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James O'Neill -- President Donald Trump's pick for the No. 2 spot at HHS under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. -- faced questions on vaccine mandates, HHS cuts, and even the hiring of David Geier to lead a new agency study on vaccines and autism, but emerged from a Senate committee hearing on his nomination relatively unscathed. O'Neill was supposed to field questions from the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee on Thursday morning alongside Janette Nesheiwat, MD, Trump's previous pick for Surgeon General. However, O'Neill faced the committee alone after Nesheiwat's nomination was pulled hours before the hearing. (Henderson, 5/8)

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is planning to tap Rich Danker as the department’s new top spokesman, three people familiar with the decision told POLITICO. The selection comes two months after Kennedy’s first assistant secretary for public affairs, Tom Corry, abruptly quit just days into his tenure over disagreements with Kennedy’s senior team and Kennedy’s handling of the measles outbreak. (Cancryn, 5/8)

President Donald Trump’s new pick for surgeon general — wellness influencer Casey Means — is already the target of MAGA vitriol, underscoring a split inside the president’s base over the future of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement. Trump’s decision to select Means came just hours after news broke about his decision to withdraw Janette Nesheiwat, a former Fox News contributor, for the post. (Gardner, 5/8)

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday issued an unrelenting defense of President Trump’s surgeon general nominee, Casey Means, who has faced an onslaught of criticism since the president tapped her for the influential government post late Wednesday. In a post on the social platform X on Thursday, Kennedy chastised her critics — which have included some high-profile conservative influencers including Laura Loomer, who called the pick “honestly insane” and suggested Trump did not make the decision himself. (Fortinsky, 5/8)

Updates on the federal staffing cuts —

The Department of Health and Human Services has decided to effectively block the payout of overdue bonuses to many of its laid-off employees, multiple health officials say. The bonuses were tied to high performance by the workers last year, before they were cut from the department. "If the savings from the layoffs were pennies from the HHS budget, this is hundredths of a penny," one current federal health agency employee said of the move. (Tin, 5/8)

Jay Tischfield prides himself on his long track record of cellular custodianship. As the founding director of the Human Genetics Institute of New Jersey at Rutgers University, he maintains one of the largest university-based DNA banks in the world — much of it, on behalf of the U.S. government. Starting about three decades ago, the National Institutes of Health began outsourcing the storage and distribution of samples from several nationwide studies to Tischfield and his network of finely tuned freezers. (Molteni and Mast, 5/9) 

Approximately half of the AmeriCorps programs terminated in a controversial decision by the Trump Administration are projects that serve states and communities President Trump won in the 2024 election, according to a review of the list of terminated AmeriCorps grant programs. CBS News has obtained the list of more than 1,000 Americorps grant programs terminated in recent weeks by the Administration. (MacFarlane, 5/8)

�����鶹��ƷHealth News: Sen. Ron Wyden Seeks Answers On RFK Jr.’s Purge Of FOIA Staff
The Department of Health and Human Services’ mass dismissals of workers who release government records “raise grave transparency, accountability, and privacy concerns,” Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden said Thursday. In a May 8 letter to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. provided exclusively to �����鶹��ƷHealth News, Wyden, the top Democrat on the powerful Senate Finance Committee, wrote that “it is hard to square your commitment to radical transparency” with HHS’ firing of workers who handled Freedom of Information Act requests. (Pradhan, 5/8)

Talk to us —

We’d like to speak with personnel from the Department of Health and Human Services or its component agencies about what’s happening within the federal health bureaucracy. Please message us on Signal at (415) 519-8778 or get in touch here.

In other Trump administration updates —

The Pentagon will immediately begin moving as many as 1,000 openly identifying transgender service members out of the military and give others 30 days to self-identify under a new directive issued Thursday. Buoyed by Tuesday’s Supreme Court decision allowing the Trump administration to enforce a ban on transgender individuals in the military, the Defense Department will begin going through medical records to identify others who haven’t come forward. (Baldor, 5/8)

�����鶹��ƷHealth News: Trump Team Faces Key Legal Decision That Could Put Mental Health Parity In Peril
The Trump administration must soon make a decision that will affect millions of Americans’ ability to access and afford mental health and addiction care. The administration is facing a May 12 deadline to declare if it will defend Biden-era regulations that aim to enforce mental health parity — the idea that insurers must cover mental illness and addiction treatment comparably to physical treatments for ailments such as cancer or high blood pressure. (Pattani, 5/9)

A man lay on a New York City sidewalk with a gun shot wound, clutching his side. Emily Borghard, a social worker who hands out supplies to the homeless through her nonprofit, found him and pulled out her phone, preparing to dial 911. But the man begged her not to make the call, she said. “No, no, no,” he said, telling her in Spanish that he would be deported. Ms. Borghard tried to explain that federal law required hospitals to treat him, regardless of his immigration status, but he was terrified. (Baumgaertner Nunn, Agrawal and Silver-Greenberg, 5/8)

Two advocacy groups filed a federal lawsuit Thursday asking the courts to halt new Trump Administration vetting procedures for reuniting children who crossed into the U.S. without their parents, saying the changes are keeping families separated longer and are inhumane. The lawsuit was filed by the National Center for Youth Law and Democracy Forward in federal court in the District of Columbia. It names the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and its Office of Refugee Resettlement and seeks a return to prior reunification procedures. (Gonzalez, 5/8)

Reports of plans to deport migrants from the U.S. to Libya, a country with a documented history of serious human rights violations and abuse of migrants, have spotlighted the difficulties they face in the lawless North African nation. Migrants in Libya are routinely arbitrarily detained and placed in squalid detention centers where they are subjected to extortion, abuse, rape and killings. (Brito and Khaled, 5/8)

On foreign aid —

The United States will cut $50 million worth of medical aid a year to Zambia because of “systematic” theft of the aid in past years and the government’s failure to crack down on that, the U.S. ambassador said Thursday. The U.S. had discovered in 2021 that medicines and medical supplies that were meant to be provided free to Zambians had been taken and were being sold by pharmacies across the southern African country, U.S. Ambassador to Zambia Michael Gonzales said at a press briefing. (Sichalwe, 5/8)

South Africa’s government said its HIV-AIDS treatment program is fully funded for the current financial year despite the withdrawal of support from the US, and all patients should continue to receive their medication. About 7.8 million South Africans, or almost 13% of the population, live with the virus that causes AIDS — the world’s biggest HIV epidemic. About 17% of the funding for the country’s HIV-AIDS program has come from America’s Presidential Emergency Funding for Aids Relief, or Pepfar, but President Donald Trump suspended that program in January, meaning 7.5 billion rand ($414 million) needs to be found to plug the gap. (Vecchiatto, 5/8)

Israel’s ongoing blockade of humanitarian assistance for Gaza forced a leading aid group to shut its community soup kitchens Thursday as it faced empty warehouses and no replenishment of supplies in the war-battered enclave. U.S.-based World Central Kitchen, which was serving 133,000 meals per day, said there is almost no food left in Gaza with which to cook. (Shurafa and Chehayeb, 5/8)

Also —

In his sharpest rebuke of the world’s richest man, a distinction he once held, Bill Gates accused Elon Musk at least twice in the past week of “killing” children in the world’s poorest countries by cutting foreign aid under the Trump administration. He said that Mr. Musk bore responsibility for gutting the U.S. Agency for International Development, a decision that Mr. Gates argued had undermined decades of progress fighting diseases such as measles, H.I.V. and polio. (Vigdor, 5/8)

The Gates Foundation plans to give away $200 billion over the next 20 years before shutting down entirely in 2045, marking a new deadline for one of history’s largest and most influential charities. That target would represent a doubling in spending for the nonprofit, which has disbursed more than $100 billion since it was co-founded by Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates in 2000. Originally, the foundation was set to close 20 years after the Microsoft Corp. co-founder’s death. (Nix, Furlong and Alexander, 5/8)

President Donald Trump instructed congressional Republicans this week to raise taxes on the wealthiest earners as part of his “big, beautiful bill,” rattling his party’s brittle consensus on economic issues and muddling the GOP’s path toward enacting his campaign promises. ... House GOP leaders in recent days have ruled out certain cuts to social safety net programs that the GOP had earlier targeted to meet budget goals. Speaker Mike Johnson said the House would not cut the amount states receive to fund Medicaid, and House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn Thompson (R-Pennsylvania) told The Washington Post that his committee would not rescind federal anti-poverty food assistance money. Hard-liners had been eyeing both of those areas as potential sources of savings. (Bogage and Stein, 5/8)

House Republicans are considering nixing a Medicaid drug pricing plan floated by President Donald Trump and fiercely opposed by the pharmaceutical industry as the party pushes to strike a massive tax and spending deal in the coming days. But drugmakers may not be totally off the hook. (Cohrs Zhang, 5/8)

As Republicans in Congress debate ways to cut Medicaid so they can fund tax breaks, Democrats are pushing them in a different direction: cut excess spending in Medicare Advantage instead. (Herman, 5/8)

�����鶹��ƷHealth News: �����鶹��ƷHealth News’ ‘What The Health?’: Cutting Medicaid Is Hard — Even For The GOP
After narrowly passing a budget resolution this spring foreshadowing major Medicaid cuts, Republicans in Congress are having trouble agreeing on specific ways to save billions of dollars from a pool of funding that pays for the program without cutting benefits on which millions of Americans rely. Moderates resist changes they say would harm their constituents, while fiscal conservatives say they won’t vote for smaller cuts than those called for in the budget resolution. (Rovner, 5/8)

�����鶹��ƷHealth News: A California Lawmaker Leans Into Her Medical Training In Fight For Health Safety Net
State Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson anticipates that California’s sprawling Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal, may need to be dialed back after Gov. Gavin Newsom releases his latest budget, which could reflect a multibillion-dollar deficit. Even so, the physician-turned-lawmaker, who was elected to the state Senate in November, says her priorities as chair of a budget health subcommittee include preserving coverage for the state’s most vulnerable, particularly children and people with chronic health conditions. (Mai-Duc, 5/9)

In Medicare news —

Over the past two years, UnitedHealth Group seemed immune from the higher costs and systemic changes in the Medicare Advantage program that bedeviled its rivals. Until now. (Herman, 5/9)

Medicare drug plans significantly boosted coverage of biosimilar versions of the Humira rheumatoid arthritis medicine this year, but nearly all of them failed to take steps that would encourage greater use of these alternative treatments, a new government watchdog report finds. (Silverman, 5/8)

The nation’s infant mortality rate dropped last year after two years of hovering at a late-pandemic plateau. Some experts think one reason for the drop could be a vaccination campaign against RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, which is a common cause of cold-like symptoms that can be dangerous for infants. The infant mortality national rate dropped to about 5.5 infant deaths per 1,000 live births in 2024, according to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention posted Thursday. That’s down from about 5.6 per 1,000 live births, where it had been the previous two years. (Stobbe, 5/8)

Cancer before age 50 is rare, but increasing, in the United States and researchers want to know why. A new government study provides the most complete picture yet of early-onset cancers, finding that the largest increases are in breast, colorectal, kidney and uterine cancers. Scientists from the National Cancer Institute looked at data that included more than 2 million cancers diagnosed in people 15 to 49 years old between 2010 and 2019. Of 33 cancer types, 14 cancers had increasing rates in at least one younger age group. About 63% of the early-onset cancers were among women. (Johnson, 5/8)

University of Maryland scientists are calling for increased surveillance of avian flu in domestic cats after a global review of 20 years of published data reveals a dramatic uptick in feline infections—and the number of ways cats are being infected—after the emergence of H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b in other mammals. "Infections among mammalian species in frequent contact with humans should be closely monitored," the researchers wrote yesterday in Open Forum Infectious Diseases. "Domestic cats are susceptible to AIV [avian influenza virus] infection and provide a potential pathway for zoonotic spillover to humans." (Van Beusekom, 5/8)

Living in a water service area with a golf course showed higher odds of Parkinson's compared with other water service areas or having a private well, researchers reported in JAMA Network Open. (George, 5/8)

Two papers published this week in the journal Vaccine suggest outer membrane vesical (OMV)-based meningococcal B (MenB) vaccines could reduce gonorrhea incidence. The two systematic reviews and meta-analyses, one conducted by researchers from Semmelweis University in Hungary and the other by a team from the University of West Attica in Greece, looked at studies that compared the incidence of gonorrhea in those who received OMV-based MenB vaccines and either unvaccinated individuals or recipients of other meningococcal vaccines. (Dall, 5/8)

State-run Abu Dhabi Investment Office is expanding its presence in San Francisco, part of a push to build a healthcare cluster in the emirate. The expanded office will tout “fast-track” clinical validations and regulatory approvals as Abu Dhabi looks to attract startups to underpin the Health, Endurance, Longevity and Medicine initiative launched last month, according to a statement Thursday. (Short, 5/8)

Value-based care provider NeueHealth will convert to a privately held company within months, CEO Mike Mikan said Thursday. The company formerly known as Bright Health Group and its majority owner, venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates, announced the plan in December. Shareholders approved the $1.3 billion transaction Wednesday, Mikan said during a call with investor analysts. (Tepper, 5/8)

New York-Presbyterian Health System said it has laid off an estimated 2% of its staff in order to stay afloat in a difficult financial environment. A spokesperson said in a statement Thursday that the system anticipates more challenges ahead. The cuts affect both administrative and clinical employees across all levels, a person familiar with the plans said Thursday. (DeSilva, 5/8)

�����鶹��ƷHealth News: Honey, Sweetie, Dearie: The Perils Of Elderspeak
A prime example of elderspeak: Cindy Smith was visiting her father in his assisted living apartment in Roseville, California. An aide who was trying to induce him to do something —  Smith no longer remembers exactly what — said, “Let me help you, sweetheart.” “He just gave her The Look — under his bushy eyebrows — and said, ‘What, are we getting married?’” recalled Smith, who had a good laugh, she said. Her father was then 92, a retired county planner and a World War II veteran; macular degeneration had reduced the quality of his vision, and he used a walker to get around, but he remained cognitively sharp. (Span, 5/9)

Also —

Researchers at Mass General Brigham have developed an artificial intelligence algorithm that uses a photo of a person’s face to predict their biological age and cancer outcomes. The tool, called FaceAge, could be effective in helping inform clinical treatment decisions in cancer care, according to a study published Thursday in medical journal The Lancet Digital Health. Researchers trained FaceAge on nearly 59,000 photos of presumed health individuals from public data sets. (Turner, 5/8)

The Food and Drug Administration said it will rapidly roll out a generative artificial intelligence model to assist scientific reviews across the agency, setting up a high-stakes test of the technology’s use in vetting products used in the care of millions of Americans. (Palmer and Ross, 5/8)

People began getting in line at 5 a.m. for a free mega health clinic held at St. Louis’ downtown convention center this week. Lines stretched for blocks by the time it opened at 7 a.m., and hundreds were turned away. (Munz, 5/8)

An asbestos screening clinic in a small Montana town where thousands have been sickened by toxic dust from a nearby mine has been abruptly shuttered by authorities following a court order to seize the clinic’s assets to pay off a judgment to the railroad BNSF. The Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office closed on Wednesday the Center for Asbestos Related Disease in Libby, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the U.S.-Canada border. The town of about 3,000 people is near a mine that produced asbestos dust for decades, and the clinic has been at the forefront of efforts to help victims. (Brown, 5/9)

A federal judge has awarded a total of more than $680,000 to 17 families who say they were sickened by a 2021 jet fuel leak into a Navy drinking water system in Hawaii. The bellwether cases set the legal tone for another 7,500 military family members, civilians and service members whose lawsuits are still awaiting resolution. ... In her order, Kobayashi wrote that it was clear that even though the contaminated water could have caused many of the kinds of medical problems the military families experienced, there wasn’t enough evidence to prove a direct link. (Boone, 5/8)

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie has turned to some of the country’s wealthiest philanthropists to advance his agenda on homelessness while the city faces a daunting budget deficit. The $37.5 million fundraising haul includes $10 million from Charles and Helen Schwab’s foundation and another $10 million from Crankstart, the personal foundation of billionaire venture capitalist Michael Moritz. (Kamisher, 5/8)

The State of Colorado is continuing to license businesses that will provide psilocybin therapy, but so far, only a handful of licenses have been given out. The state has approved one standard healing center, one manufacturer and one testing facility. Two cultivation licenses have been handed out, with nine more pending. One of those pending applications belongs to startup Entheogyn. (Young, 5/8)

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) in its weekly update reported 2 more measles cases today, lifting the state's total to 48, with the number of affected counties remaining at eight, all in the southwestern corner of the state. Kansas is among a handful of states that have reported cases linked to a large outbreak centered in West Texas. Of the 48 cases, 43 were unvaccinated or have an unknown vaccination status. The number of hospitalizations remains at one, and no deaths have been reported in the state. (Schnirring, 5/8)

The confirmation of two recent tuberculosis cases in South Florida is prompting health officials to keep an eye out for a developing trend. The first case of active TB was reported in a high school student in Fort Lauderdale on April 29. Health officials immediately began reaching out to those who were directly impacted. A few days later, tuberculosis was found in an inmate at a federal detention center in Miami. Officials confirmed that further exposure is being limited. (Petracek, 5/9)

While Pope Francis made substantial strides in pushing the church toward including LGBTQ+ people, Pope Leo XIV is seen as less progressive on queer issues. The New York Times noted in a recent story that as a bishop in Peru, he opposed a plan to include gender teaching in school, noting that, “The promotion of gender ideology is confusing, because it seeks to create genders that don’t exist.” ... The new pope has not made clear his views on reproductive health concerns such as access to abortion, contraception, in vitro fertilization (IVF) or surrogacy. (Padilla, 5/8)

In a rickety white Nissan, nurse Sandra Aguirre and her vaccination team drive past apple orchards and cornfields stretching to the desert horizon. Aguirre goes door to door with a cooler of measles vaccines. In one of Latin America’s biggest Mennonite communities, she knows many will decline to be vaccinated or even open their doors. But some will ask questions, and a handful might even agree to get shots on the spot. (Janetshy, 5/9)

Even critics of the global health organization say that the United States' withdrawal won’t solve pressing problems. (Skibba, 5/7)

Across Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, Meta Platforms is racing to popularize a new class of AI-powered digital companions that Mark Zuckerberg believes will be the future of social media. Inside Meta, however, staffers across multiple departments have raised concerns that the company’s rush to popularize these bots may have crossed ethical lines, including by quietly endowing AI personas with the capacity for fantasy sex, according to people who worked on them. The staffers also warned that the company wasn’t protecting underage users from such sexually explicit discussions. (Horwitz, 4/26)

What happens when people put their phones down and eat together? (Shetterly, 5/7)

Less than two years ago, I completed a three-year emergency medicine residency and, after passing written and oral board exams, became a board-certified emergency physician. Now, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education is claiming that three years of personal and financial sacrifice are not enough. (Blake R. Denley, 5/9)

Trump exempted pharmaceuticals from his first round of tariffs in early April, but recently declared that he intends to impose "a major tariff" on imported medicines "very shortly." These tariffs, he claims, will prompt pharmaceutical companies to leave countries including China and India and begin "opening up their plants all over the place." (Eric Feigl-Ding, 5/9)

The public health community read with great interest media reports about proposed changes to vaccine safety monitoring and newly proposed standards for approving new vaccines. The goals outlined in a Washington Post story on the subject are laudable: improving vaccine safety and strengthening the vaccine safety system. (5/5)

Within hours of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s keynote address in Washington commemorating Special Operations Forces Week, the Supreme Court did something that Hegseth and anyone who watches the court closely should have expected: allowed the military’s trans ban to go into effect on a temporary basis while the constitutional challenges make their way through the lower courts. (Kimberly Atkins Stohr, 5/8)

The Weinbergs traveled from their home in Hindman to Louisville for training that taught parents how to tutor dyslexic kids with the appropriate materials. She found 15 parents in Knott County whose kids were having similar problems. Mike Mullins at the Hindman Settlement School let them have a building free of charge, and in 1980, the after-school tutoring began. (Linda Blackford, 5/8)

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s suggestion to "do your own research" before accepting safe, evidence-based medical interventions, while failing to provide Americans with specific guidance about trusted sources, sparks confusion and anxiety. As the mother of young children, the daughter of a cancer survivor, and a neonatal critical care physician, I expect his remarks will leave families bewildered and doctors frustrated. (Brooke Redmond, 5/8)