C-SPAN’s Washington Journal Open Forum kicks off with a speaker touting taxpayer-backed chronic disease initiatives, then pivots to Press Secretary Caroline Levitt defending Operation Epic Fury, citing Iran’s terrorism designation, missile advances, and nuclear risks as justification—not "imminent" threats—before live House coverage begins with Chaplain Kibben’s prayer ahead of Homeland Security funding votes. The episode underscores how geopolitical tensions and domestic priorities collide in real-time governance. [Automatically generated summary]
The NIH and work with the medical community, I think, strongly agrees with this message to use the NIH dose taxpayer-appropriated dollars to prevent and reverse disease.
So, yes, it's taxpayer money.
I think it's very clear from the administration and another example of, I think, great alignment with people on the stage that we want to figure out how to use that money to spur curiosity and spur solutions to reverse the root cause of chronic disease.
All right.
Thank you, everyone, for coming, and thank you to all of our incredible speakers.
Have a great day.
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Welcome back.
We are an open forum where you can talk about any political issue or public policy issue that is on your mind this morning.
First, we'll start from yesterday's briefing with Press Secretary Caroline Levitt at the White House, who discussed, who responded to a question about what imminent reason did the president have to strike Iran.
Congressional Directory Insights00:01:21
Take a listen here.
I completely reject the premise of your question.
You have had the President of the United States, the Secretary of War, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Vice President of the United States, the Secretary of State.
And now I am out here today to explain to you exactly what led the President to make the decision to launch Operation Epic Fury.
And President Trump does not make these decisions in a vacuum.
This decision to launch this operation was based on a cumulative effect of various direct threats that Iran posed to the United States of America and the president's feeling based on fact that Iran does pose an imminent and direct threat to the United States of America,
based on the fact that they are the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, based on the fact that they were rapidly and aggressively building up their ballistic missile program to give themselves immunity within their country alongside their Navy so that inside their country they could continue to create nuclear weapons and nuclear bombs, which would of course be available.
We're going to leave this to take you live to the U.S. House, scaffolding in to consider funding for Homeland Security here on C-SPAN.