← Here's the Scoop
Here's the Scoop
Florida moves to wipe out vaccine mandates; Epstein survivors on Capitol Hill
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Welcome to here's the scoop from NBC News. I'm Yasmin Vesugian. Today on the show Epstein accusers are back on Capitol Hill. Plus, the White House says it's taking direct aim at a Venezuelan gang and Baja blast from the past. We're kicking off with breaking news, though, out of Florida. The state surgeon general, Joseph Ladipo, says Florida is moving to wipe out all vaccine mandates.
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C
Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.
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He put it bluntly, saying it's not his job or the government's to decide what goes into your body.
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C
Who am I as a government or anyone else? Or who am I as a man standing here now to tell you what you should put in your body? Who am I to tell you what your child should put in your body? I don't have that right.
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B
Also, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis says he's creating a Florida Make America Healthy Again commission, essentially bringing Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. S National Health push down to the state level. This move comes just a week after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarres was forced out with at least four other leaders resigning in protest. Her lawyer said she refused to, quote, rubber stamp unscientific reckless directives. The White House countering that she simply wasn't aligned with the president's agenda and replaced her with acting director Jim O', Neill, a longtime vaccine skeptic and former deputy to RFK Jr. Want to bring in now NBC News medical contributor Dr. Vin Gupta. We've got this big news coming out for Florida Today, essentially making this push to ban all vaccine mandates. What is your reaction to that?
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D
It's scandalous. From a public health perspective, there's no precedence for this. And it's just flat out wrong. And people will suffer. I particularly feel bad for families that have no other option, especially families with really young children who are not done with a primary series for tetanus, which requires multiple shots. Diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, that triple vaccine that all kids get, usually starting in, you know, when they're infants on up, that requires multiple vaccines over the course of, you know, many, many months. And so say a mom and a dad have two jobs and they need to put their kid into daycare at an early age. Those kids are often not fully vaccinated. And so you lean on everybody at least doing the right thing, which is making sure that everybody's progressing towards full vaccination based on their age. And we're going to be reminded in a really harsh why we have vaccines in the first place.
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We just heard, as I came to you, that there were folks that stood up as the surgeon general was making this announcement and applauded. There are gonna be a lot of people that are happy about this. And if you look at that and you look at the trajectory of this thing, we no longer have polio, measles. There have been outbreaks, but those have come under control. If in fact you're doing away with vaccine mandates, what does that mean for those types of, of viruses, diseases, and the trajectory for young kids that are not protected?
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D
It's clear as day that we're seeing this in Texas play out over the last six months, that there's a reason why measles is on fire in West Texas, because vaccine exemptions for non religious reasons are skyrocketing there. It's one of the highest concentrations of vaccine exemptions for non religious reasons in the country for the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine that you should get when you're a child. Is it any surprise that now we're dealing with one of the worst outbreaks we've ever seen in the United States of America in recent memory at that specific location. No, it's not correlation, it's direct causation. And we're going to see this play out in Florida by removing critical vaccine mandates for kids that are vulnerable because they have developing immune systems. What they're really saying is, we don't think you need them. You need a certain level of immunity in, say, an elementary school to protect everybody. And even if that means everybody's marching towards full vaccination status because it takes time and, you know, multiple series, at least everybody's marching towards having some degree of protection. Now you're going to have a situation where these viruses and bacteria are going to be just running rampant in many cases and kids that are partially protected are going to be at risk.
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So what could that look like if we're five years in the future when this is now in play and you have a lot of unvaccinated folks against some of these diseases, viruses, bacteria that we thought we weren't going to have.
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D
To see Again, no one's going to like it, whether you're a Democrat or you're a Republican, because this is in theory, an apolitical discussion. But number two, and I think this doesn't get talked about enough since the early 2000s, but accelerated during the pandemic. I think a lot of people don't realize this because we don't talk a lot about it. Children's hospitals across the country have actually closed 10 to 15% of beds based on the numbers you look at, because children's hospitals lose money. In many cases, those beds get converted to adult beds or the hospital closes. So think about what happens here, is you're going to have more severe illness for vaccine, preventable diseases that we haven't had to really deal with at scale and we don't have the medical infrastructure to really care for that.
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B
This Surgeon General is Harvard educated. Why shouldn't folks believe him? Why shouldn't they follow his guidance? I mean, he is saying that he believes that vaccines should be a choice, that everybody should have bodily autonomy and freedom. But there are folks that say, hey, why shouldn't we believe him? This guy is, you know, Ivy League educated.
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D
As somebody that's trained at some of the same places, I can confidently say that going to an Ivy League institution does not guarantee, and I've seen this many times in many instances, not just in the case of Dr. Ladapo. It doesn't guarantee that somebody's going to practice and conduct themselves with integrity in the healthcare profession. And I'll say yes, there was some applause to his announcement, but that does not necessarily mean that that's what the people, the vast majority of people across the country want. And we know from survey after survey, great polls and surveys have been done by the best polling institutions. Pew and others have shown that the vast majority of Americans support the current childhood vaccine schedule and mandates for it because nobody wants their kids in a viral soup when they go to school.
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What is the official guidance when it comes to the American Academy of Pediatrics?
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I encourage your listeners go to HealthyChildren.org it's the website produced by the American Academy of Pediatrics. You'll get all information on recommended vaccines for your children right there. I would not trust any other resource more than that. For childhood vaccines, they recommend no change. There's no scientific reason to change the childhood vaccine schedule. There's no link between that schedule and autism, even though the current health secretary is making that link. So this is all much ado about nothing. In a world that has a lot of health problems that we need to be focused on, this is just not one of them.
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Is there a sense, Dr. Gupta, that this is beginning in Florida and that it will likely spread?
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Yeah.
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Getting rid of these vaccine mandates.
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You know, I'm here. I'm taking this call from the west coast. And Washington State, Oregon, California, have just basically said, just like the aap, American Academy of Pediatrics, that we're going to have to go our own way because we don't trust what's coming from the cdc going to have the opposite of that. You're seeing this in Florida. They're going to do the opposite of what's happening here on the West Coast. So I do think we're going to have a very patchwork approach, which isn't good for any of us. Take extreme voices out of this. Take people with perches out of this. The majority of the American public does not want this. And all this means is when you travel for the holidays, are in an airplane, your child's in an elementary school, they're now going to be exposed to things that you have no control over. And it's going to pose a risk to your household, especially if you have sick people at home, older folks, multigenerational households. No one wants this.
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Dr. Ven Gupta. Thank you.
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Thank you.
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We are going to take a quick break, and when we're back, we're going to hear from Epstein Survivors. Stay with us.
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If you had a dream, rejected IKEA.
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Can make it possible.
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So I always dreamed of having a man cave, but the wife doesn't like it.
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I don't like it.
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What if I called it a woman cave?
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Okay, so let's not do that, but add some relaxing lighting and a comfy IKEA hofburg ottoman. And now it's a cozy retreat. Nice. A cozy retreat, man.
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Cozy retreat, sir.
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Okay.
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At ikea.us dream the possibilities.
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I need a coffee.
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And we're back with Here's a scoop from NBC News. Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein were on Capitol Hill today, rallying with supporters, meeting with lawmakers and calling on the Trump administration to release more documents related to the Epstein case. Epstein, of course, is the New York financier who died by suicide in 2019 while in jail awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. My colleague Hallie Jackson, our senior Washington correspondent and the host of Hallie Jackson now, has been covering this thing and actually spoke to a panel of survivors just yesterday. Hallie, good to see you, my friend. You were actually outside Capitol Hill today as the survivors, some of which you spoke to yesterday, were there. What did you see?
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This was in so many ways, Yasmin, and it's so good to be with you here on the pod. This was a rally, but it was a rallying cry. And this group, it was the survivors. It was a number of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell accusers. It was members of Congress. And there was a very clear message that these survivors had to both Congress and to the White House just down the street on Pennsylvania Avenue. They want transparency.
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The days of sweeping this under the rug are over.
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We the survivors say no more. They are calling on Congress, this group, to get behind this move by Congressman Ro Khanna, Congressman Thomas Massie. One of them is a Dem, one of them is a Republican. This very rare alliance between, like MAGA allies and Trump foes. They want to see more Republicans get on board with this. And Congressman Khanna has suggested all Democrats will sign onto this thing already. Three other Republicans have as well, which means there only needs to be two more Republicans. And can I tell you something, Yasmin? This really fascinating moment. So I'm standing there watching this news conference. And to my left, literally standing there like with everybody else, members of the media, is a Republican, Congresswoman Victoria Sparks. She's just there watching for over 60 minutes. She's just there taking it all in. And as soon as she went to go leave and I asked her, wait a second, like, did you hear? Are you going to be one of the ones to sign, sign on? Like, did you hear anything here that would get you across the line here to support this or not and why or why not? And she basically said, hey, I came to get information. I haven't made a decision yet. And so that's the dynamic I think that you're seeing right now. I will also say, yes, you heard a lot of pushback against President Trump, too, who today called it a hoax. And these survivors and some of these members of Congress said, this is not a hoax.
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Mr. President, Donald J. Trump, I am a registered Republican. Not that that matters, because this is not political.
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However, I cordially invite you to the Capitol to meet me in person so.
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You can understand this is not a hoax.
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We are real human beings.
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This is real trauma. Well, I want to take a step back for a moment because you're essentially talking about this bipartisan discharge position, right, by Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna. And essentially what that means is more layman terms, right, Forcing a vote on the House floor to release all the Epstein files. And it seems as if, from what you're telling me, Hal, there is across the board bipartisan support for this to actually possibly happen.
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So it is, let's call it unevenly distributed bipartisan support because it's all. It's Democrats that largely support it and a handful of Republicans. That's how I describe it. And you're totally right. Discharge position. We don't need to be living in the weeds on that. It just basically means a push that would force a vote that would compel the Department of Justice to release this stuff. And so the interesting dynamic is the pressure that's building here on House Republican leadership. House leaders don't support this. Speaker Johnson just today said he didn't see the news conference, but he believes that what Congressman Massie is doing this again, petition, is poorly written. He thinks it doesn't offer enough protections for the victims. He says it's moot because the House Oversight Committee separately is working on this kind of parallel push. So his argument is, listen, this is redundant. Like, we don't need this. We can all get behind one thing. And obviously Congressman Massie, Congressman Khanna feel differently about that. They feel like their, their push has a little bit more muscle.
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Well, hold up, because you're saying that the House speaker says this doesn't offer enough protection for the victims. But you actually spoke to some of the victims in your exclusive interview, and they said they want the stuff released, they want these files out there.
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And they're the group of survivors and victims today were specifically at the Capitol appearing with these lawmakers to make that push. Now, that said, yeah, as we should note, there are hundreds of Epstein survivors, and so there are a number of women who have come forward to speak. But as I also heard today over and over again, and yesterday in that exclusive interview, there are so many more. And that was another thread that was woven through just how many more. There are this desire to wanna try to give a voice and give some courage to who have stayed silent so far.
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Hal, I watched your interview in its entirety. You did an incredible job. There was a lot of emotion from these victims, from family members of victims. And I think kind of what stood out to me was not only how united they were, but how much it still affected them even to this day, despite the fact that for many of them, it happened to them when they were young girls. What stood out to you, Hal, in your interview with them?
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So a couple of things. One, simply the sheer numbers and them in a room together. Some of these people had never met before they sat down with us yesterday. And so this idea, somebody said, courage is contagious. There is strength in numbers, that we can all come together and have a voice.
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So, you know, it means the world.
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To be here with you, all of you.
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And, you know, I think this is.
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Only the beginning of what's really to come, because showing a force like this.
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They have to listen.
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Now, I would also say you talk about how they live with this all the time. I was at a different rally this morning with survivors, and I had somebody come up to me and say that they were struck by a part of the interview where we had a woman say, you know, I turn on the news, and there he is.
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It is heartbreaking to have friends send you news articles and be like, hey, oh, this again. I thought this was over for you. And then it's five years later, six years later, here we are again. Because they're still not doing something from when they started the investigation, years and years and years prior to that. Had they done their job in the first place, none of us would have to be sitting here on camera today.
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And then the last thing I'll say is a word that struck me, which is what one of the women said. She said, right now, I will tell you, I feel empowered. And that was really notable, the use of the word empowered from somebody who has suffered that kind of abuse, she said, because here I am alongside these others, and we are not giving up. They are very determined, Yasmin, to try to see something come of this.
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Hallie Jackson, my friend, miss you, miss.
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You, appreciate you so much.
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All right, let's get to some headlines. OpenAI is rolling out new safety guardrails for ChatGPT over the next 120 days, changes aimed at better protecting teenagers and users in emotional distress. The changes following a teen's death by suicide and a lawsuit from his parents who allege the chatbot acted as a suicide coach, a case first reported by NBC News senior legal correspondent Laura Jarrett. The updates include parental controls that link accounts and flag acute distress, plus input from 90 plus doctors and experts to strengthen the model's crisis response. Distress triggering chats will be routed to advanced models like GPT5 thinking, designed to apply safety rules more consistently. After the wrongful death lawsuit was filed, a spokesperson for OpenAI said its current safeguards work in short chats, but conceded that they can break down in longer, more complex conversations. Tensions on Israel's northern border have escalated following a series of Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon earlier today. The strikes come amidst a backdrop of growing Israeli opposition to the war in Gaza. Protests demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a deal to release remaining hostages have intensified, with demonstrators in Jerusalem setting fires and occupying buildings near the Knesset Parliament and the prime minister's residence. A federal appeals court has put the brakes on President Trump's latest immigration move, blocking his use of the Alien Enemies act to deport Venezuelans that his administration claims are part of the Trender Agua gang. And late last night, Trump said the US Military hit a small Venezuelan boat that he alleged was tied to the same gang and loaded with drugs. The White House did not immediately explain how the military determined that those aboard the vessel were Trender Agua members. The EU has pulled the plug on a star ingredient in gel manicures, tpo. I'm not even going to attempt to pronounce the ingredient's actual name, but if you don't have a chemistry degree, it is the photo initiator that makes polish cure fast under UV or LED light. But studies mostly on animals flag it as potentially carcinogenic, mutagenic or toxic for reproduction. Salons and retailers in the EU must toss their TPO stock immediately. No grace period, no excuses. Critics say the science is shaky, but brands are already scrambling to reformulate. In America, TPO is still fair game, meaning your gel mani might sparkle with a hint of possible risk, but there are some alternatives. In a statement to today, the Nail Manufacturer Council on Safety, an industry group of nail product manufacturers and salon owners, said safe and effective alternatives to TPO are already on the market. It from Baggy cargoes to chunky sneakers. Everything old is trending again, even Taco Bell's menu, including me, by the way. The chain is firing up our flip phone memories with a New Decades Y2K menu dropping September 9th. Think Cool Ranch Doritos, Locos Tacos, Double Decker Tacos, and Seven Layer Burritos. And because nothing says the early 2000s like rhinestones and Questionable Tribal Prince, they're teaming up with Ed Hardy for exclusive merch hats, tees, even a digital watch. So grab your Motorola razor, your trucker hat, and slip into those bedazzled jeans. Word of warning, though, too many burritos may bring back the frosted tips.
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Yo quiero Taco Bell.
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That's gonna do it for us today at Here's a scoop from NBC News. I'm Yasmin Bisugin. We'll be back tomorrow with whatever the day may bring.
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At this very moment, we are living through a series of cascading constitutional crises, rocketing up to the Supreme Court and shaking the foundations of American democracy. This is not a game of chicken.
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Where we back down from the Constitution.
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Like, that's not how this works.
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I'm Dahlia Lithwick, host of Amicus Slate's podcast about the courts, the law, and the Supreme Court. I've been writing about SCOTUS and the law for more than 20 years, and each week on Amicus, we draw on that deep experience to navigate these incredibly uncertain times. Search Amicus that's Am I C U S to Listen.