​The Trump administration’s deep cuts to federal health agencies have become a political liability after a deadly outbreak of hantavirus aboard a cruise ship and the spread of an even more fearsome disease, Ebola, in Africa.

At least that’s the way many Democrats see it.

They have seized on the situation to charge that the U.S. is ill prepared to respond to outbreaks — let alone a pandemic — after President Donald Trump slashed jobs and funding for public health infrastructure and pandemic preparedness. Infectious disease specialists have called on the White House to reverse cuts and rejoin the World Health Organization.

The White House, meanwhile, is on the defensive, trying to reassure a pandemic-weary public that the federal government can still mount effective responses to infectious disease outbreaks.

The FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention underwent massive layoffs as part of an effort led by billionaire businessman Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, that also resulted in the cancellation of billions of dollars in federal contracts and grants.

“These outbreaks are unfolding at a time when the U.S. public health infrastructure is under significant strain,” said Leana Wen, an emergency medicine physician and former Baltimore health commissioner. “The CDC currently lacks a director, the FDA lacks a director, there is no surgeon general, and many leaders with outbreak response management experience have left the federal government.”

The U.S. government has ordered quarantines and is monitoring potential exposures to hantavirus after an outbreak on a cruise ship. It is also implementing new restrictions for foreign travelers amid an Ebola outbreak in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo that has grown to more than 1,000 suspected cases. While neither situation is seen as likely to become a global pandemic, Democrats and infectious disease leaders have seized on the outbreaks to criticize the effects of the DOGE cuts and other administration public health policies.

The hantavirus cluster occurred on the MV Hondius, an expedition ship that left Argentina on April 1 for a monthlong sojourn with almost 150 people aboard. The earliest cases, including two deaths, were reported to the WHO on May 2. Three of 11 infected passengers have died. Hantavirus is typically spread to people from rodents, but this version, known as the Andes virus, can be passed person to person.

The Ebola outbreak has captured public attention, though no cases have been confirmed in the U.S. The virus — a rare strain called Bundibugyo, against which there are no proven vaccines or treatments — spread undetected for weeks, prompting WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to say he’s concerned about the “scale and speed” of the outbreak. Seven Americans, including a doctor exposed to the virus, were evacuated to Germany by the U.S. State Department.

Democra  

​Céline Gounder, KFF Health News’ editor-at-large for public health, discussed recent warnings about research-grade peptides and new colorectal cancer screening guidelines on CBS News’ CBS Mornings on May 27. She also discussed the Ebola outbreak centered on the Democratic Republic of Congo and whether it’s expected to spread on May 26.

Click here to watch Gounder discuss research-grade peptides on CBS Mornings.

Click here to watch Gounder discuss colorectal cancer screening on CBS Mornings.

Click here to watch Gounder discuss the Ebola outbreak on CBS Mornings.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://kffhealthnews.org/on-air/on-air-may-30-2026-celine-gounder-peptides-colorectal-cancer-ebola/”>article</a&gt; first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://kffhealthnews.org”>KFF Health News</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://kffhealthnews.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2023/04/kffhealthnews-icon.png?w=150&quot; style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>
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​The Host

Julie Rovner

KFF Health News

@jrovner

@julierovner.bsky.social

Read Julie’s stories.

Julie Rovner is chief Washington correspondent and host of KFF Health News’ weekly health policy news podcast, “What the Health?” A noted expert on health policy issues, Julie is the author of the critically praised reference book “Health Care Politics and Policy A to Z,” now in its third edition.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed by congressional Republicans in 2025, was supposed to backload cuts to health programs so they wouldn’t take effect until after the 2026 midterm elections. That’s not how things are working out, with numerous analyses showing insurance coverage is already starting to drop.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration claims that the coverage reductions prove its anti-fraud efforts are working. But those efforts are likely to affect far more people than just those who commit fraud against federal health programs.

This week’s panelists are Julie Rovner of KFF Health News, Maya Goldman of Axios, Shefali Luthra of The 19th, and Lauren Weber of The Washington Post.

Panelists

Maya Goldman

Axios

@mayagoldman_

@maya-goldman.bsky.social

Read Maya’s stories.

Shefali Luthra

The 19th

@shefali.bsky.social

Read Shefali’s stories.

Lauren Weber

The Washington Post

@LaurenWeberHP

@laurenweberhp.bsky.social

Read Lauren’s stories.

Among the takeaways from this week’s episode:

Amid a recent decline in the number of Americans with health insurance, one affected group in particular stands out: children. Many kids are falling off the Medicaid rolls, largely because of the chilling effects of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and broader confusion about eligibility requirements.

Meanwhile, the high cost of health insurance is pressing people to seek alternatives, many of which offer few or no protections against large medical bills. On the campaign trail, high-profile Democrats are sounding the alarm about a problematic health ecosystem, even framing issues such as reproductive health in terms of affordability.

The Trump administration is raising eyebrows with its response to the emerging Ebola crisis as it works to keep American citizens exposed to the disease out of the country entirely. Countering previous government approaches, which prioritized not only public safety but also offering the best care available to Americans, this approach also stands in stark contrast with President Donald Trump’s d  

​James Mu had braced for the call that came in late January.

A patient from his rural Northern California county had measles, a disease so rare there that many physicians have never treated a case.

While California has some of the strictest vaccine laws in the country, conservative Shasta County’s approach during the covid pandemic stood in stark contrast with the state’s guidance. Its local leaders opposed masking and vaccine mandates, and they ousted the county public health officer, who had sought to enforce those state policies and other safety measures.

A potential measles outbreak had “always been in my mind,” said Mu, an outspoken family physician who was among local doctors to sign a 2022 letter opposing covid vaccine mandates. But Mu, the county’s current public health officer, said that when his department identified the first local measles case, it acted decisively: “We forgot about fear.”

They went to work, he and his team said, to painstakingly retrace the steps of nine people sickened with measles, contacting more than 600 people who may have been exposed at Costco, a sushi restaurant, sporting events, a school, or a healthcare clinic. Just one of the nine contracted measles from one of those locations, while the others were characterized by the public health department as “close contacts.”

Two and a half months later, the Shasta County public health department had declared the measles outbreak over. Infectious disease experts say the rapid response executed in the mostly rural, vaccine-hesitant county offers a playbook for public health officers across the nation who are struggling to keep the highly contagious virus from spreading.

“To me, the story of Shasta is one of hope,” said Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California-San Francisco.

Downtown Redding, California, the seat of Shasta County. (iStock/Getty Images)

After more than a year of ongoing cases, measles has sickened more than 4,000 people in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For the first time in two decades, the U.S. is poised to lose its measles elimination status, a designation signaling that outbreaks are rare and rapidly contained.

Utah had confirmed 673 measles cases as of late May while South Carolina had seen at least 997, according to their state health departments. California had confirmed 74 cases.

Critical Rapid Response

In late January, when Shasta County identified the first case, Mu gathered with more than a dozen communicable-disease nurses, epidemiologists, and emergency and community relations staffers for an “initial threat assessment meeting.”

Measles is an airborne pathogen that can linger in a room for two hours after an infected person leaves, so on-call nurses and responders faced a daunting task figuring out exactly when the patient was infectious and where they had been.

“Everything is about speed — spee  

​Céline Gounder, KFF Health News’ editor-at-large for public health, discussed the diversion of a Detroit-bound plane to Canada over Ebola concerns on CBS News’ CBS Mornings on May 21. Gounder also discussed how the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ebola outbreak has been declared a global health emergency on Fox’s LiveNOW on May 18.

Click here to watch Gounder on CBS Mornings.

Click here to watch Gounder on LiveNOW.

KFF Health News senior correspondent Renuka Rayasam discussed Georgia’s debate over licensing midwives on WUGA’s The Georgia Health Report on May 15.

Click here to hear Rayasam on The Georgia Health Report.

Read reporter Lisa Rab’s “License To Deliver: Some Midwives Break the Law To Assist With Home Births.”

KFF Health News senior correspondent Angela Hart discussed California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget rollbacks on KQED’s Political Breakdown on May 14.

Click here to hear Hart on Political Breakdown.

KFF Health News California correspondent Christine Mai-Duc discussed Medicaid funding in California on LAist’s AirTalk on May 14.

Click here to hear Mai-Duc on AirTalk.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://kffhealthnews.org/on-air/on-air-may-23-2026-ebola-midwife-licensing-gavin-newsom-california-budget-medicaid/”>article</a&gt; first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://kffhealthnews.org”>KFF Health News</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://kffhealthnews.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2023/04/kffhealthnews-icon.png?w=150&quot; style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>
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