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The chief prosecutor, whose name has been withheld pending official confirmation, was allegedly caught in a sting operation conducted by local authorities. Reports indicate that the prosecutor was apprehended while engaging in illicit activities at a local brothel. The news has sparked outrage and condemnation from both the public and legal professionals.
WASHINGTON D.C., DC — President-elect Donald Trump on Friday nominated Dr. Marty Makary to lead the Food and Drug Administration , selecting a surgeon and author who gained national attention for opposing vaccine mandates and some other public health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic . Makary, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, is the latest in a string of Trump nominees who have declared the U.S. health system “broken," vowing a shakeup. As part of a flurry of nominations late Friday night, Trump also tapped doctor and former Republican Rep. Dave Weldon of Florida to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Fox News contributor Janette Nesheiwat, meanwhile, is set to be the nation's next surgeon general. Some of Makary's views align closely with the man who is poised to be his boss — prominent environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine organizer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom Trump put forward as the next U.S. Department of Health and Human Services secretary. In books and articles, Makary has decried the overprescribing of drugs, the use of pesticides on foods and the undue influence of pharmaceutical and insurance companies over doctors and government regulators, points that Kennedy has also harped on for years. Trump said Makary, trained as a surgeon and cancer specialist, “will restore FDA to the gold standard of scientific research, and cut the bureaucratic red tape at the agency to make sure Americans get the medical cures and treatments they deserve.” Headquartered in the Maryland suburbs outside Washington, the 18,000 employees of the FDA are responsible for the safety and effectiveness of prescription drugs , vaccines and medical devices as well as a swath of other consumer goods, including food , cosmetics and vaping products . Altogether those products represent an estimated 20% of U.S. consumer spending annually, or $2.6 trillion. Makary gained prominence on Fox News and other conservative outlets for his contrarian views during the COVID-19 pandemic. He questioned the need for masking and, though not opposed to the COVID-19 vaccine, had concerns about booster vaccinations in young children. He was part of a vocal group of physicians calling for greater emphasis on herd immunity to stop the virus, or the idea that mass infections would quickly lead to population-level protection. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that COVID-19 vaccinations prevented more than 686,000 U.S. deaths in 2020 and 2021 alone. While children faced much lower rates of hospitalization and death from the virus, medical societies including the American Academy of Pediatrics concluded that vaccinations significantly reduced severe disease in the age group. Makary has lamented how drugmakers used misleading data to urge doctors to prescribe OxyContin and other opioids as low-risk, non-addictive pain relievers. That marketing was permitted under FDA-approved labeling from the 1990s, suggesting the drugs were safe for common ailments like back pain. In more recent years, the FDA has come under fire for approving drugs for Alzheimer's , ALS and other conditions based on incomplete data that failed to show meaningful benefits for patients. A push toward greater scrutiny of drug safety and effectiveness would be a major reversal at FDA, which for decades has focused on speedier drug approvals . That trend has been fueled by industry lobbying and fees paid by drugmakers to help the FDA hire additional reviewers. Kennedy has proposed ending those payments, which would require billions in new funding from the federal budget. Other administration priorities would likely run into similar roadblocks. For instance, Kennedy wants to bar drugmakers from advertising on TV , a multibillion-dollar market that supports many TV and cable networks. The Supreme Court and other conservative judges would likely overturn such a ban on First Amendment grounds that protect commercial speech, experts note. Less is known about Trump's pick for the Atlanta-based CDC, which develops vaccines and monitors for infectious disease outbreaks. Weldon is a staunch, self-described “pro-life” Republican. Legislation he introduced more than 20 years ago outlawed human cloning. He also brokered a deal with lawmakers to bar patents on human organisms, including genetically engineered embryos. Weldon also advocated against the removal of the feeding tube for Terri Schiavo, a Florida woman whose family battle over her vegetative state turned into a national debate. Weldon's nomination is likely to placate some anti-abortion advocates, who have been concerned about Trump's nomination of Kennedy, a longtime Democrat and proponent of abortion rights, as the nation's top health official. Weldon retired from his congressional seat in 2008, after 14 years in public office. Earlier this year, he lost in a GOP primary for a seat in the Florida Legislature. If he's confirmed, he'll be in charge of more than 13,000 employees and nearly 13,000 other contract workers. Nesheiwat, meanwhile, will oversee 6,000 U.S. Public Health Service Corps members if the Republican-controlled Senate approves her nomination as the surgeon general. She is a medical director for an urgent care company in New York. She appears regularly on Fox News and has expressed frequent support for Trump, sharing photos of them together on her social media pages. Surgeons general also have the power to issue advisories, warning of public health threats in the U.S. Those advisories can influence how the government, public and medical community respond to health crises in the country. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
NoneThe U.S. Census Bureau and a growing number of states are starting to gather more detailed information about Americans’ race and ethnicity, a change some advocates of the process say will allow people to choose identities that more closely reflect how they see themselves. Crunching and sorting through those specific details — known as data disaggregation — will help illuminate disparities in areas such as housing and health outcomes that could be hidden within large racial and ethnic categories. But some experts say the details also might make it harder for Black people from multiracial countries to identify themselves. Racial data gleaned from the census is important because local, state, tribal and federal governments use it to guide certain civil rights policies and “in planning and funding government programs that provide funds or services for specific groups,” according to the Census Bureau. The form will have checkboxes for main categories — current census groupings include “Asian,” “Black,” “African American” and “White,” among others — followed by more specific checkboxes. Under Asian, for example, might be Chinese, Asian Indian, Filipino, Vietnamese, Korean or Japanese. And then there will be an empty box for people to write in more specific subgroups. Collecting more detail by allowing free-form answers, for example, will make it possible for people to identify themselves as part of more racial and ethnic subgroups — such as “Sardinian” (an autonomous region within Italy) instead of simply “Italian” — and include alternative names for certain groups, such as writing “Schitsu’umsh,” the ancient language for “Coeur D’Alene Tribe.” And the Census Bureau will for the first time include Middle Eastern/North African as a separate racial/ethnic category for respondents with that heritage. Until now, Middle Eastern people who did not choose a race were treated as a subcategory under “white,” based on a 1944 court ruling intended to protect Arab immigrants from racist laws banning U.S. citizenship for nonwhite immigrants. Under new federal guidelines approved in March, the bureau also will give people the option to check no race at all if they identify as Hispanic or Middle Eastern/North African. The Census Bureau already has decided to use more open-ended questions in both the 2027 American Community Survey and the nation’s 2030 census. But the agency is seeking public comment on the way write-in responses will be categorized. The bureau wants to hear how people are likely to identify themselves, said Merarys Ríos-Vargas, chief of the bureau’s Ethnicity and Ancestry Branch, Population Division, in a recent webinar. The agency also is interested in whether there are missing or incorrect entries in its proposed list of possible responses. ‘It’s about people’s lives’ Nancy López, a University of New Mexico sociology professor, said she and other experts in Black Hispanic culture think the census should have a “visual race” or “street race” question, so people can communicate how others see them as well as how they identify themselves. The answer might be “Black” or a yet-unrecognized racial category such as “brown.” “A separate question on race as a visual status helps illuminate the kind of things we are interested in — discrimination in housing, discrimination in employment, discrimination in education and accessing health care in public spaces,” said López, who is the daughter of Dominican immigrants and a co-founder of the university’s Institute for the Study of “Race” & Social Justice. “It’s about people’s lives, it’s about the future, it’s about children, it’s about access to opportunities and it’s about fairness,” she added, noting that even if the federal government doesn’t add such questions to surveys and the decennial census, state and universities can still do it on their own as they collect data for health care, student enrollment and other topics. The NALEO Educational Fund, an organization representing Latino elected and appointed officials, supports the decision to make a race choice optional for Hispanics. “Many Latinos did not see themselves in any of the categories for their racial identity,” said Rosalind Gold, NALEO’s chief public policy officer. “There’s a large number of Latinos who feel that identifying as Latino is both their racial and ethnic identity.” Gold said NALEO understands the concern some have that failing to require a race designation will obscure racial information on Black Hispanics. But her group argues that the census can get what it needs by educating the public on how to respond and by including prompts on the questionnaires to guide race choices. Black Hispanic people often see themselves as having a single racial and ethnic identity, according to several experts in Hispanic identity who spoke at a Census Bureau National Advisory Committee meeting Nov. 7. “They conceptualize themselves as belonging to one [group],” said Nicholas Vargas, an associate professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley, speaking at the committee meeting. “They check ‘Black’ and they check ‘Dominican’ — and don’t want to be counted as two or more,” he said. In response, Rachel Marks, an adviser for the Census Bureau on race and ethnicity, said the bureau will consider that issue and other “feedback on how people want to be represented” before making a final decision on survey details. The bureau may recognize a term, Afro-Latino, that could be used to indicate both Black race and Hispanic ethnicity, according to a proposed code list from the agency, as well as “Blaxican” for Black Mexican and “Blasian“ for Black Asian. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of civil rights groups, called the more detailed questions“a step forward” but also suggested more guidance on the forms to ensure people are categorized the way they want to be. In its comment on the changes, the group noted that in 2020, some people who wrote in “British” under the Black checkbox were categorized as partly white even if they didn’t mean that. The group also said it is “concerned about a conflation of the concepts of race and ethnicity,” and it asked for more research to make sure people understand how to respond. State actions Some states are acting on their own to gather more detailed data about identity. New Jersey is among the latest states to pass a law requiring more detailed race and ethnic data collection for state records such as health data and school enrollment. A similar bill in Michigan would require state agencies that gather information to offer “multiracial” and “Middle Eastern or North African” as choices; the bill remains in committee. And advocates in Oregon, which already has a law requiring detailed ethnic data collection, are asking the state for more details on Asian subgroups who face education challenges. A December 2023 report by The Leadership Conference Education Fund identified 13 other states with laws requiring more detailed state data on ethnic and racial groups, including laws passed last year in Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts and Nevada. The states of California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island and Washington already had such laws, the group found.The tale of the lost graduate student and her two exceptional children serves as a testament to the power of perseverance, love, and the unbreakable bond of family. 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Tom Krishner The Associated Press The reliability of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids has dramatically improved, narrowing a wide gap with gas-powered automobiles, according to the latest survey by Consumer Reports. But vehicles with internal combustion engines and gas-electric hybrids are still far more dependable, the survey found. Consumer Reports subscribers, who filled out surveys during much of 2024, reported that electric vehicles had 42% more problems than gas autos on average. But that was down from 79% more in the 2023 survey. The survey released Thursday measured reliability of vehicles mainly from the 2022, 2023 and 2024 model years. Plug-ins, which travel a short distance on battery power before a hybrid powertrain kicks in, had 70% more problems than gas vehicles, but that was less than half the difference found in last year’s survey. The reason for the improvement? EV and plug-in technology are maturing, said Jake Fisher, head of Consumer Reports’ automobile test center. “As the automakers get more experience with the new technologies and new platforms, they will improve,” Fisher said. He said he expects plug-in and electric vehicles to keep getting better, further closing the gap with gas vehicles. But one thing may stand in the way: Automakers often test new automation and other features on EVs, and the new stuff is prone to glitches. “Until we get to where an EV is just a car that does practical things with their own powertrain, I’m not sure they’ll ever catch up totally” to gas vehicles, Fisher said. The new technology may offer more than the next wave of EV buyers would like, as EVs move from early adopters to more practical mainstream buyers, Fisher said. “There are people who just want a car that’s easy to maintain,” he said. “I don’t use gas. I don’t need this automation feature and electric door handles or whatever the heck they are putting out.” Consumer Reports has noted that concerns about EV and plug-in quality add to issues that may have buyers hesitating before switching from gasoline engines, including concerns about higher up-front costs, too few charging stations and long charging times. Gas-electric hybrids, which switch from internal combustion to electric power to get better mileage, were about as reliable as cars with combustion engines. While the technology is pretty technical, it has been refined for a quarter century, mainly by pioneer Toyota, Fisher said. “CR’s tests have shown that they are often quieter, quicker and more pleasant to drive than their gasoline-only counterparts,” he said. Through September of this year, the last month for which all automakers have reported results, electric vehicle sales are up 7.2%, plug-in sales rose 11.6%, but hybrids led with a 32.6% increase, according to Motorintelligence.com. Consumer Reports said its 2024 survey of subscribers representing about 300,000 vehicle owners found that Subaru was the most reliable brand for the first time, followed by perennial top finishers Lexus and Toyota. Rounding out the top five were Honda and its Acura luxury brand. It was the first time since 2020 that neither Toyota nor its Lexus luxury brand were in the top spot, Fisher said. The highest-ranked brand from a U.S.-based automaker was General Motors’ Buick at No. 11. The five lowest of 22 brands that were ranked were electric upstart Rivian, followed by GM’s Cadillac luxury brand, GMC, Jeep and Volkswagen, Consumer Reports said. The magazine and website didn’t get enough data this year to rank Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, Infiniti, Jaguar, Land Rover, Lincoln, Lucid, Maserati, Mercedes, Mitsubishi, Porsche and Ram. Electric vehicle sales leader Tesla finished 17th, down three spots from last year’s survey. Subaru took first place in the survey by following the same formula that Toyota uses to get high reliability scores: It doesn’t make huge changes when updating or unveiling new vehicles, Fisher said. Instead of going with new engines or transmissions, Subaru carries parts over from the prior generation. “They don’t fix what’s not broken,” he said. “They continue to refine their products, and because the products perform quite well, they don’t have to have big changes.” Rivian, Fisher said, is a new company with new electric models that have more glitches. Since the company is a startup, it can’t use proven powertrains from prior generations yet. “It’s expected that you’re going to have issues when you have nothing to carry over” from previous model years, he said. The survey found that the gas-powered Toyota RAV4 small SUV was the most reliable vehicle, followed by the Toyota Corolla compact car. The RAV4 Prime plug-in hybrid was third, followed by the RAV4 gas-electric hybrid, Fisher said. Consumer Reports’ survey of its subscriber base does not represent all vehicle purchasers in the U.S. or the population that bought specific vehicle types. The survey results were released at a meeting of the Automotive Press Association of Detroit.
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