Recipe: These Black Bean Tostadas make a tasty, last-minute meal

• May 5, 2025

These tostadas make a tasty last-minute meal and would be perfect to make for Mom on Mother’s Day. Put out the garnishes and let diners add their favorite toppings, piling them high with cheese and nutritious veggies. If you like, add chunks of cooked chicken to the bean mixture.

Black Bean Tostadas with Radishes, Cherry Tomatoes and Avocado

Yield: 4 servings

INGREDIENTS

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 garlic clove, minced

1 small white onion, chopped

1 red bell pepper, seeded, chopped

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon chili powder

2 (15-ounces each) cans black beans

Optional: 1 cup bite-sized pieces cooked chicken breast

8 crisp tostada shells (fried or baked corn tortillas), store-bought or homemade

Garnishes: 1 sliced avocado, 3 thinly sliced radishes, 1 cup shredded cabbage, 1 cup shredded Jack cheese or queso fresco, lime wedges, salsa

DIRECTIONS

1. In a skillet, warm oil on medium heat. Add garlic, onion and red bell pepper; cook, stirring occasionally, until onion softens, about 8 minutes. Stir in cumin and chili powder. Add beans to pan along with their juices. Stir and mash until beans are a chunky mixture — only partially pureed, some beans can remain whole. If desired, add cooked chicken. Heat it through, stirring occasionally.

2. Assemble: Top each tostada shell with about 1/2 cup bean mixture. Top with garnishes and serve.

Award-winning food writer Cathy Thomas has written three cookbooks, including “50 Best Plants on the Planet.” Follow her at CathyThomasCooks.com.

​ Orange County Register 

How Alcatraz became America’s most notorious prison

• May 5, 2025

By ED WHITE

President Donald Trump wants to convert Alcatraz back into a federal prison, decades after the California island fortress was converted into a U.S. tourist destination because it had become too costly to house America’s worst criminals.

The prison off the coast of San Francisco is where the government sent notorious gangsters Al Capone and George “Machine Gun” Kelly as well as lesser-known men who were considered too dangerous to lock up elsewhere.

Circled by herons and gulls and often shrouded in fog, Alcatraz has been the setting for movies featuring Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage and Clint Eastwood.

Trump says Alcatraz, now part of the National Park Service, suddenly is needed to house America’s “most ruthless and violent” criminals.

“When we were a more serious Nation, in times past, we did not hesitate to lock up the most dangerous criminals, and keep them far away from anyone they could harm. That’s the way it’s supposed to be,” Trump said Sunday on his Truth Social site.

What is Alcatraz?

Alcatraz is in San Francisco Bay off the coast of San Francisco and visible from the Golden Gate Bridge. It is best known for its years as a federal prison, from 1934-63, but its history is much longer.

President Millard Fillmore in 1850 declared the island for public purposes, according to the park service, and it soon became a military site. Confederates were housed there during the Civil War.

By the 1930s, the government decided that it needed a place to hold the worst criminals, and Alcatraz became the choice for a prison.

“A remote site was sought, one that would prohibit constant communication with the outside world by those confined within its walls,” the park service said. “Although land in Alaska was being considered, the availability of Alcatraz Island conveniently coincided with the government’s perceived need for a high security prison.”

Why did it close?

The remoteness eventually made it impractical. Everything from food to fuel had to arrive by boat.

“The island had no source of fresh water,” according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, “so nearly one million gallons of water had to be barged to the island each week.”

The cost to house someone there in 1959 was $10.10 a day compared with $3 at a federal prison in Atlanta, the government said. It was cheaper to build a new prison from scratch.

Why is Alcatraz notorious?

Despite the location, many prisoners tried to get out: 36 men attempted 14 separate escapes into the bay, according to the FBI. Nearly all were caught or didn’t survive the cold water and swift current.

“Escape from Alcatraz,” a 1979 movie starring Eastwood, told the story of John Anglin, his brother Clarence and Frank Morris, who all escaped in 1962, leaving behind handmade plaster heads with real hair in their beds to fool guards.

“For the 17 years we worked on the case, no credible evidence emerged to suggest the men were still alive, either in the U.S. or overseas,” the FBI said.

“The Rock,” a 1996 fictional thriller with Connery and Cage, centers on an effort to rescue hostages from rogue Marines on Alcatraz.

A national park

Alcatraz became part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and was opened to the public in 1973, a decade after it was closed as a prison.

The park service says the island gets more than 1 million visitors a year who arrive by ferry. A ticket for an adult costs $47.95, and visitors can see the cells where prisoners were held.

In 1969, a group of Native Americans, mostly college students, claimed to have a right to Alcatraz and began an occupation that lasted for 19 months. It ended in 1971 when federal authorities intervened.

“The underlying goals of the Indians on Alcatraz were to awaken the American public to the reality of the plight of the first Americans and to assert the need for Indian self-determination,” late historian Troy Johnson wrote.

​ Orange County Register 

Play your cardinals right: Betting on next pope gains popularity ahead of the conclave

• May 5, 2025

By MARIA GRAZIA MURRU and SYLVIA HUI

ROME (AP) — Next week’s conclave to elect the successor to Pope Francis as leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics is a solemn affair steeped in centuries-old traditions.

But far from the Sistine Chapel where cloistered cardinals will cast votes, people are placing bets on who will be chosen as the next pope. From cash bets on websites to online games modeled after fantasy football leagues and casual wagers among friends and families, the popularity of guessing and gambling on the future of the papacy is increasing worldwide, experts and participants say.

It’s even topped the Europa League soccer tournament and Formula One drivers’ championship, said Sam Eaton, U.K. manager for Oddschecker, a leading online platform analyzing odds across sports, events and other betting markets.

“There’s a huge level of interest globally,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve had a market like this where we’ve had so many countries interested in seeing odds.”

Around the world, thousands of bets on the next pope

Hundreds of thousands of people from some 140 countries have visited Oddschecker to review each cardinal’s chances of becoming the next pope, Eaton said. He noted special eagerness in the United Kingdom, Ireland and the United States.

In the U.K., about 30,000 pounds (almost $40,000) have been wagered with one leading online betting platform as of this week, Eaton said – a far cry from 1.2 million pounds on the singing contest Eurovision but still noteworthy as a trend, with the conclave days away.

“Betting on the next pope is definitely a niche market in the grand scheme of things, but it generates global interest,” said Lee Phelps, a spokesman for William Hill, one of the U.K.’s biggest bookmakers.

“Since April 21, we’ve taken thousands of bets, and it’s the busiest of all our non-sports betting markets,” said Phelps, who expects a surge in interest once the conclave begins Wednesday.

Betting on elections, papal conclaves and all manner of global events is almost a tradition of its own in the U.K., but such betting is not legal in the United States. BetMGM, one of the world’s top sports-betting companies, said it would not have any bets up.

But Eaton noted that in the unregulated, illegal space, one of the biggest sites has $10 million wagered so far in pope bets.

Fantasy “teams” of cardinals

In Italy, betting on the papal election — and all religious events — is forbidden.

Some people in Rome are making friendly, informal wagers — the equivalent of $20 on a favorite cardinal, with the loser pledging to host a dinner or buy a pizza night out.

Others are turning to an online game called Fantapapa, or Fantasy Pope, which mimics popular fantasy football and soccer leagues. More than 60,000 people are playing, each choosing 11 cardinals – as if for a soccer team – whom they believe have the best shot at becoming the next pope.

They also draft the top contender, or captain. As with online wagers, the No. 1 choice for fantasy players has been Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin, closely followed by Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle.

“It’s a really fun game to play with friends and have a laugh,” Italian student Federico La Rocca, 23, said. “Initially my dad sent it to me ironically, but now that it’s going to be the conclave, I decided to have a go and try it.”

La Rocca said he chose Tagle because “he looks like a nice guy and fun person.”

Players’ selections determine the number of points they rake in. But what’s the jackpot?

“Eternal glory,” joked Mauro Vanetti, who created the game when Francis was hospitalized earlier this year.

Vanetti said he and his co-founder are against gambling, but they wanted to create something fun around the event.

“It seems like in Italy there’s a certain inquisitiveness about the mechanisms of the Catholic hierarchy, but it’s a critical curiosity, a sarcastic and playful curiosity, so we were interested in this jesting spirit for such a solemn event,” Vanetti said. “In some ways it deflates the sacredness, in a nonaggressive way.”

Some concerns about betting on a solemn event

Beyond simply picking who the next pope will be, players and gamblers also can guess how many tries it will take the cardinals to choose the leader, which day of the week he’ll be elected, what new name he will decide on, or where his priorities will land on the progressive-conservative scale.

While the game and some of the bets have a novel or fun nature, anti-gambling advocates have raised overall concerns about legal gaming and the growing popularity of wagering on all manner of events.

A study published last fall found that 10% of young men in the U.S. show behavior that indicates a gambling problem, which is a rising concern in other parts of the world, too.

And for gambling around the papacy in general, some have raised religious concerns. Catholic teaching doesn’t go so far as to call games of chance or wagers sinful, but its Catechism warns that “the passion for gambling risks becoming an enslavement.”

It says gambling becomes “morally unacceptable” if it gravely affects a person’s livelihood.

Hui reported from London. AP writers Giovanna Dell’Orto in Rome and Mark Anderson in Las Vegas contributed.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

​ Orange County Register 

California Democrats are tougher on businesses than they are on child trafficking

• May 5, 2025

If only California’s super-majority leading Democrats treated everyone with the kindness, understanding and leniency they show child sex predators.

Last week, Democrats crushed an effort by one of their own members, Assemblywoman Maggy Krell, to equalize the penalties for purchasing a child for sex. It’s an automatic felony in California if the child is 15 or younger, but for 16- and 17-year-olds, it’s a misdemeanor. It can be charged as a felony if the child was trafficked, but the burden of proving that the child was trafficked, believe it or not, falls on the child. That was the outcome of a 2024 deal to pass Senate Bill 1414, a deal that was forced on author Sen. Shannon Grove as a condition of toughening penalties on those who buy children for sex.

Some people might say that like a turtle on a fence post, if you see 16- or 17-year-old prostitutes on the street, they didn’t get there by themselves. But that’s not the view of Sen. Scott Wiener, who last year led the charge to pass a bill that decriminalized loitering for prostitution, a law that Krell’s bill, AB 379, would largely reverse.

Wiener posted on social media that he supports lighter penalties for buying 16- and 17-year-olds because it’s not “smart criminal justice policy” to send “an 18-year-old high school senior to state prison for offering his 17-year-old classmate $20 to fool around.”

We’re not going to guess how often that happens, if ever, but it’s an odd justification for opposing a law to protect children by cracking down on the predators who provide the lifeblood of cash for the atrocity of trafficking teens for sex.

Wiener has a completely different view of how the law should be enforced against job-creating businesses. He has introduced Senate Bill 310, which blows up a deal made last year to enact legislative reforms to the state’s shakedown-enabling Private Attorneys General Act.  PAGA, as it’s known, allows private attorneys to enforce the provisions of the state’s monster-length labor code. Business groups have long criticized the law, which they say encourages unscrupulous attorneys to target businesses with lawsuits that may be meritless, but are less expensive to settle than to defend.

Last year, proponents of a PAGA reform initiative agreed to withdraw it from the November ballot in exchange for the governor’s signature on two bills that gave businesses some protections, including time to cure violations before litigation could commence and a process for settling disputes outside of court. The idea was to reduce costs for employers while still protecting workers.

Now Wiener’s SB 310 would create an entirely new private right of action for wage and hour penalties that gives trial attorneys new leverage to compel costly settlements.

There’s nothing new about the merciless treatment of businesses in California. Ask the trucking industry how much understanding they were shown when their engines were outlawed by the California Air Resources Board. Ask the restaurant industry what they have to go through to get a permit for a char-broiler. From laws that penalize businesses for not removing graffiti fast enough to regulations that are driving oil companies to close refineries to hyper-regulation of legal marijuana businesses, fines and penalties are imposed that make businesses unsustainable.

Why an exception has been made for the child prostitution business is a question voters should ask their representatives.

​ Orange County Register 

Coalition of 19 states ask federal judge to reverse deep cuts to US Health and Human Services

• May 5, 2025

By REBECCA BOONE and AMANDA SEITZ

Attorneys general in 19 states and Washington, D.C., are challenging cuts to the U.S. Health and Human Services agency, saying the Trump administration’s massive restructuring has destroyed life-saving programs and left states to pick up the bill for mounting health crises.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Washington D.C. on Monday, New York Attorney General Letitia James said. The attorneys general from Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia signed onto the complaint.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. restructured the agency in March, eliminating more than 10,000 employees and collapsing 28 agencies under the sprawling HHS umbrella into 15, the attorneys general said. An additional 10,000 employees had already been let go by President Donald Trump’s administration, according to the lawsuit, and combined the cuts stripped 25% of the HHS workforce.

“In its first three months, Secretary Kennedy and this administration deprived HHS of the resources necessary to do its job,” the attorneys general wrote.

Kennedy has said he is seeking to streamline the nation’s public health agencies and reduce redundancies across them with the layoffs. The cuts were made as part of a directive the administration has dubbed, “ Make America Healthy Again.”

HHS is one of the government’s costliest federal agencies, with an annual budget of about $1.7 trillion that is mostly spent on health care coverage for millions of people enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid.

The cuts have resulted in laboratories having limited testing for some infectious diseases, the federal government not tracking cancer risks among U.S. firefighters, early childhood learning programs left unsure of future funds and programs aimed at monitoring cancer and maternal health closing, the attorneys general say. Cuts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also have hampered states’ ability to respond to one of the largest measles outbreaks in recent years, the lawsuit says.

“This chaos and abandonment of the Department’s core functions was not an unintended side effect, but rather the intended result,” of the “MAHA Directive,” they said. They want a judge to vacate the directive because they say the administration can’t unilaterally eliminate programs and funding that have been created by Congress.

The restructuring eliminated the entire team of people who maintain the federal poverty guidelines used by states to determine whether residents are eligible for Medicaid, nutrition assistance and other programs. A tobacco prevention agency was gutted. Staff losses also were significant at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

The Trump administration is already facing other legal challenges over cuts to public health agencies and research organizations. A coalition of 23 states filed a federal lawsuit in Rhode Island last month over the administration’s decision to cut $11 billion in federal funds for COVID-19 initiatives and various public health projects across the country.

Boone reported from Boise, Idaho and Seitz reported from Washington, D.C.

​ Orange County Register 

Dinner parties, listening and lobbying. What goes on behind closed doors to elect a pope

• May 5, 2025

By NICOLE WINFIELD

ROME (AP) — Rome is bustling with jasmine blooming and tourists swarming. But behind closed doors, these are the days of dinner parties, coffee klatches and private meetings as cardinals in town to elect a successor to Pope Francis suss out who among them has the stuff to be next.

It was in this period of pre-conclave huddling in March of 2013 that Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the retired archbishop of Westminster, and other reform-minded Europeans began pushing the candidacy of an Argentine Jesuit named Jorge Mario Bergoglio. Their dinner table lobbying worked and Pope Francis won on the fifth ballot.

Cardinal Vincent Nichols may have inherited Murphy-O’Connor’s position as archbishop of Westminster. But he’s not taking on the job as the front-man papal lobbyist in these days of canvassing of cardinals to try to identify who among them should be the next pope.

“We’re of quite different styles,” Nichols said Friday, chuckling during an interview in the Venerable English College, the storied British seminary in downtown Rome where Nichols studied in the 1960s. “Cardinal Cormac would love to be at the center of the party. I’m a little more reserved than that and a little bit more introverted.”

Nevertheless, Nichols, 79, provided an insider’s view of what’s going on among his fellow cardinal-electors, between meals of Rome’s famous carbonara — as they get to know one another. They all descended on Rome to bid farewell to the pope and are now meeting informally before the start of the May 7 conclave.

Nichols says he is spending these days before he and his fellow cardinals are sequestered listening. The routine calls for cardinals to meet each morning in a Vatican auditorium to discuss the needs of the Catholic Church and the type of person who can lead it. These meetings are open to all cardinals, including those over 80, while the conclave itself in the Sistine Chapel is limited to cardinals who haven’t yet reached 80.

With the exception of an afternoon Mass — part of the nine days of official mourning for Francis — the rest of the day is free. Cardinals have been seen around town taking walks or eating out, trying to remain incognito.

‘Not a boys’ brigade that marches in step’

Nichols said a picture of the future pope is beginning to emerge, at least in his mind, as cardinals look back at Francis’ 12-year pontificate and see where to go from here.

“I suppose we’re looking for somebody who even in their manner not only expresses the depth of the faith, but also its openness as well,” said Nichols.

Pope Benedict XVI named Nichols archbishop of Westminster in 2009, but he didn’t become a cardinal until 2014, when Francis tapped him in his first batch of cardinals. Francis went on to name Nichols as a member of several important Vatican offices, including the powerful dicastery for bishops, which vets bishop nominations around the world.

“My experience so far, to be quite honest with you, is there’s a lot of attentive listening,” Nichols said. “That’s listening to the people who might have an idea today of who they think is the best candidate, and I wouldn’t be surprised if by Monday they might have changed their mind.”

Nichols said the picture that is emerging is of seeing Francis’ pontificate in continuity with the more doctrinaire papacies of St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI, and of appreciating the multicultural reality of the Catholic Church today. Francis greatly expanded the College of Cardinals to include cardinals from far-flung places like Tonga and Mongolia, rather than the traditional centers of European Catholicism.

Yes, divisions and disagreements have been aired. “But I can never remember a time when Catholics all agreed about everything,” Nichols said.

“We’re not a boys’ brigade that marches in step.” But he said he sensed that cardinals believe Francis’ reforming papacy and radical call to prioritize the poor and marginalized, to care for the planet and all its people, needed further consolidating with another papacy.

“There’s a sense that the initiatives that this man of such originality took, they probably do need rooting a bit more to give them that stability and evident continuity,” Nichols said. “So that these aren’t just the ideas of one person, one charismatic person, but they are actually consistently part of how the church reflects on humanity, our own humanity and our world.”

‘Team Bergoglio’

In his book “The Great Reformer,” Francis’ biographer Austen Ivereigh described the 2013 conclave and how Nichols’ predecessor, Murphy-O’Connor and other reform-minded Europeans seized the opportunity to push Bergoglio after it was clear the Italians were fighting among themselves over the Italian candidate.

“Team Bergoglio,” as these reform-minded cardinals came to be known, had tried to talk up Bergoglio in the 2005 conclave, but failed to get their man through after Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s momentum grew and Bergoglio bowed out.

In 2013, with many too old to vote in the conclave itself, “Team Bergoglio” talked up the Argentine at dinner parties around Rome in the days before the conclave. The aim was to ensure Bergoglio could secure at least 25 votes on the first ballot to establish himself as a serious candidate, the book said.

“The Great Reformer” recounts a dinner party at the North American College, the U.S. seminary in Rome, on March 5, 2013 to which Murphy-O’Connor and Australian Cardinal George Pell were invited and where the British cardinal talked up the qualities of a possible first Latin American pope.

“He held a number of these dinners, and I think there were a few of them involved, a few who had grown convinced that Bergoglio was what the church needed,” Ivereigh said Friday.

Nichols doesn’t have any such calculations or preferred candidate, at least that he is willing to share.

“For me, it’s no good going into a conclave thinking it’s like a political election and I want my side to win. I’m not going to do that,” he said. “I’m going to go in certainly with my own thoughts but ready to change them, to listen and maybe try and persuade others to change theirs too.”

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

​ Orange County Register 

States sue Trump administration for blocking the development of wind energy

• May 5, 2025

By JENNIFER McDERMOTT

A coalition of state attorneys general filed a lawsuit Monday against President Donald Trump’s attempt to stop the development of wind energy.

Attorneys general from 17 states and Washington, D.C., are challenging an executive order Trump signed during his first day in office, pausing approvals, permits and loans for all wind energy projects both onshore and offshore. They say Trump doesn’t have the authority to unilaterally shut down the permitting process, and he’s jeopardizing development of a power source critical to the states’ economic vitality, energy mix, public health and climate goals.

They’re asking a federal judge to declare the order unlawful and stop federal agencies from implementing it.

“This arbitrary and unnecessary directive threatens the loss of thousands of good-paying jobs and billions in investments, and it is delaying our transition away from the fossil fuels that harm our health and our planet,” New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is leading the coalition, said in a statement.

Trump vowed during the campaign to end the offshore wind industry if he returned to the White House. His order said there were “alleged legal deficiencies underlying the federal government’s leasing and permitting” of wind projects, and it directed the Interior secretary to review wind leasing and permitting practices for federal waters and lands.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Massachusetts. One of the federal agencies named in it, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said it does not comment on litigation.

The Biden administration saw offshore wind as a climate change solution, setting national goals, holding lease sales and approving nearly a dozen commercial-scale projects. Trump is reversing those energy policies. He’s boosting fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal, which cause climate change, arguing it’s necessary for the U.S. to have the lowest-cost energy and electricity in the world.

The Trump administration took a more aggressive step against wind in April when it ordered the Norwegian company Equinor to halt construction on Empire Wind, a fully permitted project located southeast of Long Island, New York, that is about 30% complete. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said it appeared the Biden administration rushed the approval.

Equinor went through a seven-year permitting process before starting to build Empire Wind last year to provide power to 500,000 New York homes. Equinor is considering legal options, which would be separate from the complaint filed Monday. The Norwegian government owns a majority stake in Equinor.

Wind provides about 10% of the electricity generated in the United States, making it the nation’s largest source of renewable energy. The attorneys general argue that Trump’s order is at odds with years of bipartisan support for wind energy and contradicts his own declaration of a “national energy emergency,” which called for expanding domestic energy production.

The coalition includes Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington and Washington, D.C. They say they’ve invested hundreds of millions of dollars collectively to develop wind energy and even more on upgrading transmission lines to bring wind energy to the electrical grid.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said the executive order sows chaos, when businesses need clear regulations to effectively operate.

Large, ocean-based wind farms are the linchpin of state plans to shift to renewable energy, particularly in populous East Coast states with limited land. The nation’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm opened a year ago, a 12-turbine wind farm east of Montauk Point, New York. A smaller wind farm operates near Block Island in waters controlled by the state of Rhode Island.

Massachusetts has three offshore wind projects in various stages of development, include Vineyard Wind. The state has invested in offshore wind to ensure residents have access to well-paying green jobs and reliable, affordable energy, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell said.

The Trump administration has also suspended federal funding for floating offshore wind research in Maine and revoked a permit for a proposed offshore wind project in New Jersey.

Elsewhere, political leaders are trying to rapidly increase wind energy. U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmerannounced a major investment in wind power in April while hosting an international summit on energy security. Nova Scotia plans to offer leases for five gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030, Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston said in Virginia last week at an Oceantic Network conference.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

​ Orange County Register 

Cuts have eliminated more than a dozen US government health-tracking programs

• May 5, 2025

By MIKE STOBBE

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s motto is “ Make America Healthy Again,” but government cuts could make it harder to know if that’s happening.

More than a dozen data-gathering programs that track deaths and disease appear to have been eliminated in the tornado of layoffs and proposed budget cuts rolled out in the Trump administration’s first 100 days.

The Associated Press examined draft and final budget proposals and spoke to more than a dozen current and former federal employees to determine the scope of the cuts to programs tracking basic facts about Americans’ health.

Among those terminated at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were experts tracking abortions, pregnancies, job-related injuries, lead poisonings, sexual violence and youth smoking, the AP found.

“If you don’t have staff, the program is gone,” said Patrick Breysse, who used to oversee the CDC’s environmental health programs.

Federal officials have not given a public accounting of specific surveillance programs that are being eliminated.

Instead, a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokeswoman pointed the AP to a Trump administration budget proposal released Friday. It lacked specifics, but proposes to cut the CDC’s core budget by more than half and vows to focus CDC surveillance only on emerging and infectious diseases.

Kennedy has said some of the CDC’s other work will be moved to a yet-to-be-created agency, the Administration for a Healthy America. He also has said that the cuts are designed to get rid of waste at a department that has seen its budget grow in recent years.

“Unfortunately, this extra spending and staff has not improved our nation’s health as a country,” Kennedy wrote last month in The New York Post. “Instead, it has only created more waste, administrative bloat and duplication.”

Yet some health experts say the eliminated programs are not duplicative, and erasing them will leave Americans in the dark.

“If the U.S. is interested in making itself healthier again, how is it going to know, if it cancels the programs that helps us understand these diseases?” said Graham Mooney, a Johns Hopkins University public health historian.

The core of the nation’s health surveillance is done by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. Relying on birth and death certificates, it generates information on birth rates, death trends and life expectancy. It also operates longstanding health surveys that provide basic data on obesity, asthma and other health issues.

The center has been barely touched in layoffs, and seems intact under current budget plans.

But many other efforts were targeted by the cuts, the AP found. Some examples:

Pregnancies and abortion

The Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, which surveys women across the country, lost its entire staff — about 20 people.

It’s the most comprehensive collection of data on the health behaviors and outcomes before, during and after childbirth. Researchers have been using its data to investigate the nation’s maternal mortality problem.

Recent layoffs also wiped out the staffs collecting data on in vitro fertilizations and abortions.

Those cuts are especially surprising given that President Donald Trump said he wants to expand IVF access and that the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 playbook for his administration called for more abortion surveillance.

Lead poisoning

The CDC eliminated its program on lead poisoning in children, which helped local health departments — through funding and expertise — investigate lead poisoning clusters and find where risk is greatest.

Lead poisoning in kids typically stems from exposure to bits of old paint, contaminated dust or drinking water that passes through lead pipes. But the program’s staff also played an important role in the investigation of lead-tainted applesauce that affected 500 kids.

Last year, Milwaukee health officials became aware that peeling paint in aging local elementary schools was endangering kids. The city health department began working with CDC to test tens of thousands of students. That assistance stopped last month when the CDC’s lead program staff was terminated.

City officials are particularly concerned about losing expertise to help them track the long-term effects.

“We don’t know what we don’t know,” said Mike Totoraitis, the city’s health commissioner.

Environmental investigations

Also gone is the staff for the 23-year-old Environmental Public Health Tracking Program, which had information on concerns including possible cancer clusters and weather-related illnesses.

“The loss of that program is going to greatly diminish the ability to make linkages between what might be in the environment and what health might be affected by that,” Breysse said.

Transgender data

In some cases, it’s not a matter of staffers leaving, but rather the end of specific types of data collection.

Transgender status is no longer being recorded in health-tracking systems, including ones focused on violent deaths and on risky behaviors by kids.

Experts know transgender people are more likely to be victims of violence, but now “it’s going to be much more challenging to quantify the extent to which they are at higher risk,” said Thomas Simon, the recently retired senior director for scientific programs at the CDC’s Division of Violence Prevention.

Violence

The staff and funding seems to have remained intact for a CDC data collection that provides insights into homicides, suicides and accidental deaths involving weapons.

But CDC violence-prevention programs that acted on that information were halted. So, too, was work on a system that collects hospital data on nonfatal injuries from causes such as shootings, crashes and drownings.

Also going away, apparently, is the CDC’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey. The system is designed to pick up information that’s not found in law enforcement statistics. Health officials see that work as important, because not all sexual violence victims go to police.

Work injuries

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which tracks job-related illnesses and deaths and makes recommendations on how to prevent them, was gutted by the cuts.

Kennedy has said that 20% of the people laid off might be reinstated as the agency tries to correct mistakes.

That appeared to happen last month, when the American Federation of Government Employees said that NIOSH workers involved in a black lung disease program for coal miners had been temporarily called back.

But HHS officials did not answer questions about the reinstatement. The AFGE’s Micah Niemeier-Walsh later said the workers continued to have June termination dates and “we are concerned this is to give the appearance that the programs are still functioning, when effectively they are not.”

There’s been no talk of salvaging some other NIOSH programs, including one focused on workplace deaths in the oil and gas industries or a research project into how common hearing loss is in that industry.

Smoking and drugs

The HHS cuts eliminated the 17-member team responsible for the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, one of the main ways the government measures drug use.

Also axed were the CDC staff working on the National Youth Tobacco Survey.

There are other surveys that look at youth smoking and drug use, including the University of Michigan’s federally funded “Monitoring the Future” survey of schoolkids.

But the federal studies looked at both adults and adolescents, and provided insights into drug use by high school dropouts. The CDC also delved into specific vaping and tobacco products in the ways that other surveys don’t, and was a driver in the federal push to better regulate electronic cigarettes.

“There was overlap among the surveys, but each one had its own specific focus that the other ones didn’t cover,“ said Richard Miech, who leads the Michigan study.

Data modernization and predictions

Work to modernize data collection has been derailed. That includes an upgrade to a 22-year-old system that helps local public health departments track diseases and allows CDC to put together a national picture.

Another casualty was the Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics, which tries to predict disease trends.

The center, created during the COVID-19 pandemic, was working on forecasting the current multi-state measles outbreak. That forecast hasn’t been published partly because of the layoffs, according to two CDC officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss it and fear retribution for speaking to the press.

Trump hasn’t always supported widespread testing of health problems.

In the spring of 2020, when COVID-19 diagnoses were exploding, the president groused that the nation’s ability to do more testing was making the U.S. look like it had a worse problem than other countries. He called testing “a double-edged sword.”

Mooney, the Johns Hopkins historian, wonders how interested the new administration is in reporting on health problems.

“You could think it’s deliberate,” he said. “If you keep people from knowing, they’re less likely to be concerned.”

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