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The Trump administration has opened investigations into admissions policies at three major medical schools, expanding the federal government’s pressure campaign beyond campus culture and taking aim at the heart of scientific authority in the United States. The Justice Department on Wednesday informed Stanford University, the Ohio State University and the University of California, San Diego, about the investigations and demanded that the schools turn over extensive lists of data by April 24 or risk interruptions to essential federal funding, according to two administration officials familiar with the inquiries and documents reviewed by The New York Times. (Bender and Blinder, 3/26)

The leading medical school accreditation body in the U.S. has removed language from its standards that had required schools it validates to teach about health inequities. (Oza, 3/27)

The Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against the prominent hospital system NewYork-Presbyterian, alleging that it used restrictions in its contracts with insurers to limit price competition and block lower-cost healthcare options. The suit, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, was filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. (Wile Mathews and Michaels, 3/26)

The Trump administration is accusing California of exposing women in prison to violent assaults by allowing trans women to transfer to women’s prison facilities. The federal government will investigate “California’s and Maine’s practice of housing men in women’s prisons,” President Donald Trump’s Justice Department announced Thursday, referring — as it generally does — to transgender women as “men.” (Egelko, 3/26)

In February, the U.S. DOGE Service released a gigantic dataset showing Medicaid provider spending from every month from 2018 to 2024. Social media buzzed with eye-popping numbers and claims of widespread fraud as the government insurer’s home care spending more than doubled from $937 million per month to $2.15 billion per month over that period. (Broderick, 3/27) 

Andres Vidal-Gadea’s neuroscience research was going well. A molecular neuroethologist at Illinois State University, he studies the function of genes, sussing out ways to stop the progression of Duchenne muscular dystrophy. To do so, Vidal-Gadea would knock out genes in nematodes, then have those worms attempt to burrow in dirt or go for a swim to see happened to their muscles. (Molteni, Oza and Wosen, 3/27)

San Diego County Sheriff’s officials failed to investigate at least seven reported sexual assaults at the privately run Otay Mesa immigration detention center in 2025, and records show the agency has ceded control of the cases to civilian administrators employed by the nation’s largest for-profit prison contractor. Under a 2020 memorandum of understanding between the sheriff’s department and CoreCivic, detention center Warden Christopher LaRose has authority to decide whether to investigate rape allegations at the facility, which currently houses just under 1,500 federal immigration detainees, most of whom are in custody awaiting hearings and have not been convicted of a crime. (Fry and Duara, 3/26)

Members, ranging from health care execs to a motivational speaker, are tasked with recommending ways to cut costs, slash red tape, improve quality of care. (Cirruzzo, 3/26)

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s crusade to scale back Americans’ reliance on vaccines has collided with political and legal realities that have endangered the Senate confirmation of one top health official, delayed the nomination of another and diminished his clout in Washington. A string of developments over the past several weeks have put Mr. Kennedy’s vaccine agenda at risk. The confirmation of Dr. Casey Means, President Trump’s nominee for surgeon general, is stalled on Capitol Hill, where three Republicans on the Senate Health Committee, including its chairman, have expressed concern about her views on vaccines. (Gay Stolberg, 3/26)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: 'What The Health? From �������ýҕ�l Health News': A Headless CDC

The Trump administration faces the challenge of naming a new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who can both satisfy the Make America Healthy Again movement and get confirmed by the Senate. Meanwhile, a new Senate bill to rescind the approval of the abortion pill mifepristone is again elevating the abortion debate, which some Republicans would prefer to stay on the back burner until after the midterms. Shefali Luthra of The 19th, Lizzy Lawrence of Stat, and Rachel Cohrs Zhang of Bloomberg News join �������ýҕ�l Health News’ Julie Rovner to discuss the news. Also this week, Rovner interviews Georgetown University Law Center’s Katie Keith about the state of the Affordable Care Act on its 16th anniversary. (3/26)