A CDC scientific report finding that the 2025–2026 COVID-19 vaccine roughly halved healthy adults' risk of emergency-department visits and hospitalizations was scheduled to run in the agency's flagship Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report on March 19, 2026, after clearing internal scientific review. Acting CDC Director Jay Bhattacharya blocked its publication, objecting to the study's test-negative design — a methodology the CDC has long used to measure vaccine effectiveness and that appeared in an MMWR flu-vaccine study the prior month. A former CDC immunization director called blocking an already-cleared, scheduled MMWR report unprecedented.
On March 19, 2026, U.S. Southern Command (Joint Task Force Southern Spear) carried out a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel it described as transiting known narco-trafficking routes in the eastern Pacific Ocean, identified by USNI News as the 46th strike since the administration's maritime lethal-force campaign began on September 1, 2025. SOUTHCOM announced the strike the next day and said it had notified the U.S. Coast Guard to activate search and rescue for survivors; the Coast Guard ultimately rescued one survivor, and two people were killed. As throughout the campaign, which by this point had killed at least 156 people, those aboard were targeted without charge, trial, identification, or judicial authorization.
