Ever since Elijah Maldonado was born at just 29 weeks, he has needed specialty treatments that his family could afford only with publicly funded healthcare.

Diagnosed with cerebral palsy as an infant, he spent his first three months at a public hospital in Orange County, where the familiy lives.

Now 7, Elijah receives physical and speech therapy among a host of other services paid for through Medicaid. He relies on a wheelchair funded by the government. An assistant paid for with taxpayer dollars makes sure he’s safe on the bus ride to and from school.

Each month, he receives a $957 disability check that helps to cover his and his family’s living expenses.

Still learning to speak on his own, he uses a Proloquo speech app on an iPad provided by his school to tell his family when he’s hungry, needs to use the restroom or wants to play with his favorite toys.

“It’s his voice — his lifeline,” his aunt and primary caretaker Cassandra Gonzalez says of the app. Her compensation for his in-home care comes from taxpayer dollars too.

Now that lifeline — and much of the government assistance Elijah receives — is at risk of going away.

With hundreds of billions of dollars worth of cuts to Medicaid and food aid kicking in this fall thanks to the passage of the Republican-backed “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” — on top of earlier cuts imposed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency — a host of federally funded healthcare and nutrition programs that serve low-income Americans will be scaled back, revamped with expanded work requirements and other restrictions or canceled altogether if individual states can’t find alternate funding sources.

The budget reduces federal spending on Medicaid alone by about $1 trillion over the next 10 years nationwide, with initial reductions taking effect in the coming weeks.

Gov. Gavin Newsom responded by accusing the Trump administration of “ripping care from cancer patients, meals from children and money from working families — just to give tax breaks to the ultra-rich.”

L.A. public health officials called the cuts devastating for a county where nearly 40% of the population is enrolled in Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program. L.A. County’s Department of Health Services, which oversees four public hospitals and about two dozen clinics, projects a budget reduction amounting to $750 million a year, and federal funding for the Department of Public Health, which inspects food, provides substance-use treatment and tracks disease outbreaks, will drop by an estimated $200 million a year. Spending cuts have prompted hiring freezes and projections of ballooning budget deficits, county health officials said.

Spending reductions, combined with recent changes to the Affordable Care Act and Medicare, could leave an additional 1.7 million people in California uninsured by 2034, according to an analysis by the nonprofit healthcare research organization KFF.

Cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), colloquially known as “food stamps,” will exceed $280 billion over the next decade, according to projections from the Congressional Budget Office.

It’s not just that the cuts to these programs are massive by historical standards.

The new rules and restrictions are confusing and states have been given little guidance from the federal agencies that oversee health and nutrition programs on how, or even when, to implement them, experts at the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities wrote in a recent report.

What’s clear, the CBPP said, is that millions of children, older adults, people with disabilities and veterans stand to lose not just Medicaid coverage but federal aid to access the type of healthy foods that could prevent illness and chronic conditions.

More than 5 million California households receive food aid through the state’s CalFresh program and 97% percent of them will see their benefits either slashed or eliminated because of federal spending cuts, changes to eligibility requirements or financial constraints at the state level, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan California Budget Policy Center.

Elijah plays with toy cars outside his aunt’s home in Tustin.

(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

In Orange County, where Elijah’s family lives, public health officials were already reeling from federal spending cuts in the months before the budget bill passed, said Dr. Veronica Kelley, director of the OC Health Care Agency. For example, there was the $13.2-million cut to funding for family planning services in the county, and the $4-million reduction in funding to Women, Infants and Children nutrition (WIC).

The agency has worked to prevent mass layoffs by moving public-health workers in canceled programs to other departments or leaving some positions unfilled in order to save jobs elsewhere, and it has sought out nonprofit social service organizations and philanthropies to either take over programs or help fund them, Kelley said.

Now, Kelley is preparing for possible cuts to programs to combat obesity, maintain community gardens, help seniors make better healthcare decisions and reduce the use of tobacco. The agency also has to figure out how to make up for a $4.8-million reduction in federal funds for the county’s SNAP program that takes effect on Wednesday — another casualty of the federal spending bill.

The measures that the agency has leaned on to get through the year are not sustainable, Kelley said. “We can only do that for so long,” she said. “It’s chaotic. In terms of healthcare, it’s devastating… It feels like we’re taking so many steps backward.”

The looming cuts and changes have also set off alarm bells at Kaiser Permanente, California’s largest private healthcare provider with 9.5 million members statewide, 1.1 million of whom are enrolled in Medi-Cal.

“Without the ability to pay, newly uninsured people will find themselves having to delay care, leading to more serious and complex health conditions, increasing the use of emergency services and more intensive medical services,” Kaiser Permanente Southern California Regional spokeswoman Candice Lee said in a statement to The Times.

“This will affect all of us as the cost of this uncompensated care leads hospitals and care providers to charge paying customers more to cover their costs. Some hospitals and providers, especially those in rural and underserved areas, will be unable to make up for these unreimbursed costs, and will be financially threatened by these changes.”

Standing in front of her sister Cassandra’s town home in Tustin, a quiet suburban city of 80,000 about 10 miles south of Disneyland, Elijah’s mother, Samantha Rios; grandmother Josephine Rios; and Aunt Cassandra are filled with worry.

Elijah points to a command on his Proloquo speech app, which he uses to communicate his needs.

(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

Josephine, a nursing assistant who works at a Kaiser hospital in Orange County, said she hears the panic in patients’ voices when they describe rushing to schedule needed medical procedures in anticipation of losing their Medicaid benefits.

Earlier this year, Josephine joined delegations of unionized California healthcare workers who traveled to Washington with the aim of pressing lawmakers to oppose spending cuts.

Rep. Young Kim, the Republican who represents the Rios family’s district in Congress, was receptive to the delegation’s pleas to vote no on the budget bill, Josephine recalls. The congresswoman ultimately voted for the bill, saying on her official webpage the legislation was good for Californians because it would relieve the tax burden on families, ensure that government dollars are used effectively and “strengthen Medicaid and SNAP for our most vulnerable citizens who truly need it.”

Elijah’s Aunt Cassandra and grandmother Josephine look over his shoulder as he watches a TV show.

(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

Now, Josephine looked on as Elijah, seated in his wheelchair, played on his iPad and watched a Disney program on his phone. He can press a tab on the touchscreen to make the tablet say “My name’s Elijah” if he’s feeling unsafe away from home, another to tell his family he needs space when upset.

Watching Elijah enjoy himself, the women said they feel awkward broadcasting their woes to strangers when all they desire is what’s best for him. They don’t need the public’s pity.

The family wants lawmakers and the public to understand how seemingly abstract healthcare decisions involving billions of dollars, and made 2,000-plus miles away in Washington, have brought new financial turmoil to a family that’s already on the edge financially.

Samantha, a single mom, works full time to provide a home for Elijah and his two sisters, ages 10 and 8. A subscription to the Proloquo speech app alone would cost $300 a year out-of-pocket — more than she can afford on her shoestring budget.

Due to changes in household income requirements, Samantha had already lost Medicaid coverage for herself and her two girls, she said, as well as her SNAP food assistance, leaving her at a loss for how to fill the gap. She now pays about $760 a month to cover her daughters and herself through her employer-based health plan.

The cut to food aid has forced her to compensate by getting free vegetables, milk, eggs and chicken from the food pantry at a local school, a reality that she said she was at first too ashamed to disclose even to relatives.

Then came the bad news Samantha recently received about Elijah’s monthly Social Security Insurance for his disability. She was stunned to hear that because of stricter income cut-offs for that type of aid, Elijah would no longer receive those checks as of Oct. 1.

“Before, he was getting $957 a month — obviously that’s grocery money for me,” Samantha said. The money also went to buy baby wipes, as well as knee pads to help him move more comfortably on the floor when not using his wheelchair.

“I don’t get food stamps. I don’t get Medi-Cal for my girls. I don’t get any of that,” Samantha said. “As of Oct. 1, now I’ve got to figure out how am I going to pay my rent? How am I going to buy groceries?”

Luckily, the sisters said, the physical, speech and behavioral-health therapies that Elijah receives are safe — for now.

And the women know they can lean on each other in tough times. The sisters and Josephine all live within minutes of each other in Tustin, close enough for Samantha’s children to eat at someone’s home when their own cupboards are bare.

Every few months, Samantha said, Elijah experiences severe seizures that can last up to 90 minutes and require hospitalization.

Cassandra and Josephine like that they can run over to help if Elijah has a medical emergency. Another sister who lives farther away is on hand when needed too.

“What’s going to happen to other families who don’t have that support system?” Samantha said.

Given the potential for further cuts to programs that pay for home-based healthcare and assistants for people with disabilities, Cassandra wonders what will happen to her own family if she can no longer work as Elijah’s caregiver.

Where would the family get the money to pay a new caregiver who is qualified enough to work with a special-needs child who can speak a few words thanks to speech therapy but who cannot eat, walk or use the restroom without supervision? What if funding is eliminated for the assistant who travels with Elijah to school?

“People think that cutting Medi-Cal, cutting food stamps or whatever isn’t going to affect that many people,” Cassandra said. “It’s affecting my nephew and nieces. It’s affecting my sister. But it’s not just affecting her household. It’s affecting my household.”

“We’re not saying we’re going to Disneyland or going out to eat every day,” Cassandra said. “This is just living. We can’t even live at this point, with things being cut.”

The women offered up principles they feel are in short supply lately in the discourse over the government’s role in public health — among them “morals” and “empathy.” Samantha adds one more word to the list.

“Humanity,” she says. “We lack it.”

Health officials say a person in the state of Washington has a new form of bird flu virus.

The virus, H5N5, never has been seen in a person before. It appeared first in 2023 in birds and mammals in eastern Canada. The strain was confirmed by the Washington State Department of Health on Friday.

“Given the rarity of such infections in humans and the fact that this person was hospitalized, there is an urgency to figure out how this person may have come in contact with the virus and whether anyone else was infected,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University in Providence, R.I.

Epidemiologists and virologists worry that avian influenzas could generate a pandemic if allowed to spread and mutate. For instance, the H5N1 virus circulating in dairy cattle in North America is one mutation away from being able spread easily between people.

“Anytime someone is infected with a novel influenza virus, we want to gather as much information as we can to be sure the virus hasn’t gained the ability to more easily infect and spread between humans, which would trigger a pandemic,” Nuzzo said.

The case involves a person who lives in Grays Harbor County on the Olympic Peninsula. Their illness became severe enough that they were transferred to a hospital in more populous Thurston County and then to King County, where Seattle is located.

Melissa Dibble, a spokesperson for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, confirmed the Washington health department’s finding, and said the patient had a backyard flock of “mixed domestic poultry.”

“The domestic poultry or wild birds are the most likely source of virus exposure,” she said in an email.

According to a news release from county health officials, the person is “older” and has underlying health conditions. Their symptoms included a high fever, confusion and trouble breathing. The person has been hospitalized since early November.

“The fact that the patient experienced severe illness from this infection only increases the urgency to know more about this particular case,” Nuzzo said.

Henry Niman, an evolutionary molecular biologist and founder of Recombinomics Inc., a virus and vaccine research company in Pittsburgh, said other animals and birds in Canada also have been infected, including a red fox, cat and raccoon.

According to research published last year on the novel strain, some infected animals carried a key mutation in the virus that allows it to transfer more easily between mammals.

Every time a bird flu virus infects a person, concerns grow that it could change, becoming more transmissible or more deadly. For instance, if a sickened person also has another flu virus replicating in their body, there’s concern the viruses could exchange genetic material. Just by having an opportunity to replicate and evolve millions of times in the human body, it could acquire deadly mutations.

Samples of a virus taken from a critically ill teenager in Canada, for example, showed the virus acquired genes that allowed it to target human cells more easily and cause severe disease.

Richard Webby, an influenza expert at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., said the new virus is “interesting,” but he isn’t overly concerned yet.

“No reason to expect an elevated risk,” he said.

However, Niman, the molecular biologist, said the fact that it has presented as a severe clinical case in the first person infected with it should be cause for concern.

“I think this is a big deal,” he said.

Dibble, the CDC spokeswoman, said they are investigating the case with Washington’s health department and maintain that the the risk of bird flu to the general public remains low. The CDC urges caution, however, for people who work with or have recreational contact with infected birds, cattle or other potentially infected domestic or wild animals. They should wear gloves, masks and eye protection.

They also recommend people (and their pets) avoid raw or undercooked meat and eggs and raw milk or cheeses.

For the last year and a half, Americans have watched and worried as H5N1 bird flu racked dairy herds and killed hundreds of millions of commercially raised chickens, turkeys and ducks.

But far less widely known is that the virus has devastated wildlife across the globe, killing millions of wild birds and mammals.

Few animals have been harder hit than elephant seals, sea lions and fur seals in the Southern Hemisphere. In some places thousands of carcasses and orphaned pups have littered the beaches.

On Thursday, a research team led by Connor Bamford, a marine ecologist with the British Antarctic Survey, reported a 47% drop in breeding females between 2022 and 2024 in the three largest elephant seal colonies on South Georgia Island.

The elephant seals of South Georgia Island, located between South America and Antarctica in the South Atlantic, are the largest breeding colony on the planet.

The virus hit there in 2023, Bamford said, and researchers were there to see it. But it was their visit in 2024 that really drove the devastation home.

“Normally there’s about 6,000 seals on St. Andrews Bay,” he said, describing a two-mile strip of beach along the northeastern side of the island. Usually it’s hard to make your way through the animals, it’s so jam-packed.

But in 2024, “it was easy. There were massive gaps. There were so few of them,” he said.

Other large breeding colonies — including along the Argentinian coast, as well as several other islands north of the Antarctic Circle — have also been hit. In 2023, UC Davis researchers reported that nearly 97% of elephant seal pups died at Argentina’s Peninsula Valdes, the most deaths ever recorded for this species.

According to Ralph Vanstreels, a marine ecologist with UC Davis who is researching the animals in Argentina, two-thirds of southern elephant seal colonies are now infected. Only those near New Zealand and Australia have been spared.

“We’re just holding our breath,” in hopes the virus doesn’t get there, he said.

Vanstreels said genetic analyses show the strain of virus circulating in Argentina acquired mutations allowing it to pass easily between mammals. He said it’s not yet clear whether the virus that has hit other elephant seals and pinnipeds in the region carries the same mutations.

Nor does anyone know whether the virus will move north to populations along the California coast — or into people.

But it’s left a deadly wake.

Reports of southern sea lions, fur seals and crabeater seals dying en masse have come in from across the region.

Vanstreels and Bamford say there’s no way to know the full extent of the virus’ toll on these animals. Many of these species, such as crabeater seals, are so remote that there are few, if any human observers to witness the devastation.

More than 30,000 sea lions in Peru and Chile died between 2022 and 2024. In Argentina, roughly 1,300 sea lions and fur seals perished.

A researcher launches a drone on the island of South Georgia, home to the world’s largest southern elephant seal population.

(British Antarctic Survey)

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Vanstreels said researchers don’t yet have any clear idea about why northern elephant seals and marine mammals in the north Pacific, including those that breed along the California coast, have been spared.

He said the strain circulating off the North American Pacific coast doesn’t carry the mutations seen in South America, so that may be why. There may also be differences in population densities or in the local marine ecosystem.

“We think the South American sea lion played a big role in transmission, carrying the virus along the coast and perhaps introducing it to the elephant seal population,” he said. “Maybe the areas where the Northern elephant seal lives don’t have as good a vector for the infection to be spread.”

Bamford and Vanstreels say the loss of this many animals will probably affect the broader ecosystem as well.

For example, elephant seal placentas are a major source of food for a variety of coastal animals, such as birds and crabs. In addition, the seals’ deep-sea foraging brings nutrients to the ocean surface, where fish, kelp, shrimp and other sea life depend on their waste and refuse for sustenance.

“You get rid of half of their population, that’s going to have an impact,” Vanstreels said.