"Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Monday he was removing the entire membership of the influential vaccine advisory panel that makes immunization recommendations for the United States, an unprecedented move by Kennedy and escalation of his overhaul of federal vaccination policy."
A private social media message piqued Arizona Republic reporter Joan Meiners’ interest in rural retirees’ efforts to block construction of a gas-fired peaker plant next to their homes. Her year-long, grant-funded investigation in 2024 uncovered questionable local government actions and utility executive motives, and concluded with action against the facility. Read Meiners’ account of how rural Arizonans became unlikely climate activists, in the latest FEJ Storylog.
"A top coronavirus vaccine adviser at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has resigned, citing concerns that she could no longer help vulnerable people after federal health officials rescinded long-standing recommendations to immunize children and pregnant women."
"Americans are losing a vast array of people and programs dedicated to keeping them healthy. Gone are specialists who were confronting a measles outbreak in Ohio, workers who drove a van to schools in North Carolina to offer vaccinations and a program that provided free tests to sick people in Tennessee."
It’s not just scientists who are being lost to the new administration’s extensive firings of federal workers. A Backgrounder Analysis argues it’s the science itself. It’s happening at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, but also across agencies that conduct research to protect health and the environment, whether around toxic chemicals or on the battleground of climate change science. A frank look at the reality and what’s being lost for journalists and the communities they serve.
"The Department of Health and Human Services is pulling millions of dollars it had committed to give Moderna to aid the effort to develop a vaccine to combat the bird flu in humans, the company announced Wednesday.
As the Trump administration rolls back Biden-era rules limiting the presence of “forever chemicals” in drinking water, an updated data mapping tool helps pinpoint local angles on the PFAS story. The latest TipSheet outlines the basics on this class of widely used chemicals, their risks to humans and the challenges of regulating them, plus provides a half-dozen story ideas and questions to ask.
