WASHINGTON (AP) ' A leading U.S. health official on Sunday urged people to get inoculated against the measles at a time of outbreaks across several states and as the United States is at risk of losing its measles elimination status.

'Take the vaccine, please,' said Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator whose boss has raised suspicion about the safety and importance of vaccines. 'We have a solution for our problem.'

Oz, a heart surgeon, defended some recently revised federal vaccine recommendations as well as past comments from President Donald Trump and the nations health chief, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., about the efficacy of vaccines. From Oz, there was a clear message on the measles.

'Not all illnesses are equally dangerous and not all people are equally susceptible to those illnesses,' he told CNNs 'State of the Union.' 'But measles is one you should get your vaccine.'

An outbreak in South Carolina in the hundreds has surpassed the recorded case count in Texas 2025 outbreak, and there is also one on the Utah-Arizona border. Multiple other states have had confirmed cases this year. The outbreaks have mostly impacted children and have come as infectious disease experts warn that rising public distrust of vaccines generally may be contributing to the spread of a disease once declared eradicated by public health officials.

Asked in the television interview whether people should fear the measles, Oz replied, 'Oh, for sure.' He said Medicare and Medicaid will continue to cover the measles vaccine as part of the insurance programs.

'There will never be a barrier to Americans get access to the measles vaccine. And it is part of the core schedule,' Oz said.

But Oz also said 'we have advocated for measles vaccines all along' and that Kennedy 'has been on the very front of this.'

Questions about vaccines did not come up later in a Kennedy interview on Fox News Channels 'The Sunday Briefing,' where he was asked about what kind of Super Bowl snack he might have (probably yogurt). He also he eats steak with sauerkraut in the mornings.

Critics of Kennedy have argued that the health secretarys longtime skepticism of U.S. vaccine recommendations and past sympathy for the unfounded claim that vaccines may cause autism may influence official public health guidance in ways contrary to the medical consensus.

Oz argued that Kennedys stance was supportive of the measles vaccine despite Kennedys general comments about the recommended vaccine schedule.

'When the first outbreak happened in Texas, he said, get your vaccines for measles, because thats an example of an ailment that you should get vaccinated against,' Oz said.

The Republican administration last month dropped some vaccine recommendations for children, an overhaul of the traditional vaccine schedule that the Department of Health and Human Services said was in response to a request from Trump.

Trump asked the agency to review how peer nations approach vaccine recommendations and consider revising U.S. guidance accordingly.

States, not the federal government, have the authority to require vaccinations for schoolchildren. While federal requirements often influence those state regulations, some states have begun creating their own alliances to counter the administrations guidance on vaccines.

U.S. vaccination rates have dropped and the share of children with exemptions has reached an all-time high, according to federal data. At the same time, rates of diseases that can be protected against with vaccines, such as measles and whooping cough, are rising across the country.

Kennedys past anti-vaccine activism

Kennedys past skepticism of vaccines has come under scrutiny since Trump first nominated him to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

During his Senate confirmation testimony last year, Kennedy told lawmakers that a closely scrutinized 2019 trip he took to Samoa, which came before a devastating measles outbreak, had 'nothing to do with vaccines.'

But documents obtained by The Guardian and The Associated Press undermine that testimony. Emails sent by staffers at the U.S. Embassy and the United Nations said that Kennedy sought to meet with top Samoan officials during his trip to the Pacific island nation.

Samoan officials later said Kennedys trip bolstered the credibility of anti-vaccine activists before the measles outbreak, which sickened thousands of people and killed 83, mostly children under age 5.

Mixed messaging on autism, vaccines

Ozs comments mark a broader pattern among administration officials of voicing discordant and at times contradictory statements about the efficacy of vaccines amid an overhaul of U.S. public health policy.

Officials have walked a fine line in criticizing past U.S. vaccine policy, often at times appearing to express sympathy for unfounded conspiracy theories from anti-vaccine activists, while also not straying too far from established science.

During a Senate hearing Tuesday, Jay Bhattacharya, the director of the National Institutes of Health, said no single vaccine causes autism, but he did not rule out the possibility that research may find some combination of vaccines could have negative health side effects.

But Kennedy, in Senate testimony, has argued that a link between vaccines and autism has not been disproved.

He has previously claimed that some components of vaccines, like the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal, may cause childhood neurological disorders such as autism. Most vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella do not contain thimerosal. A federal vaccine advisory board overhauled by Kennedy last year voted to no longer recommend thimerosal-containing vaccines.

Administration public health officials often cite the need to restore trust in public health systems after the coronavirus pandemic, when vaccine policy and the general public health response to the deadly pandemic became a highly polarizing topic in American politics.

Misinformation and conspiracy theories about the public health system also spread during the pandemic, and longtime anti-vaccine activist groups saw a swell in interest from the wider public.

Kennedy, who for years led the anti-vaccine activist group Childrens Health Defense, has been criticized for ordering reviews of vaccines and public health guidelines that leading medical research groups have deemed settled science.

Public health experts also criticized the president for making unfounded claims about highly politicized health issues. During a September Oval Office event, Trump asserted without evidence that Tylenol and vaccines are linked to a rise in the incidence of autism in the United States.

CAIRO (AP) ' A limited number of Palestinians traveled between Gaza and Egypt on Sunday as the Rafah crossing reopened after a two-day closure, Egyptian state media reported.

The vital border point opened last week for the first time since mid-2024, one of the main requirements for the U.S.-backed ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. The crossing was closed Friday and Saturday because of confusion around operations.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said 17 medical evacuees and 27 companions had begun the crossing into Egypt. The same number was expected to head into Gaza. Israel didnt immediately confirm it.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington on Wednesday, though the major subject of discussion will be Iran, his office said.

Delays and mistreatment accusations

Over the first four days of the crossings opening, just 36 Palestinians requiring medical care were allowed to leave for Egypt, plus 62 companions, according to U.N. data. Rafahs reopening came after Israel retrieved the remains of the last hostage in Gaza and U.S. officials visited Israel to apply pressure.

Palestinian officials say nearly 20,000 people in Gaza seek to leave for medical care that isnt available in the war-shattered territory.

A group of Palestinian patients gathered Sunday in the courtyard of a Red Crescent hospital in Gazas southern city of Khan Younis before making their way to the crossing for treatment abroad, family members told The Associated Press.

Amjad Abu Jedian, injured in the war, had been scheduled to leave for medical treatment on the first day of the crossings reopening, but only five patients were allowed to travel, said his mother, Raja Abu Jedian. He was shot by an Israeli sniper while doing building work in the central Bureij refugee camp in July 2024, she said.

On Saturday, his family received a call from the World Health Organization about traveling on Sunday, she said.

'We want them to take care of the patients (during their evacuation),' she said. 'We want the Israeli military not to burden them.'

Returning to Gaza

A group of Palestinians arrived Sunday at the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing to return to Gaza, Egypts state-run Al-Qahera News satellite television reported.

Palestinians who returned to Gaza in the first few days of the crossings operation described hours of delays and invasive searches by Israeli authorities and an Israeli-backed Palestinian armed group, Abu Shabab. Israel has denied mistreatment.

A European Union mission and Palestinian officials run the border crossing, and Israel has its screening facility some distance away.

The Rafah crossing, a lifeline for Gaza, was the only one not controlled by Israel before the war. Israel seized the Palestinian side in May 2024, though traffic through the crossing was heavily restricted even before that.

Restrictions negotiated by Israeli, Egyptian, Palestinian and international officials mean that only 50 people will be allowed to return to Gaza each day and 50 medical patients ' with two companions for each ' will be allowed to leave, but far fewer people have crossed so far.

Hamas negotiations

A senior Hamas official, Khaled Mashaal, said the militant group is open to discuss the future of its weapons as part of a 'balanced approach' that includes the reconstruction of Gaza and protecting the Palestinian enclave from Israel. Such issues are central in the ceasefires second phase.

Mashaal said the group has offered multiple options, including a long-term truce, as part of ongoing negotiations with Egyptian, Qatari and Turkish mediators.

Hamas plans to agree to a number of 'guarantees,' including a 10-year period of disarmament and an international peacekeeping force on Gazas borders, 'to maintain peace and prevent any clashes' between the militants and Israel, Mashaal said at a forum in Qatar.

Israel has repeatedly demanded the complete disarmament and dismantling of Hamas and its infrastructure, both military and civil.

Mashaal accused Israel of financing and arming militias, like the Abu Shabab group which operates in Israeli military-controlled areas in Gaza, 'to create chaos.'

Mashaal was asked about Hamas position on the new Board of Peace, a Trump-led group of world leaders that is expected to meet for the first time Feb. 19 to raise money for Gazas reconstruction. He didnt offer a specific answer but said the group wont accept 'foreign intervention' in Palestinian affairs.

'Gaza is for the people of Gaza. Palestinians are for the people of Palestine,' he said. 'We will not accept foreign rule.'

Lidman reported from Tel Aviv, Israel.

NEW YORK (AP) ' The FBI pored over Jeffrey Epsteins bank records and emails. It searched his homes. It spent years interviewing his victims and examining his connections to some of the worlds most influential people.

But while investigators collected ample proof that Epstein sexually abused underage girls, they found scant evidence the well-connected financier led a sex trafficking ring serving powerful men, an Associated Press review of internal Justice Department records shows.

Videos and photos seized from Epsteins homes in New York, Florida and the Virgin Islands didnt depict victims being abused or implicate anyone else in his crimes, a prosecutor wrote in one 2025 memo.

An examination of Epsteins financial records, including payments he made to entities linked to influential figures in academia, finance and global diplomacy, found no connection to criminal activity, said another internal memo in 2019.

While one Epstein victim made highly public claims that he 'lent her' to his rich friends, agents couldnt confirm that and found no other victims telling a similar story, the records said.

Summarizing the investigation in an email last July, agents said 'four or five' Epstein accusers claimed other men or women had sexually abused them. But, the agents said, there 'was not enough evidence to federally charge these individuals, so the cases were referred to local law enforcement.'

The AP and other media organizations are still reviewing millions of pages of documents, many of them previously confidential, that the Justice Department released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act and it is possible those records contain evidence overlooked by investigators.

But the documents, which include police reports, FBI interview notes and prosecutor emails, provide the clearest picture to date of the investigation ' and why U.S. authorities ultimately decided to close it without additional charges.

Dozens of victims come forward

The Epstein investigation began in 2005, when the parents of a 14-year-old girl reported she had been molested at the millionaires home in Palm Beach, Florida.

Police would identify at least 35 girls with similar stories: Epstein was paying high school age students $200 or $300 to give him sexualized massages.

After the FBI joined the probe, federal prosecutors drafted indictments to charge Epstein and some personal assistants who had arranged the girls visits and payments. But instead, then-Miami U.S. attorney Alexander Acosta struck a deal letting Epstein plead guilty to state charges of soliciting prostitution from an underage girl. Sentenced to 18 months in jail, Epstein was free by mid-2009.

In 2018, a series of Miami Herald stories about the plea deal prompted New York federal prosecutors to take a fresh look at the accusations.

Epstein was arrested in July 2019. One month later, he killed himself in his jail cell.

A year later, prosecutors charged Epsteins longtime confidant, Ghislaine Maxwell, saying shed recruited several of his victims and sometimes joined the sexual abuse. Convicted in 2021, Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison term.

Prosecutors fail to find evidence backing most sensational claims

Prosecution memos, case summaries and other documents made public in the departments latest release of Epstein-related records show that FBI agents and federal prosecutors diligently pursued potential coconspirators. Even seemingly outlandish and incomprehensible claims, called in to tip lines, were examined.

Some allegations couldnt be verified, investigators wrote.

In 2011 and again in 2019, investigators interviewed Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who in lawsuits and news interviews had accused Epstein of arranging for her to have sexual encounters with numerous men, including Britains former Prince Andrew.

Investigators said they confirmed that Giuffre had been sexually abused by Epstein. But other parts of her story were problematic.

Two other Epstein victims who Giuffre had claimed were also 'lent out' to powerful men told investigators they had no such experience, prosecutors wrote in a 2019 internal memo.

'No other victim has described being expressly directed by either Maxwell or Epstein to engage in sexual activity with other men,' the memo said.

Giuffre acknowledged writing a partly fictionalized memoir of her time with Epstein containing descriptions of things that didnt take place. She had also offered shifting accounts in interviews with investigators, they wrote, and had 'engaged in a continuous stream of public interviews about her allegations, many of which have included sensationalized if not demonstrably inaccurate characterizations of her experiences.' Those inaccuracies included false accounts of her interactions with the FBI, they said.

Still, U.S. prosecutors attempted to arrange an interview with Andrew, now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. He refused to make himself available. Giuffre settled a lawsuit with Mountbatten-Windsor in which she had accused him of sexual misconduct.

In a memoir published after she killed herself last year, Giuffre wrote that prosecutors told her they didnt include her in the case against Maxwell because they didnt want her allegations to distract the jury. She insisted her accounts of being trafficked to elite men were true.

Prosecutors say photos and videos dont implicate others

Investigators seized a multitude of videos and photos from Epsteins electronic devices and homes in New York, Florida and the U.S. Virgin Islands. They found CDs, hard copy photographs and at least one videotape containing nude images of females, some of whom seemed as if they might be minors. One device contained 15 to 20 images depicting commercial child sex abuse material ' pictures investigators said Epstein obtained on the internet.

No videos or photos showed Epstein victims being sexually abused, none showed any males with any of the nude females, and none contained evidence implicating anyone other than Epstein and Maxwell, then-Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey wrote in an email for FBI officials last year.

Had they existed, the government 'would have pursued any leads they generated,' Comey wrote. 'We did not, however, locate any such videos.'

Investigators who scoured Epsteins bank records found payments to more than 25 women who appeared to be models ' but no evidence that he was engaged in prostituting women to other men, prosecutors wrote.

Epsteins close associates go uncharged

In 2019, prosecutors weighed the possibility of charging one of Epsteins longtime assistants but decided against it.

Prosecutors concluded that while the assistant was involved in helping Epstein pay girls for sex and may have been aware that some were underage, she herself was a victim of his sexual abuse and manipulation.

Investigators examined Epsteins relationship with the French modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, who once was involved in an agency with Epstein in the U.S., and who was accused in a separate case of sexually assaulting women in Europe. Brunel killed himself in jail while awaiting trial on a rape charge in France.

Prosecutors also weighed whether to charge one of Epsteins girlfriends who had participated in sexual acts with some of his victims. Investigators interviewed the girlfriend, who was 18 to 20 years old at the time, 'but it was determined there was not enough evidence,' according to a summary given to FBI Director Kash Patel last July.

Days before Epsteins July 2019 arrest, the FBI strategized about sending agents to serve grand jury subpoenas on people close to Epstein, including his pilots and longtime business client, retail mogul Les Wexner.

Wexners lawyers told investigators that neither he nor his wife had knowledge of Epsteins sexual misconduct. Epstein had managed Wexners finances, but the couples lawyers said they cut him off in 2007 after learning hed stolen from them.

'There is limited evidence regarding his involvement,' an FBI agent wrote of Wexner in an Aug. 16, 2019, email.

In a statement to the AP, a legal representative for Wexner said prosecutors had informed him that he was 'neither a coconspirator nor target in any respect,' and that Wexner had cooperated with investigators.

Prosecutors also examined accounts from women who said theyd given massages at Epsteins home to guests whod tried to make the encounters sexual. One woman accused private equity investor Leon Black of initiating sexual contact during a massage in 2011 or 2012, causing her to flee the room.

The Manhattan district attorneys office subsequently investigated, but no charges were filed.

Blacks lawyer, Susan Estrich, said he had paid Epstein for estate planning and tax advice. She said in a statement that Black didnt engage in misconduct and had no awareness of Epsteins criminal activities. Lawsuits by two women who accused Black of sexual misconduct were dismissed or withdrawn. One is pending.

No client list

Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News in February 2025 that Epsteins never-before-seen 'client list' was 'sitting on my desk right now.' A few months later, she claimed the FBI was reviewing 'tens of thousands of videos' of Epstein 'with children or child porn.'

But FBI agents wrote superiors saying the client list didnt exist.

On Dec. 30, 2024, about three weeks before President Joe Biden left office, then-FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate reached out through subordinates to ask 'whether our investigation to date indicates the ‘client list, often referred to in the media, does or does not exist,' according to an email summarizing his query.

A day later, an FBI official replied that the case agent had confirmed no client list existed.

On Feb. 19, 2025, two days before Bondis Fox News appearance, an FBI supervisory special agent wrote: 'While media coverage of the Jeffrey Epstein case references a client list, investigators did not locate such a list during the course of the investigation.'

Aaron Kessler in Washington contributed to this report.

The AP is reviewing the documents released by the Justice Department in collaboration with journalists from CBS, NBC, MS NOW and CNBC. Journalists from each newsroom are working together to examine the files and share information about what is in them. Each outlet is responsible for its own independent news coverage of the documents.

WASHINGTON (AP) ' President Donald Trump wants to keep home prices high, bypassing calls to ramp up construction so people can afford what has been a ticket to the middle class.

Trump has instead argued for protecting existing owners who have watched the values of their homes climb. Its a position that flies in the face of what many economists, the real estate industry, local officials and apartment dwellers say is needed to fix a big chunk of Americas affordability problem.

'I dont want to drive housing prices down. I want to drive housing prices up for people that own their homes, and they can be assured thats whats going to happen,' Trump told his Cabinet on Jan. 29.

That approach could bolster the Republican presidents standing with older voters, a group that over time has been more likely to vote in midterm elections. Those races in November will determine whether Trumps party can retain control of the House and Senate.

'You have a lot of people that have become wealthy in the last year because their house value has gone up,' Trump said. 'And you know, when you get the housing ' when you make it too easy and too cheap to buy houses ' those values come down.'

But by catering to older baby boomers on housing, Trump risks alienating the younger voters who expanded his coalition in 2024 and helped him win a second term, and he could wade into a 'generational war' in the midterms, said Brent Buchanan, whose polling firm Cygnal advises Republicans.

'The under-40 group is the most important right now ' they are the ones who put Trump in the White House,' Buchanan said. 'Their desire to show up in an election or not is going to make the difference in this election. If they feel that Donald Trump is taking care of the boomers at their expense, that is going to hurt Republicans.'

The logic in appealing to older voters

In the 2024 presidential election, 81% of Trumps voters were homeowners, according to AP VoteCast data. This means many of his supporters already have mortgages with low rates or own their homes outright, possibly blunting the importance of housing as an issue.

Older voters tend to show up to vote more than do younger people, said Oscar Pocasangre, a senior data analyst at liberal think tank New America who has studied the age divide in U.S. politics. 'However, appealing to older voters may prove to be a misguided policy if whats needed to win is to expand the voting base,' Pocasangre said.

Before the 2026 elections, voters have consistently rated affordability as a top concern, and that is especially true for younger voters with regard to housing.

Booker Lightman, 30, a software engineer in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, who identifies politically as a libertarian Republican, said the shortage of housing has been a leading problem in his state.

Lightman just closed on a home last month, and while he and his wife, Alice, were able to manage the cost, he said that the lack of construction is pushing people out of Colorado. 'Theres just not enough housing supply,' he said.

Shay Hata, a real estate agent in the Chicago and Denver areas, said she handles about 100 to 150 transactions a year. But she sees the potential for a lot more. 'We have a lack of inventory to the point where most properties, particularly in the suburbs, are getting between five and 20 offers,' she said, describing what she sees in the Chicago area.

New construction could help more people afford homes because in some cases, buyers qualify for discounted mortgage rates from the builders preferred lenders, Hata said. She called the current situation 'very discouraging for buyers because theyre getting priced out of the market.'

But pending construction has fallen under Trump. Permits to build single-family homes have plunged 9.4% over the past 12 months in October, the most recent month available, to an annual rate of 876,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Trumps other ideas to help people buy houses

Trump has not always been against increasing housing supply.

During the 2024 campaign, Trumps team said he would create tax breaks for homebuyers, trim regulations on construction, open up federal land for housing developments and make monthly payments more manageable by cutting mortgage rates. Advisers also claimed that housing stock would open up because of Trumps push for mass deportations of people who were in the United States illegally.

As recently as October, Trump urged builders to ramp up construction. 'Theyre sitting on 2 Million empty lots, A RECORD. Im asking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to get Big Homebuilders going and, by so doing, help restore the American Dream!' Trump posted on social media, referring to the government-backed lenders.

But more recently, he has been unequivocal on not wanting to pursue policies that would boost supply and lower prices.

In office, Trump has so far focused his housing policy on lobbying the Federal Reserve to cut its benchmark interest rates. He believes that would make mortgages more affordable, although critics say it could spur higher inflation. Trump announced that the two mortgage companies, which are under government conservatorship, would buy at least $200 billion in home loan securities in a bid to reduce rates.

Trump also wants Congress to ban large financial institutions from buying homes. But he has rejected suggestions for expanding rules to let buyers use 401(k) retirement accounts for down payments, telling reporters that he did not want people to take their money out of the stock market because it was doing so well.

There are signs that lawmakers in both parties see the benefits of taking steps to add houses before this years elections. There are efforts in the Senate and House to jump-start construction through the use of incentives to change zoning restrictions, among other policies.

One of the underlying challenges on affordability is that home prices have been generally rising faster than incomes for several years.

This makes it harder to save for down payments or upgrade to a nicer home. It also means that the places where people live increasingly double as their key financial asset, one that leaves many families looking moneyed on paper even if they are struggling with monthly bills.

There is another risk for Trump. If the economy grows this year, as he has promised, that could push up demand for houses ' as well as their prices ' making the affordability problem more pronounced, said Edward Pinto, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think tank.

Pinto said construction of single-family homes would have to rise by 50% to 100% during the next three years for average home price gains to be flat ' a sign, he said, that Trumps fears about falling home prices were probably unwarranted.

'Its very hard to crater home prices,' Pinto said.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) ' The makers of mobile apps designed to help shoppers identify and boycott American goods say they saw a surge of interest in Denmark and beyond after the recent flare-up in tensions over U.S. President Donald Trumps designs on Greenland.

The creator of the 'Made OMeter' app, Ian Rosenfeldt, said he saw around 30,000 downloads of the free app in just three days at the height of the trans-Atlantic diplomatic crisis in late January out of more than 100,000 since it was launched in March.

Apps offer practical help

Rosenfeldt, who lives in Copenhagen and works in digital marketing, decided to create the app a year ago after joining a Facebook group of like-minded Danes hoping to boycott U.S. goods.

'Many people were frustrated and thinking, ‘How do we actually do this in practical terms,' the 53-year-old recalled. 'If you use a bar code scanner, its difficult to see if a product is actually American or not, if its Danish or not. And if you dont know that, you cant really make a conscious choice.'

The latest version of 'Made OMeter' uses artificial intelligence to identify and analyze several products at a time, then recommend similar European-made alternatives. Users can set preferences, like 'No USA-owned brands' or 'Only EU-based brands.' The app claims over 95% accuracy.

'By using artificial intelligence, you can take an image of a product … and it can make a deep dive to go out and find the correct information about the product in many levels,' Rosenfeldt told The Associated Press during a demonstration at a Copenhagen grocery store. 'This way, you have information that you can use to take decisions on what you think is right.'

‘Losing an ally

After an initial surge of downloads when the app was launched, usage tailed off. Until last month, when Trump stepped up his rhetoric about the need for the U.S. to acquire Greenland, a strategically important and mineral-rich Arctic island that is a semiautonomous territory of Denmark.

Usage peaked Jan. 23, when there were almost 40,000 scans in one day, compared with 500 or so daily last summer. It has dropped back since but there were still around 5,000 a day this week, said Rosenfeldt, who noted 'Made OMeter' is used by over 20,000 people in Denmark but also by people in Germany, Spain, Italy, even Venezuela.

'Its become much more personal,' said Rosenfeldt, who spoke of 'losing an ally and a friend.'

Trump announced in January he would slap new tariffs on Denmark and seven other European countries that opposed his takeover calls, only to abruptly drop his threats after he said a 'framework' for a deal over access to mineral-rich Greenland was reached with NATO Secretary-General Mark Ruttes help. Few details of that agreement have emerged.

The U.S. began technical talks in late January to put together an Arctic security deal with Denmark and Greenland, which say sovereignty is not negotiable.

Rosenfeldt knows such boycotts wont damage the U.S. economy, but hopes to send a message to supermarkets and encourage greater reliance on European producers.

'Maybe we can send a signal and people will listen and we can make a change,' he added.

The protest may be largely symbolic

Another Danish app, 'NonUSA,' topped 100,000 downloads at the beginning of February. One of its creators, 21-year-old Jonas Pipper, said there were over 25,000 downloads Jan. 21, when 526 product scans were performed in a minute at one point. Of the users, some 46,000 are in Denmark and around 10,000 in Germany.

'We noticed some users saying they felt like a little bit of the pressure was lifted off them,' Pipper said. 'They feel like they kind of gained the power back in this situation.'

Its questionable whether such apps will have much practical effect.

Christina Gravert, an associate professor of economics at the University of Copenhagen, said there are actually few U.S. products on Danish grocery store shelves, 'around 1 to 3%'. Nuts, wines and candy, for example. But there is widespread use of American technology in Denmark, from Apple iPhones to Microsoft Office tools.

'If you really want to have an impact, thats where you should start,' she said.

Even 'Made OMeter' and 'NonUSA' are downloaded from Apples App Store and Googles Play Store.

Gravert, who specializes in behavioral economics, said such boycott campaigns are usually short-lived and real change often requires an organized effort rather than individual consumers.

'It can be interesting for big supermarket brands to say, OK, were not going to carry these products anymore because consumers dont want to buy them,' she said. 'If you think about large companies, this might have some type of impact on the import (they) do.'

On a recent morning, shoppers leaving one Copenhagen grocery store were divided.

'We do boycott, but we dont know all the American goods. So, its mostly the well-known trademarks,' said Morten Nielsen, 68, a retired navy officer. 'Its a personal feeling … we feel we do something, I know we are not doing very much.'

'I love America, I love traveling in America,' said 63-year-old retiree Charlotte Fuglsang. 'I dont think we should protest that way.'

By Claudia Boyd-Barrett, Oona Zenda, KFF Health News

Lydia Romero strained to hear her husbands feeble voice through the phone.

A week earlier, immigration agents had grabbed Julio César Peña from his front yard in Glendale, California. Now, he was in a hospital after suffering a ministroke. He was shackled to the bed by his hand and foot, he told Romero, and agents were in the room, listening to the call. He was scared he would die and wanted his wife there.

'What hospital are you at?' Romero asked.

'I cant tell you,' he replied.

Viridiana Chabolla, Peñas attorney, couldnt get an answer to that question, either. Peñas deportation officer and the medical contractor at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center refused to tell her. Exasperated, she tried calling a nearby hospital, Providence St. Mary Medical Center.

'They said even if they had a person in ICE custody under their care, they wouldnt be able to confirm whether hes there or not, that only ICE can give me the information,' Chabolla said. The hospital confirmed this policy to KFF Health News.

Family members and attorneys for patients hospitalized after being detained by federal immigration officials said they are facing extreme difficulty trying to locate patients, get information about their well-being, and provide them emotional and legal support. They say many hospitals refuse to provide information or allow contact with these patients. Instead, hospitals allow immigration officers to call the shots on how much ' if any ' contact is allowed, which can deprive patients of their constitutional right to seek legal advice and leave them vulnerable to abuse, attorneys said.

Hospitals say they are trying to protect the safety and privacy of patients, staff, and law enforcement officials, even while hospital employees in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Portland, Oregon, cities where Immigration and Customs Enforcement has conducted immigration raids, say its made their jobs difficult. Hospitals have used what are sometimes called blackout procedures, which can include registering a patient under a pseudonym, removing their name from the hospital directory, or prohibiting staff from even confirming that a patient is in the hospital.

'Weve heard incidences of this blackout process being used at multiple hospitals across the state, and its very concerning,' said Shiu-Ming Cheer, the deputy director of immigrant and racial justice at the California Immigrant Policy Center, an advocacy group.

Some Democratic-led states, including California, Colorado, and Maryland, have enacted legislation that seeks to protect patients from immigration enforcement in hospitals. However, those policies do not address protections for people already in ICE custody.

More detainees hospitalized

Peña is among more than 350,000 people arrested by federal immigration authorities since President Donald Trump returned to the White House. As arrests and detentions have climbed, so too have reports of people taken to hospitals by immigration agents because of illness or injury ' due to preexisting conditions or problems stemming from their arrest or detention.

ICE has faced criticism for using aggressive and deadly tactics, as well as for reports of mistreatment and inadequate medical care at its facilities. Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told reporters at a Jan. 20 news conference outside a detention center he visited in California City that he spoke to a diabetic woman held there who had not received treatment in two months.

While there are no publicly available statistics on the number of people sick or injured in ICE detention, the agencys news releases point to 32 people who died in immigration custody in 2025. Six more have died this year.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, did not respond to a request for information about its policies or Peñas case.

According to ICEs guidelines, people in custody should be given access to a telephone, visits from family and friends, and private consultation with legal counsel. The agency can make administrative decisions, including about visitation, when a patient is in the hospital, but should defer to hospital policies on contacting next of kin when a patient is seriously ill, the guidelines state.

Asked in detail about hospital practices related to patients in immigration custody and whether there are best practices that hospitals should follow, Ben Teicher, a spokesperson for the American Hospital Association, declined to comment.

David Simon, a spokesperson for the California Hospital Association, said that 'there are times when hospitals will ' at the request of law enforcement ' maintain confidentiality of patients names and other identifying characteristics.'

Although policies vary, members of the public can typically call a hospital and ask for a patient by name to find out whether theyre there, and often be transferred to the patients room, said William Weber, an emergency physician in Minneapolis and medical director for the Medical Justice Alliance, which advocates for the medical needs of people in law enforcement custody. Family members and others authorized by the patient can visit. And medical staff routinely call relatives to let them know a loved one is in the hospital, or to ask for information that could help with their care.

But when a patient is in law enforcement custody, hospitals frequently agree to restrict this kind of information sharing and access, Weber said. The rationale is that these measures prevent unauthorized outsiders from threatening the patient or law enforcement personnel, given that hospitals lack the security infrastructure of a prison or detention center. High-profile patients such as celebrities sometimes also request this type of protection.

Several attorneys and health care providers questioned the need for such restrictions. Immigration detention is civil, not criminal, detention. The Trump administration says its focused on arresting and deporting criminals, yet most of those arrested have no criminal conviction, according to data compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse and several news outlets.

Taken outside his home

According to Peñas wife, Romero, he has no criminal record. Peña came to the United States from Mexico in sixth grade and has an adult son in the U.S. military. The 43-year-old has terminal kidney disease and survived a heart attack in November. He has trouble walking and is partially blind, his wife said. He was detained Dec. 8 while resting outside after coming home from dialysis treatment.

Initially, Romero was able to find her husband through the ICE Online Detainee Locator System. She visited him at a temporary holding facility in downtown Los Angeles, bringing him his medicines and a sweater. She then saw hed been moved to the Adelanto detention center. But the locator did not show where he was after he was hospitalized.

When she and other relatives drove to the detention facility to find him, they were turned away, she said. Romero received occasional calls from her husband in the hospital but said they were less than 10 minutes long and took place under ICE surveillance. She wanted to know where he was so she could be at the hospital to hold his hand, make sure he was well cared for, and encourage him to stay strong, she said.

Shackling him and preventing him from seeing his family was unfair and unnecessary, she said.

'Hes weak,' Romero said. 'Its not like hes going to run away.'

ICE guidelines say contact and visits from family and friends should be allowed 'within security and operational constraints.' Detainees have a constitutional right to speak confidentially with an attorney. Weber said immigration authorities should tell attorneys where their clients are and allow them to talk in person or use an unmonitored phone line.

Hospitals, though, fall into a gray area on enforcing these rights, since they are primarily focused on treating medical needs, Weber said. Still, he added, hospitals should ensure their policies align with the law.

Family denied access

Numerous immigration attorneys have spent weeks trying to locate clients detained by ICE, with their efforts sometimes thwarted by hospitals.

Nicolas Thompson-Lleras, a Los Angeles attorney who counsels immigrants facing deportation, said two of his clients were registered under aliases at different hospitals in Los Angeles County last year. Initially, the hospitals denied the clients were there and refused to let Thompson-Lleras meet with them, he said. Family members were also denied access, he said.

One of his clients was Bayron Rovidio Marin, a car wash worker injured during a raid in August. Immigration agents surveilled him for over a month at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, a county-run facility, without charging him.

In November, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to curb the use of blackout policies for patients under civil immigration custody at county-run hospitals. In a statement, Arun Patel, the chief patient safety and clinical risk management officer for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, said the policies are designed to reduce safety risks for patients, doctors, nurses, and custody officers.

'In some situations, there may be concerns about threats to the patient, attempts to interfere with medical care, unauthorized visitors, or the introduction of contraband,' Patel said. 'Our goal is not to restrict care but to allow care to happen safely and without disruption.'

Leaving patients vulnerable

Thompson-Lleras said hes concerned that hospitals are cooperating with federal immigration authorities at the expense of patients and their families and leaving patients vulnerable to abuse.

'It allows people to be treated suboptimally,' Thompson-Lleras said. 'It allows people to be treated on abbreviated timelines, without supervision, without family intervention or advocacy. These people are alone, disoriented, being interrogated, at least in Bayrons case, under pain and influence of medication.'

Such incidents are alarming to hospital workers. In Los Angeles, two health care professionals who asked not to be identified by KFF Health News, out of concern for their livelihoods, said that ICE and hospital administrators, at public and private hospitals, frequently block staff from contacting family members for people in custody, even to find out about their health conditions or what medications theyre on. That violates medical ethics, they said.

Blackout procedures are another concern.

'They help facilitate, whether intentionally or not, the disappearance of patients,' said one worker, a physician for the countys Department of Health Services and part of a coalition of concerned health workers from across the region.

At Legacy Emanuel Medical Center in Portland, nurses publicly expressed outrage over what they saw as hospital cooperation with ICE and the flouting of patient rights. Legacy Health has sent a cease and desist letter to the nurses union, accusing it of making 'false or misleading statements.'

'I was really disgusted,' said Blaire Glennon, a nurse who quit her job at the hospital in December. She said numerous patients were brought to the hospital by ICE with serious injuries they sustained while being detained. 'I felt like Legacy was doing massive human rights violations.'

Handcuffed while unconscious

Two days before Christmas, Chabolla, Peñas attorney, received a call from ICE with the answer she and Romero had been waiting for. Peña was at Victor Valley Global Medical Center, about 10 miles from Adelanto, and about to be released.

Excited, Romero and her family made the two-hour-plus drive from Glendale to the hospital to take him home.

When they got there, they found Peña intubated and unconscious, his arm and leg still handcuffed to the hospital bed. Hed had a severe seizure on Dec. 20, but no one had told his family or legal team, his attorney said.

Tim Lineberger, a spokesperson for Victor Valley Global Medical Centers parent company, KPC Health, said he could not comment on specific patient cases, because of privacy protections. He said the hospitals policies on patient information disclosure comply with state and federal law.

Peña was finally cleared to go home on Jan. 5. No court date has been set, and his family is filing a petition to adjust his legal status based on his sons military service. For now, he still faces deportation proceedings.

©2026 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Ever since Larry Wilkewitz retired more than 20 years ago from a wood products company, hes had a commercial Medicare Advantage plan from the insurer Humana.

But two years ago, he heard about Peak Health, a new Advantage plan started by the West Virginia University Health System, where his doctors practice. It was cheaper and offered more personal attention, plus extras such as an allowance for over-the-counter pharmacy items. Those benefits are more important than ever, he said, as hes treated for cancer.

'I decided to give it a shot,' said Wilkewitz, 79. 'If I didnt like it, I could go back to Humana or whatever after a year.'

Hes sticking with Peak Health. Members of Medicare Advantage plans, a privately run alternative to the governments Medicare program, can change plans through the end of March.

Now entering its third year, Peak Health has tripled its enrollment since last year, to 'north of 10,000,' said Amos Ross, its president. It expanded from 20 counties to 49, he said, and moved into parts of western Pennsylvania for the first time.

Although hospital-owned plans are only a sliver of the Medicare Advantage market, their enrollment continues to grow, reflecting the overall increase in Advantage members. Of the 62.8 million Medicare beneficiaries eligible to join Advantage plans, 54% signed up last year, according to KFF, the health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News. While the number of Advantage plans owned by hospital systems is relatively stable, Mass General Brigham in Boston and others are expanding their service areas and types of plan offerings.

Health systems have dabbled in the insurance business for years, but its not for everyone. MedStar Health, serving the greater Washington, D.C., area, said it closed its Medicare Advantage plan at the end of 2018, citing financial losses.

'Its a ton of work,' said Ross, who spent more than a decade in the commercial health insurance industry.

Like any other health insurer, hospitals entering the business need a back-office infrastructure to enroll patients, sign up providers, fill prescriptions, process claims, hire staff, and ' most importantly ' assure state regulators they have a reserve of money to pay claims. Once they get a state insurance license, they need approval from the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to sell Medicare Advantage policies. Some systems affiliate with or create an insurance subsidiary, and others do most of the job themselves.

Kaiser Permanente, the nations largest nonprofit health system by revenue, started an experimental Medicare plan in 1981 and now has nearly 2 million people enrolled in dozens of Advantage plans in eight states and the District of Columbia. The Justice Department announced Jan. 14 that KP had agreed to pay $556 million to settle accusations that its Advantage plans fraudulently billed the government for about $1 billion over a nine-year period.

Last year, UCLA Health introduced two Medicare Advantage plans in Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the United States. Other new hospital-owned plans have cropped up in less profitable rural areas.

'These are communities that have been very hard for insurers to move into,' said Molly Smith, group vice president for public policy at the American Hospital Association.

But Advantage plans offered by hospitals have a familiar, trusted name. They dont have to move into town, because their owners ' the hospitals ' never left.

Bad Breakups

Medicare Advantage plans usually restrict their members to a network of doctors, hospitals, and other clinicians that have contracts with the plans to serve them. But if hospitals and plans cant agree to renew those contracts, or when disputes flare up ' often spurred by payment delays, denials, or burdensome prior authorization rules ' the health care providers can drop out.

These breakups, plus planned terminations and service area cuts, forced more than 3.7 million Medicare Advantage enrollees to make a tough choice last year: find new insurance for 2026 that their doctors accept or, if possible, keep their plan but find new doctors.

About 1 million of these stranded patients had coverage from UnitedHealthcare, the countrys largest health insurer. In a July earnings update for financial analysts, chief financial officer John Rex blamed the companys retreat on hospitals, where 'most encounters are intensifying in services and costing more.'

The turbulence in the commercial insurance market has upset patients as well as their providers. Sometimes contract disputes have been fought out in the open, with anxious patients in the middle receiving warnings from each side blaming the other for the imminent end to coverage.

When Fred Neary, 88, learned his doctors in the Baylor Scott & White Health system in central and northern Texas would be leaving his Medicare Advantage plan, he was afraid the same thing could happen again if he joined a plan from another commercial insurer. Then he discovered that the 53-hospital system had its own Medicare Advantage plan. He enrolled in 2025 and is keeping the plan this year.

'It was very important to me that I would never have to worry about switching over to another plan because they would not accept my Baylor Scott & White doctors,' he said.

Eugene Rich, a senior fellow at Mathematica, a health policy research group, said hospital systems Medicare Advantage plans offer 'a lot of stability for patients.'

'Youre not suddenly going to discover that your primary care physician or your cardiologist are no longer in the plan,' he said.

A Health Affairs study that Rich co-authored in July found that enrollment in Advantage plans owned by hospital systems grew faster than traditional Medicare enrollment for the first time in 2023, though not as rapidly as the overall rise in sign-ups for all Advantage plans.

The massive UCLA Health system introduced its two Medicare Advantage plans in Los Angeles County in January 2025, even though patients already had a list of more than 70 Advantage plans to choose from. Before rolling out the plan, the University of California Board of Regents discussed its merits at a November 2024 meeting. The meeting minutes offer rare insight into a conversation that private hospital systems would usually hold behind closed doors.

'As increasing numbers of Medicare-enrolled patients turn to new Medicare Advantage plans, UC Healths experience with these new plans has not been good, either for patients or providers,' the minutes read, summarizing comments by David Rubin, executive vice president of UC Health.

The minutes also describe comments from Jonathon Arrington, CFO of UCLA Health. 'Over the years, in order to care for Medicare Advantage patients, UCLA has entered numerous contracts with other payers, and these contracts have generally not worked out well,' the minutes read. 'Every two or three years, UCLA has found itself terminating a contract and signing a new one. Patients have remained loyal to UCLA, some going through three iterations of cancelled contracts in order to remain with UCLA Health.'

Costs to Taxpayers

CMS pays Advantage plans a monthly fixed amount to care for each enrollee based on the members health condition and location. In 2024, the federal government paid Advantage plans an estimated $494 billion to care for patients, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, which monitors the program for Congress.

The commission said this month that it projects insurers in 2026 will be paid 14%, or about $76 billion, more than it would have cost government-run Medicare to care for similar patients.

Many Democratic lawmakers have criticized overpayments to Medicare Advantage insurers, though the program has bipartisan congressional support because of its increasing popularity with Medicare beneficiaries, who are often attracted by dental care and other coverage unavailable through traditional Medicare.

Whenever Congress threatens cuts, insurers claim these generous federal payments are essential to keep Medicare Advantage plans afloat. UCLA Healths Advantage plans will need at least 15,000 members to be financially sustainable, according to the meeting minutes. CMS data indicates that 7,337 patients signed up in 2025.

A study published in JAMA Surgery in August compared patients in commercial Medicare Advantage who had major surgery with those covered by Medicare Advantage plans owned by their hospital. The latter group had fewer complications, said co-author Thomas Tsai, an associate professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Smith, of the American Hospital Association, isnt surprised. When insurers and hospitals are not on opposite sides, she said, care delivery can be smoother. 'Theres more flexibility to manage premium dollars to cover services that maybe wouldnt otherwise be covered,' Smith said.

But Tsai warns seniors that hospital-owned Medicare Advantage plans operate under the same rules as those run by commercial health insurance companies. He said patients should consider whether the extra benefits of Advantage plans 'are worth the trade-off of potentially narrow provider networks and more utilization management than they would get from traditional Medicare.'

In Texas, Neary hopes the closer relationship between his doctors and his insurance plan means theres less of a chance that bills for his medical care will be kicked back.

'I dont think I would run into a situation where they would not provide coverage if one of their own doctors recommended something,' he said.

©2026 Kaiser Health News. Visit khn.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. ©2026 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Probation Chief Guillermo Viera Rosa testified before a Superior Court judge on Friday, Feb. 6, that he expects the Downey-based juvenile hall will now end up with about 200 detainees once the county finishes asbestos-related renovations at the Dorothy Kirby Center in Commerce that have delayed the final transfers out of Los Padrinos.

The department is confident it can come back into compliance with state law at that population level even with its ongoing staffing struggles, Viera Rosa said.

Judge Miguel Espinoza both praised and criticized the county’s progress at the hearing, at times applauding the collaboration between stakeholders and at other times questioning whether the Board of Supervisors was allocating enough resources.

He found the department had demonstrated a “sufficient effort to effectuate the depopulation plan,” though he noted that “significant improvements” were still necessary.

“The court is attempting to very carefully thread a needle here,” he said.

In 2024, Los Padrinos was ordered to close by state regulators for its failure to maintain suitable conditions under state law, but the county refused to comply. The Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office challenged the continued operation almost immediately, arguing that youth should not be sent to a facility that is operating unlawfully.

The county, under the depopulation plan approved by Espinoza in May 2025, initially estimated it could drop Los Padrinos’ total population from about 278 to 175 by August 2025.

As of this week, the facility has about 223 youths left, even after transferring dozens of girls to Campus Kilpatrick in the Santa Monica Mountains and a similar number of boys to Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar.

A higher-than-usual number of juvenile arrests last year offset depopulation efforts, officials said. The next and final phase will shift about two dozen males with developmental disabilities from Los Padrinos to Dorothy Kirby.

So far, the transitions have not gone smoothy.

Both Kilpatrick and Nidorf have failed recent inspections by the Board of State and Community Corrections, the California regulatory agency overseeing jails and juvenile halls. Those facilities could be ordered to close, too, if the deficiencies identified aren’t addressed within the next few months.

“We are here because of LP, but we are starting to see signs that the noncompliance is emerging in other places,” Espinoza said at the hearing.

The juvenile hall portion of Barry J. Nidorf has been out of compliance with state law since May 2023 and the county did not obtain the state’s permission before reopening it last year. The BSCC inspectors, during a comprehensive review in December, determined the county had not addressed many of the issues that led to Nidorf’s unprecedented closure nearly three years ago.

Following the transfers in July and September, Nidorf experienced a surge in violence and pepper spray usage. The facility has also faced repeated criticism ' internally and externally ' for the lack of activities available for the juveniles.

Espinoza focused a large part of Friday’s hearing on problems arising at Campus Kilpatrick, which now houses all of the girls in the county’s custody. Juvenile court judges relied on the mental health programs available to girls at their previous home in the Dorothy Kirby Center and have expressed concerns to Espinoza that the same level of services are not yet available at Kilpatrick.

Kim Binion, the superintendent for Kilpatrick, said the county offers many programs already, including individual and family therapy, and plans to expand. Many of the officers working at Kilpatrick are veterans with experience in providing treatment, she said.

“It doesn’t feel like a juvenile hall,” she said.

The remoteness of the campus in the Santa Monica Mountains has made it difficult for parents to visit and to pick up girls being released into community detention, according to Luis Rodriguez, the juvenile division chief at the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office.

The county offers ride-hailing vouchers to help with visits, but defense attorneys and parents do not know who to contact to obtain the vouchers, Rodriguez said. At the same time, girls who try to turn themselves over to probation officers at Los Padrinos or other more centrally located facilities are being told they must go 52 miles away to Kilpatrick instead, Rodriguez said.

“We continue to have these problems,” he said.

Espinoza similarly described a case in which a girl was set to be released with an ankle monitor, but her mother, who had taken public transportation to the Inglewood Juvenile Courthouse, was expected to travel to Kilpatrick to pick her up under the current system. The judge ultimately ordered the girl released directly from the courthouse instead.

At the end of the hearing, Espinoza ordered the county to develop a better system for issuing vouchers and for handling community detention releases.

He also ordered the county to report back to him on its efforts to come back into compliance with the BSCC at all of its facilities and, specifically, to provide him with a timeline for when Los Padrinos would be reinspected by the state.

L.A. County has not asked for a reinspection of Los Padrinos as of Friday, according to the BSCC.

The Chino residents day is bookended not by sitcoms or sports but by a silent nest. It’s a family affair. Three Braasch generations start and end their days by checking on the pair they know only through a screen.

RELATED: Ravens damage both Big Bear bald eagle eggs

It’s all thanks to the nonprofit Friends of Big Bear Valley, which operates nonstop webcams that capture life in the eagles San Bernardino County nest. From her living room, the 61‑year‑old grandmother ' plus her husband, daughter and grandbabies ' cue up the livestream, building a ritual around two birds shes never met.

'Its just peaceful,' Braasch said by phone, adding, 'but you got to know that it is nature,' referring to the sometimes sad and cruel acts of nature on display.

The live nest camera has become a global phenomenon. The Friends has roughly 2.4 million social media followers, including more than 1 million on its main Facebook page and nearly 400,000 in a private Facebook group, said Jennifer Voisard, the group’s media and website manager.

Gina Muscato, UC Riversides social media manager, said by phone that posts about animals often go viral because 'the audience is always looking for happy, funny, wholesome content, especially at times when things feel heavy in the real world.'

'There’s something just so authentic about watching these 24-hour live streams of animals and … there’s no AI and there’s no editing, and I think people really gravitate to that kind of social media content.'

At one point, the A.K. Smiley Public Library in Redlands set up a monitor to livestream the eagle cam for patrons.

Friends’ Executive Director Sandy Steers said the environmental group’s monitoring, education and advocacy help connect people with nature.

'This is an unscripted view into the daily lives of bald eagles,” Steers said in an email. “They are amazing creatures, and there is so much that we can learn from them.'

Braasch is not alone in her avian superfandom. The livestream attracts thousands of viewers daily from fans across the nation and world.

Friends of Big Bear Valley credits Peter Sharpe, who recently retired from the Institute for Wildlife Studies in northern California, for installing the 24/7 video feed.

Sharpe, who has made eagles the focus of his work since 1997, has designed similar camera systems and led an eagle restoration project on the California Channel Islands.

Sharpe coordinated with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service to install the two cameras, ensuring safety for the eagles and tree in which it’s rigged.

The exact location of Jackie and Shadows nest is kept private to protect the birds and their habitat, Voisard said. The first camera was installed in October 2015 on the branch where the nest currently rests. A second one came in 2021, on a nearby tree, for a wider view. Both are 145 feet in the air and solar powered.

A  team of about 45 contractors and volunteers, coast to coast, along with others working from the Philippines and the United Kingdom, constantly monitors feeds for bird activity and to make sure equipment is working, Voisard said by email.

The organization also has an education program. Team members or volunteers speak to classrooms via Zoom to discuss conservation efforts or the famous eagles. In 2025, Friends virtually reached more than 4,000 students, from kindergarten through Advanced Placement biology students, answering their questions live, Voisard said.

During the current nesting season, the team and spectators log in to see whether the two lovebirds produce eggs.

Friend of Big Bear Valley provides updates on all its social media accounts, but its official Facebook page is the most popular, Voisard said. Each post gets hundreds of comments and thousands of likes and shares.

The first egg of the 2026 nesting season appeared on video feeds Jan. 23. A second egg appeared three days later. Footage on the group’s Facebook page netted over a million views for each egg announcement, with thousands of commenters expressing excitement.

The cheers would be short-lived, however. Days after the second egg announcement, a raven landed in the nest while Jackie and Shadow were gone and breached the eggs. 

More than 5,800 comments of condolences flooded the Jan. 30 Facebook post reporting the sad news.

'Just before noon, Shadow left the nest, Jackie did not come in, and Shadow did not return for a few hours. We will never know why, but we are sure they had their reasons as they have been incubating the eggs faithfully,' the Facebook post read.

Sharpe said that 'it’s extremely odd for the bird to disappear for four hours, or seemed like four hours … there’s really no way to say what is going on.'

But theres still hope for new eggs, he said.

'Fortunately, they can recycle and lay eggs again, usually at about a month intervals. So in late February, early March, I would expect them to lay again … so it’s definitely not over for the season.'

The post announcing the loss of both eggs sparked heartfelt posts of disappointment and sorrow.

'It was hard to watch, especially with how attached you get to these eagles over the years,' viewer Sarah Fraley wrote on Facebook, 'Nature is brutal.”

Sharpe said theres no way to know, but it’s likely the birds would not feel the same kind of grief as humans.

'It would be instinctual … it would be nothing like ours if they do,' Sharpe said.

Still, for those who watch every day, it’s difficult not to feel fondness for the birds.

Devastated by the eggs’ loss, Braasch wore a Jackie and Shadow shirt ' “in memory of the birds” ' that her husband bought from the Friends’.

Yolonda Youngs, a Cal State San Bernardino professor in environmental studies and geography, compared the Big Bear eagles to the way images of the Grand Canyon made it a U.S. icon. Video of the nest, like a postcard from the canyon’s rim, offer an intimate frame of the “wildlife family,” Youngs said.

'We want to follow them, and it’s difficult to not see it as a family and sort of impose on them our ideas of parenthood and raising young and surviving tough winter storms,' Youngs said by phone.

Jackie and Shadows fanbase stretches far, with commenters from Hawaii, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Michigan, West Virginia, Texas and as far as Australia.

Vicki Leach, who lives in Starkville, Mississippi, doesnt remember how she learned about Jackie and Shadow, but has been tuning in since last year.

'Ive been fascinated by eagles all my life … getting to see the ‘wonderful (birds) with others who are watching the same thing from all over the place is just a fun ‘small world experience,' she said.

Her grandson texted her last year from a Colorado visit after seeing others there watching the Big Bear feed, waiting for an an egg to hatch.

“Everybody knew Jackie and Shadow,” she said. “He thought it was just me.'

When Jackies three eggs finally began to hatch last season, the public response was so intense it crashed the Friends’ website, Voisard said.

Within a few days, the nest camera page drew about 6 million views, disrupted service on the site and knocked out the Friends team email accounts, forcing staff to scramble to migrate servers ' twice.

“Everybody was very excited, because we hadn’t had any eggs hatched in two seasons before that,” she said.

Youngs said people relate to the birds and their family.

“I think there might be a sense of people sort of connecting with them as potentially raising a family amid some challenging conditions that we all deal with in Southern California of snow and fire and there’s the Santa Ana winds, you know, that kind of thing,' she said.

That’s true in Braasch’s home, where she couldn’t bear to watch when the raven landed in the nest.

Braasch raced from her living room and went upstairs, listening as her daughter gasped while watching the televised raid unfold.

Even in that grief, she said, the eagles drew her closer to the fragile, sacred lifecycle of living things.

'Some people look at the eagles and say, ‘They’re just birds, but they’re not,' she said. 'If you look at it and you study them, and you look at them for a full day, you’ll see that they’ve got feelings … Theyre creating life.'

For now, the livestream is back to familiar scenes: a nest, eagles perhaps sharing a beaky kiss and a vast gray sky. And somewhere in Chino, on a kitchen counter or flickering living room TV screen, Braasch will be there, tuning in again.

'We received your message, and we understand. We beg you now to return our mother to us so that we can celebrate with her,' she said in a video posted on social media, flanked by her siblings. 'This is the only way we will have peace. This is very valuable to us, and we will pay.'

Guthrie was referencing a message that was sent to the Tucson-based television station KOLD on Friday afternoon, according to Kevin Smith, a spokesperson for the FBI office in Phoenix.

KOLD said it received an email related to the Guthrie case on social media that day but declined to share specific details about its contents as the FBI conducted its review.

The station was one of multiple press outlets that received alleged ransom letters during the week. At least one letter made monetary demands and established Thursday evening and the following Monday evening as deadlines.

In a news conference Thursday, law enforcement officials declined to affirm that the letters were credible but said all tips were being investigated seriously. They also said one letter referenced Nancy Guthries Apple watch and a specific feature of her property.

The video released Saturday was the third this week that pleaded with potential kidnappers.

No suspects identified

Investigators think Nancy Guthrie was taken against her will from her home just outside Tucson last weekend. DNA tests showed blood on Guthries front porch was a match to her, Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos has said. Authorities have not identified any suspects or ruled anyone out.

The sheriff said Friday that he was frustrated that a camera at Nancy Guthries home was not able to capture images of anyone the day she went missing.

Investigators have found that the homes doorbell camera was disconnected early Sunday and that software data recorded movement at the home minutes later. But Nancy Guthrie did not have an active subscription, so none of the images were able to be recovered.

'It is concerning, its actually almost disappointing, because youve got your hopes up,' Nanos told The Associated Press in an interview. 'OK, they got an image. ‘Well, we do, but we dont.’'

President Donald Trump, speaking on Air Force One on Friday, said the investigation was going 'very well.'

'We have some clues that I think are very strong,' Trump said, while en route to his Florida estate. 'We have some things that may be coming out reasonably soon.'

Investigators return to scene

They were back in Nancy Guthries neighborhood on Friday.

The sheriffs department posted on social media to say access was restricted to the road in front of the home to give investigators space. Journalists staked out there were directed to move.

The Catalina Foothills Association, a neighborhood group, told residents in a letter that authorities were resuming searches in the area immediately.

'I know we all stand together in our collective disbelief and sadness and greatly appreciate your willingness to speak with law enforcement, share camera images and allow searches of your properties,' the association president said in the letter.

The sheriff said Thursday that investigators have not given up on trying to retrieve camera recordings.

'I wish technology was as easy as we believe it is, that heres a picture, heres your bad guy. But its not,' Nanos told the AP. 'There are pieces of information that come to us from these tech groups that say ‘this is what we have and we cant get anymore.’'

The sheriff also said he had no new information about the note to the TV station or other purported ransom letters sent to some media outlets, saying the FBI is handling that side of the investigation.

Meanwhile concern about Nancy Guthries health condition has grown, because authorities say she needs vital daily medicine. She is said to have a pacemaker and have dealt with high blood pressure and heart issues, according to sheriffs dispatcher audio on broadcastify.com.

'Her conditions, I would imagine, are worsening day by day,' Nanos said. 'She requires medication. And I have no way of knowing whether theyre getting that medication to her.'

The kidnapping has captured the attention of Americans, including Trump, who said he was directing federal authorities to help investigate.