Today's early morning highlights from the major news organizations.
KFF HEALTH NEWS ORIGINAL STORIES
KFF Health News: Abortion Is On The Ballot Again As Post-Roe Policies Continue To Evolve After Missouri voters added abortion protections to the state constitution in 2024, Kelly McCoomb decided to keep her yard sign supporting the measure in the basement of her suburban St. Louis home. Abortion access is important to McCoomb. She wants her daughter to grow up in a state where the option is available if needed, and the sign was a keepsake from the day Missourians voted to reverse the state’s near-total ban. McCoomb also couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d need to display the sign in her yard again soon. (Sable-Smith and Orozco Rodriguez, 9/25)
KFF Health News: KFF Health News’ ‘What The Health?’: Healthcare A Vague But Potent Issue For Election 2026 Healthcare, in particular its rising costs, is a key issue for voters in both parties this fall. But lawmakers are offering a variety of remedies on the campaign trail, suggesting that neither party has an agreed-upon approach. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has apparently backed off a plan — for now — to create a political board to review scientific grant awards from the National Institutes of Health. (Rovner, 9/24)
ON CAPITOL HILL
Stat: Senate Panel Clears Chris Klomp To Be RFK Jr.'s Top HHS Deputy A key Senate committee on Thursday approved the nomination of top federal health official Chris Klomp to be deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, clearing the way for him to be confirmed by the full Senate. (Cirruzzo and Wilkerson, 9/24)
Roll Call: FDA Nominee Evasive On Abortion Pill But Firm On Vaccine Safety Republicans and Democrats alike on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee tried repeatedly with little success to elicit opinions from the White House’s nominee to lead the Food and Drug Administration, Heidi Overton, on health policy or a pledge to assert the agency’s independence. Throughout the hearing Thursday, Overton told senators she would “follow statutory guidelines” and “review the evidence” when asked about crucial issues or the agency’s prior decisions. (Cohen, 9/24)
GUN VIOLENCE EPIDEMIC
AP: Man Who Was Shot During 2024 Trump Campaign Rally In Butler, Pennsylvania, Has Died James Copenhaver, one of three campaign rally attendees shot in 2024 during an assassination attempt on then-candidate Donald Trump, has died in Pittsburgh, his lawyer said Thursday. He was 76. Copenhaver was in the bleachers during the event in Butler, Pennsylvania, when a 20-year-old gunman opened fire from a nearby rooftop, grazing Trump’s right ear with one bullet. Copenhaver was struck in the arm and in the abdomen, wounds that left him with lingering injuries and walking with a cane. Copenhaver’s lawyer, Joseph Feldman, said in a statement issued on behalf of the family that he died surrounded by loved ones. The statement did not specify if his death was directly related to the injuries he suffered at the rally. (Johnson and Smyth, 9/24)
THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION
Becker's Hospital Review: AMA, AHA Seek Exemptions From Proposed $103K H-1B Visa Fee The American Medical Association and American Hospital Association are asking the Department of Homeland Security to exempt clinicians from a proposed $103,265 fee on H-1B visa petitions. The AMA warned the fee would make recruiting physicians to underserved areas “next to financially impossible.” (Twenter, 9/24)
Military.com: Transgender Service Members Allegedly Denied Promised Separation Pay After Forced Military Exits A group of Democratic lawmakers want answers from the Pentagon and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth following reports that roughly a dozen transgender service members never received separation pay following their forced exits from the military. (Mordowanec, 9/25)
The Hill: Students For Life America Files Notice To Sue FDA Over Mifepristone Usage The anti-abortion group Students for Life of America on Thursday filed a notice of intent to sue the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over alleged inaction over the Endangered Species Act, an escalation of the group’s years-long effort to use environmental laws to restrict abortion drugs. The organization alleges more than 50 tons of medical waste are flushed into water systems each year as a result of abortion drugs, causing significant environmental harm. Environmental scientists dispute that. (Weixel, 9/24)
OUTBREAKS AND HEALTH THREATS
The Washington Post: U.S. Pledges An Additional $267 Million To Contain Fast-Spreading Ebola The United States on Wednesday said it will give an addition $267 million in humanitarian aid to help contain and alleviate the deadly Ebola epidemic ravaging the Democratic Republic of Congo. The sum adds to the $887 million already provided, the State Department said in a statement, and will go toward building Ebola treatment units, helping response teams bury bodies safely, buying medical equipment and expanding programs meant to contain the spread of the disease. (Ombuor, 9/24)
WUSF: Florida Counties Declare States Of Emergency To Battle Dengue Fever Hillsborough County, which remains an active area for dengue fever, declared a state of emergency Thursday over the mosquito-borne illness. So did neighboring Pasco and Pinellas, which took the proactive step to prevent the disease from spreading across county lines. (Mayer, 9/24)
CIDRAP: 10 More Sickened In Salmonella Outbreak Tied To Broccoli Sprouts Ten more people have fallen ill in a multistate Salmonella outbreak linked to broccoli sprouts, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in an update today. The outbreak of Salmonella Bovismorbificans has now sickened 32 people in six states, with three hospitalized. Illness-onset dates range from July 7 to September 3. Of the 27 people who’ve been interviewed, 26 reported eating sprouts or microgreens. (Dall, 9/24)
CIDRAP: Pennsylvania Tops 800 Measles Cases As CDC Acknowledges Only 1 Measles Death Measles cases in Pennsylvania have now reached 835, according to the state Department of Health yesterday, and 43 of them are new. In addition, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) yesterday listed a single measles death for 2026 on its dashboard—its first confirmed death of 2026—but Pennsylvania is still reporting four recent deaths related to the virus. (Soucheray, 9/24)
NBC News: America Had Wiped Out Measles. As Pennsylvania Outbreak Grows Babies Are Infected At Birth At least six babies in Pennsylvania have been born infected with measles, with two so sick they had to be admitted to intensive care. The growing outbreak is raising alarm among doctors who are treating the potentially deadly condition. Congenital measles is a disease that’s rarely, if ever, seen in the U.S. (Edwards, 9/24)
CIDRAP: H5N1 Avian Flu Activity Picking Up In Minnesota As Study Notes Virus In Polar Bears The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) recorded eight new H5N1 avian flu outbreaks among commercial poultry, backyard flocks, and commercial turkey operations, with six of the outbreaks reported in Minnesota, while a new study reports H5 avian flu in polar bears in Alaska. Montana and Wisconsin each reported a single poultry outbreak. (Soucheray, 9/24)
CIDRAP: Fractured Ecosystems, Climate Change Raise Risk Of Zoonotic, Vector-Borne Disease Outbreaks, Study Finds An analysis of more than 58,000 outbreaks of 32 diseases in 169 countries finds that the fragmentation of ecosystems and climate change–related declines in rainfall have driven up the risk of diseases that spread from animals, mosquitoes, ticks, and fleas to people. For the study, published yesterday in Nature, an international group of researchers assessed outbreaks of zoonotic diseases (those transmitted directly from animals to people) such as coronaviruses, Ebola, and mpox and vector-borne diseases (those spread by mosquitoes, ticks, and fleas), including dengue, Lyme disease, and malaria. (Van Beusekom, 9/24)
HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY
Fierce Healthcare: Maine Governor Urges Fired Nurses Reinstated Ahead Of Union Vote Accusations of retaliatory firings have been met with denouncement of an "increasingly aggressive" national smear campaign against Prime Healthcare. (Muoio, 9/24)
MPR News: Unionized Doctors Reach Tentative Deal With Allina Health After Four-Day Strike The union representing about 150 doctors at Allina Health’s Mercy Hospital in Coon Rapids and its Unity campus in Fridley announced Wednesday that it has reached a tentative agreement for a first contract with the health system. (Zurek, 9/24)
Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Georgia’s Morehouse Medical Students Face Food Struggles Amid Aid Delays Leah Mohnkern had heard there were delays in financial aid disbursements at the Morehouse School of Medicine, but she didn’t realize how serious the problem was until a few weeks ago when she learned a classmate was struggling to afford meals. “She’d basically been eating snacks as her primary source of energy for weeks,” said Mohnkern, a second-year medical student. “It was really hard to hear because obviously studying is really challenging … You can’t do it on an empty stomach.” (Armesto, 9/25)
Healthcare Dive: UnitedHealth Names First Chief Administrative Officer UnitedHealth has named a longtime corporate strategy and workforce management executive as its inaugural chief administrative officer as the healthcare behemoth continues to overhaul its leadership amid intense scrutiny of its business practices. As CAO, Jodee Kozlak will work to modernize and align UnitedHealth’s operations across different businesses. She’ll oversee a portfolio that initially includes human resources, real estate, procurement and corporate security, according to a Thursday press release. (Parduhn, 9/24)
Modern Healthcare: Novant Health To Sell 36 Urgent Care Centers To Prisma Health Prisma Health has agreed to acquire 36 urgent care locations in South Carolina from Novant Health. The deal, slated to close Nov. 1, involves an estimated 500 employees, according to a Thursday news release. Financial terms were not disclosed. (DeSilva, 9/24)
Fierce Healthcare: Hospitals' Use Of AI Coding Tools Cost BCBSA Plans $942M More For Similar Care: Analysis Hospitals’ increasing use of artificial intelligence for patient coding has increased the frequency of inpatient stays classified as medically complex—boosting the bills sent to payers despite no apparent changes in the care being delivered, according to a new claims analysis from the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association. (Muoio, 9/24)
Modern Healthcare: Cigna Group, OpenAI Partner To Expand Complex Care Offerings The Cigna Group plans to integrate technology from artificial intelligence giant OpenAI to bolster its offerings for patients with complex health conditions. The collaboration will initially focus on oncology, aiming to streamline support care for cancer patients. For example, the company said one capability will provide oncology nurses and case managers across Accredo Specialty Pharmacy and Cigna Healthcare with AI-based tools to aggregate patients’ clinical, pharmacy, behavioral and benefits information. (DeSilva, 9/24)
Modern Healthcare: Payers, Providers See Growth Opportunities In Senior Living Providers and payers are deploying clinicians and technology to senior living communities in collaborations aimed at lowering the cost of care for older adults. Programs that offer healthcare services within senior living communities have been growing and could create a new source of revenue for providers. The challenge is getting enough residents onboard to make the initiative cost-effective for providers and payers. (Eastabrook, 9/24)
STATE WATCH
San Francisco Chronicle: San Francisco Reports Record-Low Number Of New HIV Cases San Francisco reported a record-low number of new HIV infections in 2025, according to the city’s annual AIDS update, but ending the decades-long epidemic remains a stubbornly distant prospect. There were 136 new infections reported last year — 12 fewer than the year before, and a 75% drop over the past 20 years. That number is remarkably low compared to the worst years of the epidemic in the 1990s, when thousands were infected every year, and a testament to the success of antiviral medications to fight the virus and drugs that are highly effective at preventing infection. (Allday, 9/24)
The Washington Post: D.C. Mailer Sent To Medicaid Recipients Directed People To Adult Site In a statement, the Department of Health Care Finance confirmed the authenticity of the mailer, which it said included an outdated URL ending in “.com” that had previously been used by the agency. The correct website uses “.gov.” The agency apologized to any resident who may have received one with the bad web address. (Bowman, 9/24)
The Washington Sun: The Trump Administration Has Made It Harder To Be Homeless In D.C. Homelessness encampments in D.C. have largely disappeared a year after President Donald Trump pushed a crackdown. Homelessness is still, however, a major problem in the city. If anything, the combination of Trump’s pressure to push unhoused people out of the capital and Mayor Muriel Bowser’s response have made struggles worse, according to local lawmakers and advocates for D.C.’s homeless population. (Fernández, 9/24)
The Florida Trib: How Hope Florida Quietly Hollowed Out The State's Medicaid, Food Safety Net Outside Florida's Department of Children and Families office in Kendall, people stood in line for three to four hours in the South Florida heat, waiting to learn why their Medicaid or food assistance had been cut off and what they could do about it — something the letters the state mailed them often didn't say. (Venkatasubban, 9/24)
AP: Florida Authorities Arrest NC State's Ex-Head Trainer Accused Of Sex Abuse Of Wolfpack Male Athletes N.C. State’s former director of sports medicine faces felony and misdemeanor criminal charges after being accused of sexually abusing former Wolfpack male athletes under the guise of treatment, which previously led to more than 30 athletes outlining allegations in years of civil lawsuits. Authorities in Florida arrested Robert M. Murphy Jr. on Wednesday night, and he was being held Thursday in the Marion County jail on out-of-state fugitive warrants from North Carolina. (Beard, 9/24)
North Carolina Health News: NC Perinatal Group’s Funding Is Restored Dozens of hospitals statewide will be able to take part next year in research to improve maternal and newborn care as part of the revived Perinatal Quality Collaborative of North Carolina. (Fernandez, 9/25)
Wyoming Public Radio: Wyoming’s Food Pantries Face Another Year Of Increased Food Insecurity Volunteers piled boxes of food into trunks in a warehouse in Rock River in southcentral Wyoming. The line of vehicles stretched down the street. Each person had a story, like Susan Griffin. “As soon as I lost my husband, I lost my health, and I ended up on disability. And so I've kinda had to have help since then,” Griffin said. (Edwards, 9/24)
People.com: Woman Paralyzed After Man Falls From Tree Onto Her During Music Festival In Kentucky A woman is paralyzed from the waist down after a man fell from a tree and landed on top of her during a music festival. On Friday, Sept. 18, Jamie Ulshoffer was at the Louder Than Life music festival at the Kentucky Exposition Center when a man suddenly fell from a nearby tree and landed directly on top of her, according to ABC affiliate WHAS and First Coast News. The Louisville Metro Police Department tells PEOPLE that their office learned that “a tree limb broke,” causing the man to fall. (Anello, 9/21)
SCIENCE AND INNOVATIONS
The New York Times: Anthropic’s A.I. Is Teaching Itself Biology. Now It’s Made Its First Discovery Biologists at Anthropic announced on Wednesday that they had used artificial intelligence to identify genes in viruses that produce enzymes that work in a new way, the first discovery emanating from a research lab the company opened this spring. “We have chosen biology and medicine as the primary way that we believe the benefits from A.I. can come about,” said Eric Kauderer-Abrams, the head of life sciences at Anthropic. (Zimmer, 9/24)
MedPage Today: Is AI Flooding Medical Journals With 'Meaningless' Research? As artificial intelligence (AI) grows more sophisticated, its use in medical research is becoming both more prominent and harder to detect, leading to what some describe as a flood of mediocre science being published in journals. Even just 6 months ago, AI hallucinations like fabricated references were a big concern. But it's now relatively easy to prompt AI to double-check these things and churn out research with no obvious errors, experts said. (Robertson, 9/24)
Undark: Engineering Animals to Grow Human Organs — But Not Human Minds In 2010, scientists at the University of Tokyo and other institutions reported a startling achievement: They had successfully grown a pancreas made almost entirely of rat cells within the bodies of mice. The research was directed by Hiromitsu Nakauchi, a physician-scientist who also holds an academic appointment at Stanford University. Nakauchi specializes in developing “chimeric” animals made up of cells from different species. This unprecedented feat proved that an entire organ from one kind of animal can be grown within another. The chimeras had been generated as early-stage embryos that, after being implanted into surrogate mothers, came to term “just as in normal mouse pregnancy,” Nakauchi wrote in an emailed response to questions. (Schmidt, 9/25)
The Washington Post: Some Dementia Patients Grow Lucid Near The End. Scientists Hope It’s A Clue. Accounts raise tantalizing questions about what happens inside a brain afflicted by dementia and whether cognitive abilities could possibly be restored. (Hetherman, 9/25)
WP Intelligence: How The Growing Cost Of Alzheimer’s Is Spurring A Push For Drug Innovation New Alzheimer's tests and treatments offer business opportunities and hope for improving outcomes for patients. (Adams, 9/23)
PUBLIC HEALTH
Inside Climate News: Chemicals Linked To Breast Cancer Are ‘Ubiquitous,’ Study Shows The more scientists look for chemicals that can increase breast cancer risk, the more they find. Hundreds of potential breast carcinogens lurk in consumer goods, food, drinking water, pesticides, drugs and building materials, scientists reported in a peer-reviewed study published Wednesday in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. Exposure to these chemicals is ubiquitous, the authors warn, yet biomonitoring efforts are failing to measure people’s exposures to most chemicals or assess risks from compound exposures. (Gross, 9/23)
ABC News: What To Know About Frontotemporal Degeneration After NASCAR Hall Of Famer Darrell Waltrip's Diagnosis NASCAR Hall of Famer Darrell Waltrip's family revealed over the weekend he has been diagnosed with frontotemporal degeneration (FTD) complicated by possible chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). In a statement, Waltrip's family said the possible CTE may be related to injuries sustained during his racing career. They said his symptoms are currently minor, but that he will step further away from public life as the disease progresses. It remains unclear what symptoms Waltrip may have at this time. (Chang and Tsapatsaris, 9/24)
GLOBAL WATCH
Stat: Indonesian Court Rules Against 'Patent Evergreening' By Pharma Industry In the latest battle over access to medicines, an Indonesian court recently struck down a provision in a law that allowed “patent evergreening,” a tactic used by drugmakers to file additional patents containing minor tweaks to existing medicines and, ultimately, forestall competition. (Silverman, 9/24)
Stat: 'Vulnerable' WHO Begins Process Of Picking New Director-General At least five candidates are in the running to become the next director-general of the World Health Organization, a job that will come with extraordinary challenges. (Branswell, 9/25)
The Washington Post: Ukraine Weighs Legalizing Pornography To Raise Taxes And Buy More Drones Decriminalizing porn would help close a huge budget gap but is a fraught step in a nation long stained by a reputation for exploiting its women. (Ebel, 9/25)
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