GOP Sen. Cassidy Criticizes Vaccine Advisers, Says They Shouldn’t Meet Yet

The Hill: Cassidy Calls For Postponing RFK Jr’s Vaccine Advisory Panel Meeting
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) called for the delay of this week’s meeting of a federal vaccine advisory panel handpicked by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, citing concerns about members’ lack of experience and potential bias towards vaccines. “Wednesday’s meeting should not proceed with a relatively small panel, and no CDC Director in place to approve the panel’s recommendations,” Cassidy wrote in a post on X late Monday evening. (Weixel, 6/23)

CIDRAP: Letter Urges HHS To Convene Meeting Of Advisory Group On Antimicrobial Resistance
A coalition of 41 infectious disease, medical, veterinary, and public health organizations has signed on to a letter to the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) calling for a federal advisory committee on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) to meet as soon as possible. The President's Advisory Council on Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria (PACCARB), a group established in 2014 to provide recommendations to HHS for addressing the AMR threat, was scheduled to meet on January 28 to 29. ... But that meeting was canceled amid a larger HHS pause on government-related scientific meetings. (Dall, 6/23)

More on the Trump administration —

FiercePharma: FDA's Acting CDER Head Heads For The Exit: Report
Only a few days after reports emerged that the director of the FDA's cell and gene therapy office had been abruptly put on administrative leave, a new departure shows that an intense period of leadership turnover at the agency isn't over. Monday, Jacqueline Corrigan-Curay, M.D., the acting director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), wrote in an email to colleagues that she'd be retiring from the agency in July, according to reports in Bloomberg, Endpoints News and Stat. Corrigan-Curay has been with the FDA for more than eight years. (Sagonowsky, 6/23)

Fierce Healthcare: Oz, RFK Jr. Tout Insurers' Pledge To Ease Prior Authorization
Top officials in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) are touting a multipronged effort from major payers to reform the oft-criticized prior authorization process. Mehmet Oz, M.D., administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), said during a press conference Monday that the prior auth pledge is just the first step in a broader push. Oz and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. met with major payers earlier in the day to discuss the commitments. (Minemyer, 6/23)

On the immigration crisis —

The New York Times: Florida Builds ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Detention Center For Migrants In Everglades
Florida’s attorney general, James Uthmeier, a Trump ally who has pushed to build the detention center in the Everglades, has said the state will not need to invest much in security because the area is surrounded by dangerous wildlife, including alligators and pythons. A spokesperson for the attorney general said work on the new facility started on Monday morning. ... Immigrant advocates criticized the move. “The fact that the administration and its allies would even consider such a huge temporary facility,” he said, “on such a short time line, with no obvious plan for how to adequately staff medical and other necessary services, in the middle of the Florida summer heat is demonstrative of their callous disregard for the health and safety of the human beings they intend to imprison there," said Mark Fleming, the associate director of federal litigation at the National Immigrant Justice Center. (Aleaziz, 6/23)

The New York Times: Supreme Court Lets Trump Deport Migrants To Countries Other Than Their Own 
The Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to deport migrants to countries other than their own, pausing a federal judge’s ruling that said they must first be given a chance to show that they would face the risk of torture and potentially clearing the way for the administration to send men held at an American military base in Djibouti to South Sudan. The court’s order gave no reasons and said the judge’s ruling would remain paused while the government pursues an appeal and, after that, until the Supreme Court acts. The court’s three liberal members issued a lengthy dissent. (Liptak, 6/23)

On federal funding and research cuts —

CNN: NIH Froze Funding For Clinical Trials At A Major University. By Fall, They’ll Run Out Of Funding 
Angelina Brown passed out while she was exercising one day, a scary experience that led her to a diagnosis of atrial fibrillation. It’s a condition in which the heart’s upper chambers beat irregularly, and it’s the most common heart rhythm abnormality in adults, affecting about 10 million Americans. (Tirrell, 6/23)

New Hampshire Public Radio: Federal Program That Makes NH’s Cancer Registry Possible May Be Cut In The 2026 Budget 
In New Hampshire, the state’s cancer registry has been used to determine that there is a higher-than-usual rate of kidney cancer in Merrimack, where water supplies have been polluted with PFAS chemicals. Registry data also prompted state officials to look into high childhood cancer rates and whether they have environmental causes. (Hoplamazian, 6/24)

KFF Health News: ‘We Need To Keep Fighting’: HIV Activists Organize To Save Lives As Trump Guts Funding
Cedric Sturdevant woke up with “a bit of depression” but made it to church, as he does every Sunday. In a few days, he would drive from Mississippi to Washington, D.C., to join HIV advocates at an April rally against the Trump administration’s actions. It had clawed back more than $11 billion in federal public health grants to states and abruptly terminated millions of dollars in funds for HIV work in the United States. Testing and outreach for HIV faltered in the South, a region that accounts for more than half of all HIV diagnoses. (Maxmen, 6/24)