A community rallied to share flu shot experiences. Then the government stopped the study

• May 5, 2025

By LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — Some Denver parents got texts during this winter’s brutal flu season with videos sharing why people in their neighborhoods chose flu shots for their kids, an unusual study about trust and vaccines in a historically Black community.

But no one will know how it worked out: The Trump administration canceled the project before the data could be analyzed — and researchers aren’t the only ones upset.

“For someone like me, from the Black community who income-wise is on the lower end, we don’t often have a voice,” said Denver mom Chantyl Busby, one of the study’s community advisers. “Having this funding taken away from this project sends a horrible, horrible message. It’s almost like telling us all over again that our opinions don’t matter.”

How to talk about vaccines with parents – or anyone – is taking on new urgency: At least 216 U.S. children died of flu this season, the worst pediatric toll in 15 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Unvaccinated children are fueling one of the country’s largest measles outbreaks in decades, and another vaccine-preventable disease — whooping cough — is soaring, too.

At the same time Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. questions vaccines long proven to be safe and effective. Moves by the Trump administration are making it increasingly uncertain that COVID-19 vaccines will be available this fall. And the administration has slashed funding for public health and medical research, including abruptly stopping studies of vaccine hesitancy.

“We need to understand what it is that is creating this challenge to vaccines and why,” said Michael Osterholm, who directs the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy and worries the country is entering “scientific dark ages.”

At Denver Health, Dr. Joshua Williams is a pediatrician who every day has vaccine conversations with confused or worried parents. Some even ask if they’ll get kicked out of his practice for refusing immunizations.

Nope, Williams says: Building trust takes time.

“The most satisfying vaccine-related encounters I have are the ones in families who had significant concerns for a long time, came to trust me over the years as I cared for broken arms and ear infections – and ultimately vaccinated their child,” he said.

But in the TikTok age, Williams wondered if digital storytelling – seeing and hearing what led other families to choose vaccination – might help those decisions. He chose flu shots as the test case — just under half of U.S. children got one this season. And Black children are among those most at risk of getting seriously ill from influenza.

With a grant from the National Institutes of Health, Williams partnered with Denver’s nonprofit Center for African American Health to host workshops bringing volunteers together to discuss how influenza and the flu vaccine had impacted their lives. Professionals helped those who wanted to go the extra step turn them into 2- to 3-minute polished videos.

After two years of community engagement, five of those videos were part of the pilot study sending text messages to 200 families who get care at two Denver Health clinics.

In one video, a mother described getting her first flu vaccination along with her young daughter, making her own health decisions after leaving a controlling relationship.

In another, a grandmother explained how she’ll never again miss a vaccine appointment after her grandson spent his 4th birthday hospitalized with the flu.

Seeing “people that they look like, that they sound like, who have experiences they’ve been through that can go, ‘Hey, I felt like you felt but this changed my life,’” is powerful, said Busby, who OK’d her kids’ flu vaccinations after questioning Williams during multiple family checkups.

The study’s sudden cancellation means Williams can’t assess if the texted videos influenced families’ vaccine decisions – lost data from more than two years of work and already-spent NIH dollars. It also jeopardizes the researchers’ careers. While considering next steps, Williams has asked permission of community members to use some of the videos in his own practice as he discusses vaccination.

Williams gets personal, too, telling families that his kids are vaccinated and how his 95-year-old grandmother reminisces about the terror of polio during her own childhood before those vaccinations were developed.

“We’ve lost the collective memory about what it’s like to have these diseases in our community,” Williams said, ruefully noting the ongoing measles outbreak. “I think it’s going to take a collective voice from the community saying this is important, to remind those in power that we need to be allocating resources to infection prevention and vaccine hesitancy research.”

AP video journalist Thomas Peipert contributed to this report.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

​ Orange County Register 

Don’t have a REAL ID yet? That could cause you travel headaches after May 7

• May 5, 2025

By BRIDGET BROWN, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — The deadline to get a REAL ID is fast approaching after years of postponements and delays.

Starting May 7, your license or identification card will need to be REAL ID-compliant to fly domestically in the U.S.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like there will be another delay in the deadline this time. So, if you’re confused about how to get a REAL ID, why you even need one in the first place, and what happens if you don’t have one by May 7, here are some things to know:

What is a REAL ID?

It’s a federally compliant state-issued license or identification card that the DHS says is a more secure form of identification. Besides needing a REAL ID to fly domestically, you will also need one to access certain federal buildings and facilities.

Why is this happening?

When the REAL ID Act was signed into law in 2005, it enacted a recommendation from the 9/11 Commission that the government set security standards for state-issued driver’s licenses and IDs.

“REAL ID is a coordinated effort by the federal government to improve the reliability and accuracy of driver’s licenses and identification cards,” John Essig, the Transportation Security Administration’s Security Director for airports in the New York City region said in a press release on April 3. “The improvements are intended to inhibit terrorists’ ability to evade detection by using fraudulent identification.”

The REAL ID Act was supposed to begin rolling out in 2008, “but has faced repeated delays due to state implementation challenges and the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Nina Ruggiero, senior editorial director for Travel + Leisure. “The combination of varying state processes and shifting deadlines has added to the overall confusion around REAL IDs and likely led some travelers to take the deadlines less seriously.”

How do I know if I already have a REAL ID?

If you’ve gotten a new ID in the last few years, it could already be REAL ID-compliant.

“I also hear from travelers who are confused as to whether or not they already have a REAL ID,” Ruggiero said. “Some people who have recently renewed their license may already have a compliant ID and not know it,” so you may want to double-check yours before starting the process.

A REAL ID-compliant driver’s license has a symbol ( in most states, a star ) in the top corner of the card.

If you live in Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Vermont or Washington, it’s possible you could have an “enhanced″ ID card instead, which permits you to both fly domestically and cross land and sea borders into Mexico and Canada from the U.S. It does not, however, allow you to fly into either of those countries.

Enhanced IDs will have an American flag icon, as well as the word “enhanced” at the top of the card.

If I don’t have a REAL ID, how do I get one?

The requirements vary by state, so you will need to visit the website of your state’s driver’s licensing agency to find out the specific steps, including whether you’ll need to make an appointment at a DMV and what documentation you’ll need when you get there.

What happens on May 7? What if I don’t have a REAL ID by then?

If you don’t have a REAL ID by the deadline and you’re planning to board a domestic flight, you will need to bring your passport or another TSA-approved form of identification when you travel.

Otherwise, you could face “delays, additional screening and the possibility of not being permitted into the security checkpoint,” warns TSA spokesperson Lisa Farbstein.

The deadline has already been pushed back so many times. Could it be delayed again?

In mid-April, a group of state senators from Kentucky asked the agency to delay implementing the new requirements yet again. They said the state has limited appointments available to people seeking the new cards and that there has been a rush to meet the May 7 deadline.

However, TSA spokesperson Dan Velez told the AP that the agency does not intend to delay the REAL ID deadline again.

As of late April, 81% of travelers at TSA checkpoints were presenting acceptable identification, including a state-issued REAL ID, according to DHS.

​ Orange County Register 

Army pausing helicopter flights near Washington airport after close calls

• May 5, 2025

By TARA COPP

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Army is pausing helicopter flights near a Washington airport after two commercial planes had to abort landings last week because of an Army Black Hawk helicopter that was flying to the Pentagon.

The commander of the 12th Aviation Battalion directed the unit to pause helicopter flight operations around Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport following Thursday’s close calls, two Army officials confirmed to The Associated Press on Monday. One official said the flights have been paused since Friday.

The pause comes after 67 people died in January when a passenger jet collided in midair with a Black Hawk helicopter at Reagan airport.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details that were not publicly announced. The unit is continuing to fly in the greater Washington, D.C., region.

The unit had begun a return to flight within the last week, with plans to gradually increase the number of flights over the next four weeks, according to an Army document viewed by the AP.

Thursday’s close call involved a Delta Air Lines Airbus A319 and a Republic Airways Embraer E170, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

They were instructed by air traffic control to “perform go-arounds” because of a “priority air transport” helicopter, according to an emailed statement from the Federal Aviation Administration.

The priority air transport helicopters of the 12th battalion provide transport service to top Pentagon officials. It was a Black Hawk priority air transport known as PAT25 that collided with the passenger jet in midair in January.

That crash was the worst U.S. midair disaster in more than two decades. In March, the FAA announced that helicopters would be prohibited from flying in the same airspace as planes near Reagan airport.

The NTSB and FAA are both investigating the latest close call with an Army helicopter.

The Army said after the latest incident that the UH-60 Blackhawk was following published FAA flight routes and air traffic control from Reagan airport when it was “directed by Pentagon Air Traffic Control to conduct a ‘go-around,’ overflying the Pentagon helipad in accordance with approved flight procedures.”

But helicopter traffic remains a concern around that busy airport. The FAA said that three flights that had been cleared for landing Sunday at Reagan were ordered to go around because a police helicopter was on an urgent mission in the area. All three flights landed safely on their second approaches.

The NTSB said after the January crash that there had been an alarming number of close calls near Reagan in recent years, and the FAA should have acted sooner.

Investigators have highlighted 85 close calls around Reagan airport in the three years before the crash that should have signaled a growing safety problem. FAA officials said they did analyze every close call but missed the alarming trend.

Since then, the FAA launched a review of data at airports nationwide with heavy helicopter traffic that identified safety concerns at the Las Vegas airport related to all the helicopter tours there. That review is ongoing.

Reuters first reported the pause in Army helicopter flights.

In New Jersey on Monday, flight delays and cancellations persisted at Newark Liberty International Airport. The FAA attributed arriving flight delays of nearly four hours to a combination of an air traffic controller shortage, thick cloud cover and antiquated air traffic control equipment that needs to be upgraded.

Associated Press writer Josh Funk contributed to this report from Omaha, Nebraska.

​ Orange County Register 

New York Times wins 4 Pulitzers, New Yorker 3; Washington Post wins for coverage of Trump shooting

• May 5, 2025

By DAVID BAUDER

NEW YORK (AP) — The New York Times won four Pulitzer Prizes and the New Yorker three on Monday for journalism in 2024 that touched on topics like the fentanyl crisis, the U.S. military and last summer’s assassination attempt on President Donald Trump.

The Pulitzers’ prestigious public service medal went to ProPublica for the second straight year. Kavitha Surana, Lizzie Presser, Cassandra Jaramillo and Stacy Kranitz were honored for reporting on pregnant women who died after doctors delayed urgent care in states with strict abortion laws.

The Washington Post won for “urgent and illuminating” breaking news coverage of the Trump assassination attempt. The Pultizers honored Ann Telnaes, who quit the Post in January after the news outlet refused to run her editorial cartoon lampooning tech chiefs — including Post owner Jeff Bezos — cozying up to Trump.

The Pulitzers honored the best in journalism from 2024 in 15 categories, along with eight arts categories including books, music and theater. The public service winner receives a gold medal. All other winners receive $15,000.

The Times’ Azam Ahmed and Christina Goldbaum and contributing writer Matthieu Aikins won an explanatory reporting prize for examining U.S. policy failures in Afghanistan. The newspaper’s Doug Mills won in breaking news photography for his images of the assassination attempt. Declan Walsh and the Times’ staff won for an investigation into the Sudan conflict. Alissa Zhu, Nick Thieme and Jessica Gallagher won in local reporting, an award shared by the Times and The Baltimore Banner, for reporting on that city’s fentanyl crisis.

The New Yorker’s Mosab Abu Toha won for his commentaries on Gaza. The magazine also won for its “In the Dark” podcast about the killing of Iraqi civilians by the U.S. military and in feature photography for Moises Saman’s pictures of the Sednaya prison in Syria.

David Bauder covers the intersection of media and entertainment for The Associated Press.

​ Orange County Register 

Cinco de Mayo celebrations set for Boyle Heights, Avalon

• May 5, 2025

Free Cinco de Mayo celebrations are set Monday for Boyle Heights and Avalon commemorating the victory of a 4,500-man Mexican militia over a larger, well-equipped French expeditionary force during the original Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862.

There will be a Cinco de Mayo celebration from 4 to 8 p.m. at Mariachi Plaza in Boyle Heights with mariachi and regional music performances, traditional dance and cultural performances and vendor and artisan booths.

Catalina Museum for Art & History in Avalon will host its annual Cinco de Mayo Celebration from 5 to 9 p.m., featuring performances by Mariachi Las Catrinas, Ballet Folklorico Quetzal and Avalon School students from transitional kindergarten through fifth grade.

Margaritas, wine, beer and other refreshments will be available for purchase.

The Los Angeles Police Department is encouraging the public to celebrate Cinco de Mayo responsibly by planning ahead and designating a sober driver. The department will conduct a saturation patrol from 3 to 11 p.m. in the Central Area and a DUI checkpoint from 6 to 11 p.m. at Sherman Way and Independence Avenue in Canoga Park.

​ Orange County Register 

What to know about flight delays and cancellations at Newark airport

• May 5, 2025

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — Flight delays and cancellations persisted at Newark Liberty International Airport Monday, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer calling for an investigation into the “chaos” sparked by an air traffic controller shortage and thick cloud cover.

Schumer, a Democrat from New York, said he wants an inspector general’s investigation into the delays and cancellations to prevent them from getting worse or spreading. New Jersey Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy called the delays “completely and utterly unacceptable” in a post on X, and said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is “committed” to hiring more air traffic controllers.

The delays at the busy airport outside New York City made headlines over the weekend as United Airlines said it was cutting 35 daily flights from its schedule.

As of Monday, the Federal Aviation Administration attributed arriving flight delays of nearly four hours to a combination of staffing and cloud cover.

Here’s a closer look at what to know about the delays.

What’s behind the delays at Newark?

FAA officials said in a statement Monday that controllers who work at the Philadelphia-based facility that coordinates flights to and from Newark had taken time off “to recover from the stress of multiple recent outages.”

“While we cannot quickly replace them due to this highly specialized profession, we continue to train controllers who will eventually be assigned to this busy airspace,” the FAA statement said.

The airport faced disruptions last week as well.

United CEO Scott Kirby said in a letter to customers over the weekend that the technology used to manage planes at the New Jersey airport failed more than once in recent days.

The flight delays, cancellations and diversions that the equipment problems caused were compounded when more than one-fifth of Newark’s traffic controllers “walked off the job,” he said.

Faulting the FAA’s alleged failure to address “long-simmering” challenges related to the air-traffic control system, United Airlines cut 35 daily flights from its Newark schedule starting last Saturday.

Messages seeking comment were left with the air traffic controllers labor union and the federal Transportation Department, which oversees the FAA.

What’s the broader issue with air traffic control?

The Trump administration has said an “obsolete” air traffic control system needs to be fixed.

The administration says it’s been trying to “supercharge” the air traffic controller workforce and address the nation’s shortage of controllers. Duffy last week announced a program to recruit new controllers and give existing ones incentives not to retire.

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association, a workers’ union, said at the time that those moves could help address staffing shortages, but it also said the system is “ long overdue for technology and infrastructure upgrades.”

Uncertainty at play?

United’s decision to pare back its flight schedule in Newark comes at an already uncertain period for U.S. airlines. Potential customers across the industry are reconsidering whether to fly for work or for vacation given all the unknowns about what President Donald Trump’s trade war will do to the economy.

Uncertainty is so high that United recently made the unusual move of offering two separate forecasts for how it could perform financially this year: one if there were a recession and one if not.

United flies to 76 U.S. cities and 81 international destinations from Newark.

​ Orange County Register 

Trump’s meme coin business racks up fees as buyers jump at the chance for access to the president

• May 5, 2025

By ALAN SUDERMAN

In the crypto world, meme coins are mostly just jokes with no intrinsic value. But the Trump family is parlaying the president’s meme coin into two valuable commodities: serious cash and access to the president.

Since the coin was launched earlier this year, it has generated more than $320 million in fees for its creators, according to the blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis. And on Monday, Trump promoted a dinner he’s set to attend on May 22nd that’s open to almost anyone who buys enough of the coins.

According to the contest’s rules, the top 220 holders of the meme coin will get to go to the dinner at Trump’s Washington-area golf club. The top 25 holders will also get to attend a reception where they can rub shoulders with Trump beforehand.

“Let the President know how many $TRUMP coins YOU own!” the meme coin said on its website promoting the dinner.

Trading activity in the meme coin jumped after the dinner was first announced and the price rose as well. But the Trumps don’t need to sell any coins to make money.

How Trump makes money off the meme coin

Decentralization is foundational to cryptocurrency. Bitcoin, the world’s most popular crypto, was born in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis as a digital currency meant to be uncontrolled by banks or governments.

Trump meme coins can be traded on a decentralized exchange, which is essentially a place where traders can swap goods without a middleman.

Instead of matching buyers and sellers one by one, decentralized exchanges use something called a liquidity pool to ensure trades can happen easily and instantly. Liquidity pools are essentially an automated pot of funds that pair meme coins like $TRUMP with more popular types of crypto that can be easily traded.

When the Trump meme coin was first launched, its creators initially released 20% of the planned 1 billion total coins. Half of that 20% was put up for public sale while the other half was put into a liquidity pool. CIC Digital, an affiliate of the Trump Organization, and another company receive “trading revenue derived from trading activities” of the Trump meme coins, according to its website.

Through the liquidity pool, the creators of Trump’s meme coins make money by charging tiny fees on each trade.

“You don’t really care about what happens to the price. You only care that there is continuous volume,” said Nicolai Søndergaard, a research analyst at the blockchain analytics firm Nansen. “Because the more volume there is, that means more trades and therefore more fees for you.”

Since cryptocurrency blockchains are public, it’s possible to track how much in trading fees has been paid. Chainalysis said Trump meme coin creators made more than $1.3 million in trading fees in the week after the dinner was first announced. The value of the meme coin jumped from about $9 to around $14 just after the announcement. It was trading around $11 on Monday afternoon.

Trump downplays profits

Launched just before he took office, Trump’s meme coin has become one of the most high-profile ways the norm-breaking president has mixed politics and his personal finances.

The remaining 80% of Trump’s meme coins, which are still under a lock-up, have been allocated to CIC Digital and another company. An ethics agreement prohibits Trump from “day-to-day” decision making at the Trump Organization when he’s president and limits the financial information about the business that can be shared with him.

During an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press over the weekend, Trump said he didn’t follow the price swings of his meme coin and dismissed the idea that he was profiting from the presidency. He also rejected a suggestion that he would forgo any profits made from his crypto endeavors.

“Should I contribute all of my real estate that I’ve owned for many years if it goes up a little bit because I’m president and doing a good job? I don’t think so,” Trump said.

Heavy promotion

The team behind Trump’s meme coins has been aggressively trying to promote the chance to eat with the president.

“Good News! President Trump is allowing one more person to attend Dinner with Trump,” the meme coin’s official account on X said last week, encouraging people to reply with memes featuring Trump. “Our favorite $TRUMP memes will be shown to President Trump and we will pick 1 person who gets to come to the dinner on May 22nd!”

The creators have also tried to up the ante by offering $100,000 Trump-themed watches to the top four holders of Trump’s meme coins.

Unknown guests

On Monday night, Trump is hosting a “Crypto & AI Innovators Dinner” fundraiser sponsored by his Maga, Inc. super PAC at his golf club outside Washington. An invitation to the event that circulated online instructs those invited to pay $1.5 million per person to attend. The super PAC will be required to list donors in its regular public disclosures.

But whether the public will ever know who bought their way into the meme coin dinner with the president is unclear. Unlike political donations that must be publicly reported, there’s no disclosure requirement for meme coin buyers. The White House did not immediately respond to a question about whether it would share details of the dinner’s attendees.

Critics of Trump’s foray into meme coins, which includes several Democrats, say the pseudonymous nature of cryptocurrency gives bad actors the opportunity to try and unduly influence the president through purchasing his digital assets.

The Trump meme coin website assures those who register for the contest that their full legal name and contact information will “never be publicly shown.”

Instead, registrants pick a username that’s displayed on the website’s leaderboard. The ranking is dependent not just on how many Trump meme coins someone holds, but also on how long.

After No. 220, the board has a note of encouragement for those just below the cut to buy more of the meme coins.

“You’re so close. FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT for your $TRUMP dinner.”

Associated Press reporter Will Weissert contributed.

​ Orange County Register 

Rivian building $120 million EV supplier park to offset tariffs

• May 5, 2025

By Miranda Davis and Kara Carlson | Bloomberg

Rivian Automotive Inc. is investing $120 million in a new supplier park in Illinois, another win for Governor JB Pritzker after the company announced a $1.5 billion plan to expand its plant in the state.

The 1.2 million-square-foot park in Normal will allow the electric-vehicle maker to increase production at its plant in 2026, when it starts building its R2 model, said Chief Executive Officer RJ Scaringe. The park, which will create almost 100 direct jobs, will be used to co-locate companies that produce parts for Rivian.

Pritzker is trying to promote Illinois as hub for new technologies including quantum computing, batteries and EVs. Rivian last year paused plans on a new Georgia facility, shifting planned production of its upcoming R2 vehicle to Illinois, a move the company said it would get the SUV to market faster and save more than $2.25 billion.

The announcement comes as domestic manufacturers have been trying to bolster their supply chains as President Donald Trump’s trade policy has left many unsure of how to source raw materials and production equipment. That includes Rivian, which quietly began stockpiling electric vehicle batteries from Asia ahead of the tariffs, Bloomberg reported last week.

Pritzker, the billionaire two-term Democratic governor who is one of Trump’s most vocal critics, said the investment is about creating a broader electric vehicle ecosystem in Illinois and that the company’s investment will “attract suppliers from across the globe to invest in Illinois.”

Rivian will get $16 million in state incentives for the supplier park, which includes a $5 million tax benefit over 20 years, as well as a capital grant.

The company, which also plans to eventually produce R2 and a future vehicle called R3 in Georgia, won approval for a $6.6 billion loan from the Department of Energy to support construction of the facility earlier this year, just as President Joe Biden was leaving office.

The Trump administration has threatened such loans, but experts have said clawing back loans would be difficult.

​ Orange County Register