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A senior Border Patrol commander and some agents are expected to leave Minneapolis as early as Tuesday, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press. The departure of Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino, who has been at the center of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement surge in cities nationwide, comes as President Donald Trump dispatched border czar Tom Homan to Minnesota to take charge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations. (Brown, McGhee, Rodriguez-Feo Vileira, Petesch, Yee, Clark and Doyle, 1/26)

Bovino will return to his former job in El Centro, California, where he is expected to retire soon, according to a DHS official and two people with knowledge of the change. ... Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her close adviser Corey Lewandowski, who were Bovino’s biggest backers at DHS, are also at risk of losing their jobs, two of the people told a reporter. (Miroff, 1/26)

Nurse organizations and other health professional groups expressed outrage and sorrow over Saturday's killing of intensive care nurse Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents. "The ENA [Emergency Nurses Association] community mourns Alex Pretti and extends its condolences to his loved ones and his nursing family," ENA President Dustin Bass, RN, DNP, said in a statement. "Nurses play a vital role in their communities not only within the hospital, but anywhere someone needs help. We always try to do what's right for others, using our clinical expertise to care for patients and relying on personal beliefs to show up for people, even beyond the stretcherside." (Frieden and Firth, 1/26)

Alex Pretti died as he lived: taking care of other people. Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse with a Veterans Affairs medical center, was using his cell phone on Saturday morning to record federal immigration agents in Minneapolis in a neighborhood known for its ethnic diversity. Bystander videos show that he was directing traffic until an agent knocked down another bystander and Pretti went to help her up. (Becker, 1/26)

The killing of Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents in Minnesota has led to a rare rebuke of top Trump administration officials by leading 2nd Amendment advocates. Multiple national gun-rights organizations, as well as a prominent Minnesota gun rights group, have expressed horror at top Trump administration officials’ criticism of Pretti for being armed with a handgun that he had a legal permit to carry. (Howard, 1/27)

Weekend comments made by some top Trump administration officials are raising questions about Minnesota’s permit to carry laws, following the fatal shooting of a Minneapolis resident by federal forces on Saturday. (Bergey, 1/26)

The escalation of ICE activity in Minnesota is disrupting care at hospitals and clinics that already were navigating shifting legal standards on immigration enforcement in their facilities. Health workers say many patients aren't coming in for necessary care out of fear they'll be detained by federal agents. (Goldman, 1/27)

The American Medical Association weighed in Monday about immigration enforcement activities at hospitals and emergency rooms. “The American Medical Association is deeply concerned by reports of immigration enforcement activity in and around hospitals and emergency rooms — a tactic fueling fear among patients and hospital staff alike,“ the organization said in a statement. ”When people are afraid to seek medical attention for themselves or their families, it threatens their health, impedes the ability of physicians to render care, and ultimately undermines basic trust in our health care institutions." (DeSilva, 1/26)

After federal immigration agents shot and killed an American citizen in Minneapolis for the second time this month, Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota that outlined what she described as three “simple steps” to “bring back law and order.” Her final step, however, seemed to have little to do with immigration or the state’s fraud scandal, the stated reasons for the federal government’s presence in Minnesota. (Corasaniti, 1/26)

President Donald Trump's administration is calling on its Justice Department to enforce policies on transgender students playing in girls' sports in Minnesota. The Education Department and the Department of Health and Human Services made the announcement Jan. 26 – the same day state and local officials fought the Trump administration in court over whether immigration actions in Minnesota have crossed the line. (Mansfield, 1/26)

Chris Madel, a Minneapolis attorney who was running as a Republican for Minnesota governor, said Monday that he was ending his campaign because of the national GOP’s “retribution” on his state, describing Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations there as an “unmitigated disaster.” “United States citizens, particularly those of color, live in fear. United States citizens are carrying papers to prove their citizenship — that’s wrong,” Madel said, noting that he had spoken to Hispanic and Asian members of local law enforcement whom immigration officers had stopped. ... "The reality is that the national Republicans have made it nearly impossible for a Republican to win a statewide election in Minnesota,” he said. (Wang, 1/26)

Six annual spending bills for the current budget year are awaiting action in the Senate this week, including a key appropriations package that would fund the Department of Health and Human Services through Sept. 30. But the sweeping government funding package is now in peril as Senate Democrats vowed to oppose it in the wake of the shooting death of a Minneapolis man by federal immigration agents, which would trigger a partial government shutdown. The number of agencies that would be affected by a shutdown remains unclear. (Landi, 1/26)

Nearly half of the databases that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used to update regularly — surveillance systems that tracked public health information like Covid vaccination rates and hospitalizations for respiratory syncytial virus — have been paused without explanation, according to new research. The findings, published Monday in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, indicate that at the start of 2025, the CDC maintained 82 databases that were updated at least monthly. But by the end of October, the study found, 38 had gone stale, with 34 showing no new entries at all in the previous six months. (Bendix, 1/26)

A Senate committee Monday narrowly approved a bill that would create a new path for parents who don’t want their schoolchildren vaccinated, with the proposal’s sponsor saying parents should be in the “driver’s seat” — but opponents warning of public health consequences. (Saunders, 1/27)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Trump Policies At Odds With Emerging Understanding Of Covid’s Long-Term Harm

Possible risk of autism in children. Dormant cancer cells awakening. Accelerating aging of the brain. Federal officials in May 2023 declared an end to the national covid pandemic. But more than two years later, a growing body of research continues to reveal information about the virus and its ability to cause harm long after initial infections resolve, even in some cases when symptoms were mild. (Armour, 1/27)

Republicans have embraced HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s healthy food crusade, hoping it will boost their prospects in the midterms. Some Democrats fear it might work. The health secretary was in Pennsylvania last week, touting a new campaign to “take back” Americans’ health. It was the first of what is expected to be many stops ahead of the midterms where the secretary, a former presidential candidate with a constituency all his own, will tout the administration’s efforts to keep Americans, especially children, healthy. (Haslett and Doherty, 1/27)

Prominent cardiology leaders wrote a letter to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. demanding a "forward-looking" U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) roster that will be willing to adopt the latest science on cardiovascular prevention. The nonprofit Society for Heart Attack Prevention and Eradication (SHAPE) coalition of physicians, scientists, and public health leaders criticized past USPSTF recommendations for lagging "far behind contemporary science and real-world clinical needs." (Lou, 1/26)

Executives who donated to the president’s super PAC met privately with him and urged a repeal of the rule, which was intended to prevent neglect of patients. (Vogel and Jewett, 1/27)

The US officially exited the Paris Agreement on Jan. 27. It’s the second time President Donald Trump has pulled out of the pact that commits almost 200 countries to keep global warming to no more than 2C (3.6F), and ideally 1.5C, above pre-industrial levels. Compared with his first term in office, Trump has escalated his retreat from global cooperation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. (Roston and Kahn, 1/27)

The use of a hurtful word still considered taboo is emblematic of the provocative language that courses through the manosphere sector of social media these days — almost gleefully transgressive language often adopted in messaging from the White House. Diplomacy is out and mockery in, whether by displaying plaques that insult former presidents, depicting Donald Trump spraying excrement on protesters from a military jet — or using the “R-word” to question the intelligence of a political opponent, as Mr. Trump did in a Truth Social post on Thanksgiving Day, in which he called Minnesota’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz, “seriously retarded.” (Barry and Rao, 1/26)

The Trump administration plans to increase payments to next year’s Medicare Advantage plans by less than 0.1% on average — far below what the industry had expected. (Herman, 1/26)

More than 31,000 Kaiser Permanente nurses and other health care workers walked off the job early Monday, launching an open-ended strike across California and Hawaii that could disrupt operations at dozens of hospitals and hundreds of clinics. The workers, represented by the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals, say the strike was triggered by what they describe as unfair labor practices and Kaiser’s refusal to return to national bargaining talks. (Vaziri and Flores, 1/26)

Hennepin Healthcare is cutting five medical programs and about 100 full-time positions to address a $50 million budget shortfall by the end of March. (Zurek, 1/26)

The University of Minnesota, Fairview and M Physicians have reached a 10-year agreement to fund the U’s medical school and support physician training and research after seven weeks of intensive mediation. (Zurek, 1/26)

In Alamance County, Ivey Broadnax works with young people who may be struggling with mental health issues. Instead of focusing on mental health symptoms or deficits, Broadnax and other “youth partners,” through Vaya Health, want to build positive childhood experiences for the young people they are helping. (Fernandez, 1/27)

Health systems are making big investments in pulsed field ablation systems, reasoning that the technology will help expand their cardiac programs and the short-term financial hit quickly will be recouped. Pulsed field ablation has only been available in the U.S. within the past two years. Despite it being reimbursed at the same level as older technology, hospitals have embraced it as an atrial fibrillation treatment because it’s considered safer, in demand by patients and the procedure is faster. (Dubinsky, 1/26)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Watch: A Strange Checkup Bill Revealed A Firefighter’s Kids Were Mistakenly Uninsured

After Susannah Reed-McCullough’s husband died in 2018, she and their young daughters continued to receive health insurance through his job as a firefighter in Maryland. Then, in 2024, she got an unexpected medical bill: $377 for a checkup for one of her children the previous fall. Reed-McCullough said she called the doctor’s billing department and learned the insurance company had dropped the children’s coverage. The drop turned out to be a mistake. (Jackman, 1/27)

In time, his surgical innovations were credited with saving millions of lives, and publications hailed him for his supreme skill and accomplishments as the “Thomas Edison” and even the “Mickey Mantle” of medical device inventors. But long before Thomas J. Fogarty drew such renown, he was a tinkerer — a boy growing up in Cincinnati in the 1940s, fixing things around the house for his widowed mother. (Longman, 1/26)

Between Friday evening and Monday afternoon, eight people were found dead outside or later died at a hospital, officials said. They had not yet determined how the eight had died by Monday and said they were still investigating whether the people were homeless. Mayor Zohran Mamdani said some of them had “interactions with the shelter system” in the past, but did not provide specifics. (Zaveri, 1/26)

People in 14 states have died as a result of the weekend winter storm that brought, snow, ice and treacherous conditions. (Waddick, Pulver and Nguyen, 1/26)

As large parts of the U.S. dig out from a major winter storm, health officials are renewing warnings about the serious and potentially deadly risks of shoveling snow, which has been linked to heart attacks. "Snow shoveling is definitely associated with an increased risk of both heart attack and sudden cardiac death, especially in men and those with unknown cardiac coronary heart disease, or with multiple cardiac risk factors," said Christopher Kramer, a cardiologist and University of Virginia Health and the president of the American College of Cardiology. (Czachor, 1/26)

When it came time for any of the Colorado Medical Services Board members to make a motion, there was only dead silence. For two hours, the 11-member board that governs the state Medicaid program heard pleas from parents who provide round-the-clock care of their adult children with severe disabilities. And when the testimony was over, no one on the board would make a motion that would result in cuts to the parents’ monthly pay. (Brown, 1/26)

Baltimore Police are showing progress on a goal to address mental health crises, with more than a quarter of the department’s patrol officers now certified in crisis intervention. (Belson, 1/26)

The DeSantis administration's Healthy Florida First initiative finds traces of the toxic element in several popular candies. How dangerous is this? Manufacturers criticize the testing as "misguided." (Mayer, 1/26)

Michael O’Reilley doesn’t always remember his wife’s name when she visits him, or even that she’s his wife at all. “He just knows he loves me,” said Linda Feldman, O’Reilley’s wife of 39 years. “That’s a constant.” O’Reilley, 77, has Alzheimer’s disease. Last November, during a visit at his memory care facility in Berkeley, California, he pulled Feldman close, looked at her and asked her a question she had already answered nearly four decades earlier. “Will you marry me?” he asked. “Yes,” Feldman replied. (Page, 1/26)

Nearly half of the mortality gap between Black and White adults can be traced to the cumulative toll of a lifetime of stress and heightened inflammation, a new study published Monday shows. The study, published in JAMA Network Open, bolsters the body of evidence showing that chronic stress takes a biological toll that shortens lives. (Johnson, 1/26)

Transgender patients of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles secured a win last week after the U.S. Department of Justice agreed to end its efforts to obtain personal and medical information of more than 3,000 young patients. (Ibarra, 1/24)

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit alleging a new state law allowing pregnant women to use parking spaces reserved for people with disabilities violates federal protections. (Kam, 1/27)

Indiana Senate Democrats proposed four amendments to an abortion medication bill, but all of them failed in voice votes Monday. (Kukulka, 1/26)

In the early hours of the morning on June 1, 2025, Katie Gowell went into labor at her home in Patten, a town on the outskirts of Maine’s northern wilderness containing Mount Katahdin, where her family doctor was prepared to deliver her fifth child. Shortly after her water burst, a complication arose: she had a prolapsed umbilical cord, a medical emergency that can cut off the baby’s oxygen supply. Her physician, Dr. Rose Fuchs, quickly intervened to keep the blood flowing and called for an ambulance. (Hedegard, 1/26)

A growing number of states are implementing paid leave policies in an effort to attract and retain teachers. (Lumpkin, 1/26)

Roche Holding AG said patients on its experimental shot lost 18% more weight than those who got placebo in a study that will help set the stage for the Swiss drugmaker to compete in the lucrative obesity market. Almost half of the volunteers treated with the highest dose shed 20% or more of their body weight by week 48 of the mid-stage trial, Roche said Tuesday. (Kresge, 1/27)

Postmenopausal women on the GLP-1 medication tirzepatide (Zepbound) for obesity lost more weight if they were also using menopause hormone therapy, a retrospective cohort study indicated. Among 120 women with overweight or obesity on tirzepatide, hormone therapy users lost 19.2% of their body weight, while those not using hormone therapy treatment lost 14% (P=0.0023), reported Maria Daniela Hurtado Andrade, MD, PhD, of the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, and colleagues. (Monaco, 1/26)

Merck MRK is no longer in discussions to buy biotech Revolution Medicines, according to people familiar with the matter. Merck had recently been in talks to acquire RevMed in a deal that could have valued the cancer-drug biotech at around $30 billion. The talks cooled after the two couldn’t come to an agreement on price, some of the people said. It is always possible talks could restart or another suitor for RevMed could emerge. (Thomas and Rockoff, 1/25)

Artificial intelligence has yet to deliver on the most challenging aspect of drug development -- finding new molecules that lead to major medical advances -- but it is already streamlining less glamorous parts of the process, industry executives say. AI is helping find participants and sites for clinical trials and drafting documents for regulators, shaving weeks off these labor-intensive processes, seven large drugmakers and six smaller biotech companies said at the recent JP Morgan Healthcare Conference. (Fick and Erman, 1/26)

Health care technology startup Tandem Technology Inc., which aims to smooth the process of writing and receiving medical prescriptions using artificial intelligence, has reached a valuation of $1 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. The company is raising $100 million in the deal, which is being led by venture capital firm Accel, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. (Torrence, 1/26)

Ahead of an artificial intelligence conference held last April, peer reviewers considered papers written by “Carl” alongside other submissions. What the reviewers did not know was that, unlike other authors, Carl wasn’t a scientific researcher, but rather an AI system built by the tech company Autoscience Institute, which says that the model can accelerate artificial intelligence research. And at least according to the humans involved in the review process, the papers were good enough for the conference: In the double-blind peer review process, three of the four papers, which were authored by Carl (with varying levels of human input) were accepted. (López Lloreda, 1/26)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Doctors Increasingly See AI Scribes In A Positive Light. But Hiccups Persist

When Jeannine Urban went in for a checkup in November, she had her doctor’s full attention. Instead of typing on her computer keyboard during the exam, Urban’s primary care physician at the Penn Internal Medicine practice in Media, Pennsylvania, had an ambient artificial intelligence scribe take notes. At the end of the 30-minute visit, Urban’s doctor showed her the AI summary of the appointment, neatly organized into sections for her medical history, the physical exam findings, and an assessment and treatment plan for her rheumatoid arthritis and hot flashes, among other details. (Andrews, 1/27)

Julia Sheffield, a psychologist who specializes in treating people with delusions, is difficult to rattle. But she was unnerved last summer when patients began telling her about their conversations with A.I. chatbots. ... By the end of the year, Dr. Sheffield had seen seven such patients at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville. Although she is accustomed to treating people with mental instability, Dr. Sheffield was disturbed that this new technology seemed to tip people from simply having eccentric thoughts into full-on delusions. (Valentino-DeVries and Hill, 1/26)

I first learned to fear law enforcement when I was 9 years old. I had just arrived in the United States from Mexico without documentation, and I quickly understood that uniforms, sirens, and official questions could change the course of a family’s life. I learned early which streets to avoid, when to stay quiet, and how fear could shape everyday decisions. (Jesus Ruiz, 1/27)

Washington keeps arguing over who should pay the bill while ignoring what’s driving costs in the first place — a policy failure decades in the making. (Ashish K. Jha, 1/26)

At the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting last year, researchers presented the results of a large Phase 3 breast cancer clinical trial that led to the approval of inavolisib, an important new drug for breast cancer. In the study, inavolisib significantly improved survival rates among patients with hormone receptor-positive breast cancer who also carry a genetic mutation that makes them resistant to standard endocrine therapy. (Yehoda Martei, 1/27)

Average Americans could experience significant hits to their health and their pocketbooks. (Richard L. Revesz, 1/26)

Maryland was one of the most active U.S. states on AI policy in 2025. The General Assembly advanced multiple AI‑related bills and strategic planning initiatives, focusing on consumer protection, state government AI use, ethical standards, algorithmic discrimination, education impacts and long-term AI governance. (Peter Shen, 1/26)