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With Daniel Lippman, Megan Messerly and Alice Miranda Ollstein

REVISITING COVID SCHOOL CLOSURES — The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic will hold a hearing today on how pandemic school closures impacted students.

What to expect: The hearing offers a high-profile venue for House Republicans to raise long-standing grievances over the government’s recommendations to close schools and keep millions of children out of the classroom during the pandemic, a move that public health experts have since said had negative impacts on their mental and physical health, as well as leading to significant learning losses.

Chairman Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) will discuss what he says is a lack of science supporting the prolonged closures. The committee also intends to investigate how government officials decided to lock down schools and whether they put “the best interests of our nation’s children first,” as well as convey why it’s important to hold officials accountable for their mistakes so the nation’s schools will be better prepared for the next pandemic.

Who will we hear from? The scheduled witnesses in the hearing are journalist David Zweig, who has written extensively about school closures; epidemiologist Tracy Beth Hoeg; and Ginny Gentles, director of the Independent Women’s Forum’s Education Freedom Center.

Why it matters: Consternation over the government’s decision to shutter schools and send kids to class in front of their laptops at home is part of a wider conservative argument that federal officials overstepped their authority during the pandemic to the detriment of Americans’ health.

It’s also part of the escalating fight over parents’ rights that’s already impacted political races nationwide and will likely be a central plank in the presidential elections.

The hearing comes just days after the House passed sweeping “Parents Bill of Rights” legislation outlining what rights parents have concerning their children’s education.

WELCOME TO TUESDAY PULSE — Debating whether or not to shell out to watch spring training? Going to that game might be good for you. Send your news and tips to [email protected] and [email protected].

TODAY ON OUR PULSE CHECK PODCAST, host Megan Messerly talks with POLITICO’s Natalie Fertig, who recently sat down with Dr. Wilson Compton, the deputy director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, to chat about the known health effects of cannabis and how scientists’ limited access to cannabis products sold in state-legal dispensaries is thwarting effective research.

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE — The Biden administration will defend itself today against a group of Democratic attorneys general who believe the FDA is wrong to place any restrictions on mifepristone, one of two pills used to terminate a pregnancy, Alice and Megan report.

The administration, which has in recent months highlighted its efforts to promote and improve access to abortion services, is expected to tell a federal judge in Washington state that the FDA has the authority to place certain restrictions on abortion pills, such as requiring a certification process for anyone prescribing it.

Why this matters: A federal judge in Texas, considering a separate lawsuit, could at any time ban the pills entirely. That means there’s the potential for dueling federal court rulings, which would make the issue ripe for the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, in Georgia, the state Supreme Court will hear oral arguments today in a case filed by abortion providers and reproductive health advocates challenging a state law prohibiting the procedure after about six weeks of pregnancy. A lower court ruled that the law was void because it violated either the state or federal constitution at the time it was signed into law, though the law remains in effect pending appeal.

And Kansas’ high court heard oral arguments Monday in two cases filed by abortion providers challenging restrictions on the procedure, seven months after voters rejected a ballot measure in the state that would have inserted language saying there’s no right to abortion stated in the state’s constitution.

E&C GOES AFTER FDA — The House Energy and Commerce Committee sent two letters to FDA head Robert Califf on Monday, asking the agency for information about FDA scientists’ manipulation of viruses in its laboratories and its response to drug shortages.

In the first letter, signed by E&C chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), subcommittee health chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) and subcommittee oversight and investigations chair H. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.), the committee asked for additional information regarding a January FDA email it received, in which FDA staff said that standard techniques, including viral sequence manipulation, were used in some studies “to better understand differences in disease pathology caused by the different SARS-CoV-2 strains. … None of the research studies were undertaken to make the virus intentionally more virulent,” it added.

In the second, the same lawmakers asked how the agency handles and monitors drug shortages and included detailed questions about several drugs on the FDA Drug Shortage Database.

An FDA spokesperson told Pulse the agency has received the letters and will respond directly to the representatives.

FEDS STILL TRYING TO IMPROVE BUP ACCESS — On Monday, the FDA said it’s notifying pharmacists that they no longer need to verify that prescriptions for buprenorphine come from providers with the so-called X-waiver.

Backstory: The X waiver — which required medical providers to undergo lengthy training to prescribe the life-saving drug used to treat opioid use disorder — was eliminated in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023. Now, any provider federally licensed to prescribe controlled substances can prescribe the drug, which is an opioid.

Why it matters: To reduce U.S. overdose deaths, the Biden administration has been trying to improve access to buprenorphine. But patients around the country have had difficulty filling their prescriptions, as POLITICO reported earlier this month, because some pharmacists and distributors are wary of running afoul of the federal agencies that regulate the drug.

Georgetown University has appointed Deus Bazira as the inaugural director of the Georgetown Global Health Institute. Bazira is an associate professor of medicine at Georgetown’s School of Medicine and founding director of its Center for Global Health Practice and Impact.

Healthcare automation firm Notable has hired James Lakes as its chief growth officer. Lakes was previously Salesforce’s senior vice president of sales for healthcare providers.

The Washington Post reports why certain women in the U.S. military had to fight for health care when they returned home from Afghanistan.

A doctor and scientist who helped develop the Covid-19 vaccine writes in The New York Times that we have the science to prepare a vaccine for the next pandemic but lack the systems to ensure everyone gets it.

Stat reports on why Minnesota is becoming a haven for trans youth.