By CAROLYN THOMPSON, Associated Press

Later this year, the National Toy Hall of Fame could induct snow — yes, the cold, white stuff that falls from the sky. But only if it ices out enough of the competition — a group that features hugely popular board games, outdoor favorites and giggling plushies.

The Hall of Fame announced its 12 finalists for the Class of 2025 Wednesday and opened voting to the public and a panel of judges who will choose which few will be honored in November.

Along with snow, the contenders include tabletop favorites Battleship, Catan, Connect Four, Spirograph and Trivial Pursuit, as well as crowd-pleasers — scooters, slime and cornhole. The “Star Wars” lightsaber, Furby and Tickle Me Elmo round out the finalists chosen from among the thousands of nominees the Toy Hall of Fame receives each year.

“This year’s contenders present some playful matchups,” said Christopher Bensch, vice president for collections and chief curator.

The Strong’s National Toy Hall of Fame in Rochester, N.Y., on Sept. 17, 2025, announced the 12 finalists in the running for induction later this year: Battleship, Catan, Connect Four, cornhole, Furby, scooter, slime, snow, Spirograph, Star Wars Light Saber, Tickle Me Elmo, and Trivial Pursuit. (Strong’s National Toy Hall of Fame via AP)

Along with a slate of board games and tactile materials like snow and slime, he said, “There’s also Tickle Me Elmo and Furby — two technological icons of the 90s toy world — battling it out.”

“I’m always excited to see where the judges and public come out in their votes,” Bensch said. “At the end of the day, the playful debates just go to show how much personal and cultural relevance these toys have for us all.”

The public has a week, until Sept. 24, to vote for their favorites. The three top vote-getters will make up a “Player’s Choice” ballot to be counted alongside 22 other ballots from a panel of historians, educators and other experts. The winners will be announced in November by The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York, where the Hall of Fame is located.

While anyone can nominate a toy, the ones that make it into the hall have to be considered icons, have engaged multiple generations, fostered creativity, or profoundly changed play or toy design.

Last year, My Little Pony, Transformers action figures and the Phase 10 card game were honored, bringing to 87 the number of toys inducted since the Hall of Fame was established in 1998.

Who is nominated this year?

— Battleship: Milton Bradley has sold more than 100 million copies of the strategy game since introducing its plastic warships and pegboard version in 1967. Originally a pencil-and-paper game, Battleship was among the first board games to be computerized in 1979.

— Catan: Known earlier as Settlers of Catan, the game first published by Kosmos in Germany was one of the first German-style board games to achieve popularity outside of Europe. More than 45 million copies in 40 languages have sold since it was introduced in 1995. It has inspired dozens of spinoffs and new editions, including electronic versions, and even a cookbook.

— Connect Four: Players drop discs into a grid in hopes of being the first to get four in a row. Spoiler alert: The game has been mathematically solved, meaning the first player can always win with the right moves.

— Cornhole challenges players to throw bean bags though a hole in a slanted wooden board to score points. The nominee stands out for a simplicity that has made it a staple at picnics, on bar patios and while tailgating.

— Furby debuted in 1998 and within the first three years, 40 million of the drowsy-eyed robotic creatures were sold. An enhanced version was reintroduced to a new generation of kids in 2023.

— The scooter has provided riders with low-tech, two-wheeled transportation for generations, evolving along the way to incorporate lightweight materials and innovative technology.

— Slime, whether commercially produced or homemade, is on the list for its ability to encourage messy and experimental play. Since it’s commercial introduction in 1976, it has become an element of other playthings and a featured player on television shows.

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— Snow is recognized for its versatility, allowing children and adults to make snowballs and sculpt the cold, wintry stuff into forts and figures, while also serving as a base for sledding, skiing and snowboarding. The nominee would join the ranks of other back-to-basic inductees like the stick, sand and cardboard box.

— Spirograph, with its plastic gears, rings, triangles and bars, has entertained and educated the masses for 60 years. Users place the tip of pen into a hole of a gear and rotate it around or within other gears to create intricate, geometric drawings.

— Kenner released the first “Star Wars” lightsaber in 1978 on the heels of the 1977 “Star Wars” movie. An arsenal has followed, with lights and sound, demonstrating the influence of popular culture on play.

— Tickle Me Elmo, with its contagious laughter, was the must-have toy of the 1996 holiday season. The “Sesame Street” character wasn’t the first stuffed animal to get electronics, but the giggling Muppet took the concept to another level.

— Trivial Pursuit debuted more than 40 years ago with a challenging mix of trivia questions on geography, history, sports and other topics. More than 100 million copies were sold by 2023.

By VALERIE GONZALEZ, Associated Press

McALLEN, Texas (AP) — New revelations about conditions at a Texas detention facility for immigrant families have stoked ongoing concerns from attorneys representing children.

The details are part of a lawsuit where the government is attempting to end protections for children. Declarations from families held at the facility in Dilley, Texas, which was reopened in March, described persistently cloudy water, delayed medical attention and long periods of time children are being detained.

Allegations of children fighting adults for clean water, distraught children and a protracted medical response first surfaced during the summer while the federal government asked a federal judge to end a policy protecting immigrant children.

U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles, who presides over the case, heard arguments from the government, which wants to end the Flores Settlement agreement. The policy limits how long Customs and Border Protection can hold immigrant children and requires safe and sanitary conditions.

After Gee told the government last month to provide detention times, Immigration and Customs Enforcement reported that the number of children in custody over 72 hours decreased from an average of six days to five days in June and July, respectively. The “vast majority” spent less than 72 hours in CBP custody, the report stated.

Attorneys representing the children reviewed the report and said some children are still being held for several weeks or months and often without justification.

About 65 families spoke to attorneys since Dilley opened.

“A huge percentage of families at Dilley are being apprehended from across the country as they dutifully appear for their immigration court hearings and ICE check-ins,” Leecia Welch, the deputy legal director at Children’s Rights who spoke with families, told The Associated Press in a statement.

The tap water is cloudy, smells strange and upsets stomachs, the families told their attorneys. The hand soap the facility provides for showers has been causing rashes, the families said. Children also struggle eating the food, like the snacks of graham crackers, apples, juice and milk.

Detainees are allowed to buy staples like bottled water for $1.21 from the commissary.

“I have never heard until now of children having to buy water,” said Welch, who has been visiting children in custody of CBP and the Office of Refugee Resettlement for eight years.

Families face costs as high as $5.73 for deodorant, $1.44 for soap, and $2.39 for toothpaste, Welch said in court documents. A single dose of Tylenol costs $1.30, she said.

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A child with a stomachache waited six hours for a nurse and wasn’t taken to a hospital with appendicitis until he vomited, court documents said. Another child fell on his arm and it wasn’t until two hours later that the staff drove him to a hospital for an X-ray.

Parents said there are no organized activities for the children and only an hour of instruction from workbooks.

A woman’s son told her that he “doesn’t believe in God anymore because he prays to him but we still haven’t been able to get out of here,” according to her declaration, provided by Welch.

Some families are being released only to be detained again, Welch said. One family released after about 60 days in federal detention was asked to check in with ICE only to be detained at their appointment.

By Phil Galewitz, KFF Health News, KFF Health News

Republicans insist that President Donald Trump’s cuts to Medicaid were aimed at reducing fraud and getting more of its adult beneficiaries into jobs. But the side effects may include less care for sick kids.

Some children’s hospitals collectively stand to lose billions of dollars in revenue once Trump’s wide-ranging tax and spending law, which Republicans called the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” is fully enacted, according to the Children’s Hospital Association. Kids account for nearly half of enrollees in Medicaid, the state and federally financed health program for low-income and disabled people, and its related Children’s Health Insurance Program.

The law will cut federal Medicaid spending by about $900 billion over a decade.

The reduction “cannot be achieved without directly affecting coverage and care for Arizona’s kids, especially the most vulnerable among them,” said Robert Meyer, chief executive of Phoenix Children’s, a pediatric hospital system. About half of the system’s revenue comes from Medicaid.

Trump’s law locks into place much of his domestic agenda, including a massive expansion of immigration enforcement and an extension of tax cuts that largely benefit the wealthiest Americans. The cuts to Medicaid are expected to partially offset the cost of the president’s priorities, which will add more than $3 trillion to the nation’s deficit, according to the Congressional Budget Office. About 7.5 million Americans will lose Medicaid coverage by 2034 as a result, the CBO estimates.

Throughout debates over the measure, Republicans insisted the Medicaid cuts would affect only nondisabled adults enrolled in the program who don’t work and immigrants living in the U.S. without legal status. “Our legislation preserves Medicaid, strengthens Medicaid for the people who actually need it and deserve it,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said June 1 on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.” “And we’re going to get rid of the fraud, waste, and abuse.”

Meyer, though, warned that unless some cuts are reversed, Phoenix Children’s would lose about $172 million a year in payments that supplement the health system’s regular Medicaid revenue, for treating low-income children covered by the program. Medicaid typically pays lower rates for care than commercial insurance or Medicare, the federal program for people age 65 and older.

The supplemental payments, known as state-directed payments, are financed largely by federal taxpayers through complicated tax arrangements adopted by nearly all states. The payments have helped the Phoenix system open additional pediatric clinics, increase mental health staffing, and screen children for abuse and other trauma, Meyer said.

A provision of Trump’s law would cap the amount of directed payments states could make to any hospital, including those for children. But the cap, which doesn’t take effect until 2028, will be phased in over a decade — and hospitals are already lobbying to ensure that never happens. Days after voting for Trump’s law, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., introduced legislation that would eliminate provisions of the measure cutting Medicaid payments to hospitals.

If the law isn’t changed, at least 29 states would need to reduce their payments, according to an analysis by KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.

The extra Medicaid funds, on average, make up more than a third of children’s hospitals’ total Medicaid revenue and about 14% of their operating revenue overall, according to the Children’s Hospital Association.

Richard Park, a director at Fitch Ratings, a credit rating agency, said the Medicaid funding cuts present a “long-term headwind” for children’s hospitals. Hospital officials say that if the payments are cut and states don’t replace the funding, they could be forced to cut staff and services.

“Services the hospitals provide that require longer admissions or bring in less revenue are going to be in the crosshairs, for sure,” Park said.

Children’s hospitals are especially vulnerable to changes in Medicaid because they count on the program for about half their revenue — a much higher proportion than general acute-care hospitals do.

Most children’s hospitals are in good financial condition, however, because they face little competition — there are seldom more than one or two in a metropolitan area — and strong philanthropic support. And the funding cuts won’t affect all the nation’s approximately 200 children’s hospitals.

In 2023, Phoenix Children’s had a $163 million surplus on nearly $1.5 billion in revenue, according to its 2023 IRS tax return.

Under the law, the extra payments in the District of Columbia and 40 states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act would be capped at Medicare payment rates. The 10 states that didn’t expand would be able to pay up to 110% of Medicare rates.

The Biden administration had allowed states to pay up to their average commercial insurance rates. That’s generally about 2.5 times the Medicare rate, according to KFF.

Medicaid’s traditionally low fees to health providers can make doctors, dentists, and other specialists reluctant to treat patients in the program.

Brian Blase, president of the conservative Paragon Health Institute and a key architect of Medicaid changes in the new law, said cutting state-directed payments is justified because states should not pay hospitals more to treat Medicaid patients than they do for Medicare patients. Unlike regular Medicaid payments for specific health services, hospitals are not always held accountable for how they spend the extra money, he said.

He said state-directed payments to children’s hospitals and other facilities amount to “corporate welfare,” often helping financially strong institutions get richer.

Blase said states have little incentive to pay hospitals less because the money from state-directed payments comes mostly from federal taxpayers.

In Norfolk, Virginia, Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters depends on more than $11 million annually in state-directed payments to make up for what it says is a shortfall between Medicaid’s low reimbursement rates and the cost of advanced care.

The cuts to Medicaid in Trump’s law “will have serious and far-reaching consequences to our services, programs, and patients,” spokesperson Alice Warchol told KFF Health News. “Medicaid supplemental funding helps us pay for the highly specialized pediatric medical, surgical, and psychiatric physicians that are needed to care for every child who needs our services.”

In fiscal 2023, King’s Daughters had a $24 million surplus on $646 million in revenue, according to its federal tax return.

King’s Daughters has used the extra Medicaid money to expand treatment for abused and neglected children and mental health services, Warchol said.

How states account for the extra payments made to hospitals varies. For instance, Utah Medicaid Director Jennifer Strohecker said her state does not track how the money gets spent.

Other states, such as Texas, use the money as an incentive for hospitals to improve their performance in treating patients. They track how well the facilities do each year and publish the findings in public reports.

Matthew Cook, president and chief executive of the Children’s Hospital Association, said that even with the extra funding, Medicaid doesn’t cover the full cost of treatment for its patients.

While some children’s hospitals have strong balance sheets, boosted by philanthropy, that is not the case for all, Cook said. And the Medicaid funding cuts come on top of reductions in other federal payments, including for training doctors and research, he said.

At Phoenix Children’s, Meyer said, the loss of extra funding would curtail expansions of care for children and growth of the hospital’s workforce. The hospital hopes Congress delays or reverses the cuts — but it’s not counting on it, he said.

“We see this grace period as a godsend to get ourselves ready to close the funding gap,” he said.

©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Grace Abels, PolitiFact and Maria Ramirez Uribe, PolitiFact, KFF Health News

“Everybody can get” the COVID-19 vaccine.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Sept. 4 in a Senate Finance Committee hearing

When health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testified before the Senate Finance Committee on Sept. 4, several senators criticized him for restricting the COVID-19 shots after promising in November he wouldn’t “take away anybody’s vaccines.”

“Did you hold up a big sign saying that you were lying when you said that?” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., asked Kennedy.

On Aug. 27, the FDA updated its COVID vaccine guidance, limiting the groups of people approved to get the updated shot to anyone 65 or older and any person at least 6 months old who has at least one underlying health condition that increases their risk of a severe COVID infection.

Kennedy pushed back. “Anybody can get the booster,” he said, later adding that “it’s not recommended for healthy people.”

Warren said, “If you don’t recommend, then the consequence of that in many states is that you can’t walk into a pharmacy and get one. It means insurance companies don’t have to cover the $200 or so cost.”

Warren and Kennedy continued to speak over each other, debating the vaccines’ availability.

“It depends on the states,” Kennedy said. “But they can still get it. Everybody can get it. Everybody can get it, senator.”

Asked for evidence, the Health and Human Services Department pointed to an Aug. 27 post on the social platform X from Kennedy that said, “These vaccines are available for all patients who choose them after consulting with their doctors.”

Kennedy’s blanket statement to senators is misleading and premature.

Under current guidance, healthy people under 65 might need a doctor’s prescription to get the shot. If they successfully get a prescription, they may need to pay out-of-pocket.

Further, whether the vaccine is available at pharmacies and covered by insurance is largely dependent on a vaccine panel that has so far issued no recommendations.

What was the status quo for years — that most Americans, regardless of age, could easily make an appointment at their local pharmacy for the vaccine at little to no out-of-pocket cost — is no longer guaranteed in the 2025-26 season.

Limited Approval, No Guidance

The FDA’s approval is not the only step in the process of making vaccines available to the public.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a panel of independent experts that guides vaccine policy, has not voted on or issued current guidance. Typically, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends vaccines based on the panel’s guidance.

And that guidance affects insurance coverage and vaccine access. Federal law requires that most health insurance plans fully cover vaccines recommended by the CDC. Some states also require these recommendations before they allow vaccines to be offered over-the-counter at pharmacies.

On June 9, Kennedy fired all 17 members of the CDC’s immunization advisory committee and replaced some with new members, many of whom have expressed anti-vaccine views. CDC Director Susan Monarez was fired Aug. 27 over what Monarez described as a dispute about vaccine policy.

According to the CDC’s website, the advisory panel is scheduled to meet Sept. 18 to 19.

Access Varies by State

People in the FDA-approved groups should be able to schedule vaccinations as soon as authorized health care providers receive supplies, likely in the next few weeks.

Even if you are in these approved groups, where you can get a COVID shot varies by state. By law, pharmacies in certain states won’t be able to offer the vaccine or will administer it only with a doctor’s prescription until the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel issues its recommendations.

That means despite the FDA having issued its approval for some groups, in 18 states and Washington, D.C., “pharmacists cannot administer it because it isn’t on the CDC immunization schedule yet,” Brigid Groves, the American Pharmacists Association’s vice president of professional affairs, previously told PolitiFact.

As of Sept. 4, the scheduling apps for Walgreens and CVS notified patients in some locations that they could not schedule a COVID vaccine appointment because of state restrictions, inventory, or the need for a prescription.

‘Off-Label’ Prescriptions

People not in the FDA’s approved group are not banned from getting a COVID vaccine, per se. But accessing the vaccine will likely require navigating barriers.

Doctors can legally prescribe a COVID vaccine for people who fall outside the FDA categories.

That’s true for adults and children — and the practice of prescribing medications and vaccines for “off-label” use is fairly common in pediatrics, William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University Medical Center professor of infectious diseases, previously told PolitiFact.

That requires making and paying for a doctor’s appointment, and finding a doctor willing to prescribe it off-label.

Depending on ACIP’s guidance, pharmacists might be able to vaccinate people not in an FDA-approved group through a process called “ shared clinical decision-making.”

That means, for example, “if you were 52 years old and otherwise healthy, but you nonetheless wanted to get the vaccine, you could discuss that with your doctor — shared clinical decision-making — and you could receive the vaccine,” Schaffner said.

Pharmacists are considered clinicians who can conduct shared decision-making, Groves said.

But again, without CDC recommendations, “we don’t know if that provision is still there,” Schaffner said.

Waiting on the CDC

Insurance coverage for the vaccine is still up in the air, too, and will largely depend on what the CDC recommends.

Insurance coverage is more probable for people in an FDA-approved category. But, if the CDC recommendations include giving vaccines to healthy people through the shared clinical decision-making process, insurance companies will generally honor that, Schaffner said.

COVID vaccines cost about $142, according to the CDC’s price lists. It’s unclear whether that would be the out-of-pocket cost for patients receiving a COVID vaccine not covered by insurance.

Our Ruling

Kennedy said “everybody can get” a COVID vaccine.

The FDA limited the groups of people eligible for the COVID vaccines, which has already diminished the shots’ drugstore availability in some states. People who are not in those groups aren’t banned from getting a shot, but are likely to face additional barriers. For example, people may need a doctor to prescribe the vaccine “off-label,” making the process more challenging and potentially more costly.

Kennedy’s blanket statement also is premature.

A CDC vaccine panel has not issued recommendations for the vaccines. The group’s guidance might affect insurance coverage and over-the-counter access.

The statement contains an element of truth — the vaccine has not been banned and some people are approved to get it. But it ignores critical facts about the barriers others could face in accessing and paying for it. We rate it Mostly False.

PolitiFact staff writer Madison Czopek contributed to this report.

©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.