn't. But it was brought up for vote at this committee meeting, and our staff had pulled together just an evidence review of thimerosal and posted it on the website. And the secretary's office ordered it down and had a person, Lynn Redwood, who came from the Children's Health Defense, to talk about thimerosal. And that presentation had not been vetted or cleared by CDC and actually included references that didn't exist. And to me, that was really compromising our scientific integrity, both to remove a document and to have an unvetted presentation go forward under a CDC committee, things like that. Over time, I just couldn't be there anymore for that.
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Oftentimes, you know, the CDC is allowed to remain apolitical amidst the changeover in administrations. Some wonder as they see the changes that are happening at the CDC and under Health Secretary RFK Jr. As to whether or not these changes can be reversed. Can it be?
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I hope so. That's one of the reasons why, you know, Dan Demetri and I resigned together to really sound the alarm. You know, I've been calling it a bat signal. And for me, it's just a different HHS leadership group. It's not a different administration. CDC did well under President Trump previously. And so I think it's really about a different leadership at the Health and Human Services Department that is needed. It's not going to happen overnight with the damage that's been done. But I am very hopeful that CDC and public health in our country can still thrive if we intervene now.
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Dr. Deborah Howery, thank you.
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Thank you.
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All right, when we come back, 12 federal judges are speaking out in rare exclusive interviews about the state of our Supreme Court. That's next.
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Sometimes an identity threat is a ring of professional hackers. And sometimes it's an overworked accountant who forgot to encrypt their connection while sending bank details.
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I need a coffee.
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And you need Lifelock. Because your info is in endless places. It only takes one mistake to expose you to identity theft. Lifelock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second. If your identity is stolen. And we'll fix it, guaranteed. Or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year@lifelock.com specialoffer terms apply.
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Hi, I'm Jessica St. Clair. And I'm June Diane Rayfiel. And we are two friends trying to survive the chaos and celebrate the joy that life throws our way. And we do it every week on our podcast, the Deep Dive. Sometimes we dig into the deep stuff, like how I communicate with my dead best friend. And sometimes we, sometimes we give bad advice based off a TikTok I saw. And we're not going to apologize for that. Absolutely not. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll hire a psychic medium. Join us, won't you? Listen to the Deep Dive wherever you get your podcasts from Lemonada Media.
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And we're back with. Here's the scoop from NBC News. So last night brought a legal doubleheader for the Trump administration. First up, we had a federal judge in Boston ordering the Trump administration to unfreeze nearly $2.2 billion in federal grants to Harvard University. The administration withheld these funds after Harvard would not comply with a list of demands following these massive on campus protests last spring. And then in round two, Trump's tariff war is heading to the Supreme Court. The administration is asking the justices for a fast track to keep his sweeping tariffs alive after a lower court ruled the president had exceeded his authority. Call it law and order. Trump Unit. These cases are just the latest in what feels like this never ending number of court battles for the administration, with many of them ultimately ending up at the Supreme Court. So with that, I want to bring in NBC News senior Supreme Court reporter Lauren Turley. He actually sat down for rare and exclusive interviews with 12 federal judges who are both Republican and Democratic appointees about how they feel about the current state of our judicial system. Hi, Lawrence.
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Hi. Good to see you.
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Good to see you. I want to talk first about Harvard and this decision from Judge Alison Burroughs who said effectively, and I quote, in this 84 page summation, she says that Harvard is in fact, quote, plagued by antisemitism, according to the things in which Harvard has said, that they should have done a better job of dealing with the issue. But and she says there is in reality little connection between the research affected by the grant terminations and antisemitism. Walk us through quickly, if you can, this latest decision and what it could mean for the assault on other universities across the country.
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In this case, Judge Burrows is saying that claims of antisemitism are just a smokescreen and that the administration is actually just wanting to target and kind of bully or punish the country's premier universities for other reasons. But of course, you know, this case is probably going to be appealed and go up maybe to the Supreme Court, which has had other cases about grant terminations and funding cuts in the last few months, most of which the Trump administration has won.
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I also want to talk about the tariffs, because now the administration is essentially going to the Supreme Court and saying, listen, take this up and take it up fast. I mentioned at the top that you actually sat down with 12 lower court judges and talking about how the Supreme Court has, it seems, repeatedly overturned many of their decisions. What is the pattern they are seeing here?
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10 of the judges I spoke to said that they think the Supreme Court has to do a better job of explaining itself when it issues these emergency decisions that overturn lower court judges in favor of the Trump administration serve almost to validate some of the harsh criticisms that we've seen of the judges by the Trump administration. The Supreme Court, they're not explaining themselves and also they're not using kind of pleasant language, if you like, that acknowledges that these judges dealing with these cases that are coming out with that are highly politicized, they have to act on them quickly. And they're saying, like, give us a break, we might get it wrong, but at least acknowledge that it's a difficult case and give us some explanation of why you're doing this so that we know going forward how to handle the case. And among those judges, then there's also a subsection who say in this culture of threats and accusations that are being hurled at judges, the chief justice, John Roberts, should really do a better job of protecting the judiciary in his role. You know, he's the head of the judiciary overall.
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What type of threats are these judges facing who only agreed to speak with you by remaining anonymous?
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Lawrence, they didn't want to be publicly named because they are concerned about these threats. One of the judges in particular said that when someone knocks on the door, they're kind of frightened and they don't want to answer it. Just more broadly, judges have had bomb threats. They've had fake swatting calls where Someone calls the cops on them. They've had these kind of fake pizza deliveries to their homes. They do have some protection from the Marshals Service, but they're concerned because the Trump administration and their officials are kind of playing into this rhetoric.
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Would they say that this is an unprecedented moment in judicial history?
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Yeah, I think so. I mean, the fact that judges normally don't speak to the press that much, the fact that when I reached out to these judges, that they were willing to talk to me and sometimes say quite sort of colorful things about how they're feeling is pretty unusual. I've been around for a while, and the fact they kept on coming back to me and said, yes, I'll talk to you, is a little surprising to me.
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I want to talk about this term shadow docket that has kind of recently emerged. Can you walk us through what exactly it is and how it's changed the way in which cases are handled, especially.
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At the Supreme Court level?
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Yeah, I mean, that's a huge reason why these judges are upset. Actually, what's changed is these emergency cases, and that's what's called the shadow docket, where basically a lower court rules against the president and it gets quickly appealed up to the Supreme Court to block that ruling. So this isn't like a regular appeal. It's not like, you know, when people think about Supreme Court cases, they think of lengthy briefs and the court agrees to hear the case, and then they issue this long ruling that explains what they said. But these are cases that are filed any time of the year. They're filed quickly. They go straight up to the Supreme Court, and then they act on them almost straight away. In quite a few of those cases, they don't explain anything about what they did.
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If we talk numbers here, I mean, the administration has asked the Supreme Court 23 times to block lower court rulings on an emergency basis. Seventeen of those requests have been granted. That's just since January. But you compare that to the Biden administration timeline. They filed 19 applications over a four year period in which 10 of them were actually granted. What is the court's justification for granting these shadow dockets, these cases, on an emergency basis?
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It's a little bit of a black box. Right. They do have some sort of criteria that are supposed to be met for granting emergency relief, but they've been criticized for not really following that all the time. I mean, even as a reporter covering some of these cases, when the order comes out from the court explaining what they did, and I'm looking at it and trying to Put out a story about it. Sometimes I'm scratching my head thinking, like, I don't even know what the court did here. I don't even know what to tell, you know, our readers, what happened for it.
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So I think it's just important for folks to understand this when they make these rulings on emergency basis, this is not the ultimate ruling.
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Right.
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These are rulings that are made which then basically kick the can back down to the lower courts, which would eventually then lead back likely up to the Supreme Court.
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Yeah. And the issue is with a lot of these cases is the judges have made some decision that they think there'll be irreparable harm if the Trump administration is allowed to go ahead with this thing. So they have to act quickly because, you know, someone's rights might be violated. For example, you know, if an immigrant is being deported without due process, you know, if the judge doesn't block that deportation, then the person has been deported.
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Right.
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And the case is sort of moot. Right.
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Do the judges that you spoke to feel as if there is a way to restore integrity in the judicial system? And if so, how?
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I would say, generally speaking, they think the judiciary needs to be more united because clearly it's not. And I think some of these judges are thinking that the Supreme Court could set the tone and be more protective of them and make it clear that on the same team, as it were, of course, the country as a whole is polarized and it seems like the judiciary, you know, is reflective of that, too.
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Lawrence Rowley, our Englishman who was an expert on our American judicial system.
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I know, but I am an American citizen, so, you know.
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Well, good to know. Thanks, Lawrence. Appreciate it.
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Great. Thanks a lot.
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Let's get to some headlines. Washington, D.C. is suing the Trump administration over the deployment of National Guard troops to the city. In the suit filed by DC's Attorney General, City leadership says that Trump has, quote, run roughshod over a fundamental tenet of American democracy, that the military shouldn't be involved in domestic law enforcement. The action is coming just days after a federal court in California ruled that a similar deployment to Los Angeles was illegal. But that hasn't stopped Trump from threatening to send guardsmen to cities like Baltimore, New Orleans and Chicago. Speaking of Residents in Broadview, a suburb west of Chicago, are being told to prepare for a large scale enforcement campaign tied to the local ICE processing facility. In a letter of residents and business owners, Mayor Katrina Thompson warned the operation will run seven days a week for about 45 days, with the potential for traffic disruptions protests and even more. The latest barrier to abortion access in Texas was approved. Texas lawmakers have passed a bill letting private citizens sue anyone who makes, distributes or provides abortion pills in the state. The measure is now headed to the desk of governor Greg Abbott. This bill is the first of its kind in the US to target the most commonly used abortion method.
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It's beginning to look a lot like.
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That was the collective screams of holiday shoppers everywhere. It is not even Halloween yet, but Santa's already running the numbers. The average holiday budget this year is $1,552 per person, down 5%, according to PwC. Gen Z is slashing spending by 23%. Millennials and Gen X are holding steady, and boomers are breaking out the checkbooks with a 5% bump. Who uses checkbooks, by the way? Now the good news? Wells Fargo says prices will be higher, but not by much. Many retailers stocked up before the latest tariff hike, so they're working to keep increases in check. The bad news? Expect fewer deals, an earlier shopping rush, and must haves disappearing faster than the pumpkin spice at your local Starbucks. As for the wish list, boomers want tradition, Gen X wants big ticket essentials, Millennials want convenience. And Gen Z wants experiences, trends and a course dupes. Because why drop product cash when TikTok's got the $20 version? You hear that Thursday Night Football is back. The NFL 2025 season is kicking off with the reigning champs tonight, the Philadelphia Eagles versus The Dallas Cowboys. These teams have had a rivalry since the 70s, and that 60 year feud will likely only get hotter tonight at 7pm Eastern time. Turn to NBC for your football needs or catch the Eagles on peacock Birds Supporting birds Fashion royalty has left the building. Giorgio Armani, the Italian designer who turned Less Is More into a global empire of sleek power suits and red carpet moments, has died at 91. Known back home in Italy as Re Giorgio King George, Armani ditched the stiff, padded suits of old for lighter, looser lines that made boardrooms and Hollywood feel a whole lot cooler. Richard Gere's American Gigolo closet Pure Armani. He built not just a label, but a lifestyle. Fragrances, hotels, even furniture. And unlike most of his luxury peers, he never sold out to the big conglomerates. Armani kept his empire as meticulously tailored as his jackets beyond the Runway. He banned fur in his lines, backed AIDS research and even took a spin as a UN Goodwill ambassador. His legacy? Teaching the world that true style isn't loud, it's quiet confidence. And for decades, Giorgio Armani spoke volumes. All right, that's gonna do it for us at here's the scoop from NBC News. I'm Yasmin Vesugin. We'll be back tomorrow with whatever a day may bring.
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Sometimes an identity threat is a ring of professional hackers. And sometimes it's an overworked accountant who forgot to encrypt their connection while sending bank details.
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F
I need a coffee.
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And you need Lifelock. Because your info is in endless places. It only takes one mistake to expose you to identity theft. Lifelock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second. If your identity is stolen, we'll fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year@lifelock.com specialoffer terms apply.