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According to Leon County Sheriff Walt McNeil, the 20-year-old suspect is the son of one of his deputies, saying his mother has been with the force for 18 years and that he was involved in the sheriff's office programs. The shooter also used his mother's former service weapon — now a personal handgun — which was found at the scene. "Not a surprise to us that he had access to weapons," McNeil said. According to Revell, the shooter also had a shotgun with him during the shooting but could not confirm whether it was used. (Geisel, 4/17)

Twenty-year-old Phoenix Ikner was previously at the center of a protracted battle between his parents that featured a custody dispute stretching from the Florida panhandle to Norway, according to court documents. At the time of the custody dispute, the suspect was a child and was known as Christian Gunnar Eriksen. Christian was taken by his biological mother to Norway in March 2015 in violation of a child custody order, according to a 2015 probable cause affidavit from the Leon County Sheriff's Office. ... "Mr. Ikner advised that Christian has developmental delays and has special needs which he feared would not be taken care of without access to his doctors here in the United States." The sheriff's affidavit said the child was on medication for "several health and mental issues, to include a growth hormone disorder and ADHD." (Sarnoff, Shapiro, Katersky, Thomas, Margolin and Kofsky, 4/18)

It was not the first time some of them had barricaded themselves in a room at school. The sight of law enforcement officers in tactical gear, sweeping campus for a gunman, was familiar. So was the fear for several students who sheltered in place during Thursday’s deadly shooting at Florida State University and shared a traumatizing coincidence: They had endured the Parkland, Fla., school massacre in 2018. (Vigdor and Hassan, 4/17)

Tallahassee Police Department (TPD) officers were scheduled for a training session on Thursday afternoon as the first alerts involving a Florida State University (FSU) active shooter spread across social media. In a post to Facebook at 10:10 a.m. ET Thursday, TPD alerted the community of the training planned for the Tactical Apprehension and Control Team. "During this training session, you may hear loud bangs, crashes, sirens, and see officers with firearms displayed," the post said in part. ... X account @Aesthetica, with nearly 500,000 followers, noted the training and added in part, "At first students didn't realize it was a real shooting." (Commander, 4/17)

This marks the sixth mass shooting in Florida so far in 2025 out of 81 in the United States, according to data from the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive, which defines "mass shooting" as incidents resulting in four or more people getting shot, not counting the shooter. (Bridges, 4/17)

President Trump said on Thursday that the shooting at Florida State University in Tallahassee that killed two people and injured six was a “shame,” but suggested that it would not prompt him to support any new gun control legislation. “These things are terrible, but the gun doesn’t do the shooting — the people do,” Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “It’s, you know, a phrase that’s used probably too often. I will tell you that it’s a shame.” (Wolfe, 4/18)

Luigi Mangione was indicted on federal murder charges in the shooting of a UnitedHealth Group Inc. executive, paving the way for US prosecutors to pursue the death penalty against him. Mangione’s federal case has now been assigned to a US judge, who will rule on disputes in the case and oversee a trial. Mangione has separately been charged by New York state prosecutors with Brian Thompson’s murder and awaits trial. (Hurtado, Van Voris, and Voreacos, 4/17)

Inside UnitedHealth Group Inc., the company is a force for good. Employees often describe its work as a “mission.” The public perception, though, is that it’s a faceless giant denying care to boost profits. That narrative exploded through a barrage of sinister social media posts after executive Brian Thompson was killed on his way to an investor meeting in December. (Tozzi, 4/16)

The U.S. DOGE Service is putting new curbs on billions of dollars in federal health-care grants, requiring government officials to manually review and approve previously routine payments — and paralyzing grant awards to tens of thousands of organizations, according to 12 people familiar with the new arrangements. The effort, which DOGE has dubbed “Defend the Spend,” has left thousands of payments backed up, including funding for doctors’ and nurses’ salaries at federal health centers for the poor. Some grantees are waiting on payments they expected last week. (Diamond, Johnson and Natanson, 4/17)

Health systems would be subject to greater oversight under a White House proposal to expand hospital cost report audits. The White House Office of Management and Budget is seeking information from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services as it weighs whether to increase funding for hospital cost report auditing, according to a leaked draft of its fiscal 2026 budget plan, dated April 10. (Early, 4/17)

The Food and Drug Administration is drawing up plans that would end most of its routine food safety inspections work, multiple federal health officials tell CBS News, and effectively outsource this oversight to state and local authorities. The plans have not been finalized and might need congressional action to fully fund, said the officials, who were not authorized to speak publicly. Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, denied that the FDA was making plans to do this. (Tin, 4/17)

The Food and Drug Administration will remove industry representatives from advisory committees and replace them with patients and caregivers, Commissioner Marty Makary announced Thursday. (Wilkerson, 4/17)

Americans suffering from brain tumors, liver cancer and heart attacks may find their medical care disrupted if President Donald Trump’s trade war cuts off access to rare earth minerals with health-care applications. China processes almost all the world’s rare earths, a group of 17 metals used in a wide array of products in the defense, health-care and technology sectors. But as part of its retaliation against escalating U.S. tariffs, Beijing this month restricted the export of several rare earth minerals, raising the risk that U.S. industries will face shortages. (Northrop and Li, 4/18)

Buried in a leaked draft budget from the Trump administration is an ask that may alarm (or elate?) health tech watchers. The administration is proposing to create a new office of the chief technology officer within the federal health department that would house the Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy, the department’s health IT regulator, and an “Office of Chief Information.” Under the proposal, ASTP would be funded with $9 million,  compared to the $66 million appropriated in the 2023 budget. (Aguilar, 4/17)

A federal judge on Thursday imposed new restrictions on billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, limiting its access to Social Security systems that hold personal data on millions of Americans. U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander issued a preliminary injunction in the case, which was brought by a group of labor unions and retirees who allege DOGE’s recent actions violate privacy laws and present massive information security risks. Hollander had previously issued a temporary restraining order. (Skene, 4/18)

The Supreme Court announced on Thursday that it would hear arguments in a few weeks over President Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship. The brief order by the justices was unsigned and gave no reasoning, as is typical in such emergency cases. But the unusual move is a sign that the justices consider the matter significant enough that they would immediately hold oral argument on the government’s request to lift a nationwide pause on the policy. (VanSickle, 4/17)

Hospitals, health insurers, and insurance agents are asking President Trump to pump the brakes on a regulation that would lead to potentially millions of people losing their health insurance. (Herman, 4/18)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is in full damage-control mode after causing outrage with his comments about autism during his first official press briefing as health secretary. Kennedy’s remarks have caused national outrage, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) calling for Kennedy’s resignation. Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic, attempted to dial back the controversy in a sit-down Thursday night with Fox News’ Sean Hannity. Kennedy attempted to clarify that he wasn’t referring to all people with diagnosed with autism, but only to those who are “nonverbal”, meaning that they do not communicate using spoken language. “Let me say this,” he told Hannity. “There are many kids with autism who are doing well. They’re holding down jobs, they’re getting pay checks, they’re living independently. But I was referring specifically to that 25 percent—the group that is nonverbal.” (Van Brugen, 4/18)

Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) criticized Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for comments he made Wednesday about autism. ... “This is disrespectful and a flat out lie that further stigmatizes autism. It’s not a virus or a disease – it’s a neurological condition with a wide spectrum. Many Americans with autism work, pay taxes, and are living happy and healthy lives,” Frost said in his post. (Suter, 4/17)

Autistic people and their loved ones have swiftly and publicly rejected statements by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top health official, that people with autism will never play baseball, date, pay taxes or have a job. They say the health and human services secretary’s comments Wednesday, during his first official news conference, misstate the capabilities of many people with autism — and they flooded social media with counterexamples. (Somasundaram, 4/17)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: �鶹Ů�� Health News’ ‘What The Health?’: On Autism, It’s The Secretary’s Word Vs. CDC’s

Tensions between Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his employees at the Department of Health and Human Services are mounting, as he made a series of claims about autism this week — contradicting his agency’s findings. Plus, President Donald Trump unveiled an executive order to lower drug prices as his administration explores tariffs that could raise them. (Rovner, 4/17)

At the fitness club where Michele Jardine used to work as a cleaner, her boss called her “retarded” in front of her co-workers. Jardine has an intellectual disability, which can make it harder to learn and understand instructions, and borderline personality disorder, which can lead to outbursts. She says repeated bullying at work led her to move to the Brookwood Community in Brookshire, Texas, a nonprofit whose goal is to “change the way the world thinks about adults with disabilities.” ... Brookwood is exempt from paying her the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour because of her disability. (Eidelson, 4/17)

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has scrapped a plan to offer help curbing measles in Texas schools after some staff working on the agency's response to this year's record outbreak of the virus were warned they could face layoffs, an agency employee said. CDC officials had initially weighed expanding a service they had been offering to hospitals in Texas — onsite assessments to root out how errors in ventilation and air filtration could be enabling spread of the virus – to other kinds of facilities like schools as well. (Tin, 4/17)

The Montana Department of Public Health & Human Services (DPHHS) said in a news release on Thursday, April 17, 2025, that measles cases have been confirmed in Montana for the first time since 1990. The Gallatin City-County Health Department said the five confirmed cases of measles are people who live in Gallatin County; all are currently isolated at home. All five individuals are unvaccinated, or their vaccine status is not yet known, according to GCCHD. (4/17)

The Hawaii Department of Health today confirmed a second case of measles in an adult household member of the first case, which was in a child under the age of 5. This second case was considered a presumptive case after the adult began exhibiting symptoms. The child confirmed to have measles on April 7 has since fully recovered. Both recently returned from international travel. (Wu, 4/17)

As the United States struggles to contain a resurgence of measles that has swept through swaths of the Southwest, neighboring countries are responding to their own outbreaks. Canada has reported more than 730 cases this year, making this one of the worst measles outbreaks in the country since it declared the virus “eliminated” in 1998. Mexico has seen at least 360 measles cases and one death, most of them in the northern state of Chihuahua, according to Mexican health authorities. (Rosenbluth, 4/17)

A new study in BMJ Global Health across 13 middle- and high-income countries reveals that 25% of patients reported symptoms of long COVID after symptomatic COVID-19, and long COVID is significantly more prevalent in participants from less wealthy nations and in patients of Arab or North African ethnicity. A second study published in BMC Public Health showed that, among 3,693 COVID-19 patients in China, 30.2% reported at least one persistent long-COVID symptom, and 10.7% noted symptoms affecting daily life. (Soucheray, 4/17)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Covid Worsened Shortages Of Doctors And Nurses. Five Years On, Rural Hospitals Still Struggle

Even by rural hospital standards, Keokuk County Hospital and Clinics in southeastern Iowa is small. The 14-bed hospital, in Sigourney, doesn’t do surgeries or deliver babies. The small 24-hour emergency room is overseen by two full-time doctors. CEO Matt Ives wants to hire a third doctor, but he said finding physicians for a rural area has been challenging since the covid-19 pandemic. He said several physicians at his hospital have retired since the start of the pandemic, and others have decided to stop practicing certain types of care, particularly emergency care. (Krebs, 4/18)

In updates on H5N1 avian flu today, the World Health Organization (WHO) shared new details about Mexico's recent fatal case, the country's first H5N1 infection, along with an updated risk assessment from the WHO and two global animal health groups. In an outbreak notice, the WHO said the child from Durango state didn't have any underlying health conditions and became ill on March 7 with fever, malaise, and vomiting. (Schnirring, 4/17)

An E. coli outbreak linked to romaine lettuce ripped across 15 states in November, sickening dozens of people, including a 9-year-old boy in Indiana who nearly died of kidney failure and a 57-year-old Missouri woman who fell ill after attending a funeral lunch. One person died. But chances are you haven’t heard about it. The Food and Drug Administration indicated in February that it had closed the investigation without publicly detailing what had happened — or which companies were responsible for growing and processing the contaminated lettuce. (Khimm, 4/17)

More than 9,000 Catholic employers do not need to abide by federal regulations requiring accommodations for workers who seek abortions and fertility treatments, according to a ruling issued this week by a federal judge in North Dakota. The Catholic Benefits Association and the Bismarck Diocese filed a lawsuit last year challenging the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s regulations on implementing the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which requires employers to make reasonable accommodations for pregnancy and childbirth-related needs. The EEOC interpreted the statute to include abortion and fertility treatments as among those needs, which the Catholic groups argued violated their religious rights. (Dura, 4/17)

Google’s AI summaries have responded to some internet searches about abortion by echoing talking points from organizations that attempt to dissuade women from ending their pregnancies, according to a Campaign for Accountability report. In a series of searches conducted in three states that require women to have an ultrasound before undergoing an abortion — Arizona, Florida and Wisconsin — the nonprofit group found that Google’s AI Overviews framed the scans as a way for women to make informed choices about their health and cited pages from crisis pregnancy centers as sources for the summaries. (Love and Alba, 4/17)

The team behind CDC's U.S. Medical Eligibility Criteria for Contraceptive Use (MEC) was another casualty in the mass layoffs at HHS -- and clinicians worry what losing this critical guideline will mean for patient care. The MEC details the safety of contraceptive types for people with different medical conditions, and was run by a slim eight-person team. The latest MEC guidelines and companion practice recommendations were released in August 2024. (Robertson, 4/17)

Fourteen Planned Parenthood sites in Connecticut are affected by a temporary freeze on $1.8 million in federal funding. Planned Parenthood of Southern New England, which also has one location in Rhode Island, found out about the pause on March 31. (Ingram, 4/17)

A Baltimore County woman is suing a Pikesville supermarket and out-of-state ice cream manufacturers that she says sold products contaminated with listeria and led to the death of her newborn baby, according to a complaint filed in Baltimore County Circuit Court this month. (Karpovich, 4/17)

Many fathers and fathers-to-be say that even taking the parental leave they’re entitled to is seen by their boss as showing a lack of professional commitment. (Cox, 4/18)

The House Committee on Education and the Workforce is calling for an investigation into “improper financial practices” by the union 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, citing recent reporting by POLITICO. In a letter Thursday to a top federal labor official, committee Chair Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) expressed concern about “numerous troubling allegations” detailed in POLITICO’s investigation, which found union President George Gresham has for years used the organization’s funds to benefit himself, his family and political allies. (Kaufman, 4/17)

More than two dozen rural hospitals in Ohio and West Virginia formed a clinically integrated network, which providers are increasingly turning to instead of health system-led acquisitions. The Ohio High Value Network, announced Thursday, is a 26-hospital collaboration designed to provide the purchasing power, patient volume and clinical expertise needed to reduce costs, reinforce alternative payment models and boost care quality. Similar coalitions formed in Minnesota and North Dakota over the past two years. (Kacik, 4/17)

Medtech company Semler Scientific has announced an offer to pay nearly $30 million to the Justice Department to resolve allegations related to how Medicare and other federal healthcare programs were billed for peripheral artery disease tests conducted using its QuantaFlo device. The Justice Department has not responded to the offer. If it’s rejected, the agency could proceed with a civil lawsuit under the False Claims Act, which could result in the company having to pay more. (Dubinsky, 4/17)

Morgan Stanley has hired senior dealmaker David Kostel as the vice chairman of its health-care investment banking group, people familiar with the matter said. Kostel, who had previously been global co-head of coverage and global head of health care at UBS Group AG, will join the Wall Street firm next month and will be based in New York, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing confidential information. (Davis, 4/17)

UnitedHealth Group on Thursday slashed its profit outlook for this year after the health care conglomerate said its Medicare Advantage members continued to seek more medical care than it anticipated, sending its stock tumbling. (Herman and Bannow, 4/17)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Watch: Why Insurance Companies Are Denying Coverage For Prosthetic Limbs

Although knee replacements are usually covered by health insurance, amputees face roadblocks to coverage and often must prove their prosthetics are medically necessary. (Andrews, 4/18)

A new study has linked the oils, including safflower, canola, corn, soybean, and sunflower oils, to an aggressive form of breast cancer. In the Weill Cornell Medicine study published last month in Science, researchers found that linoleic acid—the omega-6 fatty acid found in the oils—promoted growth of triple-negative breast cancer tumors in mice (though it’s important to note that the same results and treatments do not always translate to human clinical trials). (Mikhail, 4/17)

Hearing loss may play a bigger role in dementia than previously thought, data from a U.S. cohort study suggested. ... The findings mean that "up to 32% of population-level dementia risk could potentially be delayed or prevented if we completely treated hearing loss, assuming there is a causal association between hearing loss and dementia," Smith told MedPage Today. (George, 4/17)

Virtually all individuals identified as having obesity based on body mass index (BMI) also had confirmed excess adiposity, according to an analysis of National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data. Among the 2,225 adults in the study, all under 60 years of age, 39.7% had obesity as defined only by higher BMI, while 39.1% had confirmed excess adiposity when using diagnostic criteria recently laid out by an expert commission that recommended pairing BMI with at least one other anthropometric index, or direct body fat measurement. (Monaco, 4/17)

Eighteen years ago, Steve and Linda Znachko dropped their 14-year-old daughter Anna off at a private, inpatient eating disorder facility for the first time. The sign at the facility’s entrance read, “Expect a miracle.” As devout Christians with resources, they expected nothing less. This it turned out was just the beginning of what would be a long and grueling battle with anorexia. Anna spent nearly two decades cycling between therapists, treatment centers and psychiatric medications at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars. It was a battle she ultimately lost: Anna Znachko died of anorexia in August 2024. (Andersen, 4/17)

From wildfires to tornados, heat waves to hurricanes, there seems barely time to process the last climate disaster before the next one is upon us. The World Meteorological Organization estimates there were 151 unprecedented extreme weather events last year alone. The US Federal Emergency Management Agency responded to a major weather-related disaster on average every four days in 2024. (Manning, 4/18)

The question of when children should get smartphones and whether these devices are harmful has sparked debate for years, but new research from the University of South Florida challenges some long-held assumptions. Leading up to the study, researchers expected to find negative outcomes tied to smartphone use among children. Instead, they found the devices may not be as damaging to kids’ mental health as some believe and could, in fact, be beneficial. (Shafer, 4/17)

The cases, known in the field as “retained surgical items,” are rare occurrences that many medical professionals agree are largely preventable and should never happen. There’s no national source that counts all the incidents, but Hearst Newspapers identified thousands of cases of surgical items left in patients reported in national and state health data between 2015 and 2023. Those cases represent a fraction of a much greater number, years of medical research shows. (Munson and Darwiche, 4/16)

“I have Alzheimer’s.” Those are the three words that many of my patients most dread saying, even to their closest family. They struggle with whom to tell, when to tell, and what to tell. There was a time not long ago when this wasn’t an issue; by the time a person was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, it was pretty obvious that something was wrong. But now, thanks to advances in our ability to detect the disease early, more patients are being forced to confront those questions. (Agronin, 4/13)

After the Trump administration cut its funding, a Nashville nonprofit is fighting to provide refugees with the support it promised, despite contending with depleted resources, layoffs and disillusionment. (Yurkanin, 4/15)

Being an executioner is not the sort of job that gets posted in a local wanted ad. Kids don’t dream about being an executioner when they grow up, and people don’t go to school for it. So how does one become a death row executioner in the US, and who are the people doing it? (Lain, 4/17)

The world is so close to wiping out polio. But in 2025, there are signs that the virus is not quite ready to go the way of smallpox — the only disease eradicated by humans. Two countries are seeing an increase in cases caused by the wild polio virus, which can cause paralysis and even death, particularly in infants and young children. (Joles and Kumar, 4/16)

Something worrisome was happening at Spurwink, a mental health clinic in Portland, Maine. Many patients being treated for opioid addiction had gone missing for days, even weeks, skipping prescription refills and therapy appointments. The counselors feared their patients were relapsing on fentanyl. But those who reappeared did not show the telltale signs — no slurred speech, pinpoint pupils or heavy eyelids. On the contrary, they were bouncy, frenetic, spraying rapid-fire chatter, their pupils dilated. They warned of spies lurking outside the building, listening devices in ceiling tiles, worms in their throats. (Hoffman, 4/16)

The devastating stimulant has been hitting Portland, Maine hard, even competing with fentanyl as the street drug of choice. Although a fentanyl overdose can be reversed with Narcan, no medicine can reverse a meth overdose. Nor has any been approved to treat meth addiction. Unlike fentanyl, which sedates users, meth can make people anxious and violent. Its effects can overwhelm not just users but community residents and emergency responders. Here are voices from one troubled neighborhood. (Rybus and Hoffman, 4/16)

Fentanyl overdoses have finally begun to decline over the past year, but that good news has obscured a troubling shift in illicit drug use: a nationwide surge in methamphetamine, a powerful, highly addictive stimulant. This isn’t the ’90s club drug or even the blue-white tinged crystals cooked up in “Breaking Bad.” As cartels keep revising lab formulas to make their product more addictive and potent, often using hazardous chemicals, many experts on addiction think that today’s meth is more dangerous than older versions. Here is what to know. (Hoffman, 4/16)

The Trump administration’s waves of massive cuts to funding at the National Institutes of Health are framed as a recasting of research priorities and a way to save taxpayer money. Another way to frame it is an exercise in massive waste. (Lisa Jarvis and Carolyn Silverman, 4/17)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. might have preferred to spend his early months as secretary of Health and Human Services on issues for which he has broad support, such as his battle against ultraprocessed food. But the country’s devastating eruption of measles has proved to be a make-or-break event for him, and his constant equivocation on this issue has been disastrous. (Benjamin Mazer, 4/18)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention laid off everyone in its lead-poisoning group last week, just as Milwaukee schools beg for federal help with a lead-poisoning crisis. Funding to help states replace lead pipes has also been frozen or delayed. (Catherine Rampell, 4/18)

The first few weeks in office are never easy, but the early stumbles of Marty Makary, the new commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration under the second Trump administration, are cause for concern. Confirmed swiftly, he enjoyed broad support from the biotech industry, which hoped that he would usher in a new era of scientific leadership at the agency. (Luciana Borio and Phil Krause, 4/18)

Even before the Department of Health and Human Services announced its recent major reorganization, the media had been reporting on anticipated changes to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institutes of Health. But the very last bullet on the HHS fact sheet was a complete surprise to most people: the elimination of the Administration for Community Living (ACL). (Alison Barkoff, Kathy Greenlee, Sharon Lewis and Henry Claypool, 4/17)

In 2022, I gave birth to a healthy baby girl and triggered a wildly violent chain of events: multiple organ failure, hemorrhaging, blood clots in many of my major organs, and a rattled medical team working tirelessly to keep me alive. (Taylor Coffman, 4/18)

Few lifesaving medical procedures rely as deeply on partnership and coordination as organ transplantation. The moment a patient receives the call for a potential organ is only possible because a grieving family, during an incredibly vulnerable time, agrees to give the gift of life. A dedicated Organ Procurement Organization then works with hospitals to make that miracle possible. (Anthony Watkins, 4/17)