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The Senate voted along party lines on Thursday to confirm Russell T. Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget, putting in place one of the most powerful architects of President Trump’s agenda to upend the federal bureaucracy and slash spending that the administration thinks is wasteful. In speeches, Mr. Vought made clear that he relished the opportunity to overhaul the ranks of career federal workers that Mr. Trump views as part of the “deep state.” (Rappeport, 2/6)

Trump has long distanced himself from the controversial policy blueprint Project 2025, but is still taking steps that reflect its policy proposals. (Durkee, 2/6)

A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s plan to push out federal workers by offering them financial incentives, the latest tumult for government employees already wrestling with upheaval from the new administration. The ruling came hours before the midnight deadline to apply for the deferred resignation program, which was orchestrated by Trump adviser Elon Musk. (Megerian, Binkley and Tau, 2/6)

It’s the final day that federal employees can take a resignation offer, but some HHS employees aren’t biting. ... A Wednesday email from HHS to its employees and viewed by Pulse offered early retirement to staff who are at least 50 with 20 years of service or employees with 25 years of service. According to media reports, around 40,000 federal employees across the government have accepted the offer so far. But it’s unclear how many health agency employees the 40,000 includes. Two federal health agency employees, granted anonymity to speak freely, told Pulse that they won’t take the offer nor have they heard that other colleagues would take it. (Cirruzzo and Hooper, 2/6)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: �鶹Ů�� Health News’ ‘What The Health?’: Chaos Continues In Federal Health System

The Senate has yet to confirm a Health and Human Services secretary, but things around the department continue to change at a breakneck pace to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive orders. Payment systems have been shut down, webpages and entire datasets have been taken offline, and workers — including those with civil service protections — have been urged to quit or threatened with layoffs. Meanwhile, foreign and trade policy changes are also affecting health policy. (Rovner, 2/6)

The White House is working on an executive order to fire thousands of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services workers, according to people familiar with the matter. Under the order, the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health agencies would have to cut a certain percentage of employees. (Whyte and McKay, 2/6)

Leaders across the Department of Health and Human Services have been told urgently to rank thousands of their employees who are in probationary periods, with some managers bracing for layoffs of staff members who have been identified as less essential, according to eight people with knowledge of the matter and emails obtained by The Washington Post. The anxieties have been heightened at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where officials were told to rank 10 percent of their probationary staff as mission-critical, 50 percent as important and 40 percent as not mission-critical, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisal. (Diamond, Sun and Davies, 2/6)

The Trump administration is pushing the Department of Health and Human Services to go after “anything related to Covid” and contracts that would “be deemed wasteful by an average citizen if made public,” according to an email sent to Food and Drug Administration staff on Thursday seen by Bloomberg. That includes General Services Administration contracts for services to support diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility offices, telework, swag or advertising spending, the memo said. Staff were asked to report data back on such wasteful spending by Thursday morning. (Griffin, 2/6)

The Trump administration plans to reduce the number of workers at the U.S. Agency for International Development from more than 10,000 to about 290 positions, three people with knowledge of the plans said on Thursday. he small remaining staff includes employees who specialize in health and humanitarian assistance, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to publicly discuss the cuts. (Demirjian and Kavi, 2/6)

Asanda Zondi received a startling phone call last Thursday, with orders to make her way to a health clinic in Vulindlela, South Africa, where she was participating in a research study that was testing a new device to prevent pregnancy and H.IV. infection. The trial was shutting down, a nurse told her. The device, a silicone ring inserted into her vagina, needed to be removed right away. (Nolen, 2/6)

The Environmental Protection Agency said on Thursday it placed on leave 168 employees who worked on addressing pollution facing communities of color and low-income and rural areas. The move is the latest and most sweeping action by EPA to implement President Donald Trump’s agenda targeting diversity, equity and inclusion activities across the federal government. (Guillén and Snider, 2/6)

Users who search for abortion information on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) website are now directed to try searching for the word “adoption.” The change comes less than a week after more than a dozen federal agency websites — including the CDC’s — went offline. Some of the CDC’s webpages have since been restored, but scientists and public health researchers are concerned that the information that has come back has been altered in some way. (O’Connell-Domenech, 2/6)

Two letters from different groups of senators call for answers from the Trump administration about pauses in scientific communications and funding. (Wroth, 2/6)

Funding delays have pushed several community health centers nationwide to close or cut back on staff, citing issues accessing federal funding. The financial problems, the centers say, appear to stem from last week’s temporary domestic funding grant freeze and the implementation of new executive orders. (Hellmann and Raman, 2/6)

In West Virginia, a nonprofit mental health program for teenage girls is turning to a private donor to help cover its expenses. Three Virginia health clinics have shut their doors. And a network of health centers in rural Mississippi is facing a deficit of $500,000 and may have to scale back services. Across the country, health clinics and nonprofit organizations largely serving rural and low-income patients have found themselves unable to access previously allocated federal funds, as a short-lived government funding freeze has continued to disrupt daily operations for a range of programs. (Pettypiece and Harris, 2/7)

The Trump administration’s push to align federal spending to the president’s agenda — which last week came with the striking freeze of grants and loans to a broad swath of the nation’s nonprofits — has sent shockwaves through the network of organizations that provide services to victims of gender-based and domestic violence. (Mithani and Barclay, 2/6)

President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday aimed at eradicating “anti-Christian bias” in the federal government by having agencies review policies and practices that he says have tried to squelch religious activities and activism. Mr. Trump, who announced the order at the National Prayer Breakfast, appointed his new attorney general, Pam Bondi, to lead a task force at the Justice Department to spearhead the effort. Mr. Trump said the task force would “fully prosecute anti-Christian violence and vandalism in our society” and “move heaven and earth to defend the rights of Christians and religious believers nationwide.” (Green, 2/7)

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the nation’s largest private funder of biomedical research, this week abruptly ended a $60 million program aimed at improving the retention of a diverse student body in undergraduate science and engineering programs. The decision came as a shock to the 104 institutions receiving funding through the program, called Inclusive Excellence, or IE3, especially because HHMI has vocally heralded moves to increase diversity in science in the past. (Oza, 2/6)

The largest college sports governing body in the country has completely banned transgender women student-athletes from competing in women’s sports, following President Donald Trump’s executive order threatening federal funding for schools that allow trans girls on girls’ teams. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) on Thursday rescinded its former guidance for transgender student-athletes, which had been in place since 2010 and was amended in 2022. (Rummler, 2/6)

A veteran apparently took their own life Jan. 27 at the parking garage at the VA Medical Center in Syracuse, New York, draped in a banner associated with transgender rights. A witness said the veteran died by suicide wearing a body-length pink, light blue and white flag -- a symbol of transgender pride. According to Syracuse.com, which first reported the death, the veteran was a patient who had been discharged from the hospital's inpatient facility on Jan. 21. (Kime, 2/6)

Last Friday, St. John's Community Health, a large southern California network of federally qualified health centers serving 430,000 individuals a year, tried to withdraw funds from a $1.67 million CDC grant specifically earmarked for transgender health services. "We weren't able to access it," Jim Mangia, St. John's president and CEO, told MedPage Today, "even though there was an injunction forbidding federal departments from initiating any funding freezes or terminations based on [the president's] executive orders." And even though the money is needed for payroll and service expenses. (Clark, 2/6)

The Trump administration has chosen Gerald Parker, a veterinarian and former top US health and security official, to lead the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy, people familiar with the matter said Thursday. Parker’s career includes more than three decades in the federal government focusing on global health, national security and pandemic preparedness. He will serve as director of the office, which was established by Congress in 2022 as the Covid-19 pandemic began to abate. (Griffin, 2/7)

The CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) resumed publishing after an unprecedented 2-week hiatus, but without the three H5N1 avian influenza papers that were slated to publish on Jan. 23. A CDC spokesperson told MedPage Today that these papers "are still in the pipeline" but they did not have a confirmed publication date. (Fiore, 2/6)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: On The Front Lines Against Bird Flu, Egg Farmers Say They're Losing The Battle

Greg Herbruck knew 6.5 million of his birds needed to die, and fast. But the CEO of Herbruck’s Poultry Ranch wasn’t sure how the family egg producer (one of the largest in the U.S., in business for over three generations) was going to get through it, financially or emotionally. One staffer broke down in Herbruck’s office in tears. “The mental toll on our team of dealing with that many dead chickens is just, I mean, you can’t imagine it,” Herbruck said. “I didn’t sleep. Our team didn’t sleep.” (Wells, 2/7)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Measles Outbreak Mounts Among Children In One Of Texas’ Least Vaccinated Counties

A measles outbreak is growing in a Texas county with dangerously low vaccination rates. In late January, two school-age children from Gaines County were hospitalized with measles. Since an estimated 1 in 5 people with the disease end up in the hospital, the two cases suggested a larger outbreak. As of Feb. 6, there were 12 confirmed cases and health officials expected an additional six, said Zach Holbrooks, executive director of the South Plains Public Health District, which includes Gaines. The department is investigating many other potential cases among close contacts, he said, in hopes of treating people quickly and curbing the spread of the virus. (Maxmen, 2/7)

Infection with the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant confers weak, short-term protection against reinfection, compared with the much more robust and durable protection provided by earlier variants, which highlights the need for periodic vaccine updates, a Cornell University Qatar–led study suggests. ... The results were published yesterday in Nature. (Van Beusekom, 2/6)

A gastrointestinal illness has broken out this week on the Radiance of the Seas cruise ship, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some 89 of the 2,164 passengers onboard have been affected by the outbreak on the Royal Caribbean International ship, the CDC said. That’s around 4.1% of the passengers. Only two of the 910 crewmembers have reported symptoms. (Brown, 2/6)

Scientists have discovered a molecular switch that can reverse cancer—turning cancer cells back into their healthy counterparts. The revelation by researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST) in Daejeon, South Korea, could lead to new cancer treatments. (Randall, 2/6)

Nine patients with advanced kidney cancer who received an experimental vaccine tailored to their tumors’ specific mutations mounted an immune response to their disease and remained cancer-free for three years, an early-phase clinical trial has shown. (Cooney, 2/5)

Technology and hospital-at-home programs are paving the way for in-home treatments to be the new frontier in cancer care — if reimbursement and other challenges can be worked out. Mayo Clinic, Huntsman Cancer Institute, Mount Sinai and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center are among the providers leveraging acute care at-home programs and telehealth to treat certain patients outside of traditional care settings as the number of cancer diagnoses in the U.S. climbs. But patient safety, regulatory and reimbursement challenges are obstacles to expanding in-home cancer care. (Eastabrook, 2/6)

The past year was a step in the right direction for the hospital industry as outpatient revenue and below-inflation expense increases fueled a 9% year-over-year increase in 12-month operating margins. The new numbers from advisory firm Kaufman Hall run through December and reflect operating data from 1,300 hospitals nationwide as collected by Syntellis Performance Solutions. (Muoio, 2/6)

A federal judge in Texas signed off on an agreement on Thursday that places the Crozer Health system in receivership for 30 days. The agreement will remove its parent company, Prospect Medical Holdings, and place an independent monitor to manage the health system and keep all services going. (Holden, 2/6)

A Wisconsin couple has filed a lawsuit against pharmacy benefit manager Optum Rx and Walgreens, alleging their son's death was linked to a sudden price increase in his asthma medication. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin on Jan. 21, alleges that Cole Schmidtknecht, 22, died after being unable to afford a $500 spike in cost of his asthma medication, according to court documents obtained by Becker's. (Murphy, 2/6)

UnitedHealth Group and Amedisys dropped their request to dismiss a government antitrust lawsuit over the insurer's proposed $3.3 billion acquisition of the home health provider. In a filing Wednesday to the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, UnitedHealth Group and Amedisys said the Justice Department disclosed which counties it alleges would experience reduced competition under the deal, making the motion to dismiss the lawsuit at a preliminary stage moot. (Eastabrook, 2/6)

Bausch Health Companies Inc.’s years-long process of trying to separate its Bausch + Lomb Corp. eye-care business hit a roadblock Thursday when a potential sale to private equity fell through, raising questions about the parent company’s future. Bausch Health, which owns 88% of Bausch + Lomb, has been trying to complete a separation since as early as 2020, first entertaining a spinoff and then a sale. Disagreements between shareholders and lenders, as well as Bausch Health’s debt, which stands at more than $20 billion, have complicated the efforts. (Swetlitz, 2/6)

Kaiser Permanente and Tufts University have launched a joint initiative aimed at improving nutritional and dietary health, the organizations said Thursday. The Food is Medicine National Network of Excellence comprises Tufts University's Food is Medicine Institute in Medford, Massachusetts, and Oakland, California-headquartered Kaiser, along with network members such as Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, CVS Health, Devoted Health, Elevance Health, Geisinger Health and Highmark Health. (DeSilva, 2/6)

Hospital and emergency room patients diagnosed with cannabis use disorder — defined as an inability to stop using cannabis even when the drug is causing harm — died at almost three times the rate of individuals without the disorder over the next five years, according to a study published on Thursday, the largest on the subject. Patients with cannabis use disorder were 10 times as likely to die by suicide as those in the general population. (Caryn Rabin, 2/6)

For California, 2024 was a record-breaking year for the amount of marijuana products pulled by state regulators due to consumer safety issues. The state is now increasing efforts to test the safety of marijuana sold in the state. (Taylor, 2/6)

House Republicans are moving quickly to pass legislation that would result in harsher sentences for people convicted of fentanyl-related offenses, putting pressure on Democrats who were divided on the bill during the previous Congress. Leadership on Wednesday teed up the GOP-sponsored HALT Fentanyl Act for a floor vote this week. The bill would permanently classify fentanyl-like substances into Schedule 1, a category reserved for the most dangerous drugs. (Weixel, 2/6)

Stopping fentanyl from entering the United States presents major challenges, raising the question of what Mexico can actually do to meet President Trump’s demands in order to avoid tariffs. (Villegas, 2/6)

The country is upset at its neighbor, saying it is allowing deadly contraband to flow across the border. The president has been publicly demanding something be done. But it isn’t the U.S. complaining about fentanyl—it is Mexico trying to halt an influx of American guns.  (Elinson, 2/6)

The Navy’s elite TOPGUN pilot school quietly undertook an effort called Project Odin’s Eye in the fall of 2024 to try to detect and treat brain injuries in fighter crew members, and leaders kept it so confidential that not even the broader Navy knew about it. Now, the powerful House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is demanding to learn about the project, and what the Navy knows about the risk that high-performance jets pose to the brains of the crew members who fly in them. (Philipps, 2/6)

A test designed to identify biomarkers associated with autism in infants and young children is now available to the public in most states. LinusBio, a New Jersey-based startup, on Thursday launched the test, called Clearstrand-ASD, which it says can help physicians rule out autism in children 1 to 36 months old. The test requires just a single strand of hair. (Bush, 2/6)

The Youth Empowerment Services (YES) Waiver is an intensive mental health service program for families who cannot afford long-term psychiatric inpatient care or who would rather see their child receive treatment in their own community. The program, which serves about 2,200 children, is currently in desperate need of additional funding as providers leave the program due to low Medicaid reimbursement rates. The waitlist for this mental health service is nearly 900 families on a given day. (Simpson, 2/7)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Some Incarcerated Youths Will Get Health Care After Release Under New Law

Valentino Valdez was given his birth certificate, his Social Security card, a T-shirt, and khaki pants when he was released from a Texas prison in 2019 at age 21. But he didn’t have health insurance, mental health medications, or access to a doctor, he said. Three years later, he landed in an inpatient hospital after expressing suicidal thoughts. After more than a decade cycling through juvenile detention, foster care placements, and state prisons, Valdez realizes now that treatment for his mental health conditions would have made life on his own much easier. (Rayasam, 2/7)

Kristina and Nick Bruno were overjoyed when a 2023 Florida bill passed, meant to help support the treatment for their medically fragile child, only to be unable to access the funding two years later. The law (SB 391), which passed in 2023, allows parents and caregivers of children with chronic and complex medical needs to be paid a salary to care for that child. However, it is almost impossible for a parent to be enrolled without losing their Medicaid eligibility, linked to the new income. (McCormack, 2/6)

A Maryland Department of Health email obtained by The Baltimore Sun sent to workers at state-owned psychiatric facility Spring Grove Hospital Center  says testing and treatment for the bacteria could take weeks to complete. (Bazos, 2/6)

Dr. Daniel Kortsch is a pretty popular guy these days in the hallways of Denver Health, the hospital where he works in primary care. Colleagues come up to him for spontaneous hugs. He’s received at least one box of chocolates. The reason for this affection has to do with Kortsch’s other job at the hospital — as chief medical information officer, sort of a guru at the intersection of technology and patient care. (Ingold, 2/7)

Officials from the College of Central Florida and the Ocala Metro Chamber & Economic Partnership celebrated the grand opening of the AdventHealth Center for Nursing on Thursday with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Ocala campus. The two-story, $20 million building will serve as a learning environment for more than 300 students enrolled in registered nursing and bachelor's degree programs. (Bennett, 2/6)

Gene editing promised a revolution, but biotech layoffs, stock slumps, and industry struggles reveal a stark reality: CRISPR is hard to do profitably. (Mast, 2/6)

After more than three decades of planning and a $250 million investment, Lykos Therapeutics’ application for the first psychedelic drug to reach federal regulators was expected to be a shoo-in. Lykos, the corporate arm of a nonprofit dedicated to winning mainstream acceptance of psychedelics, had submitted data to the Food and Drug Administration showing that its groundbreaking treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder — MDMA plus talk therapy — was significantly more effective than existing treatments. (Jacobs and Nuwer, 2/4)

The nursery at RiverSpring Residences in the Bronx is a sunny, inviting space outfitted with a bassinet, a crib with a musical mobile, a few toys, bottles, picture books for bedtime reading and a rack of clothing in tiny sizes. The other morning, Wilma Rosa was there trying to soothe one of its cranky, small charges. “What’s the matter, baby?” she crooned, patting the complainer’s back. “You OK? I want you to go to sleep for a little while.”Ms. Rosa, 76, a memory care resident in assisted living, visits the nursery daily. She has had plenty of experience with babies. (Span, 2/1)

Doctors warn about their physical side effects, but they can also have unexpected effects on intimacy. (Miller, 2/2)

Is there a benefit for healthy people to track their blood sugar? Measuring blood sugar has joined sleep and exercise tracking as wellness trends, with some longevity experts claiming that reducing fluctuations throughout the day can help protect against heart disease, even for people who don’t have diabetes. Continuous glucose monitors, or CGMs, are small devices that track blood sugar in real time and can tell wearers how their bodies are reacting to stress, food, sleep or exercise. (Syal, Venkatesan and Tobia, 2/2)

An analysis of news reports by The Washington Post found that at least 477 people — 90 percent of them students — were arrested in the two weeks after the Georgia massacre at Apalachee High. That’s nearly 100 more than in the aftermaths of the three previous mass school shootings combined. (Cox and Natanson, 2/3)

Over the last three months, The New York Times collected data on Helene’s deaths from county coroners and state officials, and interviewed family members. The findings revealed that rain, which led to flooding and landslides, was the most deadly part of the storm, followed by wind, which toppled trees. And they showed that most of the deaths happened in counties where the risk of hurricane fatalities had been considered low, according to data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. (Fortin, Nostrant, Taft and Underwood, 2/4)

Following the president’s recent executive order dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, the main page for the FDA’s Diversity Action Plan guidelines — requiring pharmaceutical companies to test drugs on diverse populations before approval — has been down since Jan. 23. These guidelines were established under the Food and Drug Omnibus Reform Act of 2022, enacted by Congress to promote inclusivity in clinical trials. It’s upsetting to see. But I predict those mandates will eventually come back — because we need them. (Suzanne B. Robotti, 2/6)

For anyone who lives in a nursing home, the adequacy of the nursing staff is a life-or-death issue. That’s why the Biden administration issued federal rules last year setting minimum standards for staffing. By our estimate, they will save 13,000 lives a year. But those rules are now under attack. (Norma B. Coe and Rachel M. Werner, 2/7)

Three years ago, I was working at a biotech company leading a drug discovery program focused on metabolic disease. Interested in obtaining liver samples that could help identify potential therapeutic targets, I learned that a tenured professor at a top 10 NIH institution had more than 2,000 samples of tissue from patients they had accumulated over more than a decade of research. (Saif Rathore, 2/7)

Imagine standing at the pharmacy counter, knowing you need an inhaler to breathe and being forced to choose between spending the rest of your paycheck on an inhaler or rent. Thousands of uninsured Chicagoans have been in this position before, and Medicaid expansion — passed in January 2014 through the Affordable Care Act — provided much needed relief to thousands of Chicagoans. If Congress follows through on the plan by President Donald Trump’s administration to roll back Medicaid expansion, 900,000 Illinoisans could lose their health insurance, and millions more would lose coverage across the country. (Robert Vargas and Tony Christiano, 2/7)

Shock of shocks: Missouri Republicans aren’t much interested in reversing the state’s abortion ban. Quite the opposite, in fact. Show-Me State voters sent a pretty clear message to Jefferson City back in November — choosing, as expected, to undo the existing ban. But GOP officials aren’t just dragging their feet to avoid complying with the results of that vote: They are already pushing for another election, this time to re-ban abortion. (Joel Mathis, 2/7)

With asbestos use dominating most industries in past decades, the number of people diagnosed with exposure-related diseases has been increasing nationwide, including in Missouri. The military sector was no exception from applying asbestos in a plethora of products, and, consequently, military veterans are among the individuals most affected by this carcinogenic material, with many developing severe diseases stemming from their exposure, such as asbestosis, mesothelioma or lung cancer. (Cristina Johnson, 2/7)