From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Emily Kopp

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. challenged the record of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the COVID-19 pandemic and the precipitous rise in chronic disease in the U.S. as he defended his shakeup of the health agency at a Senate hearing Thursday.

“These changes were absolutely necessary to restore the CDC’s role as the world’s gold standard public health with a central mission of protecting Americans from infectious disease,” Kennedy said. “CDC failed that responsibility miserably during COVID when its disastrous and nonsensical policies destroyed small businesses, violated civil liberties, closed our schools and caused generational damage in doing so, masked infants with no science and heightened economic inequality.”

The combative hearing follows Kennedy’s high-profile showdown with former CDC Director Susan Monarez last week. Kennedy ousted Monarez from the post on Aug. 25, less than a month into her tenure, over a dispute about his overhaul of the committee that advises the CDC on vaccine schedules.

In a Senate Finance Committee hearing, Democrats and Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana criticized Kennedy for his actions to remake the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), as well as changes by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to COVID-19 vaccine approvals. They lambasted Kennedy as undermining confidence in vaccines and in established science.

“I’m approaching this as a doctor, not as a senator. I am concerned about children’s health, seniors’ health, all of our health. And I applaud you for joining the president in a call for radical transparency,” said Cassidy, referring to President Donald Trump’s call on Truth Social for COVID vaccine manufacturers to make data more readily available.

Cassidy last week appeared to side with Monarez in her dustup with Kennedy, urging physicians to ignore the ACIP’s recommendations.

Monarez alleged in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published hours before the hearing that Kennedy had pressured her to preapprove the outcome of an ACIP meeting scheduled for Sept. 18-19. Kennedy said that the op-ed amounted to a lie. He denied having a private meeting with her in which he asked her to leave.

Kennedy dismissed criticism of the changes to the ACIP from the American Academy of Pediatrics, pointing to the association’s pharmaceutical ties. Kennedy also cited a 2000 congressional investigation into physicians and scientists serving on the committee with financial stakes in the drugmakers they oversaw.

“I didn’t politicize ACIP, I depoliticized it,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy answered the broader criticism with a scathing referendum of the CDC’s actions during the COVID pandemic and insisted the agency should focus on its original mission of protecting Americans from infectious diseases. Kennedy added the agency requires “new blood” in light of the CDC’s “catastrophically bad judgement” during the pandemic.

“The U.S. is home to 4.2% of the world’s population yet we had nearly 20% of the COVID deaths,” Kennedy said. “The people at CDC who oversaw that process, who put masks on our children, who closed our schools, are the people who will be leaving.”

Kennedy also questioned whether the CDC was complacent amid a precipitous rise in rates of obesity, heart disease and diabetes.

“CDC’s job was to make sure this didn’t happen,” he said.

Sometimes Kennedy also directly challenged the records of individual senators on the panel, including Sens. Michael Bennet of Colorado, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Ron Wyden of Oregon.

Kennedy accused Wyden of overseeing a rise in childhood chronic disease from a position of influence over American health care.

“Senator you’ve sat in that chair for how long? Twenty, twenty-five years? While the chronic diseases in our children went up to 76%. And you said nothing,” Kennedy said.

Wyden has served on the Finance Committee, which shares jurisdiction over health policy issues, since 1996.

Kennedy also named a litany of HHS priorities addressed since his February confirmation, asserting that his brief tenure has been among the most productive in history on issues ranging from food dyes, baby formula, fluoride in tap water, 7-OH or “gas station heroin,” drug prices, the “GRAS” loophole, reducing animal testing, ending gain-of-function research, FDA drug approvals and ending diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies.

Kennedy also opened his testimony by expressing sympathy for the family of Dekalb County police officer David Rose who died by gunshot in an attack on CDC headquarters.

Pullback Of COVID Vaccines In Perpetuity

Several senators criticized a new FDA framework to require new clinical trial data for annual COVID-19 booster shots for healthy adults and children. Democrats portrayed the move as a betrayal of Kennedy’s promise at confirmation hearings earlier this year to not restrict access to vaccines. People can continue to seek the vaccine off-label, but the HHS actions limit insurance coverage.

Kennedy reminded the panel that two top vaccine regulators at the FDA during the Biden administration, Marion Gruber and Phil Krause, departed the agency in response to pressure to approve a boosters-for-all strategy without this clinical evidence in 2021. 

The hearing also occasionally delved into other more contentious topics where Kennedy diverges from many Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Sen. Chuck Grassley sought reassurance from Kennedy, a frequent critic of genetically modified crops, synthetic pesticides and their manufacturers, that he would let the U.S. Department of Agriculture lead regulation of agriculture. Kennedy agreed and added that he was working with USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins on certain priorities.

Kennedy also alleged the CDC buried evidence of an association between the Mumps, Measles and Rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism in children, which could land him in hot water with a broader coalition of lawmakers.

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Wallace White

Artificial intelligence-powered drones are making their first appearances on the battlefield in the Russia-Ukraine war as warfare creeps closer to full automation.

In bombardments on Russian targets in the past year, Ukrainian drones acting in concert were able to independently determine where to strike without human input.

It’s the first battlefield use of AI “swarm” technology in a real-world environment, a senior Ukrainian official and Swarmer, the company who makes the software, told the Wall Street Journal in a Tuesday report. While drones have increasingly defined modern battlefields, swarms until now had been confined to testing rather than combat.

“You set the target and the drones do the rest,” Swarmer Chief Executive Serhii Kupriienko told the WSJ. “They work together, they adapt.”

So far, the Swarmer technology has been used hundreds of times to target Russia assets, but was first used a year ago to lay mines on the front, the Ukrainian official told the WSJ. The software has been tested with up to 25 drones at once, but is usually utilized with only three.

Kupriienko told the WSJ that he was preparing to test up to 100 drones at once with the linking software.

A common arrangement used on the battlefield includes one reconnaissance drone to scout out the target and two explosive drones delivering the payload on target, the official told the WSJ.

While Western nations such as the U.S., France and the United Kingdom are also pursuing drone swarm technology, they have not deployed swarm technology on the battlefield the way Ukraine has, according to the WSJ. Currently, autonomous weapons are not regulated by any international authority or binding agreement, but ethical concerns around the technology has led many to call for increased regulation of weapons like the Swarmer system.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.