First Edition: Friday, March 6, 2026

KFF HEALTH NEWS ORIGINAL STORIES

KFF Health News: Six Federal Scientists Run Out By Trump Talk About The Work Left Undone
Marc Ernstoff, a physician who has pioneered immunotherapy research and treatments for cancer patients, said his work as a federal scientist proved untenable under the Trump administration. Philip Stewart, a Rocky Mountain Laboratories researcher focused on tick-borne diseases, said he retired two years earlier than planned because of hurdles that made it too challenging to do his job well. (Pradhan and Houghton, 3/6)

KFF Health News: The People — And Research — Lost In The NIH Exodus
Sylvia Chou specializes in communication between patients and their health care providers, and social media’s role in public health. She joined the federal government in 2007 as a fellow and became a civil servant in 2010. She left her National Cancer Institute job in January, she said, because the “work is no longer based on facts or truth.” After President Donald Trump returned to office, Chou said, health communication scientists like her were falsely accused of “essentially doing propaganda work.” (Pradhan and Houghton, 3/6)

KFF Health News: This Doctor-Senator Who Backed RFK Jr. Now Faces A Fight For His Job — And His Legacy
The ambitious liver doctor would go just about anywhere in his home state to give people the hepatitis B vaccine. Bill Cassidy offered jabs to thousands of inmates at Louisiana’s maximum-security prison in the early 2000s. A decade before that, he set up vaccine clinics in middle schools, a model hailed nationally as a success. “He got that whole generation immunized in East Baton Rouge,” said Holley Galland, a retired doctor who worked with Cassidy vaccinating schoolchildren. (Seitz, 3/6)

KFF Health News: KFF Health News’ ‘What The Health?’: 40 Years Of Health Policy
This month marks host Julie Rovner’s 40th anniversary reporting on health policy in Washington. Over that time, she’s covered a vast range of topics, from the response to the AIDS epidemic, to Medicare and Medicaid changes, to the fight over the “Patients’ Bill of Rights” — and a half-dozen major reform fights, including the introduction of the Affordable Care Act and the efforts to repeal it. (Rovner, 3/5)

IMMIGRATION CRISIS

The Washington Post: Trump Removes DHS Secretary Kristi Noem After Controversial Tenure
President Donald Trump said Thursday he is replacing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem, a move that came amid mounting bipartisan criticism of her stewardship of the administration’s mass deportation agenda and efforts to dismantle the Federal Emergency Management Agency. (LeVine, Arnsdorf, Sacks and Meyer, 3/5)

The Guardian: Minneapolis Killings And Deportation Outrage: Kristi Noem’s Scandal-Plagued DHS Tenure 
Here’s a look back at some of the key moments in Noem’s controversial time as the head of DHS. (Dunbar, 3/5)

AP: 911 Calls Reveal Pain, Despair At ICE's Largest Detention Camp
The calls to 911 poured in from staff at Camp East Montana in Texas, the nation’s largest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility, at a rate of nearly one a day for five months, each its own tale of pain and despair. A man sobs after being assaulted by another detainee. Another bangs his head against the wall after expressing suicidal thoughts. A pregnant woman complained of severe back pain and also had coronavirus. (Lee, Foley and Biesecker, 3/6)

The New York Times: He Had A Purple Heart, PTSD And A Rap Sheet. He Had To Leave The U.S. 
After a long battle with drug addiction, Sae Joon Park felt settled in a new life. But he was deported last year and is now fighting to get back to Hawaii. (Kim, 3/6)

MEDICAID AND SNAP

AP: Trump Administration Launches Medicaid Fraud Probe In New York
President Donald Trump’s administration is expanding its crackdown on state Medicaid programs to New York, launching a fraud probe in the state a week after it said it was freezing nearly $260 million in Medicaid funding in Minnesota over similar accusations. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz announced Tuesday that the Trump administration identified concerning trends in New York’s Medicaid program and demanded that state officials provide details about their handling of fraud, waste and abuse within 30 days or risk deferred payments. (Swenson and Izaguirre, 3/5)

The New York Times: 180,000 New Yorkers May Lose Food Stamp Benefits Under New Work Rules 
Social workers are scrambling to alert recipients and help them find jobs before their aid is eliminated under President Trump’s sweeping domestic policy law. (Haag, 3/6)

CalMatters: Trump’s Medicaid Work Mandate Could Kick Thousands Of Homeless Californians Off Coverage
On a brisk January morning, physician assistant Brett Feldman searched the streets of Los Angeles for patients, knocking on car windows and peering into tents. It was the day after a winter storm had doused the city, and many of the unhoused people Feldman usually treats had moved to find somewhere dry. Feldman leads the street medicine team at the USC Keck School of Medicine, providing primary care to thousands of L.A.’s homeless individuals. Many have chronic conditions, mental health disorders, wounds or other medical issues; they need health care desperately. (Hwang, 3/5)

MORE ON THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

MedPage Today: Med Schools, HHS Announce Nutrition Education Initiative
A group of 53 medical schools pledged to increase the amount of time spent on medical students' nutrition education starting this fall, HHS announced Thursday. "I'm pleased to announce a transformative breakthrough in medical education," HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said at a press conference at the department's headquarters. "It will reshape the way that we train doctors in our country and deliver on President Trump's promise to end the chronic disease epidemic in America." (Frieden, 3/5)

NPR: Tylenol Use By Pregnant Women In ERs Dropped After Trump Autism Warning
President Trump told pregnant women in September 2025 to avoid Tylenol because taking it would increase their babies' risk of autism: "Taking Tylenol is not good — I'll say it: It's not good." Doctors and scientists quickly said the data didn't support the president's claim, but emergency room orders for Tylenol, or acetaminophen, for pregnant patients went down 10% in the months that followed, according to a new study in The Lancet. There was no change in the acetaminophen orders for comparable women who weren't pregnant. (Lupkin, 3/5)

NBC News: RFK Jr. Vowed To Restore Public Trust In Health. It's Not Working, A New Survey Suggests
Americans are losing confidence in the nation’s public health agencies, according to a survey from the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. The survey of 1,650 adults, conducted last month, found that on matters of health, a majority of Americans say they have far more confidence in their own doctors, pediatricians and career scientists at federal agencies than the political appointees charged with overseeing those scientists. (Edwards, 3/5)

Newsweek: RFK Jr. Responds To Backlash Over Dunkin’ Comments
Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr has responded to public backlash about his announcement that Dunkin' Donuts will be asked to hand over "safety data," in a call to review the health impact of its beverages. Last week, the health secretary said at a rally in Austin: "We’re going to ask Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks, ‘Show us the safety data that show that it’s okay for a teenage girl to drink an iced coffee with 115 grams of sugar in it.'" He added: "I don’t think they’re going to be able to do it." (Laws, 3/6)

Politico: Why One Of The World's Biggest Animal Rights Group Is Praising Trump
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. eats steak for breakfast, and has been accused by family members of blending up mice and chickens to feed his hawks and cutting off a dead whale’s head to bring it home. But he has nonetheless found common cause with one of America’s most uncompromising animal rights groups. The health secretary’s kinship with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals — which has reported popping champagne at its Virginia headquarters to celebrate — stems from Kennedy’s determination to end animal testing. (Gardner, 3/5)

ON CAPITOL HILL

Bloomberg: Meta, Google Online Child Safety Rules Advanced By House Panel
A key House committee on Thursday advanced a package of bills aimed at improving children’s safety online, injecting fresh momentum for a light-touch US effort as countries race to create new protections for minors on social media. The package, which combines 12 bills, marks the committee’s most serious effort this year to regulate platforms including Meta Platforms Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google and TikTok Inc. as the companies face legal scrutiny over online harms to children. The tech industry has vigorously fought similar legislation in the past. (Birnbaum and Seddiq, 3/5)

HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY

Modern Healthcare: CHS To Sell 4 Hospitals To Freeman Health System In $112M Deal
A Community Health Systems subsidiary signed a definitive agreement to sell four Arkansas hospitals to Freeman Health System for $112 million. The deal announced Thursday would include the 128-bed Northwest Medical Center-Bentonville, the 222-bed Northwest Medical Center-Springdale, the 64-bed Northwest Medical Center–Willow Creek Women’s Hospital and the 73-bed Siloam Springs Regional Hospital, in addition to related outpatient centers and practices. The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter, pending regulatory approval. (Hudson, 3/5)

Fierce Healthcare: Salesforce Unveils New AI Agents To Take On Healthcare Paperwork
Salesforce is building out its library of pre-wired artificial intelligence agents to take on manual, administrative work on behalf of payers, providers and public health organizations. The company is partnering with three health tech companies—HealthEx, Verily and Viz.ai—to handle the heavy lifting for healthcare organizations by automating tasks from clinical intake and electronic health record updates to hospital bed management and monitoring for contagious outbreaks. (Landi, 3/6)

Modern Healthcare: Chronic Condition Patients Drive Most Of Healthcare Use: Vizient
Patients with one or more chronic conditions account for the majority of healthcare use — and a fragmented approach to delivery is driving up costs, according to a recent report from Vizient. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Chronic has noted chronic conditions such as heart disease, cancer, stroke and diabetes are becoming more common in the United States. (DeSilva, 3/5)

Modern Healthcare: Insurer Coalition's 'Hospital Watch' Targets Consolidation, Costs
A health insurance industry-backed coalition is going after hospitals in a bid to capitalize on Washington’s bipartisan focus on affordability and rising healthcare costs. Better Solutions for Healthcare launched its “Hospital Watch” campaign last month. The organization’s website links to news articles and data that are unflattering to the hospital sector. A banner on the home page reads, “Shining a Light on Corporate Hospital Systems’ Role in Driving America’s Healthcare Cost Crisis.” (McAuliff, 3/5)

The Washington Post: What Families Need To Know About Antipsychotic Drug Use In Nursing Homes
A man upset over the death of his wife kept a blanket over his head in his Minnesota nursing home. Staff gave him a powerful antipsychotic drug. Another man, in a Philadelphia facility, yelled during two evening shifts. He also got an antipsychotic. And in Michigan, a man was left sitting in his own waste for hours because he was so overmedicated with one of the drugs, he couldn’t hit a call button to summon staff for help. (Rowland, 3/6)

PHARMACEUTICALS

The New York Times: Ex-Executive At Blood Filter Start-Up Is Charged With Covering Up Deaths
Federal prosecutors charged a former executive of ExThera Medical, a California medical-device manufacturer, with concealing from the government the deaths of two cancer patients who were treated with the company’s blood filter. Dr. Sanja Ilic, ExThera’s former chief regulatory officer, agreed to plead guilty and faces up to three years in prison, the Justice Department said Thursday. Prosecutors also entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with ExThera in which the company admitted that it defrauded and misled the Food and Drug Administration by failing to report the deaths. (Carreyrou, 3/5)

The Wall Street Journal: Federal Health Officials Attack Rare-Disease Drug, Say Company Lied
Federal health officials, facing criticism from lawmakers for recent rejections of rare-disease drugs, attacked an Amsterdam-based biotech company seeking approval of a Huntington’s disease treatment and accused it of lying. The public criticism of Uniqure by officials at the Food and Drug Administration and Department of Health and Human Services was unusual for agencies that normally shy away from commenting on products still under consideration. (Essley Whyte, 3/5)

Modern Healthcare: Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly Tighten 340B Oversight As Providers Fume
Drugmakers are upping their demands for transparency in the 340B Drug Pricing Program by imposing new requirements that have sparked ire among safety-net providers. Novo Nordisk issued a notice to hospitals and other 340B participants on Monday saying providers will be required to submit comprehensive claims-level data in order to receive discounts on medications starting April 1. A similar Eli Lilly policy took effect last month. (Early, 3/5)

Modern Healthcare: CVS Health To Launch AI Platform Health100
CVS Health plans to launch a health technology subsidiary later this year that will offer an artificial intelligence-based platform designed to help consumers access healthcare information and services. The platform will allow patients to find providers, compare costs of care and centralize their health records and information, CVS said. It also will make recommendations for the next steps of care for patients with chronic conditions and offer care management through a digital health portal between visits. (DeSilva, 3/5)

CIDRAP: GARDP To Explore Animal Antibiotic As A Potential Superbug Treatment
The Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership (GARDP) is looking into the potential of an older antibiotic used exclusively in veterinary medicine to treat highly drug-resistant infections in people. GARDP said today that it has acquired all data and licensing rights for apramycin, an aminoglycoside antibiotic introduced in the early 1980s to treat gram-negative bacterial infections in animals. Bought from Swiss drugmaker Juvabis AG after it closed in 2025, the drug has shown potential for human use in preclinical trials. (Dall, 3/5)

STATE WATCH

CBS News: Bipartisan Bill Aims To Make Minnesota Health Insurers Cover Infertility Treatments
A bipartisan group of Minnesota lawmakers are pushing for a law requiring health insurers to cover infertility treatment. One in six struggle with their fertility, according to Resolve, a national infertility research organization, so this bill could help thousands of people. The bill, put forward by Republican state Sen. Julia Coleman and Democratic state Sen. Erin Maye Quade, will go before the Senate Commerce Committee Thursday. (3/5)

Mountain State Spotlight: Lawmakers Chip Away At Water Protections As Senate Moves To Weaken Aboveground Storage Tank Rules
West Virginia lawmakers in the Senate passed a bill to weaken drinking water protections by loosening regulations for certain aboveground storage tanks. It is the latest move to weaken the Aboveground Storage Tank Act, passed in 2014 after a chemical leak from Freedom Industries along the Elk River contaminated drinking water for nearly 300,000 West Virginians in the Charleston area. The bill would further decrease the number of tanks that must meet inspection and monitoring requirements designed to protect drinking water. (Spencer, 3/5)

NBC News: New Mexico Confirms Latest Measles Case At A Local Jail
The number of confirmed measles cases in New Mexico increased to six after the state's Department of Health confirmed Wednesday a new case inside a local jail in Las Cruces. A federal inmate being held in the Doña Ana County Detention Center is the latest person to have tested positive for measles. The New Mexico Department of Health said others may have been exposed to the highly contagious disease from this confirmed case if they visited the U.S. District Court building in Las Cruces on Feb. 24. (Acevedo, 3/5)

The New York Times: D.C. Court Strikes Down Local Ban On High-Capacity Gun Magazines 
A local law in the District of Columbia banning gun magazines that contain more than 10 bullets was struck down as unconstitutional by a three-judge panel on Thursday. (Schwartz, 3/5)

CBS News: Cases Of Carbon Monoxide Exposure In Maryland Up By 50% So Far In 2026
Cases of carbon monoxide (CO) exposure in Maryland increased by nearly 50% in 2026 compared to last year, according to data from the State Department of Health. In 2025, the state recorded a total of 167 emergency room and urgent care visits due to CO exposure. So far this year, 251 cases have been reported, data shows. ... More than 400 people die from unintentional carbon monoxide poisoning each year in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (Moodee Lockman, 3/5)

The New York Times: Potomac River In D.C. Is Safe, Officials Say. But Locals Still Worry About The Poop. 
A broken pipe sent a gusher of sewage into the river near Washington. Some people may try to row, sail or fish. But skeptics are steering clear. (Qin, 3/6)

CBS News: Lady Gaga Donates $100,000 To Atlanta Non-Profit Supporting Youth Mental Health And Education
Lady Gaga isn't just leaving an impact in Atlanta through her stop at State Farm Arena for her Mayhem Ball Tour this week. Her Born This Way Foundation recently donated $100,000 to COR, a non-profit focused on empowering young people through education, mental health support, and fighting social inequality. Almost every school day after class, Carver High Students can stop by one of COR's meetups on campus to talk to other students and guidance counselors. Thursday, they talked about how they want to create more unity among students at Carver Steam Academy and Carver Early College (EC). (John, 3/5)

The Boston Globe: School Nurses Tell Investigator Their Warnings Went Unheeded Before Sharon, Mass., Football Player's Catastrophic Injury
Anguished nurses at Sharon High School urgently appealed to administrators in the fall of 2024 to avert a potential medical crisis by hiring a full-time athletic trainer, according to an investigative report commissioned by the school system and obtained by the Globe. But their repeated warnings went unheeded for months, the nurses told an investigator, and their worst fears were realized when a 15-year-old Sharon High football player, Rohan Shukla, suffered a life-shattering brain injury during the annual Thanksgiving game. (Hohler, 3/6)

The New York Times: They Helped Her Open A Weed Shop. Now They’re Suing For $2.5 Million
Leeann Mata made history two years ago when she became the first Black woman to open a legal cannabis dispensary in Brooklyn. She started the business with the support of Housing Works, a nonprofit that assists people living with AIDS. It seemed to be a perfect match — years ago, three of Ms. Mata’s brothers were detained on low-level marijuana offenses under state laws that have since been amended, and Housing Works had expanded its mission to helping those negatively affected by the so-called war on drugs. But the partnership quickly soured. (Southall, 3/5)

CIDRAP: Avian Flu Detected At 20 Commercial Poultry Operations
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has confirmed at least 20 H5N1 avian flu outbreaks on commercial poultry facilities this past week, including five detections on facilities in LaGrange County, Indiana. Also hit this week was a commercial broiler production facility in Carolina County, Maryland, with 95,600 birds affected. Commercial table egg layers had the largest outbreaks reported to APHIS. A facility in Hyde County, North Carolina, had 3.2 million birds affected, and a facility in Jefferson County, Wisconsin, had 1.2 million birds involved. (Soucheray, 3/5)

GLOBAL WATCH

AP: Jamaica Ending Agreement With Cuba Over Medical Missions
Jamaica’s foreign ministry said Thursday it was ending a decades-long agreement with Cuba involving its medical missions. The unexpected move comes as the U.S. pushes for ending such missions, with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio calling it “forced labor” and a “form of human trafficking.” (3/6)