Science
Measles Cases in Kansas May Be Linked to Texas Outbreak
Measles cases in Kansas more than doubled in the last week, bringing the tally to 20, while another outbreak in Ohio has sickened 10 people, local public health officials reported on Wednesday.
There have been several large outbreaks in the United States this year, including one in West Texas that has spread to more than 320 people and hospitalized 40. Health officials have worried that the Texas outbreak may be seeding others.
More than 40 measles cases have been reported in New Mexico, and seven have been identified in Oklahoma. In both states, health officials said the infections were connected to the Texas outbreak.
In Kansas, the virus has mainly infected unvaccinated children in the southwest corner of the state. Genetic sequencing has suggested a link to the Texas and New Mexico outbreaks, state health officials told The New York Times on Wednesday.
Fourteen other states have reported isolated measles cases in 2025, more often the result of international travel. In Ohio, nine of the 10 cases were traced to an unvaccinated man who recently traveled abroad.
“Given the measles activity in Texas, New Mexico and other states around the country, we’re disappointed but not surprised we now have several cases here in Ohio,” said Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff, director of the state’s Department of Health.
Experts fear that declining vaccination rates nationwide have left the country vulnerable to a resurgence of preventable illnesses, including measles.
Just under 93 percent of children in kindergarten had the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella in the 2023-24 school year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Experts recommend that at least 95 percent of people in a community be vaccinated in order to avoid outbreaks.
In Kansas, about 90 percent of kindergartners were given the M.M.R. shot in the 2023-24 school year, according to state data.
About 89 percent of kindergartners in Ohio had the M.M.R. shot that year.
Measles, which spreads when an infected person breathes, coughs or sneezes, is one of the most contagious known viruses.
Within a few weeks of exposure, those who are infected may develop a high fever, a cough, a runny nose and red, watery eyes. Within a few days, a telltale rash breaks out, first as flat, red spots on the face and then spreading down the neck and the torso to the rest of the body
In most cases, these symptoms resolve in a few weeks. But in rare cases, the virus causes pneumonia, making it difficult for patients, especially children, to draw oxygen into their lungs.
The infection can also lead to brain swelling, which can cause lasting damage, including blindness, deafness and intellectual disabilities. For every 1,000 children who contract measles, one or two will die, according to the C.D.C.
One child has died in the Texas outbreak, the first such death in the United States in a decade. One suspected measles death was also reported in New Mexico.
It felt like the Olympics. Crowds cheering. The American flag standing tall above the bleachers. Trainers jumping with anticipation. A swimmer staring in disbelief at the clock after his final stroke. The Jumbotron announced: Kristian Gkolomeev — 20.89 seconds. A new world record in the 50-meter freestyle.
Well, kind of.
I’ve left out some details. There was only one swimmer. The crowd? Just doctors, trainers and filmmakers. This was not in an Olympic city nor an Olympic year, but in Greensboro, N.C., in 2025. And there were no iconic rings on the banners, just “Enhanced Games.”
Yes, Gkolomeev swam faster than César Cielo, the official record holder at the time (20.91 seconds). But he did it “enhanced” — a polite way to say that he used performance-enhancing drugs. At the Enhanced Games, doping isn’t punished. It’s required.
The concept, as described by the organization: “to create the definitive scientific, cultural and sporting movement that safely evolves mankind into a new superhumanity.”
Backed by investors such as Peter Thiel and Donald Trump Jr.’s 1789 Capital, the Enhanced Games embodies a techno-utopian ideal: athletes as canvases for chemical optimization, testing the limits of human health for a lot of money. Gkolomeev earned $1 million for his record.
So far, the competition has happened at one-off pop-up events. But in May, Las Vegas will host the first full-scale Enhanced Games, a four-day meet in swimming, track and field, and weightlifting. The group advertises a “potential prize purse of $7.5 million for just a single day of competition,” plus appearance fees.
Does it need to be said? Apparently yes: The Enhanced Games glorifies the risky use of enhancement drugs.
Steroids can harden arteries, elevate stroke risk, damage the liver and permanently alter hormone systems. They are not electrolyte tablets or a little preworkout creatine. If Lance Armstrong had been rewarded — rather than sanctioned — for doping, what would have happened to competitive cycling?
Fans — and especially kids — mimic their idols. As risky as the drugs are for athletes at the Enhanced Games, with its “medical commission” to give the illusion of safety, the substances are even more dangerous when used by people without medical supervision.
The games also expose the economic neglect that drives athletes toward such competition. As Benjamin Proud, the British silver medalist who recently joined the Enhanced Games, put it: “It would have taken me 13 years of winning a World Championship title in order to win what I could win in one race at these games.”
Indeed, the Enhanced Games might look like an easy way out. Only nine swimmers worldwide received prize money and performance bonuses above $75,000 in 2025, according to World Aquatics.
Investors clearly hope to make money off the games as well. The organization is moving closer to becoming a publicly traded company. The economics are not mysterious.
But the Enhanced Games are not just another sporting event. They are an arena for biomedical experimentation and should be regulated as such. The games should face limits similar to those imposed on other high-risk industries, including age restrictions and strict advertising rules.
We already know how to govern legal, profitable activities that carry serious health risks.
In the United States, that means oversight from the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission — bodies that regulate drug protocols and police misleading commercial claims. A steroid-based competition should not be treated as a sport but as a medical experiment and a marketing stunt.
Regulations on pharmaceutical advertising offer a useful model for the Enhanced Games. Prescription drugs are advertised every night on television, but only under strict rules. They require fair balance (content must present benefits and risks with comparable prominence, readability and duration) and a “major statement” of risks (most serious risks must be spoken aloud and not obscured by visuals or music).
Right now, when you play Gkolomeev’s “world-record” video on YouTube, a medical-risk warning appears for barely five seconds — then vanishes. If a cholesterol drug must audibly warn viewers of stroke risk, why shouldn’t a steroid-based competition do the same?
Enhanced Games content should be accompanied by clear warnings of the risks of performance-enhancing drugs and be clearly labeled, age-gated and distributed as high-risk content more akin to pornography than to a boxing match.
Prohibition is not the answer. Trying to shut down these games only fuels a controversy-driven brand. Just recently, the Enhanced Games sued organizations such as World Aquatics and the World Anti-Doping Agency, alleging antitrust violations and that blocking athletes from participating at the Enhanced Games is illegal. As those organizations fight back, they will be seeking to protect the integrity of mainstream sports, but they will also inadvertently be promoting the Enhanced Games.
If we want kids to admire clean athletes rather than those using banned drugs, the Las Vegas launch must not reach the world as a Super Bowl would. The Enhanced Games should not be televised or allowed to stream online to minors. Otherwise, Las Vegas, in May, risks becoming an unregulated public-health experiment mislabeled as a sporting event.
Fabricio Ramos dos Santos is a lawyer, entrepreneur and sports investor.
House Republicans had big plans for Earth Day this year: They would pass a bill to narrow protections for endangered species that they had long seen as federal overreach.
It didn’t work out that way.
On Wednesday afternoon, Republican leaders suddenly canceled a vote on the measure after an initial procedural vote showed shaky support from party members. One Florida Republican, Representative Anna Paulina Luna, publicly aired concerns about the bill before the scheduled vote, writing on social media: “Don’t tread on my turtles. Protected means protected.” Her post contained an image of a yellow flag emblazoned with a sea turtle and the slogan “Don’t tread on me,” a phrase dating to the American Revolution that some conservatives have embraced in recent years.
The flip-flop on Wednesday was an embarrassing setback for Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana. And it left uncertain the fate of the ESA Amendments Act, a sweeping bill that would limit protections for species whose populations are beginning to recover, among a slew of other changes.
The bill’s lead sponsor, Representative Bruce Westerman, Republican of Arkansas and chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, said he was trying to shore up support in the hopes of rescheduling a vote on the measure. “We just have a few provisions we’ve got to work through on it, and hopefully in the next couple of weeks, we’ll be able to vote on it,” he said.
Representative Kat Cammack, a Florida Republican, said she had raised concerns about a provision in the bill that would allow state and federal officials to exempt certain activities from Endangered Species Act restrictions. She said she worried that officials would codify an exemption that the Trump administration recently granted for oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
“I have coastline in my district,” Ms. Cammack said, citing the possibility of an oil spill sullying her state’s beaches. “I want to make sure that we’re doing everything that we can to be the best stewards as possible.”
Before the vote was postponed, conservationists had warned that the bill could speed extinctions and risk the recovery of numerous species, including piping plovers, black-footed ferrets and North Atlantic right whales. And they called the planned timing of the vote, on Earth Day, a cruel stunt.
“It’s a slap in the face to the American people and all the wildlife they love, and the ecosystems that support our lives,” Mary Beth Beetham, director of legislative affairs at Defenders of Wildlife, an advocacy group, said on Wednesday morning.
A few hours later, she was rejoicing.
“Now we can really celebrate Earth Day!” she said in a statement after the measure was pulled from the House floor. “The public defeat of the Westerman bill is a direct result of sustained constituent pressure. Congress is finally listening to the majority of Americans who support the Endangered Species Act, rather than centering politics and money in its policy decisions.”
Republican supporters countered that the Endangered Species Act needs a serious overhaul. They said the bill would make it easier to remove unnecessary protections from gray wolves, grizzly bears and other predators whose populations have rebounded in certain areas over the past several decades.
“Folks in my district have an incredible frustration regarding the gray wolf population because they have recovered,” said Representative Michelle Fischbach, Republican of Minnesota, during a hearing on the bill on Monday. She said that gray wolves had killed cattle as well as “family dogs tied up in the front yard.”
The planned vote was the latest recent effort by congressional Republicans to erode environmental protections.
Last week, the Senate voted to allow mining upstream from Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, one of the country’s largest and most visited expanses of federally protected lakes and forests, sending that measure to President Trump to be signed into law. And the House approved three bills that would narrow the reach of the Clean Air Act, although their fate in the Senate remains uncertain.
At the center of the debate over the Endangered Species Act are two polarized views of the law. Democrats and conservation groups tend to celebrate it for preventing extinctions, noting that less than 1 percent of species protected under the act have been lost. But many Republicans criticize the law for recovering only a small number of species to the point of removing them from the list.
The bill that the House had aimed to pass Wednesday would make a number of changes to the law. It would require regulators to conduct economic and national security analyses when determining whether to list a species as endangered, while limiting their ability to consider future impacts, such as climate change. It would also weaken requirements that the federal government limit harm to endangered species, reduce certain habitat protections and cap fees awarded to lawyers in endangered species litigation.
The first Earth Day, in 1970, came in response to a series of environmental disasters. The pesticide DDT was devastating bird populations. A record-breaking oil spill had polluted the waters off Santa Barbara, Calif. In Cleveland, the Cuyahoga River had caught on fire.
For the initial commemoration, Congress effectively closed down so that lawmakers could attend events. More than 20 million Americans participated in rallies, lectures and protests across the country, including at more than 1,500 college campuses and 10,000 schools.
The public outcry galvanized the modern environmental movement. It also spurred Congress to create the Environmental Protection Agency and to enact three landmark environmental laws within three years: the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and, finally, the Endangered Species Act.
Megan Mineiro contributed reporting from Washington.
Greater Los Angeles remained the most ozone-polluted metro area in the nation, according to the American Lung Assn.’s 2026 State of the Air report, which found that Southern California continues to face some of the country’s dirtiest air.
The report, released on Wednesday, ranked Los Angeles-Long Beach as the worst U.S. metro area for ozone pollution, with an average of 159.2 unhealthy ozone days a year. The region also ranked seventh worst nationally for annual particle pollution and seventh worst for short-term particle pollution.
The American Lung Assn., or ALA, assigns grades based on the number of unhealthy air days and the severity of pollution levels, using federal air quality standards. Los Angeles County received failing grades across all three categories measured in the report: ozone, short-term particle pollution and annual particle pollution.
Riverside and San Bernardino counties also failed all three measures.
Orange County received an F for ozone, a failing grade for annual particle pollution and a C for short-term particle pollution.
Ground-level ozone, often called “smog,” is a corrosive gas that forms when pollution from vehicles and other sources reacts in heat and sunlight. It can irritate the lungs and trigger serious breathing problems.
Short-term and annual particle pollution refer to fine particulate matter, known as PM2.5. These microscopic particles come from sources such as vehicle exhaust, industrial emissions and wildfires. Because they are small enough to enter the bloodstream, they are linked to asthma attacks, heart disease, strokes and lung cancer, according to Will Barrett, assistant vice president for Nationwide Clean Air Policy at the ALA.
The report did find some signs of progress. Los Angeles posted its lowest annual particle pollution level in the history of the report, even though the region still ranked among the nation’s worst overall.
On the other hand, ozone pollution in Los Angeles worsened from last year’s report, keeping the metro area in the top spot nationally for smog. The report says Los Angeles has ranked worst for ozone in 26 of the 27 years the ALA has issued the study.
Speaking to the press Tuesday, Barrett said the region’s pollution comes largely from transportation sources “primarily burning gasoline and diesel,” along with refineries and other local emissions sources. He said those pressures are compounded by climate and coastal conditions that push pollution inland, especially into the Inland Empire, where unhealthy ozone days are even more severe.
Nationally, the report found that in the U.S., 152.3 million people, or 44% of the population, live in places that received a failing grade for at least one measure of ozone or particle pollution. That includes 33.5 million children, or 46% of people under 18. In California, the ALA said 82% of residents live in counties affected by unhealthy air.
Of the 15 U.S. counties with the most bad smog days last year, eight were in California.
When it came to bad PM2.5 pollution days, California had seven of the 15 worst counties.
And of the 15 counties with the worst year-round PM2.5 pollution, nine were in California.
In the report, the ALA said recent federal actions could undermine California’s efforts to improve air quality. Those include missed deadlines for stronger particle pollution standards, rollbacks of clean-vehicle and fuel-economy rules, exemptions from toxic air pollution regulations, and a Congressional Review Act challenge targeting three of California’s clean-vehicle standards.
“This [Environmental Protection Agency] is making significant rollbacks to life-saving clean air rules,” Diana Van Vleet, the report’s lead author and the ALA’s director of nationwide clean air advocacy, said during Tuesday’s press call. “Federal actions have weakened, delayed and repealed many pollution limits.”
She referenced the EPA’s February revocation of a longstanding scientific conclusion that man-made climate change threatens the health of Americans.
“The recent actions by the federal government to interfere with California’s state rights to protect residents’ health are a major challenge to the ongoing success of our local air districts and state Air Board,” said Barrett. He added that state estimates show federal actions weakening California’s clean-air authority could lead to more than 14,000 deaths, thousands of emergency room visits and hospitalizations, and $145 billion in cumulative health impacts through 2050.
Children are especially vulnerable to polluted air because their lungs are still developing, they breathe more air relative to their body size, and they often spend more time outdoors, the report said.
“In my daily work life, I treat children with asthma that is often made worse because of the heavy doses of pollution they breathe,” said Afif El-Hasan, physician-in-charge at Kaiser Permanente San Juan Capistrano Medical Offices.
El-Hasan added that air pollution “also inhibits lung development in children, which can lead to reduced lung capacity as adults. This is not reversible. Once it happens, it’s done.”
Southern California’s air pollution burden has long been shaped by a mix of traffic, freight movement, industry, geography and climate.
The county rankings show the concentration of that burden. San Bernardino County ranked as the most ozone-polluted county in the nation, with 159.2 weighted average unhealthy ozone days, followed by Riverside County at 126.7 and Los Angeles County at 119.0.
The report also highlighted cleaner-air successes elsewhere in California. Sacramento recorded its lowest annual particle pollution levels and fewest unhealthy ozone days in the report’s history.
Four California cities also ranked among the nation’s cleanest in at least one category: Salinas and Chico for having zero high-ozone days, and Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo for recording zero days of unhealthy particle pollution.
The ALA urged state lawmakers to keep funding programs aimed at cutting emissions from the biggest sources. “The Lung Association is calling for the California Legislature to invest in zero-emission truck programs,” Barrett said, as well as for funding for cleaner agricultural equipment and consumer cars.
The health and environmental arguments for these political positions have been argued to death, but Barrett says that the economic consequences of dirty air are often overlooked. “What is often missing is this impact of the cost of air pollution on family budgets, on kids missing school, their parents staying home from work, on and on and on,” he said. “Air pollution is a costly societal problem that needs to be addressed.”
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Contributor: Regulate the ‘Enhanced Games’ as a medical experiment and a marketing stunt