"We have a team in Milwaukee," Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testified to the senator at a hearing Tuesday.

He is talking about the lead exposure crisis in public schools there. The city health department has asked experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to provide support to address it. Kennedy added: “We are providing laboratory support to Milwaukee’s analytics and are working with the health department in Milwaukee.”

But Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin from Wisconsin has a different story. “There are no staff deployed to the ground in Milwaukee to address the lead exposure of children in the school,” she said, and six schools in the city had to be closed because of leaders that displaced 1,800 students.

So, is there a team of federal chief experts in Milwaukee?

"Milwaukee has no team," Milwaukee Health Commissioner Mike Totoraitis told NPR. "We had a (federal) staff coming to Milwaukee to briefly help verify a machine, but that was with us asking a small team to actually come to Milwaukee for the Milwaukee Public Schools survey and ongoing support."

Secretary Kennedy may have been misled, Totolatis said.

The contradictions about the plan, displayed on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, symbolize Kennedy's approach to health agencies. He talked enthusiastically about the health of children and the threat of environmental toxins to Americans’ health, but he worked hard to explain that his institutions also took specific actions to narrow down and reorganize, even in the areas he said, he was his top priority.

Staff were fired, but the program's "continues"

Lead is a neurotoxin that is common in older buildings, especially in paint and pipes. It can cause developmental problems in children.

On April 1, staff from the CDC’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Program were fired, part of the agency’s effective reduction. The program includes epidemiologists, statisticians and consultants who specialize in lead poisoning – sources of exposure to the program’s effective response.

A few days later, an ABC News reporter asked Kennedy about the leadership team being laid off. "Some plans are recovering. I believe that is one of them," he said.

Not so, CDC employees who worked on the team told NPR because none of them had heard of information about recovery. Kennedy's own communications at HHS also told ABC: "People in the current department are not being restored now.

Last week, Kennedy asked about Baldwin’s cuts during a Congressional budget hearing. "Are you going to cancel this branch on the CDC?" she asked.

Kennedy replied: "No, we don't." He also said he believed lead poisoning in children was "an extremely important issue."

Kennedy appeared before another Senate committee on Tuesday, and Senator Jack Reed asked Kennedy to clarify what happened. “To the best of our knowledge, the staff has not been hired yet, and I have not seen any statements that reverse your decision to eliminate the program.”

Rhodes said: "Which is this?"

Kennedy replied: “We will continue to fund the program.” Later, he added: “My understanding is that the program is continuing,” he was willing to talk to Reed after the hearing to “find out what the details are.”

NPR asked HHS if it had revoked any shots from CDC employees working for the team. HHS replied in a statement: "HHS has finalized its detailed restructuring plan and the department will study all strategic plans and priorities for the Secretary and the country. Work on the plan will continue."

HHS did not answer a follow-up question to clarify whether it means retraining employees or working with contractors or other jobs.

HHS spokesman Emily Hilliard wrote: “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) assists in validating new laboratory instruments for environmental lead testing at the request of the Milwaukee Health Department.

Kennedy said before three different congressional panels that he could not elaborate on the restructuring due to ongoing lawsuits. He had previously stated that the CDC has a "mission creep" that will only solve future infectious diseases.

Kennedy intends to open a new agency called the Healthy America government to address chronic illness, mental health and other health issues, but when the timeline will be active and who will staff members have not been disclosed.

"You can't just cut funds, fire everyone, slogans at a new agency, and say the work will continue," Baldwin told Kennedy during the hearing. "You've decided to fire employees and eliminate offices are endangering children, including thousands of children in Milwaukee. If you have a proposal to make these plans work better, introduce and justify it."

Milwaukee says it still needs support

Totoraitis, a health commissioner in Milwaukee, said strangely, the local leader’s response has been at the center of this national story about the reorganization of federal health agencies.

"Unfortunately, I saw this crisis because it was this canary in the coal mine, something that was removed and something that could be truly catastrophic in our country," he said.

At this point, several school-age children have been found to have high lead in their blood, which has been traced back to school. In the past, the health department has dealt with lead poisoning in residences. "This is a huge key for our department and schools must be investigated now," he said. "The area has 140 school buildings, all of which have varying degrees of lead paint danger."

He said they hoped the CDC expertise to help manage the crisis and worked for months on support for formal CDC staff.

“They will send this team to Milwaukee to help us conduct investigations, screenings, data management,” he said. He explained that once all federal staff were fired, the request was formally denied “because they don’t have any subject matter experts across the CDC to support the childhood leadership investigation we are doing.”

Totoraitis said the crisis in his city’s public school leadership has not stopped and now his local team is scrambling to figure out how to manage without the support of the CDC’s experts.

Is there a tip? NPR's Selena Simmons-Duffin can be connected to signals through encrypted communication of Selena.02.

NPR's Yuki Noguchi contributed to this report.