Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Despite Healthy Status, Georgia Man Dies Within 30 Days Of ICE Arrest
The Guardian: ‘Ticking Time Bomb’: Ice Detainee Dies In Transit As Experts Say More Deaths Likely
A 68-year-old Mexican-born man has become the first Ice detainee in at least a decade to die while being transported from a local jail to a federal detention center, and experts have warned there will likely be more such deaths amid the current administration’s “mass deportation” push across the US. Abelardo Avellaneda Delgado’s exact cause of death remains under investigation, according to Ice, but the Guardian’s reporting reveals a confusing and at times contradictory series of events surrounding the incident. (Pratt, 6/22)
AP: ICE Detains Marine Corps Veteran’s Wife Who Was Still Breastfeeding Their Baby
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers detained the wife of a Marine Corps veteran in Louisiana during a routine immigration appointment in New Orleans. To visit his wife, Adrian Clouatre has to make an eight-hour round trip from their home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to a rural ICE detention center in Monroe. Clouatre, who qualifies as a service-disabled veteran, goes every chance he can get. (Brook, 6/23)
On the Trump administration's funding and research cuts —
Axios: Accidental Death Data Threatened By Trump CDC Cuts
The CDC center that provides a window into how Americans are accidentally killed could see much of its work zeroed out under the Trump administration 2026 budget after it was hit hard by staff cuts this spring. (Reed, 6/23)
Stat: FDA Cuts Hamper Conflict Of Interest Reviews, Advisory Meetings
Even before he took over the Food and Drug Administration, Marty Makary called for frequent, transparent meetings of the independent panels that advise the agency on controversial regulatory decisions. But current and former agency staff, as well as medical ethics experts, say recent cuts at the FDA are already making it more difficult to plan and run those meetings — and to ensure that the members of those committees don’t have conflicts of interest, a stated priority of Makary and of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Lawrence, 6/23)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch: St. Louis Biomed Firm Left Reeling After Feds Cut Funding
Fimbrion Therapeutics, a small but successful biomedical research business based in the city’s Cortex Innovation Center, was close to developing a key drug in the arsenal against tuberculosis, the world’s deadliest infectious disease. After working five years and receiving nearly $4 million in small business innovation funding though the National Institutes of Health, Fimbrion last fall celebrated a glowing review by the NIH that all but guaranteed the company would receive the last grant it needed to develop the final version of the drug. (Munz, 6/22)
The New York Times: Here Is All The Science At Risk In Trump’s Clash With Harvard
The federal government annually spends billions funding research at Harvard, part of a decades-old system that is little understood by the public but essential to American science. This spring, nearly every dollar of that payment was cut off by the Trump administration, endangering much of the university’s research. (Badger, Bhatia and Singer, 6/22)
The New York Times: Missteps, Confusion And ‘Viral Waste’: The 14 Days That Doomed U.S.A.I.D.
The rapid dismantling of the global aid agency remains one of the most consequential outcomes of President Trump’s efforts to overhaul the federal government, showing his willingness to tear down institutions in defiance of the courts. (Flavelle, Nehamas and Tate, 6/22)
The New York Times: What Remains Of U.S.A.I.D. After DOGE’s Budget Cuts?
The few hundred programs that survived DOGE’s purge reveal the future of foreign aid. (6/23)
