WASHINGTON — Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is issuing a U.S. surgeon general’s advisory urging families, schools, and providers to reduce children’s screen time, according to a draft of the report reviewed by STAT.
The report, which comes from the surgeon general’s office even though there is no Senate-confirmed nominee, calls on parents, schools, and all levels of government to work together to shift the use of devices with screens, saying some patterns of use “can pose real harm to children.”
The federal government is sending nearly $8 billion in supplemental Medicaid funds to hospitals in Florida for care they delivered last year, delivering a windfall to facilities in the politically influential state ahead of the imposition of new limits stemming from President Trump’s 2025 tax cut bill.
The extra cash is another victory for hospitals, which now are routinely getting paid much-higher commercial prices to treat Medicaid patients. Florida’s hospitals, which lobbied to get these extra funds approved, could get billions more on top of that once federal Medicaid officials mull over this year’s application.
On April 30, officials with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services approved the money through a mechanism called a state directed payment program. CMS released the approval letters this week. The $8 billion, which also was authorized by state lawmakers, covers Medicaid patients treated from Oct. 1, 2024, through Sept. 30, 2025.
The idea of drinking during pregnancy sounds like a generational punchline: Someone’s grandmother drank beer to fatten her fetus, another had a nightly martini to get a healthy amount of sleep — presumably unthinkable behavior in today’s America.
Yet after precipitous declines in the last 50 years, rates of alcohol use in pregnancy in the U.S. started climbing upward a decade ago. More than 1 in 8 pregnant adults reported drinking in the past month, according to STAT’s analysis of 2024 government data, making alcohol use a more common national phenomenon than gestational diabetes. Of those who drank, a quarter reported having four or more drinks in one sitting — binge drinking — in the prior month.
While rates of alcohol use in pregnancy are lower in the U.S. than those of several peer nations, the effects are all around Americans. Alcohol is the key driver of what are, by some estimates, the nation’s top neurodevelopmental conditions: fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, or FASDs.
The exact prevalence of FASDs is difficult to measure, but the most recent federally funded community studies have found as many as 1 in 20 school-aged children may have a disorder caused by prenatal alcohol exposure. By comparison, about 1 in 31 American children has autism, per recent estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Not all fetuses exposed to alcohol have birth defects or go on to develop intellectual disabilities, researchers say. But every person born with an FASD was harmed by alcohol specifically. They worry this point is being glossed over as Americans question the conventional medical advice of avoiding all alcohol while pregnant.
The Trump administration has made sweeping changes to vaccine policy over the past year justified by invocations of patients’ “personal autonomy.” In January, Department of Health and Human Services head Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Trump’s slashed the number of routinely recommended childhood vaccines from 17 to 11 after an HHS report emphasized “personal autonomy and self-determination” as key principles necessitating reconsideration of the childhood vaccine schedule.
That same month, Trump’s new head of the federal government’s vaccine panel opined that all childhood vaccines might be optional in schools on similar reasoning: “What we are doing is returning individual autonomy to the first order,” Kirk Milhoan said, noting that we allow people to make various choices, like unhealthy alcohol consumption, even if there are risks.
Two advocacy groups are demanding the United Kingdom revoke regulations at the heart of a new trade agreement with the U.S. over concerns the deal will allow outsiders to influence official decisions about the cost-effectiveness of medicines. And if the government does not comply, the groups are readying legal action.
Under the trade agreement that covers pharmaceuticals, which was finalized last month, the Trump administration committed to impose zero tariffs on medicines exported from the U.K. for at least three years. The deal is significant because it would make the U.K. the only country with tariff-free access for medicines to the U.S. market.
In return, the U.K. government took steps to appease the pharmaceutical industry, which is a key part of its economy, by pledging to increase spending on medicines from 0.3% of GDP to 0.35% by 2028 and then to 0.6% by 2035. At the same time, the U.K.’s National Health Service will increase the prices paid for by medicines by 25% and slash the maximum rebate it can claw back from drugmakers to 15%.
A number ofAmericans who are in the Democratic Republic of the Congoare believed to have had exposure to suspected cases in the country’s latest Ebola outbreak, with several deemed to have had high-risk exposures, sources have told STAT. At least one of these individuals may have developed symptoms.
One source said that there are not yet test results for any of the individuals, but the U.S. government is reportedly trying to arrange to transport them out of the DRC to somewhere they can be safely quarantined, and cared for, if they prove to have been infected. It’s not clear if that would be in the United States; there is some discussion of perhaps taking the individuals to an American military base in Germany, a source said.
WASHINGTON — Over a recent breakfast, U.S. officials had a message for the German ambassador: pay more for pharmaceuticals.
The meeting, between U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, chief health department adviser Chris Klomp, and German Ambassador Jens Hanefeld, was part of a larger push from the Trump administration to get other countries to pay more for medications as the U.S. pays less, according to a person familiar with the meeting.
The U.S. officials discussed the possible use of tariffs under Section 301 — which grants the government authority to combat trade practices considered “unfair.” The move would be similar to the tactic of threatening new tariffs to get other countries to pay more for drugs. The ambassador agreed to review the matter with officials in Germany, but no deal was made, the person said.
Background: Tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drug use continue to pose substantial public health challenges in China. Although public service announcements (PSAs) are widely used for prevention, little is known about how these messages are constructed or the extent to which they draw on established health communication theories. Objective: This exploratory study aimed to characterize the design features of anti–substance use PSAs in China, assess their use of constructs from the extended parallel process model (EPPM) and the elaboration likelihood model (ELM), and compare patterns across anti–substance use PSAs. Methods: We conducted a content analysis of 89 publicly available anti–substance use PSAs produced in mainland China. Messages were identified via major Chinese video platforms and institutional websites and then screened using predefined eligibility criteria. Variables captured message source, intended audience, framing, substance depiction, cultural appeals, and EPPM and ELM components. Frequencies and proportions were calculated, and tests were used to examine differences by PSA type. To account for multiple comparisons, values were adjusted using the Holm-Bonferroni correction. Results: Most PSAs did not identify a target audience (54/89, 60.7%), and public security departments were the most common sponsors (n=37, 41.2%), while none were sponsored by public health agencies. Theory use was selective: response efficacy (n=63, 70.8%) and perceived severity (n=55, 61.8%) appeared more often than self-efficacy (n=45, 50.6%) and perceived susceptibility (n=34, 38.2%); peripheral cues (n=79, 88.8%) were more common than central route cues (n=16, 18%). Differences across PSA types were observed in sponsorship, message features, and theoretical constructs. After adjustment for multiple comparisons, associations involving sponsoring organizations (public security departments and Chinese media) and perceived susceptibility remained statistically significant (all adjusted =.01). Antidrug PSAs were predominantly associated with public security sponsorship, whereas antialcohol and antitobacco PSAs were more frequently linked to Chinese media sources. Perceived susceptibility cues were more common in antismoking PSAs than in antidrug PSAs, while other differences in framing, substance cues, cultural appeals, and ELM or EPPM constructs were not statistically significant after adjustment. Conclusions: Anti–substance use PSAs in China were characterized by limited audience segmentation and uneven use of theory-based persuasive strategies. Observed differences across alcohol-, tobacco-, and drug-focused messages suggest that PSA design may be shaped not only by partial application of communication theory but also by institutional influences and substance-specific contexts. These findings highlight the need for more context-sensitive and theory-informed approaches to anti–substance use PSA design in China.
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“Under-babied.” Dr. Oz said that’s the name for a condition that affects one-in-three Americans. I guess that means over-babied is the condition of having too many kids, but then what do you call having the right number of babies? Baby-neutral? Balanced-babied? Send news tips and your favorite lines from Raising Arizona to John.Wilkerson@statnews.com or John_Wilkerson.07 on Signal.
Advocates for people in Medicaid would prefer that the federal government exempt specific patient populations from new requirements that able-bodied adult Medicaid beneficiaries work at least 20 hours a week, or be in school or volunteer for community service. Otherwise, it’ll be difficult to help people navigate a state-by-state patchwork of rules.
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
Three things in AI to watch, according to a Nobel-winning economist
A few months before he won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2024, Daron Acemoglu published a paper that earned him few fans in Silicon Valley. He argued that AI would give only a small boost to US productivity and would not eliminate the need for human work.
Two years later, Acemoglu’s measured take has not caught on. The technology has advanced quite a bit since his cautious predictions, but the data is still largely on his side.
This story is from The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter giving you the inside track on all things AI. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Monday.
The case for fixing everything
Stewart Brand, the counterculture icon and tech industry legend, considers maintenance a “civilizational” act. His new book argues that taking responsibility for maintaining something, whether a motorcycle, a monument, or the planet, can be radical.
Brand argues that maintainers haven’t gotten the laurels they deserve—and he’s right. Yet his vision of maintenance often feels solitary: profound, but more about personal fulfillment than tending to a shared world or making it better.
Lee Vinsel is an associate professor of science, technology, and society at Virginia Tech, a cofounder of The Maintainers, and the host of Peoples & Things, a podcast about human life with technology.
This story is from the latest edition of our print magazine, which is all about nature. Subscribe now to read the full issue and receive future print copies once they land.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 The first zero-day exploit built by AI has been discovered Google spotted and stopped the attempted “mass exploitation event.” (CNBC) + The hackers used AI to discover an unknown bug. (NYT $) + AI-powered hacking has exploded into an industrial-scale threat. (Guardian) + New tools are simplifying online crime. (MIT Technology Review)
2 OpenAI just launched its answer to Claude Mythos Daybreak patches vulnerabilities before attackers find them. (The Verge) + Sam Altman said it will “continuously secure software.” (Gizmodo) + It will rival Anthropic’s Claude Mythos, which arrived a month ago. (BBC) + OpenAI is allowing wider access to its cyber models than Anthropic. (CNBC)
3 Trump is heading to China to spread the gospel of American tech While taking cues from Beijing’s more stringent approach. (Guardian) + But investors want Trump and Xi to stay out of AI’s way. (Reuters $) + Elon Musk and Tim Cook are joining him on the trip this week. (BBC)
4 Ilya Sutskever has testified on Sam Altman’s “pattern of lying” OpenAI co-founder Sutskever took the stand in the Altman v. Musk trial. (BI) + He said he spent a year gathering proof of Altman’s dishonesty. (Reuters $) + But he also added to OpenAI’s defense. (Wired $) + While Satya Nadella called attempts to remove Altman “amateur city.” (FT $) + Here’s what happened last week in the trial. (MIT Technology Review)
5 A new hantavirus vaccine is in the works Moderna and Korea University are developing an mRNA vaccine. (Wired $) + Here’s what you need to know about the cruise ship outbreak. (MIT Technology Review)
6 Texas has sued Netflix over alleged data harvesting and “addictive” design AG Ken Paxton accuses Netflix of secretly collecting and selling user data. (Quartz) + And spying on children while deliberately fostering addiction. (Guardian)
7 A data center guzzled 30 million gallons of water—and no one noticed The curious case serves as a warning for other data center projects. (Ars Technica)
8 Europe is reportedly selling spyware to human rights abusers EU states allegedly sold the tech to countries violating rights. (Bloomberg $)
9 The US government’s AI vetting announcement has mysteriously vanished It had detailed a security test agreement with Google, xAI, and Microsoft. (Gizmodo)
10 Amazon staff are using AI for pointless tasks just to inflate usage scores In a bid to impress managers. (FT $) + An AI expert says we should stop using AI so much. (MIT Technology Review)
Quote of the day
“This is like the cheating husband complaining about the cheating wife.”
—Anupam Chander, a professor of law and technology at Georgetown Law School, tells the New York Times that Elon Musk’s hypocrisy over OpenAI becoming a for-profit company will undermine his courtroom battle with Sam Altman.
One More Thing
STUART BRADFORD
How sounds can turn us on to the wonders of the universe
For decades, astronomy has relied on visual information to make sense of the cosmos: images, charts, and graphs. Now, some researchers are trying something different: listening to the universe.
Using sonification, the process of turning information into sound, they’re helping blind and visually impaired researchers explore the cosmos—and even uncover patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed. The approach is spreading beyond astronomy into fields like climate science, navigation, and education.
