The health care cheat sheet for Harris' VP shortlist

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is expected to name her vice-president pick in the coming days as the party gears up for its convention and all (or most) of the VP-hopefuls hit the airwaves and rally events.

The pool of potential VP picks share some traits: They are largely white men from battleground or conservative-leaning states who can boast working across the aisle and bridging gaps with moderate voters. Many of these men appeared on a "White Dudes for Harris" call earlier this week that the campaign said raised millions.

But the field is ever-narrowing. STAT's Sarah Owermohle lays out the health care high points — and potential priorities — for five of the top names.

politics

Personnel is policy in Trump world

As President Biden's administration brought back a cadre of former Obama health aides, a second Trump administration could bring back some familiar faces to shape his health policy agenda.

Sarah and I pulled together our informed list of the health policy experts who could either make a reappearance in a Trump administration, or have an outsized influence from the outside. Not all of Trump's former top health officials have a desire to return. Some have largely kept themselves outside of the Washington orbit.

See all seven of the former aides and officials here.

reproductive rights

Trump tries new tack on abortion pivot

Presidential candidate Donald Trump has actually helped moderate Republicans' views on abortion, the former president said Wednesday. (We'd note that he also boasts he picked the Supreme Court justices who helped overturn national abortion rights.)

"I've made them much less radical," he told moderators during an oftentimes heated interview at the National Association of Black Journalists' convention. While Trump has said on the campaign trail that he supports exceptions in the case of rape, incest, or danger to the pregnant person's health, his comments Wednesday underscore that he pushed the party to move with him — and that he wants credit for the shift, Sarah writes. Yet he still maintained that the fall of Roe, turning abortion policy back to the states, was a broadly popular move — a position not reflected in national polls.

Reporters also asked Trump about his age and mental aptitude going into a second term, leading him to repeat that he's "aced" several cognitive tests and that they should be required.

"I want people to be sharp. I'll go a step further: I want anybody running for President to take an aptitude test, to take a cognitive test," Trump said. That's something medical experts have urged for some time now, Larry Altman wrote for STAT earlier this year.

public health

One shot, two shot, red shot, flu shot

The CDC announced a new program this week to help vaccinate farm workers against the seasonal flu to help stem the spread of H5N1 from cattle, my colleague Helen Branswell reports.

The rationale for the CDC program is to lower the risk that farm workers will be infected with human flu strains during the coming flu season and, if they go to work sick, transmit human flu viruses to cows already infected with H5N1, or themselves become co-infected with the bird flu virus.

The workers aren't getting vaccines specific to avian flu viruses, which exist and the U.S. government has stockpiled. Officials aren't planning on vaccinating cows either, for now.

science

NIH loses First Amendment lawsuit

A U.S. appeals court ruled that the NIH violated constitutional free speech protections by blocking comments on its online forums related to animal testing, STAT's Ed Silverman writes.

NIH was moderating comments on platforms including Facebook and Instagram, the lawsuit alleged. The NIH claimed it was minimizing "off-topic" discussions from reader comments. Animal rights groups were elated by the ruling, and the NIH didn't say whether it would appeal.

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