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What dish will health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. make on the first episode of his new cooking show? Wrong answers only.
Another CDC director nominee has entered the villa …
…and it’s likely she stays.
The Senate health committee approved Erica Schwartz for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director after securing a vote from every Republican member and Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine. Her nomination now moves to the full Senate floor, where it is likely to be confirmed.
The panel also approved Sean Kaufman to be the pandemic preparedness leader once Chair Bill Cassidy (R-La.) set aside his reservations to support a Trump administration pick. Kaufman is also expected to be confirmed.
Cassidy’s vote comes after he clashed with Kaufman over past remarks questioning vaccine safety, but federal health officials reportedly assuaged his concerns. Will the outgoing Louisiana senator regret his vote, which echoes his decision to support Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in February 2025? Read more from STAT’s Chelsea Cirruzzo.
Judge rejects states’ bid to delay Medicaid work requirements
A federal judge has denied 26 states’ request to postpone the implementation of Medicaid work requirements.
The verdict, announced yesterday, ends a suit that would have altered a piece of one of President Trump’s highest legislative priorities. The states argued in a hearing Tuesday that they did not have the staff or capacity to roll out these requirements by Jan. 1. U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns of Massachusetts disagreed. His ruling will also force states to communicate with Medicaid recipients by Aug. 31 regarding how the changes will affect Medicaid enrollees in each individual state.
Spreading that information will be crucial for the nearly 80% of Americans who are unfamiliar with these requirements, according to a new poll from the National Alliance on Mental Health and Ipsos.
States still have a few procedural tricks that could delay the work requirements, but read Anil Oza’s story for a full breakdown of this consequential verdict and its larger implications.
How syphilis spreads across borders
Why did STI transmission continue when nonessential U.S.-Mexico border crossings were suspended during the pandemic?
That’s the question and epidemiological link that researchers at the University of California, San Diego wanted to answer, and they were thrilled when an NIH administrator approved a study in San Diego and Tijuana. But two years later, under Trump administration changes, they were told they could no longer share funds with their Mexican collaborators. In the meantime, a shortage of intramuscular penicillin, used to treat syphilis, seemed to underscore the vulnerability of the unhoused, drug-using populations they so often worked with.
The UCSD team told STAT’s Eric Boodman that lately, about 10% of their research participants have been found to have active syphilis. For his latest story, Eric traveled to San Diego to understand the real-life impact of federal constraints and a drug shortage. He tagged along with Carlos Vera, a UCSD outreach coordinator, and a skeptical unhoused research participant named GB. Read more about the “silent crisis” of unreported sexually transmitted infections.
Federal government could improve infectious disease monitoring, says federal government
The Government Accountability Office released a report yesterday stating that the United States needs to beef up its surveillance of emerging infectious diseases.
The GAO convened a roundtable of 18 experts in April and May 2025 to discuss actions to improve public health surveillance and also gathered additional input in the following months. The experts suggested a number of fixes for this gap. Most notably, they called for a comprehensive national strategy for surveillance of emerging infectious disease threats, highlighting the importance of tracking factors such as wastewater, farm animals, and high-risk populations.
The report arrives as the U.S. is on the cusp of losing its measles elimination status and Republican politicians are relitigating the origins of the Covid pandemic and trying to place former U.S. health official Anthony Fauci “behind bars” for his role in shepherding the country through the pandemic.
Experts also cited proper public messaging as being key to this network, saying, “a lack of communication professionals and trusted messengers … is one of the reasons why public health and surveillance messaging continues to fall short.”
Here’s the full report, if you’re curious.
Limb girdle muscular dystrophy patients paying the price for FDA’s inaction
For people like Kat Bryant Knudson, who has a progressive disease called limb girdle muscular dystrophy, every day that a promising therapy is delayed is another day that they lose more muscle function, more mobility. Why, then, is the Food and Drug Administration failing to use tools created by Congress that would speed up rare disease drug development?
Rare disease care is undergoing a revolution, with new gene therapies and targeted treatments emerging daily. With the Food and Drug Omnibus Reform Act of 2022, Congress enabled the FDA to utilize a tool called platform technology designation to modernize drug development. But a growing chorus of patients, clinicians, and advocacy organizations are sounding the alarm that the agency is failing to use this regulatory flexibility.
Read more about what’s happening at the FDA from the founder and CEO of The Speak Foundation, a patient-led nonprofit advancing care, research, advocacy, and treatment development for people living with limb girdle muscular dystrophy.
What we’re reading
- We once praised the American Diabetes Association’s courage. How things have changed, STAT
- U.S. lawmakers press health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on vaccine settlement, Reuters
- Dozens of states tried to roll back vaccine laws. Here’s how they fared, New York Times
- Medicaid insurers’ contracts on the line in tight governor’s race, KFF Health News
- Cyclospora outbreak may have peaked in Michigan after lettuce recall, NBC News