DocMcStuffin

Health departments around the country have noticed there's something strange happening with funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: It's not showing up on schedule and there's been no communication about why.

The federal public health agency doles out most of the money it receives from Congress to state and local health departments, which then contract with local organizations. That's how public health work gets funded in the U.S.

According to two CDC staff members with knowledge of the agency's budget, the CDC has yet to receive its full funding for the 2025 fiscal year. NPR agreed not to name the staff members because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

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"If they can delay until the end of September, then that's it," the staffer adds. "Those projects are not going to happen. That money goes straight back to Treasury."

That's why both CDC staffers who spoke with NPR say this amounts to impounding the agency's funding.

The number of homicides is falling dramatically nationwide.

In 2024, murders fell by at least 14% across the U.S., according to analyses by the data firm AH Datalytics and the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank. Official data from the FBI goes only through 2023 but shows similar drops. Early analyses from AH Datalytics suggest the drop will be even bigger in 2025.

Two environmental groups filed a lawsuit in a South Florida federal court on Friday over the immigration detention center under construction in the Everglades that has been dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.”

They later filed a motion for expedited relief, seeking entry of a temporary restraining order by July 1.

The environmental groups complain the plan has not gone through any environmental review as required under federal law, and that the public has not had an opportunity to comment.

“The site is more than 96% wetlands, surrounded by the Big Cypress National Preserve, and is habitat for the endangered Florida Panther and other iconic species,” said Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades. “The scheme is not only cruel, it threatens the Everglades ecosystem that state and federal taxpayers have spent billions to protect.”

https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/planetary-defense/2025/04/02/nasa-update-on-the-size-estimate-and-lunar-impact-probability-of-asteroid-2024-yr4/

Tuesday’s decision temporarily stops the bill from moving forward.

The Florida Senate Committee on Criminal Justice has struck down a proposal to allow guns on college campuses.

The bill (SB 914) sponsored by Brevard Republican Senator Randy Fine, failed to get enough “yes” votes on Tuesday after one Republican rejected the idea.

Florida lawmakers rolled back some of the state’s child labor protections last year. Now, a proposal is advancing in Tallahassee that would strip them completely for those 16 and older.

The rollback would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to work full-time, including late nights and days longer than eight-hour even on school nights without required breaks. The proposal would also waive those same protections for 14- and 15-year-olds who are enrolled in home school, virtual education, or those who have already graduated and received a high school diploma.

A bill that would radically change Florida’s citizen-led constitutional amendment process received its first hearing in the Legislature on Thursday, where dozens of Floridians warned it would deal a major blow to direct democracy.

The measure (HB 1205), sponsored by Fort Myers Republican Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka, was approved mostly along party-lines by the House Government Operations Subcommittee, although Osceola County Democrat Jose Alvarez joined committee Republicans in voting yes.

US Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) today proposed a law that would let copyright owners obtain court orders requiring Internet service providers to block access to foreign piracy websites. The bill would also force DNS providers to block sites.

Lofgren said in a press release that she "work[ed] for over a year with the tech, film, and television industries" on "a proposal that has a remedy for copyright infringers located overseas that does not disrupt the free Internet except for the infringers." Lofgren said she plans to work with Republican leaders to enact the bill.

Lofgren's press release includes a quote from Charles Rivkin, chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association (MPA). As we've previously written, the MPA has been urging Congress to pass a site-blocking law.

For years, Wellpath, the largest commercial provider of health care in jails and prisons across 37 states, has been the target of federal lawsuits and scrutiny by lawmakers for its practices that have been alleged to cause long-term health problems and the deaths of dozens of incarcerated individuals.

As part of the bankruptcy proceedings, a federal judge in Texas granted a pause in all lawsuits that involve Wellpath. Legal proceedings in such cases can take years in normal circumstances, but Wellpath's bankruptcy means dozens of those cases, like the Capaci case, are on hold for the foreseeable future.

Reporting Highlights

• An Insurer Sanctioned: Three states found United’s algorithmic system to limit mental health coverage illegal; when they fought it, the insurer agreed to restrict it.
• A Patchwork Problem: The company is policing mental health care with arbitrary thresholds and cost-driven targets, highlighting a key flaw in the U.S. regulatory structure.
• United’s Playbook Revealed: The poorest and most vulnerable patients are now most at risk of losing mental health care coverage as United targets them for cost savings.

Around 2016, government officials began to pry open United’s black box. They found that the nation’s largest health insurance conglomerate had been using algorithms to identify providers it determined were giving too much therapy and patients it believed were receiving too much; then, the company scrutinized their cases and cut off reimbursements.

By the end of 2021, United’s algorithm program had been deemed illegal in three states.

But that has not stopped the company from continuing to police mental health care with arbitrary thresholds and cost-driven targets, ProPublica found, after reviewing what is effectively the company’s internal playbook for limiting and cutting therapy expenses. The insurer’s strategies are still very much alive, putting countless patients at risk of losing mental health care.