CDC Meeting On Vaccines, Fed Rate Cuts, Kimmel Suspended

Summary

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NPR Up First – Episode Summary

Date: September 18, 2025
Hosts: Leila Fadel, Steve Inskeep
Episodes Core Theme:
Today’s episode covers three major stories: an influential CDC panel meeting on vaccines with significant new political implications, the Federal Reserve’s recent rate cut amid economic and political pressures, and the government-press interplay surrounding the suspension of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” following FCC intervention.

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1. CDC Vaccine Panel Overhaul and Its Implications

[02:34–06:19]

Main Points:

• The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is meeting to discuss recommendations on several major vaccines: COVID boosters, hepatitis B for babies, and the MMRV (measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella).
• The entire panel was replaced by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. earlier this year; new members are openly skeptical of existing vaccine policies and believe the government exaggerated COVID risks and the need for certain vaccines.

Key Discussion:

• The Stakes:
  Layla Fadel: “Their recommendations have a big influence on who gets Covid vaccines this fall or whether babies get vaccinated against hepatitis B.”
• Public Health Worries:
  Ping Huang (NPR health reporter, 02:56): Explains that many new panel members “say the government overstated the risks from COVID and they also question whether people need all these vaccines.”
• Potential Changes:
  Steve Inskeep clarifies that the ACIP sets “what vaccines are offered free to children through the Vaccines for Children program” and impacts school requirements and insurance coverage.
• Health Expert Cautions:
  • Jason Schwartz, Yale professor, (paraphrased by Ping Huang): Panel includes people who claim “Covid vaccines have harmed or killed many, even though that doesn't square with the evidence."
  • Lakshmi Panayanakopoulos (former CDC official, 05:19): "We've studied all this. We've looked at this so much and so in depth. And this is established science that they're attacking."
• Public Response:
  • Some individuals are “taking extra steps to get vaccinated now before the rules change,” anticipating access could soon be limited (05:37).

Notable Quote:

• Ping Huang: “This group intends to change the country’s vaccine approach.” (05:31)

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2. Federal Reserve Rate Cut and Political Pressures

[06:28–09:57]

Main Points:

• The Federal Reserve has cut short-term interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point to boost a weakening job market, even as inflation remains above the central bank’s target.
• The move highlights tension between economic risks and an escalating White House campaign (President Trump) for aggressive cuts.
• Trump’s latest Fed appointee, economist Stephen Myron, voted for an even deeper, half-point cut, but was the lone voice for such a move.

Key Discussion:

• Why the Change?
  Scott Horsley (NPR Economics Correspondent, 06:52): “They’re getting more nervous about the labor market. There's been very little job growth since April.”
• A Delicate Balancing Act:
  Federal Reserve Official (Jerome Powell or colleague, 07:32): “We have a situation where we have two sided risk and that means there’s no risk free path.”
• White House Pressure:
  Steve Inskeep: “The president has been demanding a more aggressive rate cut.”
  Scott Horsley: Trump’s appointee “did echo the President in voting for a bigger half point interest rate cut… Myron’s dot is the one that's way off by itself.” (08:09)
• Fed Independence:
  Jerome Powell (09:16): “We don’t frame these questions at all or see them in terms of political outcomes… I think that is not at all the way we think about things at the Fed. We’re taking a longer perspective.”
  Scott Horsley: “For the moment, at least the firewall between the White House and the Fed appears to be holding.” (09:36)

Notable Quote:

• Federal Reserve Official (Powell): "There's no risk free path." (07:32)

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3. FCC Threatens ABC Stations; Jimmy Kimmel Live Suspended

[10:05–14:14]

Main Points:

• ABC pulls "Jimmy Kimmel Live" after the FCC, led by Chair Brendan Carr, issued public threats to local ABC affiliates following Kimmel's satirical monologue of President Trump's response to the killing of Charlie Kirk.
• The FCC, historically structured to be independent, is portrayed as being politicized, with direct consequences for free speech.

Key Discussion:

• What Did Kimmel Say?
  Mandalit del Barco (NPR’s LA correspondent): On Monday’s monologue, Kimmel “took a few jabs at President Trump” and mocked his response to a reporter on Kirk’s murder.
  • Jimmy Kimmel (clip, paraphrased) (11:00): “We hit some new lows this weekend with the MAGA gang, desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
• FCC’s Threats:
  • Brendan Carr (FCC chair, 12:16): “Frankly, when you see stuff like this, I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action on Kimmel or, you know, there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
• Corporate and Political Fallout:
  • Major TV operators rapidly pulled Kimmel’s show, with Sinclair Broadcast Group demanding Kimmel apologize and donate to Kirk’s family and Turning Point USA; Friday will instead air a Kirk tribute.
  • Steve Inskeep notes: “That’s really interesting since contributing money is considered by the Supreme Court to be speech.”
  • President Trump congratulated ABC for “courage in shutting down Kimmel’s show” and urged other networks to cancel additional late-night hosts.
• Free Speech Reactions:
  • Mandalit del Barco: “California Governor Gavin Newsom, comedians, actors and organizations are denouncing the suspension as censorship. And the Writers Guild of America…sent a letter of support…”

Notable Quotes:

• FCC Chair Brendan Carr (12:16): “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”
• Steve Inskeep (13:02): "They want Jimmy Kimmel to make speech for Turning Point USA."
• Mandalit del Barco (13:46): “We reached out to Jimmy Kimmel and his show and we haven’t heard back yet. But… organizations are denouncing the suspension as censorship.”

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Memorable Moments and Notable Exchanges

• Vaccine Panel Political Shift:
  • The repeated description of the CDC panel overhaul as “attacking established science” (05:19) marked a tone of scientific alarm and potential policy upheaval.
• Fed’s 'Two-Sided Risk':
  • Jerome Powell’s frank acknowledgment: “There’s no risk free path.” (07:32)
• Government Crackdown on Late Night Satire:
  • FCC Chair’s “easy way or the hard way” threat (12:16) and demands for Kimmel to effectively make a political donation or speech.

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Key Timestamps

• CDC Vaccine Panel Main Segment: 02:34–06:19
• Federal Reserve Rate Cuts Main Segment: 06:28–09:57
• Jimmy Kimmel Suspension Main Segment: 10:05–14:14

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This episode captures mounting tensions at the intersection of science, economic policy, and freedom of speech, with government interventions in all spheres taking center stage. The tone throughout is both urgent and analytical, reflecting NPR's signature style of calm but attentive news coverage.

Transcript

[Layla Falden]

A federal vaccine panel meets today discussing Covid boosters and childhood shots.

[NPR Sponsor Announcer]

This is established science that they're attacking.

[Steve Inskeep]

How can advisors named by RFK Jr. Affect which vaccines you are able to choose?

[Layla Falden]

I'm Layla Falden. That's Steve Inskeep. And this is up first from NPR News. The Federal Reserve cut interest rates that can help the weakening job market, but also adds the risk of even more inflation.

[Federal Reserve Official (Jerome Powell or colleague)]

We have a situation where we have two sided risk and that means there's no risk free path.

[Steve Inskeep]

Also, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission made a threat to ABC stations.

[FCC Chair Brendan Carr]

Frankly, when you see stuff like this, I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.

[Steve Inskeep]

Within hours, Jimmy Kimmel was off the air for telling jokes the government disliked. The FCC leader publicly celebrated. Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your day.

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[Steve Inskeep]

Federal advisory committee needs to talk about vaccines.

[Layla Falden]

Yeah, their recommendations have a big influence on who gets Covid vaccines this fall or whether babies get vaccinated against hepatitis B. Many health and medical experts are watching because the Trump administration just swapped out all the members.

[Steve Inskeep]

NPRs Ping Huang is attending the meeting in Atlanta and joins us now. Good morning.

[Ping Huang]

Good morning, Steve.

[Steve Inskeep]

Which committee is this?

[Ping Huang]

So this is the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or acip. It's a panel that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention put together to guide the country on how to use vaccines to protect people. And this will be their second meeting since Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Sacked all 17 of the previous members and replaced them with his own picks in June. He picked seven then, and then earlier this week, he added five more members. One of the common themes between many of his picks is that they say the government overstated the risks from COVID and they also question whether people need all these vaccines.

[Steve Inskeep]

So what do they look at then, today and tomorrow?

[Ping Huang]

Yeah. So the agenda contains three topics. There's Covid vaccines. There's hepatitis B, vaccines for children, and then there's also the MMRV vaccine. That's measles, mumps, rubella, plus chickenpox. And with the COVID vaccines, they're actually late on this. So the Food and Drug Administration approved the fall booster shots already, and they're starting to arrive in drugstores. And right now, there's this confusion about who should get the vaccines. And the advice is actually differing between states. But health experts worry that. That when this group votes, they could recommend limits that could make it even harder for people to get them. Jason Schwartz, who's a health policy professor at Yale, he says that the panel includes people who say that Covid vaccines have harmed or killed many, even though that doesn't square with the evidence. So the idea that there have been dozens of deaths or other unacknowledged harms that were swept under the rug doesn't align with what we saw during the COVID pandemic. Regarding the careful, ongoing scrutiny of the vaccines. Throughout their introduction, the CDC and the FDA have invested a lot in the safety monitoring to look for problems.

[Steve Inskeep]

Yeah, I guess we should note there was a time when the vaccine was new, but now it's been taken by hundreds of millions of people, and there's a lot of evidence. What about the other vaccines?

[Ping Huang]

Yeah, so today they're gonna be looking at the vaccine for hepatitis B, which has been recommended at birth since 1991 in the US that's a vaccine that protects against liver diseases, including cancer. And they're also looking at the MMRV vacc. Now, this has a slightly higher risk of causing problems with fevers than the MMR vaccine without the chickenpox part. But these are vaccines that have been given to kids for years, and Questions about them have been considered, settled, but Kennedy's committee has raised them. Again, here's Lakshmi Panayanakopoulos, a former CDC vaccine official. She's done a lot of work with the committee, but she quit the agency this spring.

[NPR Sponsor Announcer]

We've studied all this. We've looked at this so much and so in depth. And this is established science that they're attacking.

[Ping Huang]

So she and a lot of others that I spoke with say that this is a group that intends to change the country's vaccine approach.

[Steve Inskeep]

I hear from people who are worried about what they might decide are taking extra steps to get vaccinated now before the rules change. So is it possible this committee's findings or recommendations could make it harder for people to get a vaccine if they choose to get one?

[Ping Huang]

Yeah, I mean, I've heard those stories this week, too, Steve. And this group is really influential. You know, they decide what vaccines are offered for free to children through the Vaccines for Children program. They decide what a lot of health insurers will cover. A lot of states have laws that are tied to, you know, school requirements based on what this group recommends. And so it is very possible that this group, if they choose to limit access, could make it harder for people to get vaccines.

[Steve Inskeep]

NPR's Ping Huang, thanks so much.

[Ping Huang]

You're welcome.

[Steve Inskeep]

The Federal Reserve has lowered short term interest rates.

[Layla Falden]

That move influences other rates and should make it a bit cheaper to get a car loan, bankroll a business or carry a balance on your credit card. The central bank is trying to shore up the job market and is also facing a challenge to its independence.

[Steve Inskeep]

NPR chief economics correspondent Scott Horsley always reports independently and joins us now. Scott, good morning.

[Scott Horsley]

Good morning, Steve.

[Steve Inskeep]

Okay, so the Fed held off cutting rates for most of this year because they were concerned about inflation. What changed?

[Scott Horsley]

Well, they're getting more nervous about the labor market. There's been very little job growth since April. And while we've not seen a whole lot of layoffs, there is concern that people who lose their jobs are having a harder time finding new ones. And over time that could push the unemployment rate up. So the Fed's trying to fight that by lowering interest rates, but it's a delicate balancing act because inflation is still higher than the central bank would like. And the Fed fights inflation by keeping interest rates high. So it's kind of a tough spot for Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and his colleagues as they try to keep both inflation and unemployment in check.

[Federal Reserve Official (Jerome Powell or colleague)]

Ordinarily, when the labor market is weak, inflation is low. And when the labor market is really Strong. That's when you be careful about inflation. So we have a situation where we have two sided risk and that means there's no risk free path.

[Scott Horsley]

This week, concerns about the job market won out. So the Fed opted to lower its benchmark rate by a quarter percentage point.

[Steve Inskeep]

Okay, so we've followed the whole battle over the independence of the Fed. The President has been demanding a more aggressive rate cuts. Jerome Powell has been saying we have to make our own independent choices based on the facts. But Trump now has another hand picked person on that rate setting committee. How much did politics affect this choice?

[Scott Horsley]

Well, Trump's newest appointee to the Fed board, White House economist Stephen Myron, did echo the President in voting for a bigger half point interest rate cut yesterday, though none of his new Fed colleagues went along with that. Myron also appeared to signal that he thinks rates should be a lot lower by the end of the year. Every other meeting, Fed officials sketch out where they think rates ought to go. And those forecasts are shared anonymously on what's called the dot plot. It seems reasonable to assume that Myron's dot is the one that's way off by itself, projecting rates more than a full percentage point lower than they are right now. Other Fed officials are more cautious, projecting rates might drop by another quarter point, maybe another half point by year's end, or in the case of one hawkish committee member, that rates might even go back up a quarter point, presumably if inflation were to take a turn for the worse.

[Steve Inskeep]

I'm interested, listening to you. It sounds like the Fed moved in the direction Trump would like, but not as far as he would like. So how much influence did he really have?

[Scott Horsley]

Not much for now, and that's by design. As we've talked about, the Fed is supposed to operate at arm's length from the White House, so it's not swayed by short term political pressures. Here's how Powell described it yesterday.

[Federal Reserve Official (Jerome Powell or colleague)]

We don't frame these questions at all or see them in terms of political outcomes. I think when you get to another part of Washington, everything is seen through the lens of does it help or hurt this political party, this politician? You know, that's the framework. And I think that is not at all the way we think about things at the Fed. We're taking a longer perspective.

[Scott Horsley]

But that has not stopped the President from waging a high pressure campaign for much lower rates. One thing to note, two earlier Trump appointees, Chris Waller and Michele Bowman, did not join Myron yesterday in voting for a bigger rate cut. So for the moment, at Least the firewall between the White House and the Fed appears to be holding. We'll see if that sticks.

[Steve Inskeep]

NPR chief economics correspondent Scott Horsley, thanks so much.

[Scott Horsley]

You're welcome.

[Steve Inskeep]

ABC says it is pulling Jimmy Kimmel live off the air indefinitely.

[Layla Falden]

Yeah, the network acted after the chair of the Federal Communications Commission threatened local stations that carry the show. The government wanted to silence a program that satirized President Trump. And Jimmy Kimmel was taken off the air after he talked about the murder of the Trump ally and political activist, Charlie Kirk.

[Steve Inskeep]

NPR's Mendeley Del Barco is covering the story from Los Angeles. Mandalique, good morning.

[Mandalit del Barco]

Good morning.

[Steve Inskeep]

Okay, so there are two parts of this story. One is who pushed Kimmel off the air? And the other is what Jimmy Kimmel said. Let's start with the words. What did he say?

[Mandalit del Barco]

Yeah. Well, during his monologue on Monday, Kimmel took a few jabs at President Trump, as he's done many times. He made fun of Trump's response to a reporter's question about Charlie Kirk's killing. Kimmel played video of Trump changing the subject. But it was what Kimmel said right before that that upset people, including Trump. Here's Jimmy Kimmel.

[Sponsor Voice (LPL Financial or 1Password)]

We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang, desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.

[Mandalit del Barco]

You know, on his show last week, Kimmel called Kirk's murder senseless. And the day it happened, Kimmel also posted a message on Instagram sending love to the Kirk family and to victims of gun violence.

[Steve Inskeep]

Interesting. I want to note some context here. The fcc, Federal Communications Commission is really powerful. They regulate speech on broadcasts. Dangerous thing for the government to do. And because it is, Congress historically put it in charge of a bipartisan commission that was supposed to be independent from politics, that was supposed to protect us all from government abuse, at least to some extent. But the administration has rejected the idea of independence entirely, but chose to go ahead and use the power. How did the FCC use its power here?

[Mandalit del Barco]

Well, you know, as you may know, the FCC licenses and regulates the local broadcast stations that play ABC Network programs and all broadcast programs. And the chair of the fcc, Brendan Carr, criticized Kimmel's remarks, and he threatened federal action against ABC affiliates. Here's what he said to podcaster Benny Johnson yesterday.

[FCC Chair Brendan Carr]

Frankly, when you see stuff like this, I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action on Kimmel or, you know, there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.

[Mandalit del Barco]

You know, Nexstar operates 32 ABC stations around the country and it's seeking FCC approval for a $6.2 billion merger. And after Nexstar announced it was pulling Kimmel show, Sinclair Broadcast Group was next. That major TV station operator said in a statement that suspects suspending the show is not enough. They want Kimmel to apologize directly and personally donate to the Kirk family and his group, Turning Point usa. And on Friday, Sinclair is replacing Kimmel's show with a tribute to Charlie Kirk.

[Steve Inskeep]

Wow, that's really interesting since contributing money is considered by the Supreme Court to be speech. So they want Jimmy Kimmel to make speech for Turning Point usa. How did the president respond to the government going after the comedian?

[Mandalit del Barco]

Well, on his social media post, Trump congratulated ABC for, quote, courage in shutting down Kimmel's show. And you remember it was just two months ago that the president was celebrating after CBS announced it was canceling the Late show with Stephen Colbert, another longtime Trump critic. And at the time, Trump warned that Jimmy Kimmel was next. In his latest post, Trump said, that leaves Jimmy and Seth, that is late night host Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers. The president urged NBC to cancel them.

[Steve Inskeep]

What is Jimmy Kimmel saying about all this?

[Mandalit del Barco]

Well, we reached out to Jimmy Kimmel and his show and we haven't heard back yet. But California Governor Gavin Newsom, comedians, actors and organizations are denouncing the suspension as censorship. And the Writers Guild of America, which represents the writers of Jimmy Kimmel Live, sent a letter of support saying they oppose anyone who uses their power and influence to, quote, silence the voices of writers or anyone who speaks in dissent.

[Steve Inskeep]

That's NPR's Mandalit del Barco in Los Angeles. Thanks so much.

[Mandalit del Barco]

Thank you.

[Steve Inskeep]

And that's up first for this Thursday, September 18th. I'm Steve Inskeep.

[Layla Falden]

And I'm Layla Fon. Make YOUR next listen. Consider this the team behind NPR's All Things Considered goes deep into a single news story in just 15 minutes. Listen now on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts, wherever that might be.

[Steve Inskeep]

Today's Up first was edited by Scott Hensley, Raphael na Mattin McCullough, Mohamed El Bardisi and Olivia Hampton. It was produced by Ziad Buch, Anna Pettis and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Zoe Van Genhoven. And our technical director is Carly Strange. Join us tomorrow.

[Ping Huang]

Foreign.

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