Suozzi pushes Kennedy on White House proposal to cut health department budget
Representative Tom Suozzi, the moderate Democrat from New York, grilled Kennedy about the White House budget request for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which seeks to cut more than $15bn for the 2027 fiscal year, while asking for $441bn more in defense department funding.
“The president is making a lot of tough decisions, and he’s making tough decisions because of problems that he inherited,” Kennedy said, defending the blueprint that will kickstart appropriations talks on Capitol Hill.
“You say he’s not cutting Medicaid. Nobody buys that,” Suozzi replied. “I want to be bipartisan. I want to work together. I’ve applauded you on some of the things that you’re doing that are good, but how does it square that he’s increasing the defense budget by 500 billion and cutting money for NIH and CDC?”
The health secretary insisted that Donald Trump has done “more to protect public health any president” and blamed Democrats for what he describes as a “chronic disease epidemic”.
“All happened in the past four years of the Biden administration?” Suozzi snapped back
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“The president is making a lot of tough decisions, and he’s making tough decisions because of problems that he inherited,” Kennedy said, defending the blueprint that will kickstart appropriations talks on Capitol Hill.
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“You say he’s not cutting Medicaid. Nobody buys that,” Suozzi replied. “I want to be bipartisan. I want to work together. I’ve applauded you on some of the things that you’re doing that are good, but how does it square that he’s increasing the defense budget by 500 billion and cutting money for NIH and CDC?”
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The health secretary insisted that Donald Trump has done “more to protect public health any president” and blamed Democrats for what he describes as a “chronic disease epidemic”.
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“All happened in the past four years of the Biden administration?” Suozzi snapped back
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The House of Representatives backed Donald Trump’s military campaign against Iran on Thursday, narrowly voting to block a Democratic-led resolution aiming to stop the war until hostilities are authorized by Congress.
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The measure was defeated by 214 to 213 in the Republican-majority chamber, a day after a similar measure was blocked in the Senate for the fourth time. The vote was almost exclusively along party lines, with every Republican except one (Thomas Massie) opposing the resolution, and one (Warren Davidson) voting present. One Democrat (Jared Golden) voted against it.
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Federal law requires congressional approval to continue military actions for more than 60 days. The US-Israeli war on Iran began on 28 February. Some Senate Republicans signaled yesterday that they may reassess their thinking on this issue if the war reaches 60 days.
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A short while ago, Donald Trump announced that Israel and Lebanon will begin a ten-day ceasefire from 5pm EST.
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In a post on Truth Social, he said he had spoken to the leaders of both countries today and claimed this would be the “tenth war” he has “solved”.
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He wrote:
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n
I just had excellent conversations with the Highly Respected President Joseph Aoun, of Lebanon, and Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, of Israel. These two Leaders have agreed that in order to achieve PEACE between their Countries, they will formally begin a 10 Day CEASEFIRE at 5 P.M. EST.
n
On Tuesday, the two Countries met for the first time in 34 years here in Washington, D.C., with our Great Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. I have directed Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Rubio, together with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Razin’ Caine, to work with Israel and Lebanon to achieve a Lasting PEACE.
n
It has been my Honor to solve 9 Wars across the World, and this will be my 10th, so let’s, GET IT DONE!
n
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Israel, meanwhile, has no plans to withdraw its troops from southern Lebanon during the ceasefire, an Israeli security official has told Reuters.
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Israel’s punishing bombing campaign and ground invasion of Lebanon has killed more than 2,100 people, injured over 7,100 and displaced over 1.2 million.
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My colleague Tom Ambrose is blogging all the latest developments:
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All Democratic lawmakers on the Senate banking committee are urging Republican leadership to postpone the confirmation hearing for Kevin Warsh, the financial executive that Donald Trump has nominated to lead the Federal Reserve.
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In a letter to banking committee chair Senator Tim Scott, a Republican from South Carolina, eleven Democrats called to delay proceedings currently scheduled for 21 April, until the investigations into current Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell and governor Lisa Cook are closed.
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Powell is facing a criminal probe into the ongoing renovation of the central bank, while the Trump administration has tried to fire Cook for alleged mortgage fraud. The president’s attempt to fire the Federal Reserve governor has made its way to the US supreme court, where justices appeared skeptical of the case for terminating Cook.
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“It would be absurd on its face to allow President Trump to handpick the next Chair of the Federal Reserve as his Department of Justice actively pursues criminal investigations of not one, but two sitting members of the Federal Reserve Board,’” wrote the Senators. “It would also be inappropriate to move forward with Mr. Warsh’s nomination as the President publicly threatens the federal judge who found the DOJ’s probe to lack merit.”
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Trump has continued to rail against James Boasberg, the chief judge of the DC district court, who blocked the justice department from seeking testimony from Powell over his remarks to Congress on the Federal Reserve’s renovation project.
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Boasberg said “a mountain of evidence suggests that the Government served these subpoenas on the Board to pressure its Chair into voting for lower interest rates or resigning” is his 27-page ruling last month.
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In response, Trump called the jurist “wacky, nasty, crooked, and totally out of control” on Truth Social.
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Warsh’s nomination also faces hurdles from the president’s own party. Outgoing GOP senator Thom Tillis, a deciding vote on the banking committee, has said repeatedly that he won’t support any nomination as long as there is an investigation into Powell.
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John Thune, the Senate majority leader, even called on the justice to “wrap up” its probe into Powell.
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“I think it’s in everybody’s best interest to wrap up the investigation. I’ve said that before, it would be better if it winds down,” he told reporters on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.
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Trump, however, went on a lengthy tangent during a Fox Business interview this week about the Fed’s renovations, alleging without evidence that it “is probably corrupt, but what it really is is incompetence”, and seemed unfazed by the possibility that Tillis could block Warsh’s confirmation
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Robert F Kennedy Jr, the president’s health secretary, is currently testifying before the House Ways and Means committee, as part of a sprint of hearings before members of Congress about his leadership of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the White House budget request for the 2027 fiscal year.
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As I reported earlier this month, Donald Trump’s blueprint pushes lawmakers to appropriate funding to establish the Administration for a Healthy America (AHA). This, you may remember, is health secretary Kennedy’s planned consolidation of many subagencies whose workforces he slashed last year. Last year, Congress didn’t provide funding for AHA, but in 2027 the administration is hoping to secure funding as part of the $111bn it requests fo the wider HHS.
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Notably, the Trump administation is hoping to cut $5bn in funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which has seen wholesale cuts to research, grants and funding since the president returned to office.
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Kennedy’s HHS has been roiled with chaos over the last year. The president has yet to nominate a permanent director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Donald Trump’s controversial pick for surgeon general, Casey Means, remains in limbo as her nomination stalls in the Senate.
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Meanwhile, the health secretary’s Make America Health Again (Maha) agenda has been hampered in recent months. In March, a federal judge ruled that the appointment of a controversial slate of vaccine advisers, appointed by Kennedy, likely violated the law. Similarly, all votes made by those advisers was also invalidated. This includes ending the recommendation for the combination measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) and chickenpox vaccine; and the end of the universal birth dose recommendation for the hepatitis B vaccine. The atest version of flu and Covid shots, and the inclusion of the RSV shot for infants are also no longer recommended.
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F Kennedy Jr testifies on the Trump administration’s budget cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services, 16 April 2026.”,”caption”:”Robert F Kennedy Jr testifies on the Trump administration’s budget cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services, 16 April 2026. “,”credit”:”Photograph: Heather Diehl/Getty Images”}}],”attributes”:{“pinned”:false,”keyEvent”:true,”summary”:false},”blockCreatedOn”:1776346367000,”blockCreatedOnDisplay”:”09.32 EDT”,”blockLastUpdated”:1776347476000,”blockLastUpdatedDisplay”:”09.51 EDT”,”blockFirstPublished”:1776347476000,”blockFirstPublishedDisplay”:”09.51 EDT”,”blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone”:”09.51″,”title”:”Kennedy testifies before Congress over healthcare agenda and latest budget request”,”contributors”:[],”primaryDateLine”:”Thu 16 Apr 2026 13.56 EDT”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Thu 16 Apr 2026 06.00 EDT”},{“id”:”69e0c7f98f08b9e0aac01308″,”elements”:[{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”
Pope Leo blasted leaders who spend billions on wars and said the world was “being ravaged by a handful of tyrants“, in unusually forceful remarks in Cameroon on Thursday after US president Donald Trump attacked him again on social media.
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Leo, the first US pope, also decried leaders who used religious language to justify wars and urged a “decisive change of course” in a meeting in the biggest city in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions, where a simmering conflict going back nearly a decade has left thousands dead.
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On Tuesday, JD Vance capped several days of insults by insinuating the pontiff was not being truthful in matters of theology, and did not understand the concept of war.
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“How can you say that God is never on the side of those who wield the sword?” the vice-president said during a Turning Point USA event at the University of Georgia, at which he was heckled by anti-war protesters.
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“Was God on the side of the Americans who liberated Holocaust camps? It’s very, very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology … you’ve got to make sure it’s anchored in the truth.”
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Donald Trump’s design for the Triumphal Arch he wants built at an entrance to the US capital comes up for a review and possible vote on Thursday by a key federal agency.
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It is one of several projects he is pursuing alongside a White House ballroom to leave his lasting footprint on Washington.
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Trump said on social media that the arch “will be the GREATEST and MOST BEAUTIFUL Triumphal Arch, anywhere in the World” and a “wonderful addition to the Washington D.C. area for all Americans to enjoy for many decades to come!”
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Also on the agenda for the monthly meeting of the US Commission of Fine Arts, whose seven members were appointed by the Republican president, is his plan to paint the gray granite exterior of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next to the White House white.
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A third White House-related project, construction of an underground center to conduct security screenings of tourists and other guests, is also up for consideration.
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Commissioners are scheduled to review design plans for all three projects. They will be reviewing the arch and the paint job for the first time. The White House visitors’ center was discussed at the March meeting. It was unclear if the commission would approve any of the projects on Thursday.
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Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
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House Democrats filed six articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth on Wednesday, accusing the defense secretary of “high crimes and misdemeanors”, in reference to the attack on Iran without congressional authorization and deadly strikes on suspected drug smuggling boats, among other official acts.
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The move comes as the Trump administration faces mounting scrutiny over recent foreign action, particularly the war with Iran. The impeachment attempt can be seen as more symbolic than the realistic prospect of removing Hegseth from office.
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In Wednesday’s resolution, Yassamin Ansari, a Democratic congresswoman from Arizona, and colleagues including John Larson of Connecticut accused the Pentagon chief of disregarding rules to minimize civilian casualties during armed conflict.
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Meanwhile, Senate Democrats again failed to pass a war powers resolution to curb the Trump administration’s military campaign in Iran in a vote of 47-52.
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Republican senator Rand Paul voted yes on the measure, bucking his party, while John Fetterman was the only Democratic senator to vote against the resolution. It was the upper chamber’s fourth failed attempt but its first since Congress returned from its most recent recess and the ongoing two-week ceasefire with Iran began.
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It comes as senator Bernie Sanders’ effort to block the sale of bombs and bulldozers to Israel also failed yesterday, although the votes reinforced the growing appetite among Democrats to impose limits on US weapons transfers to a longtime US ally.
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It was the fourth time Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Senate Democrats, had forced consideration of resolutions cutting off military aid for Israel in the Senate, all of which have been rejected by the chamber’s Republican majority, and many Democrats.
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In other developments:
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Trump threatened to fire Jerome Powell if he stays on as US Federal Reserve chair past the end of his tenure and doubled down on a criminal investigation into renovations of the central bank’s headquarters.
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Wall Street scaled a fresh all-time high amid growing optimism among investors that the US-Israel war on Iran will soon be over.
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The supreme court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has delivered a sustained attack on her conservative colleagues’ use of emergency orders to benefit the Trump administration.
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Trump defended his consumption of diet soda by suggesting it might help prevent cancer, according to recent comments shared by Mehmet Oz.
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The US and Iran have been in indirect talks aimed at extending the two-week ceasefire beyond its expiry on 22 April, as Pakistan’s army chief arrived in Tehran to continue mediation efforts.
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John Eastman, the Republican legal scholar who convinced Trump he could stay in office despite losing the 2020 election, lost his license to practice law in California.
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Key events
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Melody Schreiber
Kennedy’s hearing before the House Ways and Means committee is back from recess. An explosive moment took place a short while ago. Representative Steven Horsford, a Democrat from Nevada, spoke about his constituents’ struggle to access health care. “Calm down, congressman,” Kennedy said.
“Don’t tell me to calm down. Health care is personal to me,” Horsford said. “If you can’t answer basic questions, then maybe come prepared next time.”
Kennedy responded that Horsford was getting upset because he didn’t “have much to say”.
RFK Jr’s hearing is now in recess so lawmakers can cast votes.
Earlier, the health and human services secretary had a heated exchange with Democratic representative Terri Sewell, of Alabama, who pressed Kennedy on his reported remarks that black children would benefit from “wellness farms” where they could be “re-parented” while weaning off psychiatric medications.
“Every black kid is now just standard put on Adderall, on SSRIs, benzos, which are known to induce violence, and those kids are going to have a chance to go somewhere and get re-parented, to live in a community where there’ll be no cellphones, no screens,” Kennedy reportedly said on the 19Keys podcast in June 2024. “You’ll actually have to talk to people.”
Today, Kennedy said he doubted he said that, adding that he didn’t know what “re-parent” means.
“Our nation has a long and painful history of separating Black children from their families,” Sewell said, referring to slavery, Jim Crow laws and systemic racial discrimination in policing and child welfare.
House Republicans narrowly block latest bid to rein in Trump Iran war powers
The House of Representatives backed Donald Trump’s military campaign against Iran on Thursday, narrowly voting to block a Democratic-led resolution aiming to stop the war until hostilities are authorized by Congress.
The measure was defeated by 214 to 213 in the Republican-majority chamber, a day after a similar measure was blocked in the Senate for the fourth time. The vote was almost exclusively along party lines, with every Republican except one (Thomas Massie) opposing the resolution, and one (Warren Davidson) voting present. One Democrat (Jared Golden) voted against it.
Federal law requires congressional approval to continue military actions for more than 60 days. The US-Israeli war on Iran began on 28 February. Some Senate Republicans signaled yesterday that they may reassess their thinking on this issue if the war reaches 60 days.
Further to that, Trump has said he’s invited the leaders of Israel and Lebanon to the White House for the countries’ first high-level talks since 1983.
He wrote on Truth Social:
In addition to the statement just issued, I will be inviting the Prime Minister of Israel, Bibi Netanyahu, and the President of Lebanon, Joseph Aoun, to the White House for the first meaningful talks between Israel and Lebanon since 1983, a very long time ago.
Both sides want to see PEACE, and I believe that will happen, quickly!
Trump announces Israel-Lebanon 10 day ceasefire
A short while ago, Donald Trump announced that Israel and Lebanon will begin a ten-day ceasefire from 5pm EST.
In a post on Truth Social, he said he had spoken to the leaders of both countries today and claimed this would be the “tenth war” he has “solved”.
He wrote:
I just had excellent conversations with the Highly Respected President Joseph Aoun, of Lebanon, and Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, of Israel. These two Leaders have agreed that in order to achieve PEACE between their Countries, they will formally begin a 10 Day CEASEFIRE at 5 P.M. EST.
On Tuesday, the two Countries met for the first time in 34 years here in Washington, D.C., with our Great Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. I have directed Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Rubio, together with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Razin’ Caine, to work with Israel and Lebanon to achieve a Lasting PEACE.
It has been my Honor to solve 9 Wars across the World, and this will be my 10th, so let’s, GET IT DONE!
Israel, meanwhile, has no plans to withdraw its troops from southern Lebanon during the ceasefire, an Israeli security official has told Reuters.
Israel’s punishing bombing campaign and ground invasion of Lebanon has killed more than 2,100 people, injured over 7,100 and displaced over 1.2 million.
My colleague Tom Ambrose is blogging all the latest developments:
Melody Schreiber
Back at Robert F Kennedy Jr’s hearing, representative Blake Moore, a Republican from Utah, spoke of his 10-year-old, Winnie, who is neurodivergent.
When the Trump administration incorrectly said Tylenol use in pregnancy causes autism, he said, “My wife was hurt.” She felt responsible, though they don’t recall if she even took the pain reliever during pregnancy.
“That was a hurtful moment for her,” Moore said, before encouraging Kennedy to continue looking for the causes of autism, which research shows has a strong genetic component.
During his hearing before House lawmakers, Robert F Kennedy Jr faced questions about the decision by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) to end the universal recommendation for the hepatitis B vaccine at birth.
Congresswoman Judy Chu, a California Democrat, pushed the health secretary about the move, calling it “incredibly harmful”. Many doctors, including Republican senator Bill Cassidy, a liver specialist by training, have warned that universal innoculation is incredibly effective since hepatits B is very infectious for children and can lead to long-term complications.
Kennedy, however, maintained that babies “essentially have zero risk unless their mother is infected”.
The health secretary said that “parents can assess the risk themselves” and the “state should not make that choice for them”.
Medical experts warn that a negative test result during pregnancy does not guarantee the child will not be infected with the hepatitis B. They point to both false negative results, but also the posibilty that mothers could contract the virus after screening.
Richard Luscombe
Pope Leo XIV has said that the world is being “ravaged by a handful of tyrants” who spend billions on war, in comments that will be seen as another sharp escalation in his almost week-long feud with the White House over the US-Israel war on Iran.
The first American-born pontiff did not mention Donald Trump by name, but used his speech in Cameroon on Thursday to denounce world leaders that invoke religion to justify violence against other nations.
His comments came as US bishops offered their full-throated support to the head of the Catholic church, who has been under fire from Trump for days after speaking out against the Iran war.
“Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth,” Leo told a gathering at Saint Joseph Cathedral in the western city of Bamenda.
Senate Democrats push to postpone confirmation hearing for Trump’s pick to lead Federal Reserve
All Democratic lawmakers on the Senate banking committee are urging Republican leadership to postpone the confirmation hearing for Kevin Warsh, the financial executive that Donald Trump has nominated to lead the Federal Reserve.
In a letter to banking committee chair Senator Tim Scott, a Republican from South Carolina, eleven Democrats called to delay proceedings currently scheduled for 21 April, until the investigations into current Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell and governor Lisa Cook are closed.
Powell is facing a criminal probe into the ongoing renovation of the central bank, while the Trump administration has tried to fire Cook for alleged mortgage fraud. The president’s attempt to fire the Federal Reserve governor has made its way to the US supreme court, where justices appeared skeptical of the case for terminating Cook.
“It would be absurd on its face to allow President Trump to handpick the next Chair of the Federal Reserve as his Department of Justice actively pursues criminal investigations of not one, but two sitting members of the Federal Reserve Board,’” wrote the Senators. “It would also be inappropriate to move forward with Mr. Warsh’s nomination as the President publicly threatens the federal judge who found the DOJ’s probe to lack merit.”
Trump has continued to rail against James Boasberg, the chief judge of the DC district court, who blocked the justice department from seeking testimony from Powell over his remarks to Congress on the Federal Reserve’s renovation project.
Boasberg said “a mountain of evidence suggests that the Government served these subpoenas on the Board to pressure its Chair into voting for lower interest rates or resigning” is his 27-page ruling last month.
In response, Trump called the jurist “wacky, nasty, crooked, and totally out of control” on Truth Social.
Warsh’s nomination also faces hurdles from the president’s own party. Outgoing GOP senator Thom Tillis, a deciding vote on the banking committee, has said repeatedly that he won’t support any nomination as long as there is an investigation into Powell.
John Thune, the Senate majority leader, even called on the justice to “wrap up” its probe into Powell.
“I think it’s in everybody’s best interest to wrap up the investigation. I’ve said that before, it would be better if it winds down,” he told reporters on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.
Trump, however, went on a lengthy tangent during a Fox Business interview this week about the Fed’s renovations, alleging without evidence that it “is probably corrupt, but what it really is is incompetence”, and seemed unfazed by the possibility that Tillis could block Warsh’s confirmation
Melody Schreiber
During his opening remarks, Kennedy focused on alleged fraud by home health aides. Federal payments from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have allowed aides, including family members, to take care of elderly and disabled people. “These are family members were getting paid to do things that they used to do as family members for free, and this is rife with fraud,” Kennedy claimed. “We are paying for fraud now as much as for medicine.”
Kennedy mentioned food dyes, menopause treatments, and cuts to gender-affirming care, while addressing lawmakers on the House Ways and Means committee, but he didn’t mention any of the administration’s controversial actions on vaccines.
Lawmakers brought them up, though.
“Did President Trump approve your decision to end CDC’s pro-vaccine public messaging campaign?” asked Linda Sánchez, a Democrat from California.
“You’ve got a lot of misinformation,” Kennedy said. A tense exchange followed, with Sánchez repeating the question several times and Kennedy saying he wanted to address her misinformation and pointing to other global outbreaks, which have not made measles circulate in the US.
“I think you don’t want to answer the question, because I think you know the terrible, terrible decisions that impact very, very real lives, especially the lives of children,” Sánchez said.
Democrats questioning Kennedy are making a point to point out the health secretary’s routine vaccine scepticism.
In a particularly heated back and forth, Mike Thompson, a Democratic congressman asked whether Kennedy has a medical or public health degree.
“No,” the health secretary answered.
“Yet you’re overruling doctors, scientists and public health experts across our country. Your dangerous conspiracy theories are undermining safe and effective vaccines,” Thompson said.
Melody Schreiber
During his opening remarks, Kennedy issued one of his common refrains. “We stand at a generational turning point. Our children are the sickest generation in modern history,” the health secretary told the House Ways and Means Committee.
Kennedy says he’s referring to chronic illness – perhaps he’s talking about obesity and other health conditions, though he uses the phrase to talk about autism. But in fact, this generation has less infectious disease and Americans still have long expected lifespans. It’s difficult to know what Kennedy means, other than fear-mongering about children’s health and development.
Democrats pushed Kennedy on Medicare fraud, and the hearing quickly turned acrimonious. “Were you shocked to see that 850 people who were suspended for fraud had been reinstated all at once?” Congressman Lloyd Doggett asked. “Your administration was the one that let them all go back to work.”
Kennedy spoke over Doggett several times. “It’s not a credible story,” he said of Trump’s reinstatement of fraudulent Medicare agents.
It’s worth noting that it’s a packed day for Kennedy. He’ll wrap up his first hearing at 12:30pm ET today, before heading to a second round of questions from House lawmakers at a subcommittee of the appropriations committee at 2pm ET.
Kennedy testifies before Congress over healthcare agenda and latest budget request
Robert F Kennedy Jr, the president’s health secretary, is currently testifying before the House Ways and Means committee, as part of a sprint of hearings before members of Congress about his leadership of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the White House budget request for the 2027 fiscal year.
As I reported earlier this month, Donald Trump’s blueprint pushes lawmakers to appropriate funding to establish the Administration for a Healthy America (AHA). This, you may remember, is health secretary Kennedy’s planned consolidation of many subagencies whose workforces he slashed last year. Last year, Congress didn’t provide funding for AHA, but in 2027 the administration is hoping to secure funding as part of the $111bn it requests fo the wider HHS.
Notably, the Trump administation is hoping to cut $5bn in funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which has seen wholesale cuts to research, grants and funding since the president returned to office.
Kennedy’s HHS has been roiled with chaos over the last year. The president has yet to nominate a permanent director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Donald Trump’s controversial pick for surgeon general, Casey Means, remains in limbo as her nomination stalls in the Senate.
Meanwhile, the health secretary’s Make America Health Again (Maha) agenda has been hampered in recent months. In March, a federal judge ruled that the appointment of a controversial slate of vaccine advisers, appointed by Kennedy, likely violated the law. Similarly, all votes made by those advisers was also invalidated. This includes ending the recommendation for the combination measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) and chickenpox vaccine; and the end of the universal birth dose recommendation for the hepatitis B vaccine. The atest version of flu and Covid shots, and the inclusion of the RSV shot for infants are also no longer recommended.
Donald Trump will spend the first half of the day in meetings at the White House, before heading to Las Vegas, where he’ll talk about tax cuts enacted through his sweeping policy bill, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was signed into law last year.
He’ll deliver remarks around 4pm PT, but we’ll bring you the latest in case the president speaks to the press before that.
Tom Ambrose
Asked whether there is any update on the welfare of the new Iranian supreme leader, Hegseth says his status “remains the same”.
He adds that Mojtaba Khamenei is believed to be alive, wounded and disfigured.
Caine told reporters today that as of this morning no US forces have had to “board any particular” ships that have defied the blockade.
Earlier this week, experts said that it is unlikely the military would fire missiles or other weapons at tankers, given the risk of an environmental disaster. The most likely option is the US navy will try to force vessels to change course through threats, and if that doesn’t work, they will launch armed boarding parties to take physical control of the ships.
