Today's POLITICS story

RFK Jr. faces bipartisan heat in Senate hearing

What happened
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faced sharp questioning yesterday while testifying before the Senate Finance Committee. He defended his leadership amid turmoil at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, blamed former CDC Director Susan Monarez for her recent firing and deflected questions about the restricted availability of key vaccines.

Who said what
Kennedy was "remarkably combative and dismissive" during three hours of testimony, "refusing to budge from his stance on vaccines, autism, Medicaid and the CDC," said The New York Times. The hearing was "punctuated with heated back-and-forth exchanges," with Kennedy "effectively getting into shouting matches" with several lawmakers.

The health secretary faced "sharp questioning from both Democrats and Republicans" and endured "bipartisan criticism" for his work limiting vaccine availability, said The Wall Street Journal. Although he "rejected assertions that he was taking vaccines away," senators "pointed to examples of immunocompromised people being denied Covid vaccines under new federal limits on who can get them." Kennedy also "claimed, wrongly," that officials at the CDC "failed to do anything" about Covid during the 2020 pandemic, said The Associated Press.

What next?
The hearing showed that Republican support for Kennedy is "starting to waver" on Capitol Hill, Politico said, possibly "driven by an August memo from Trump's longtime pollster" showing that "the overwhelming majority of voters support vaccines." As Kennedy advances "antivaccine policies at the federal level," the Journal said, CDC employees are "torn on the agency's future and their own."

Today's FEDERALIZATION Story

DC sues Trump to end 'military occupation'

What happened
Washington, D.C., yesterday sued President Donald Trump and his administration over the deployment of National Guard troops in the capital. D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb argued that the unsolicited military presence violated both the law that granted the city limited home rule and the Posse Comitatus Act, which broadly prohibits the use of military personnel for domestic law enforcement.

Who said what
"No American jurisdiction should be involuntarily subjected to military occupation," Schwalb said in a statement. His lawsuit asked a federal court to order Trump to withdraw the more than 2,200 National Guard members mobilized in D.C. and to prohibit another such deployment. The White House said it believes Trump "is well within his lawful authority" to deploy the Guard to protect federal assets and assist law enforcement.

A federal judge in California rejected that argument earlier this week, ruling that Trump's military deployment in Los Angeles was illegal. But the L.A. case is "not directly comparable," The Washington Post said, "and the vast power that the federal government retains over the district — including over the deployment of the city's National Guard — could make the legal challenge an uphill battle."

What next?
Trump's federalization of the D.C. police department will expire on Wednesday, 30 days after he claimed emergency powers — Congress has no plans to extend the emergency declaration, the Post and Politico reported. But "members of the D.C. National Guard have had their orders extended through December," The Associated Press said, citing a Guard official.

It's not all bad

A new cancer therapy has shown promise in cats, paving the way for human testing. Researchers at U.C. San Francisco and U.C. Davis treated 20 cats with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, using a drug that aims to block the protein STAT3 and boost the protein PD-1, which "stimulates the immune system's attack on tumors," said The Times of London. The treatment controlled the disease in 35% of the cats, increasing the average survival rate by two months.

Under the radar

Canyons under the Antarctic run deep

Scientists have mapped 332 underwater canyons in Antarctica, some deeper than 13,000 feet, according to a study published in the journal Marine Geology. These canyons "may have a more significant impact than previously thought on ocean circulation, ice-shelf thinning and global climate change," said the University of Barcelona.

Antarctic submarine canyons "resemble canyons in other parts of the world," said study co-author David Amblàs, a marine geologist at the university. "But they tend to be larger and deeper because of the prolonged action of polar ice and the immense volumes of sediment transported by glaciers to the continental shelf."

These canyons "facilitate water exchange between the deep ocean and the continental shelf, allowing cold, dense water formed near ice shelves to flow into the deep ocean and form what's known as Antarctic Bottom Water," the university said. They also do the reverse, transporting "warmer ocean waters from the sea toward the coastline" to help "maintain and stabilize Antarctica's interior glaciers," said Discover.

The role of submarine canyons is thus far a "blind spot in climate change science," in part because less than one-third of the seafloor has been properly mapped, Discover said. Since "so many submarine canyons are undiscovered and understudied, they do not factor into many of the current climate change models," but "omitting these water-transporting canyons drastically limits the ability of climate change models to accurately predict ocean and overall climate changes."

On this day

September 5, 1781

French forces under the command of Admiral François Joseph Paul de Grasse defeated the British in the Battle of the Chesapeake, one of the decisive naval battles of the American Revolutionary War. The French victory trapped the British commander, General Charles Cornwallis, and eventually led to the overall defeat of the British at the Battle of Yorktown.

TODAY'S newspaperS

'You ought to resign'

"Confusion rises over Covid vaccines," USA Today says on Friday's front page. "Covid cases surge as vaccine access is limited," the Los Angeles Times says. "Kennedy defends vaccine moves" as "several in GOP imply that he broke vow," The New York Times says. "You ought to resign," Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) tells RFK Jr. at "testy Senate hearing," says The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "RFK Jr. takes heat, gives it back," The Boston Globe says. "Trump to ax aid for European security," The Washington Post says. "Power suit creator" Giorgio Armani, who died yesterday, "held the reins as conglomerate rose," says The Wall Street Journal.

► See the newspaper front pages

Tall tale

A brief victory

Sydney Marathon runner Daniel Byrnes broke a Guinness World Record by wearing 53 pairs of underwear — weighing 11 pounds — during last week's race. It was part of a fundraiser for Bowel Cancer Australia, and he finished the marathon in 4 hours, 33 minutes and 20 seconds. After the race, a Guinness adjudicator had to "pull down my sweaty undies to verify it," said Byrnes. "He doesn't get paid enough, that's for sure."

Morning Report was written and edited by Nadia Croes, Catherine Garcia, Scott Hocker, Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, Justin Klawans, Rafi Schwartz, Peter Weber and Kari Wilkin, with illustrations by Stephen Kelly and Julia Wytrazek.