| The State Department is restoring $600 million in funding to Gavi, the global vaccine alliance, after bipartisan pressure from lawmakers led the administration to reverse a funding freeze championed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., according to a top lawmaker. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who leads the Senate Appropriations Committee, cheered the restoration, our Rebecca Adams reports. “It is welcome news that, following our recent outreach, the State Department has committed to contributing the full $600 million,” Collins said in a statement onTuesday, adding she’s been working with the State Department to ensure it “uses this funding Congress appropriated to replenish U.S. funding to Gavi.” The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Why it matters: Gavi, which works to expand vaccine access for children in some of the world’s poorest nations, has said the delayed funds hurt its efforts to prevent the spread of Ebola, cholera and meningitis throughout the world. The organization also said it scaled back support for vaccination against malaria, the leading cause of childhood deaths in sub-Saharan Africa. → The move to turn the funding back on comes just more than a year after Kennedy, who founded an anti-vaccine group, announced that the U.S. would be cutting off contributions to the organization, alarming public health experts. Collins said that the vaccine alliance “plays a critical role in averting the spread of preventable diseases globally and stopping outbreaks before they reach U.S. borders.” In May, Collins helped lead a bipartisan campaign asking for the money that Congress had directed to be delivered to the alliance. → The Department of Health and Human Services does not oversee funding to Gavi, which prompted the issue to become a flashpoint at a Senate hearing last month focused on the State Department’s budget. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-New Hampshire) asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio about his plans for getting Kennedy to release funds to Gavi, which could help develop an Ebola vaccine to help during a historic outbreak. President Donald Trump had asked for Kennedy to “play a leading role on the Gavi decision because of his strongly held views with regards to vaccine safety,” Rubio replied, but said that the State Department “is going to be reengaging” with Gavi. Rubio added that his department would be “respecting” the views of Kennedy and his allies. “We want to take their input. But we’d like to get this issue resolved in an outcome that’s acceptable, both to Congress and also to our goals on global health.” Still, the funding for fiscal 2025 and 2026 did not flow immediately. → In 2024, the U.S. pledged to provide nearly $1.6 billion to Gavi, or roughly 13 percent of its total target budget, from 2026 to 2030. However, in March The Post reported that the Trump administration planned to slash $1 billion in funding to Gavi as part of cuts made to U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) programs. Last year, the administration dismantled most of USAID and folded its core functions into the State Department. Nearly four years after Anthony S. Fauci left government, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) is calling the former top infectious disease official back to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to pepper him with questions about pandemic-era decision-making — and his preemptive pardon. The hearing underscores that, even as Washington’s focus turns to trying to tackle high health care costs and rooting out fraud in public programs, details about the federal government’s covid response remain a priority for Republicans. Paul, who leads the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, is using the hearing to revisit some of his longest-running accusations against Fauci. Over the weekend, the Kentucky senator released a trove of documents authored by Fauci stretching from the lead-up to the covid-19 outbreak in the United States through 2022. Kennedy recently said on Fox News that his department had compiled the notes for Paul and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin), who have been investigating the origins of the pandemic. Paul has long contended that covid-19 escaped from a laboratory in China, and has accused Fauci of allegedly obscuring the federal government’s role in research tied to the virus. Fauci has repeatedly rejected those allegations. → Sammy Westfall and Dan Diamond in The Washington Post newsroom pored over the more than 1,000 pages of Fauci’s daily record, which detail his frustrations with Trump during the pandemic and his fascination with newfound celebrity and Hollywood connections. The diary entries do not, however, contain evidence to substantiate long-standing Republican allegations that Fauci concealed information about a possible lab leak. Fauci frequently, in public and in private, pushed back on the idea he’d been part of a cover-up surrounding covid’s origins. In May 2021, Fauci wrote in his notes that the situation was getting “out of control,” with press reports “concerning my ‘flip flopping’” on theories of the virus’s origin. “I had always said that the very highly likelihood is that the virus originated naturally from an animal reservoir jumping to a human,” Fauci wrote. “However, over the past couple of days given the amount of speculation about the possibility of a lab leak I have been saying that no one is 100% certain of the origin including me and so I am calling for a thorough investigation.” Read the full story: “Fauci’s diary reveals his thoughts on a ‘rambling’ Trump and his own fame.” A federal judge ordered the Food and Drug Administration to reconsider Biden-era restrictions on the abortion pill mifepristone after finding the agency failed to adequately justify them — while reaffirming the agency’s long-standing conclusion that the drug is safe and effective. In a ruling Friday, U.S. District Judge Robert S. Ballou of Virginia said the FDA’s remaining restrictions on mifepristone, including requirements that pharmacies and clinicians be certified to prescribe the drugs, were “arbitrary and capricious,” and directed the agency to reexamine them. Ballou noted that the FDA has “steadfastly found,” through multiple reviews, that the medication is safe and effective. Meanwhile, the FDA is already conducting a broader safety review of the drug. → Last week’s ruling is only one of several moving through the courts that could reshape how medication abortion is regulated nationwide. The biggest counterweight is a set of lawsuits, brought by Louisiana and other Republican-led states, which seek to reinstate stricter limits on mifepristone, including restrictions on mail-order pharmacies filling the drug that the FDA has relaxed over the past decade. A third lawsuit, led by Texas and Florida, seeks to pull mifepristone from the market all together. What to watch: Oral arguments in the Louisiana case are set for Sept. 9. The federal judge in that case ordered the FDA to give the court a status update on its safety review study by Oct. 7. “Trump Turns Up the Heat on RFK Jr. to Cut Back Childhood Vaccines,” Liz Essley Whyte reports at the Wall Street Journal. “From TV Doctor to Power Broker: Dr. Oz Thrives on Trump’s Team,” Bloomberg’s Rachel Cohrs Zhang reports. “FDA staff reiterate concerns about Replimune skin cancer treatment,” report Elaine Chen and Matthew Herper at STAT. “GSK prepares for patent cliff with $2.5B cost-cutting plan,” Delilah Alvarado reports at BioPharma Dive. | 
