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President Donald Trump’s administration is expanding its crackdown on state Medicaid programs to New York, launching a fraud probe in the state a week after it said it was freezing nearly $260 million in Medicaid funding in Minnesota over similar accusations. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz announced Tuesday that the Trump administration identified concerning trends in New York’s Medicaid program and demanded that state officials provide details about their handling of fraud, waste and abuse within 30 days or risk deferred payments. (Swenson and Izaguirre, 3/5)

On a brisk January morning, physician assistant Brett Feldman searched the streets of Los Angeles for patients, knocking on car windows and peering into tents. It was the day after a winter storm had doused the city, and many of the unhoused people Feldman usually treats had moved to find somewhere dry. Feldman leads the street medicine team at the USC Keck School of Medicine, providing primary care to thousands of L.A.’s homeless individuals. Many have chronic conditions, mental health disorders, wounds or other medical issues; they need health care desperately. (Hwang, 3/5)

Social workers are scrambling to alert recipients and help them find jobs before their aid is eliminated under President Trump’s sweeping domestic policy law. (Haag, 3/6)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: �������ýҕ�l Health News’ ‘What The Health?’: 40 Years Of Health Policy

This month marks host Julie Rovner’s 40th anniversary reporting on health policy in Washington. Over that time, she’s covered a vast range of topics, from the response to the AIDS epidemic, to Medicare and Medicaid changes, to the fight over the “Patients’ Bill of Rights” — and a half-dozen major reform fights, including the introduction of the Affordable Care Act and the efforts to repeal it. (Rovner, 3/5)

President Trump told pregnant women in September 2025 to avoid Tylenol because taking it would increase their babies' risk of autism: "Taking Tylenol is not good — I'll say it: It's not good." Doctors and scientists quickly said the data didn't support the president's claim, but emergency room orders for Tylenol, or acetaminophen, for pregnant patients went down 10% in the months that followed, according to a new study in The Lancet. There was no change in the acetaminophen orders for comparable women who weren't pregnant. (Lupkin, 3/5)

A group of 53 medical schools pledged to increase the amount of time spent on medical students' nutrition education starting this fall, HHS announced Thursday. "I'm pleased to announce a transformative breakthrough in medical education," HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said at a press conference at the department's headquarters. "It will reshape the way that we train doctors in our country and deliver on President Trump's promise to end the chronic disease epidemic in America." (Frieden, 3/5)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: Six Federal Scientists Run Out By Trump Talk About The Work Left Undone

Marc Ernstoff, a physician who has pioneered immunotherapy research and treatments for cancer patients, said his work as a federal scientist proved untenable under the Trump administration. Philip Stewart, a Rocky Mountain Laboratories researcher focused on tick-borne diseases, said he retired two years earlier than planned because of hurdles that made it too challenging to do his job well. (Pradhan and Houghton, 3/6)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: The People — And Research — Lost In The NIH Exodus

Sylvia Chou specializes in communication between patients and their health care providers, and social media’s role in public health. She joined the federal government in 2007 as a fellow and became a civil servant in 2010. She left her National Cancer Institute job in January, she said, because the “work is no longer based on facts or truth.” After President Donald Trump returned to office, Chou said, health communication scientists like her were falsely accused of “essentially doing propaganda work.” (Pradhan and Houghton, 3/6)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. eats steak for breakfast, and has been accused by family members of blending up mice and chickens to feed his hawks and cutting off a dead whale’s head to bring it home. But he has nonetheless found common cause with one of America’s most uncompromising animal rights groups. The health secretary’s kinship with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals — which has reported popping champagne at its Virginia headquarters to celebrate — stems from Kennedy’s determination to end animal testing. (Gardner, 3/5)

Americans are losing confidence in the nation’s public health agencies, according to a survey from the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. The survey of 1,650 adults, conducted last month, found that on matters of health, a majority of Americans say they have far more confidence in their own doctors, pediatricians and career scientists at federal agencies than the political appointees charged with overseeing those scientists. (Edwards, 3/5)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: This Doctor-Senator Who Backed RFK Jr. Now Faces A Fight For His Job — And His Legacy

The ambitious liver doctor would go just about anywhere in his home state to give people the hepatitis B vaccine. Bill Cassidy offered jabs to thousands of inmates at Louisiana’s maximum-security prison in the early 2000s. A decade before that, he set up vaccine clinics in middle schools, a model hailed nationally as a success. “He got that whole generation immunized in East Baton Rouge,” said Holley Galland, a retired doctor who worked with Cassidy vaccinating schoolchildren. (Seitz, 3/6)

Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr has responded to public backlash about his announcement that Dunkin' Donuts will be asked to hand over "safety data," in a call to review the health impact of its beverages. Last week, the health secretary said at a rally in Austin: "We’re going to ask Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks, ‘Show us the safety data that show that it’s okay for a teenage girl to drink an iced coffee with 115 grams of sugar in it.'" He added: "I don’t think they’re going to be able to do it." (Laws, 3/6)

President Donald Trump said Thursday he is replacing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem, a move that came amid mounting bipartisan criticism of her stewardship of the administration’s mass deportation agenda and efforts to dismantle the Federal Emergency Management Agency. (LeVine, Arnsdorf, Sacks and Meyer, 3/5)

Here’s a look back at some of the key moments in Noem’s controversial time as the head of DHS. (Dunbar, 3/5)

Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin, President Donald Trump’s new pick to lead the embattled Department of Homeland Security, is a supporter of strict immigration enforcement who, in the last year, has proven invaluable in getting key pieces of the president’s agenda across the finish line. A first-term senator who identifies as Native American, Mullin is a self-described "bull in a China cabinet" who was instrumental in the Senate’s passage of the Trump-backed One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Lora Ries, a border security and immigration expert at the Heritage Foundation, predicted to Fox News Digital that Mullin will have a focused leadership approach as head of DHS. (Pinedo and Miller, 3/5)

The calls to 911 poured in from staff at Camp East Montana in Texas, the nation’s largest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility, at a rate of nearly one a day for five months, each its own tale of pain and despair. A man sobs after being assaulted by another detainee. Another bangs his head against the wall after expressing suicidal thoughts. A pregnant woman complained of severe back pain and also had coronavirus. (Lee, Foley and Biesecker, 3/6)

After a long battle with drug addiction, Sae Joon Park felt settled in a new life. But he was deported last year and is now fighting to get back to Hawaii. (Kim, 3/6)

Federal health officials, facing criticism from lawmakers for recent rejections of rare-disease drugs, attacked an Amsterdam-based biotech company seeking approval of a Huntington’s disease treatment and accused it of lying. The public criticism of Uniqure by officials at the Food and Drug Administration and Department of Health and Human Services was unusual for agencies that normally shy away from commenting on products still under consideration. (Essley Whyte, 3/5)

Katie Jackson desperately wants a new treatment for Huntington’s disease. Her husband died from the devastating brain disorder. And because the disease runs in families, her three children have a 50% chance of inheriting the condition. She’s pinned her hopes on a cutting-edge gene therapy from UniQure NV. But Jackson says Huntington’s patients have no desire to meet a new demand from the US Food and Drug Administration: to enroll in a new clinical trial where some people will undergo fake brain surgery without getting UniQure’s treatment. (Smith and Langreth, 3/4)

Federal prosecutors charged a former executive of ExThera Medical, a California medical-device manufacturer, with concealing from the government the deaths of two cancer patients who were treated with the company’s blood filter. Dr. Sanja Ilic, ExThera’s former chief regulatory officer, agreed to plead guilty and faces up to three years in prison, the Justice Department said Thursday. Prosecutors also entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with ExThera in which the company admitted that it defrauded and misled the Food and Drug Administration by failing to report the deaths. (Carreyrou, 3/5)

Drugmakers are upping their demands for transparency in the 340B Drug Pricing Program by imposing new requirements that have sparked ire among safety-net providers. Novo Nordisk issued a notice to hospitals and other 340B participants on Monday saying providers will be required to submit comprehensive claims-level data in order to receive discounts on medications starting April 1. A similar Eli Lilly policy took effect last month. (Early, 3/5)

The Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership (GARDP) is looking into the potential of an older antibiotic used exclusively in veterinary medicine to treat highly drug-resistant infections in people. GARDP said today that it has acquired all data and licensing rights for apramycin, an aminoglycoside antibiotic introduced in the early 1980s to treat gram-negative bacterial infections in animals. Bought from Swiss drugmaker Juvabis AG after it closed in 2025, the drug has shown potential for human use in preclinical trials. (Dall, 3/5)

A man upset over the death of his wife kept a blanket over his head in his Minnesota nursing home. Staff gave him a powerful antipsychotic drug. Another man, in a Philadelphia facility, yelled during two evening shifts. He also got an antipsychotic. And in Michigan, a man was left sitting in his own waste for hours because he was so overmedicated with one of the drugs, he couldn’t hit a call button to summon staff for help. (Rowland, 3/6)

A Community Health Systems subsidiary signed a definitive agreement to sell four Arkansas hospitals to Freeman Health System for $112 million. The deal announced Thursday would include the 128-bed Northwest Medical Center-Bentonville, the 222-bed Northwest Medical Center-Springdale, the 64-bed Northwest Medical Center–Willow Creek Women’s Hospital and the 73-bed Siloam Springs Regional Hospital, in addition to related outpatient centers and practices. The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter, pending regulatory approval. (Hudson, 3/5)

A health insurance industry-backed coalition is going after hospitals in a bid to capitalize on Washington’s bipartisan focus on affordability and rising healthcare costs. Better Solutions for Healthcare launched its “Hospital Watch” campaign last month. The organization’s website links to news articles and data that are unflattering to the hospital sector. A banner on the home page reads, “Shining a Light on Corporate Hospital Systems’ Role in Driving America’s Healthcare Cost Crisis.” (McAuliff, 3/5)

Patients with one or more chronic conditions account for the majority of healthcare use — and a fragmented approach to delivery is driving up costs, according to a recent report from Vizient. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Chronic has noted chronic conditions such as heart disease, cancer, stroke and diabetes are becoming more common in the United States. (DeSilva, 3/5)

Amazon Web Services rolled out a suite of agentic artificial intelligence tools Thursday that aim to handle a range of healthcare tasks, like helping patients schedule appointments and summarizing medical data for clinicians. The product, called Amazon Connect Health, includes five capabilities: verifying patients’ identities; handling appointment scheduling; creating summaries of patient medical histories; creating clinical notes based on conversations between clinicians and patients; and generating medical codes from clinical documentation.  (Olsen, 3/5)

CVS Health plans to launch a health technology subsidiary later this year that will offer an artificial intelligence-based platform designed to help consumers access healthcare information and services. The platform will allow patients to find providers, compare costs of care and centralize their health records and information, CVS said. It also will make recommendations for the next steps of care for patients with chronic conditions and offer care management through a digital health portal between visits. (DeSilva, 3/5)

Salesforce is building out its library of pre-wired artificial intelligence agents to take on manual, administrative work on behalf of payers, providers and public health organizations. The company is partnering with three health tech companies—HealthEx, Verily and Viz.ai—to handle the heavy lifting for healthcare organizations by automating tasks from clinical intake and electronic health record updates to hospital bed management and monitoring for contagious outbreaks. (Landi, 3/6)

A broken pipe sent a gusher of sewage into the river near Washington. Some people may try to row, sail or fish. But skeptics are steering clear. (Qin, 3/6)

A local law in the District of Columbia banning gun magazines that contain more than 10 bullets was struck down as unconstitutional by a three-judge panel on Thursday. (Schwartz, 3/5)

Cases of carbon monoxide (CO) exposure in Maryland increased by nearly 50% in 2026 compared to last year, according to data from the State Department of Health. In 2025, the state recorded a total of 167 emergency room and urgent care visits due to CO exposure. So far this year, 251 cases have been reported, data shows. ... More than 400 people die from unintentional carbon monoxide poisoning each year in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (Moodee Lockman, 3/5)

A bipartisan group of Minnesota lawmakers are pushing for a law requiring health insurers to cover infertility treatment. One in six struggle with their fertility, according to Resolve, a national infertility research organization, so this bill could help thousands of people. The bill, put forward by Republican state Sen. Julia Coleman and Democratic state Sen. Erin Maye Quade, will go before the Senate Commerce Committee Thursday. (3/5)

West Virginia lawmakers in the Senate passed a bill to weaken drinking water protections by loosening regulations for certain aboveground storage tanks. It is the latest move to weaken the Aboveground Storage Tank Act, passed in 2014 after a chemical leak from Freedom Industries along the Elk River contaminated drinking water for nearly 300,000 West Virginians in the Charleston area. The bill would further decrease the number of tanks that must meet inspection and monitoring requirements designed to protect drinking water. (Spencer, 3/5)

Lady Gaga isn't just leaving an impact in Atlanta through her stop at State Farm Arena for her Mayhem Ball Tour this week. Her Born This Way Foundation recently donated $100,000 to COR, a non-profit focused on empowering young people through education, mental health support, and fighting social inequality. Almost every school day after class, Carver High Students can stop by one of COR's meetups on campus to talk to other students and guidance counselors. Thursday, they talked about how they want to create more unity among students at Carver Steam Academy and Carver Early College (EC). (John, 3/5)

The number of confirmed measles cases in New Mexico increased to six after the state's Department of Health confirmed Wednesday a new case inside a local jail in Las Cruces. A federal inmate being held in the Doña Ana County Detention Center is the latest person to have tested positive for measles. The New Mexico Department of Health said others may have been exposed to the highly contagious disease from this confirmed case if they visited the U.S. District Court building in Las Cruces on Feb. 24. (Acevedo, 3/5)

Anguished nurses at Sharon High School urgently appealed to administrators in the fall of 2024 to avert a potential medical crisis by hiring a full-time athletic trainer, according to an investigative report commissioned by the school system and obtained by the Globe. But their repeated warnings went unheeded for months, the nurses told an investigator, and their worst fears were realized when a 15-year-old Sharon High football player, Rohan Shukla, suffered a life-shattering brain injury during the annual Thanksgiving game. (Hohler, 3/6)

Leeann Mata made history two years ago when she became the first Black woman to open a legal cannabis dispensary in Brooklyn. She started the business with the support of Housing Works, a nonprofit that assists people living with AIDS. It seemed to be a perfect match — years ago, three of Ms. Mata’s brothers were detained on low-level marijuana offenses under state laws that have since been amended, and Housing Works had expanded its mission to helping those negatively affected by the so-called war on drugs. But the partnership quickly soured. (Southall, 3/5)

Bills that would seek to provide greater online protections for kids moved forward on both sides of Capitol Hill on Thursday, though a House measure was pulled back from a committee vote in a bid for bipartisan support. The Senate passed a bipartisan bill by unanimous consent that would amend current law to enhance protections for minors regarding the collection and use of their data by online platforms and extend such protections to children and teens under the age of 17. (Mollenkamp, 3/6)

When a man already has high blood pressure or uncontrolled diabetes, the likely causes of ED are easier to pinpoint. But when the man is younger or otherwise appears healthy, I also look beyond the bedroom and start thinking about blood vessels — and the heart. Those late-night supersize fries and other choices you make today may not cause a heart attack tomorrow, but they can contribute to blood vessel changes that show up earlier as ED. (Brahmbhatt, 3/4)

Some popular baby formula brands contain heavy metals, including arsenic, lead and PFAS, or "forever" chemicals, according to a new report from Consumer Reports. The nonprofit consumer advocacy organization found that more than half of the 49 powdered, liquid, and alternative protein and hypoallergenic formulas it tested contained "potentially concerning levels" of harmful contaminants. (Cerullo, 3/4)

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has confirmed at least 20 H5N1 avian flu outbreaks on commercial poultry facilities this past week, including five detections on facilities in LaGrange County, Indiana. Also hit this week was a commercial broiler production facility in Carolina County, Maryland, with 95,600 birds affected. Commercial table egg layers had the largest outbreaks reported to APHIS. A facility in Hyde County, North Carolina, had 3.2 million birds affected, and a facility in Jefferson County, Wisconsin, had 1.2 million birds involved. (Soucheray, 3/5)

Jamaica’s foreign ministry said Thursday it was ending a decades-long agreement with Cuba involving its medical missions. The unexpected move comes as the U.S. pushes for ending such missions, with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio calling it “forced labor” and a “form of human trafficking.” (3/6)

Megan Selser has been savoring the antics of her toddler son, who laughs as he leaps from a household ottoman each night before bed and points to Minion characters on TV while shouting, “Eyeballs!” She has also been anxiously awaiting the Food and Drug Administration’s decision on a promising gene therapy for children like her son, who has Hunter syndrome. The disease floods children with cell fragments that their brains and bodies can’t break down, robbing them of the ability to walk and talk by age 8. (Jewett, 3/5)

Taken together, SB 9 and Proposition 3 illuminate a two-pronged effort to stiffen pretrial detention: They simultaneously tighten the money-bail pathway for some offenses, while widening the menu of cases where people can be held without bail at all. This is not just a Texas story. Across the country, state legislatures are reaching for similar tools. Earlier this month, lawmakers in Tennessee teed up a 2026 ballot measure that would expand the categories of offenses for which bail can be denied. Just days later, legislators in Indiana advanced an amendment that would allow judges to deny bail based on a broad finding of danger to public safety — language that critics warn could widen quickly in practice. Voters in both states will decide on the measures in November. (Lartey, 2/28)

Jonathan Gavalas embarked on several real-world missions to secure a body for the Gemini chatbot he called his wife, according to a lawsuit his father brought against the chatbot’s maker, Alphabet’s Google. When the delusion-fueled plan crumbled, Gemini convinced him that the only way they could be together was for him to end his earthly life and start a digital one, the suit claims. About two months after his initial discussions with the chatbot, Gavalas was dead by suicide. (Jargon, 3/4)

One of Us, run by Denmark’s health ministry, works with people with mental health conditions to share their stories in schools, hospitals and police stations, helping turn fear into understanding. (Bajaj, 3/3)

Studies show that having a pet is associated with lower blood pressure, a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and lower rates of death after a heart attack or stroke. And a large review of studies published in 2019 found that owning a dog was associated with a 24 percent lower risk of dying from all causes over the course of 10 years. The benefit is so striking when it comes to heart health that the American Heart Association even has a scientific statement devoted to it, declaring that dog ownership “may be reasonable for reduction in cardiovascular disease risk.” (The organization doesn’t advise getting a dog for the sole purpose of heart health, though.) (Smith, 3/3)

No religious command requires the Amish to avoid vaccination, but many are hesitant anyway. An expert explains why. (Corey Anderson, 3/6)

There is no replacement for reliable data from federal government databases. (Leana S. Wen, 3/5)

A burdensome regulatory environment is pushing clinical trials overseas. (Jacob Becraft, 3/6)

If RFK Jr. is serious about making America healthier, preventing behavioral health disorders is one place to start. (Marcella Alsan and Anand Parekh, 3/6)

Even if an ingredient deserves scientific scrutiny, the current HHS has lost credibility as a fair arbiter of such facts. (3/5)