Geoff Bennett:
In the day’s other headlines: This week’s life-threatening heat wave is peaking in some parts of the Northeast, with more than 160 million people enduring brutal conditions.
The purple you see represents extreme heat warnings that cover much of the Eastern Seaboard, including major cities like New York, Philadelphia and Boston. All three have declared heat emergencies with temperatures hitting triple digits.
Meantime, the first named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season has formed. Tropical Storm Andrea is not expected to hit land and is set to dissipate by tomorrow night.
U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told lawmakers today that he’s hired back nearly 1,000 staff who’d been laid off from the CDC and the National Institutes of Health. Kennedy had vowed to cut 10,000 jobs across those agencies, plus the Food and Drug Administration. He acknowledged today that some who were let go are needed, after all, even as he maintained that shrinking his department remains a priority.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary: Throwing money at this agency has not worked. We need to realign the agency. We need to recalibrate its trajectory, so that it transforms our health care system from a sick care system into a health care system.
