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The Trump administration said Friday it backs a 10-year deadline for most cities and towns to replace their harmful lead pipes, giving notice that it will support a tough rule approved under the Biden administration to reduce lead in drinking water. The Environmental Protection Agency told a federal appeals court in Washington that it would defend the strongest overhaul of lead-in-water standards in three decades against a court challenge by a utility industry association. (Phillis, 2/21)

U.S. President Donald Trump said he would deploy a hospital ship to Greenland, alleging that many people there are sick and not receiving care, even though both of the U.S. Navy’s hospital ships are currently docked at a shipyard in Alabama. Trump’s announcement prompted a defense on Sunday of Denmark and Greenland’s health care system from their leaders, and it was the latest point of friction with the American leader who has frequently talked about seizing the massive Arctic territory. “It’s a no thank you from here,” said Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen. (Keaten and Toropin, 2/22)

Public health experts and former federal staffers are uneasy over National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Jay Bhattacharya’s rising influence over U.S. health policy as he temporarily takes on the added role of leading the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The Trump administration announced the leadership shake-up this week, with former interim CDC Director Jim O’Neill being moved out of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). “Candidly, this is someone who very clearly has an ax to grind with science and the scientific community in general,” Kayla Hancock, director of Protect our Care’s Public Health Watch project, said of Bhattacharya. (Choi, 2/22)

In health news from Capitol Hill —

At least one Republican lawmaker is formally pushing back on President Trump’s effort to boost a controversial herbicide, glyphosate, that’s reviled by supporters of the “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement. Trump this week stoked MAHA fury by issuing an executive order that seeks to “ensure an adequate supply” of glyphosate as a national security issue and grant “immunity” to makers of the pesticide under the Defense Production Act. In response, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) drafted legislation to prevent the order’s implementation. (Frazin, 2/20)

Congress has backed off plans to institute “site-neutral” Medicare payments for outpatient care for now, but a new law still represents a step toward curtailing billions of dollars in hospital reimbursements. The spending and healthcare package President Donald Trump enacted this month requires health systems to obtain unique National Provider Identifiers, or NPIs, for their outpatient departments by 2028. Although the policy does not modify Medicare payments, it will arm lawmakers and regulators with detailed information about outpatient care provided at hospital-owned facilities — and its cost — to support broader site-neutral policies. (McAuliff, 2/20)

Lawmakers will likely have a lot to say about health care this year. Paradoxically, they probably won’t accomplish much on the subject. (Wilkerson, 2/23)

On the immigration crisis —

Three months into President Donald Trump’s mass deportation undertaking, an ICE officer shot and killed a U.S. citizen in South Padre Island, long before immigration agents killed another American in Minnesota that prompted outrage across the nation, according to records released this week that were not previously disclosed by the government. (Serrano and Runnels, 2/20)

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials this week reported that the death of a 55-year-old Cuban man at a detention facility in El Paso was the result of the staff’s “spontaneous use of force” to “prevent him from harming himself.” Officials quietly updated the cause of death after previously declaring last month that the man died of “medical distress.” (Kriel and Deguzman, 2/20)

The Merrimack warehouse that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to turn into an immigrant detention facility sits within a contamination zone where residents have long faced issues with chemical pollution in their drinking water. (Hoplamazian and Dario, 2/20)

The head of a health care company that’s advertising jobs for nurses and other medical staff to work inside a proposed US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Merrimack, N.H., said his business hasn’t decided whether to provide staffing for this or any other ICE facility. Ethan Bond, president of Aspen Medical USA, said his company posted “speculative” job listings online to test the labor market in New Hampshire and other markets where the US Department of Homeland Security is expected to have health care staffing needs. (Porter, 2/22)

In other news about the presidency —

Longtime friends and allies of Joe Biden say they are worried about the toll an aggressive form of prostate cancer is taking on the former president and his health. But Biden and his aides say he is doing well, making progress on ongoing projects and maintaining public appearances. (Abutaleb, 2/23)