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A federal judge on Friday indefinitely blocked the Trump administration from pulling back more than $11 billion in public health funding from state and local health departments. The ruling from Judge Mary McElroy of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island extends a temporary restraining order she issued in April that stopped the administration from wiping out the pandemic-era funding to a group of 23 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia. (Weixel, 5/16)

The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to allow it to immediately proceed with its plan to lay off tens of thousands of workers across federal agencies. In an emergency appeal, the administration urged the justices to quickly lift a lower-court order that has temporarily blocked the layoffs. (Ali Kanu, 5/16)

Labor unions say layoffs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) are threatening science even as some employees get their jobs back. In a statement released Friday, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) said the layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) “gut frontline science and shut down life-saving public health programs.” (Choi, 5/16)

The grant termination letters sting. Study after study gets spiked because it “no longer effectuates agency priorities.” If the research hints at diversity, equity, or inclusion, the wording gets a little nasty, in the view of neurologist Charles DeCarli, chair in Alzheimer’s research at the University of California, Davis. His $53 million inquiry into how vascular factors contribute to dementia among white, Black, and Hispanic people was terminated in March. But a month later, his grant was back. (Cooney, 5/19)

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency tried to place a downsizing team at the Government Accountability Office, but the congressional watchdog rebuffed the intrusion, according to an internal bulletin viewed by POLITICO’s E&E News. DOGE recently contacted the congressional watchdog with plans to “assign a team” to the office, according to the bulletin sent to all GAO staff on Friday. (Richards, 5/16)

On the heels of a production-tinged executive order earlier this month, the Trump administration is doubling down on efforts to boost medicine manufacturing in the U.S. In a new public-private partnership spearheaded by the administration, the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS') Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are linking up with several universities and companies in a bid to improve manufacturing for essential medicines using technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and informatics. The project is dubbed Equip-A-Pharma. (Kansteiner, 5/16)

Earlier this week, Lisa Blunt Rochester asked a seemingly simple question of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during his testimony to the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee: “Who is the acting CDC director?” (Branswell, 5/16)