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    RFK Jr.’s War on Pesticides Riles Farmers and a Republican Senator

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    A health report commissioned by President Trump has been causing angst within the agriculture industry who fear the chemicals will be identified as a driver of childhood disease.Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s long-running crusade against agricultural chemicals ran into pushback on Tuesday from the agriculture industry and a Republican senator, who pointedly instructed Mr. Kennedy not to interfere with the livelihood of American farmers by suggesting certain pesticides are unsafe.The admonition from the senator, Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, came as President Trump was preparing to release a report on Thursday from a commission, led by Mr. Kennedy and named for his movement, to examine the causes of childhood chronic disease.Mr. Trump established the panel to look at a range of potential factors, including chemicals, which Mr. Kennedy has said “pollute our bodies the same way that they pollute the soil.” Mr. Kennedy and his followers in the “Make America Healthy Again” movement have previously singled out the agricultural chemical glyphosate, originally made by Monsanto, which is now owned by Bayer, the German chemical and pharmaceutical giant.The key ingredient in Roundup, the chemical has long been a target of environmental groups. In 2020, Bayer paid more than $10 billion to settle tens of thousands of claims alleging Roundup causes cancer. In 2018, when he was an environmental lawyer, Mr. Kennedy helped win a $289 million judgment against Monsanto, in a case brought by a man who said the company’s weedkillers, including Roundup, caused his cancer.As Mr. Kennedy was testifying Tuesday before members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Ms. Hyde-Smith asserted that “1,500 studies and 50-plus years of review” of glyphosate by the Environmental Protection Agency and “other global health authorities have affirmed its safety when used as directed.” She also suggested in no uncertain terms that the commission had better get its facts straight.“Mr. Secretary, we have to get this right; you have to be 100 percent certain,” Ms. Hyde-Smith said, adding, “Before you start suggesting an initial assessment that the methods in which the farmers provide our food is unsafe, I trust your report will be described as an initial assessment of things to be considered but yet to be determined.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      F.D.A. Approves Novavax Covid Vaccine With Stricter New Conditions

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      The agency narrowed who can get the shot and added new study requirements that could cost the company tens of millions.The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved the Novavax Covid-19 vaccine, but only for older adults and for others over age 12 who have at least one medical condition that puts them at high risk from Covid.Scientific advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who typically make decisions on who should get approved shots and when, have been debating whether to recommend Covid shots only to the most vulnerable Americans. The F.D.A.’s decision appeared to render at least part of their discussion moot.The new restriction will sharply limit access to the Novavax vaccine for people under 65 who are in good health. It may leave Americans who do not have underlying conditions at risk if a more virulent version of the coronavirus were to emerge. It could also limit options for people who want the vaccine for a wide array of reasons, including to protect a vulnerable loved one.The vaccine had previously been authorized under emergency use. Covid vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, which are more widely used by Americans, were granted full approval in 2022. However, the companies are working on updated shots for the fall, and the new restrictions on the Novavax shot portend a more restrictive approach from the F.D.A.The F.D.A.’s new restrictions also appeared to reflect the high degree of skepticism about vaccines from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, and the other leaders he has appointed at health agencies.“This is incredibly disappointing,” said Dr. Camille Kotton, an infectious disease physician at Massachusetts General Hospital who cares for immunocompromised patients, and a former adviser to the C.D.C.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Budget Cuts Hobble Antismoking Programs

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      Students at Wyoming East High School in West Virginia’s coal country had different reasons for joining Raze, a state program meant to raise awareness about the health risks of tobacco and e-cigarettes.Cayden Oliver, 17, grew up around generations of people who smoked and vaped, and he wanted to make his own choice. Nathiah Brown, 18, was struggling to quit e-cigarettes and showed up for moral support. Kimberly Mills, 18, wanted to prove that even though she had been a foster child, she would defy the odds.This high school’s program cost West Virginia less than $3,000 a year and was meant to protect teenagers in the state that has the highest vaping rate in their age group. It fell prey to U.S. government health budget cuts that included hundreds of millions of dollars in tobacco control funds that reached far beyond Washington, D.C.At the high school, students pack into stalls in the school restrooms, sneaking puffs between classes. “It’s bad now,” said Logan Stacy, 18, a member of the Raze group. “Imagine what it will be like in two years.”Experts on tobacco control said the Trump administration’s funding cuts would set back a quarter-century of public health efforts that have driven the smoking rate to a record low and saved lives and billions of dollars in health care spending. Still, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that nearly 29 million people in the United States continue to smoke.The decimation of antismoking work follows a year of lavish campaign donations by tobacco and e-cigarette companies to President Trump and congressional Republicans.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Federal Report Denounces Gender Treatments for Adolescents

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      The H.H.S. review may set the stage for additional restrictions on gender-affirming care. Critics described it as an ideological statement.Federal health officials published a report on Thursday declaring that the use of hormonal and surgical treatments in young people with gender dysphoria lacked scientific evidence and expressing concern about long-term harms, a stark reversal from previous agency recommendations and the advice of top U.S. medical groups.The report instead prioritized the role of psychotherapy, a divisive intervention to treat gender dysphoria that many advocates and physicians have equated with so-called conversion therapy.Other parts of the review seemed to call into question the very notion that some people have a gender identity that does not align with their sex at birth.In January, President Trump signed an executive order titled “Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation” giving the Department of Health and Human Services 90 days to produce a report on the best practices for treating young people who say their gender does not align with their birth sex.But the order made it clear that the administration had already reached its own conclusion about gender transition treatments for minors, characterizing the “blatant harm done to children” as a “stain on our nation’s history.”The 400-page report took a more sober tone but reached a similar conclusion. In a remarkable departure from the standard for medical evidence reviews, the authors were not identified pending a post-publication review process that would begin in “the coming days.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Cuts Threaten Meals and Services for People With Disabilities and the Aging

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      Every Monday, Maurine Gentis, a retired teacher, waits for a delivery from Meals on Wheels South Texas.“The meals help stretch my budget,” Ms. Gentis, 77, said. Living alone and in a wheelchair, she appreciates having someone look in on her regularly. The same group, a nonprofit, delivers books from the library and dry food for her cat.But Ms. Gentis is anxious about what lies ahead. The small government agency responsible for overseeing programs like Meals on Wheels is being dismantled as part of the Trump administration’s overhaul of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Roughly half its staff has been let go in recent layoffs and all of its 10 regional offices are closed, according to several employees who lost their jobs.“I’m just kind of worried that the whole thing might go down the drain, too,” Ms. Gentis said.In President Trump ’s quest to end what he termed “illegal and immoral discrimination programs,” one of his executive orders promoted cracking down on federal efforts to improve accessibility and representation for those with disabilities, with agencies flagging words like “accessible” and “disability” as potentially problematic. Certain research studies are no longer being funded, and many government health employees specializing in disability issues have been fired.The downsizing of the agency, the Administration for Community Living, is part of far-reaching cuts planned at the H.H.S. under the Trump administration’s proposed budget.While some federal funding may continue through September, the end of the government’s fiscal year, and some workers have been called back temporarily, there is significant uncertainty about the future. And some groups are reporting delays in receiving expected federal funds.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tariffs on China Aren’t Likely to Rescue Battered U.S. P.P.E. Industry

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      The few domestic companies that still make protective gear for health care workers have clamored for federal intervention. But they worry President Trump’s trade war with China won’t help.Few domestic industries have been as devastated by the flood of cheap Chinese imports as manufacturers of face masks, exam gloves and other disposable medical gear that protects health care workers from infectious pathogens.The industry’s demise had calamitous consequences during the Covid pandemic, when Beijing halted exports and American hospital workers found themselves at the mercy of a deadly airborne virus that quickly filled the nation’s emergency rooms and morgues.But as President Trump unveiled his tariff regimen earlier this month, and Beijing retaliated with an 84 percent tax on American imports, the few remaining companies that make protective gear in the United States felt mostly unease.“I’m pretty freaked out,” said Lloyd Armbrust, the chief executive of Armbrust American, a pandemic-era startup that produces N95 respirator masks at a factory in Texas. “On one hand, this is the kind of medicine we need if we really are going to become independent of China. On the other hand, this is not responsible industrial policy.”The United States once dominated the field of personal protective equipment, or P.P.E. The virus-filtering N95 mask and the disposable nitrile glove are American inventions, but China now produces more than 90 percent of the medical gear worn by American health care workers.Despite bipartisan vows to end the nation’s dependency on foreign medical products — and to shore up the dozens of domestic manufacturers that sprung up during the pandemic — federal agencies and state governments have resumed their reliance on inexpensive Chinese imports. Earlier this year, when California purchased millions of N95 masks for those affected by the Los Angeles wildfires, it chose masks made in China.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      RFK Jr. Announces Ban on Food Dyes and Says ‘Sugar Is Poison’

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      Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. escalated his war against the food industry on Tuesday, declaring that “sugar is poison.”Mr. Kennedy’s comment came during a highly publicized news conference where he also asserted that he has “an understanding” with major food manufacturers to remove petroleum-based food colorings from their products by 2026.No one from the food industry attended the event, and none have publicly agreed to Mr. Kennedy’s demands, although the International Dairy Foods Association has pledged to eliminate artificial colors in milk cheese and yogurt sold to schools as part of the federal lunch and breakfast programs by the start of the 2026 school year.However, Mr. Kennedy and his advisers said that every major food manufacturer and some fast-food companies have contacted the agency looking for guidance.“Four years from now, we are going to have most of these products off the market, or you will know about them when you go to the grocery store,” Mr. Kennedy said.Mr. Kennedy’s push to get food manufacturers to remove dyes from their products is his first effort at sweeping reform of the food industry, which he has long blamed for creating and marketing ultra-processed foods that he says are making Americans obese and contributing to a host of diseases, including diabetes and heart disease.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In Trump Attack on Harvard, Punishment Before Proof

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      The legal underpinnings of the administration’s broadsides against universities and schools stretch precedents and cut corners.In the White House’s campaign against Harvard University, the punishment came swiftly.The Trump administration has frozen $2.2 billion in grants to the school, while seeking to exert unprecedented control over hiring, impose unspecified reforms to its medical and divinity schools, block certain foreign students from enrolling and, potentially, revoke its tax-exempt status.It is a broadside with little precedent. And, as with the White House’s other attacks on universities, colleges and even K-12 schools, the legal justifications have been muddled, stretched and, in some instances, impossible to determine.“It’s punishment before a trial, punishment before evidence, punishment before an actual accusation that could be responded to,” said Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education and the U.S. Department of Education’s third-ranking official during the Obama administration. “People talk about why higher ed hasn’t responded. Well, how can you fight a shadow in this way?​”The legality of each threat varies. In more typical times, some of the individual punishments might be validated by lengthy investigations in which a university would have a right to defend itself.But taken together, law professors and education experts said, the immediacy of the sanctions and threats conveyed an unmistakable hostility toward Harvard and other schools in the president’s sights. The broad vendetta, they said, could weaken the legal argument for each individual action.“You can’t make decisions — even if you have the power to do so — on the basis of animus,” said Brian Galle, a Georgetown University law professor who teaches about taxation policy and nonprofit organizations. “Those aren’t permissible reasons that the government can act. And so what’s interesting about the fact that it’s doing all of these things to Harvard at the same time, is that undermines the legitimacy of each of them individually.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump-Allied Prosecutor Sends Letters to Medical Journals Alleging Bias

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      An interim U.S. attorney is demanding information about the selection of research articles and the role of N.I.H. Experts worry this will have a chilling effect on publications.A federal prosecutor has sent letters to at least three medical journals accusing them of political bias and asking a series of probing questions suggesting that the journals mislead readers, suppress opposing viewpoints and are inappropriately swayed by their funders.The letters were signed by Edward Martin Jr., a Republican activist serving as interim U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C. He has been criticized for using his office to target opponents of President Trump.Some scientists and doctors said they viewed the letters as a threat from the Trump administration that could have a chilling effect on what journals publish. The health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has said he wants to prosecute medical journals, accusing them of lying to the public and colluding with pharmaceutical companies.One of the letters was sent to the journal Chest, published by the American College of Chest Physicians. The New York Times obtained a copy of the letter.The Times confirmed that at least two other publishers had received nearly identically worded letters, but those publishers would not speak publicly because they feared retribution from the Trump administration.In the letter to Chest, dated Monday, Mr. Martin wrote, “It has been brought to my attention that more and more journals and publications like CHEST Journal are conceding that they are partisans in various scientific debates.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More