A federal website that used to feature information on vaccines, testing and treatment for COVID-19 has been transformed into a page supporting the theory that the pandemic originated with a lab leak.

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The covid.gov website shows a photo of President Donald Trump walking between the words “lab” and “leak” under a White House heading. It mentions that Wuhan, China, where the coronavirus first began spreading, is home to a research lab with a history of conducting virus research with “inadequate biosafety levels.”

The web page also accuses Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, of pushing a “preferred narrative” that COVID-19 originated in nature.

The origins of COVID have never been proven. Scientists are unsure whether the virus jumped from an animal, as many other viruses have, or came from a laboratory accident. A U.S. intelligence analysis released in 2023 said there is insufficient evidence to prove either theory.

It’s common for government websites to get a makeover from one administration to the next, but the latest overhaul has been more extensive than usual. Public health data was scrubbed, particularly any information involving transgender people. The Pentagon also removed photos that were believed to celebrate diversity, equity and inclusion.

The covid.gov site used to include information on how to order free COVID tests and described how to stay up to date with your COVID-19 vaccine, saying it’s “the best way you can protect you and your loved ones.” It advised people how to get treatment right away if they get sick and added links to learn more information about long COVID.

About 325 Americans have died from COVID per week on average over the past four weeks, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As of April 5, less than a quarter of adults in the U.S. have gotten an updated COVID vaccine. Millions worldwide have had long COVID, with dozens of widely varying symptoms, including fatigue and brain fog.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

By FATIMA HUSSEIN and CHRIS MEGERIAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — Just days after being promoted to acting IRS commissioner, the whistleblower who testified publicly about investigations into Hunter Biden’s taxes is out again, according to three people familiar with the decision.

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Gary Shapley, who previously testified to Congress as Republicans reviewed the business dealings of Joe Biden’s son, will be replaced by Deputy Treasury Secretary Michael Faulkender, according to the three people, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the move and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.

Faulkender will be the fourth IRS leader since President Donald Trump took office in January, a sign of the turmoil within the agency in the early months of the president’s second time in the White House.

Shapley’s short-lived tenure comes as a stream of high-ranking officials have exited the federal tax collection agency via a mix of resignations over Trump’s policy decisions, layoffs and demotions.

Shapley’s ouster and subsequent replacement were first reported by The New York Times, which said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had complained to Trump that Shapley had been installed without his knowledge and at the behest of Trump adviser Elon Musk, who has butted heads with Cabinet officials in his role spearheading the Department of Government Efficiency.

Late Thursday night, Musk shared an X post from Laura Loomer, a far-right activist who has criticized certain administration officials for a lack of loyalty to Trump, a Republican.

Loomer accused Bessent of inviting a “Trump hater” to work with him on financial literacy efforts. “I am going to personally tell President Trump and personally show him these receipts,” Loomer wrote, adding “shame on” Bessent.

Musk responded, “troubling.”

FILE – Michael Faulkender, President Donald Trump’s pick to be Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, listens during a hearing of the Senate Committee on Finance on Capitol Hill, March 6, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)

Bessent said in an emailed statement that “trust must be brought back to the IRS” and that he is confident that Faulkender “is the right man for the moment.” He added that Shapley “remains among my most important senior advisors at the U.S. Treasury as we work together to rethink and reform the IRS.”

As a result of the latest upheaval, the IRS has put a temporary pause on its reduction in force plan, according to two of the people also familiar with Shapley’s ouster. The pause in layoffs is due to the whiplash changes in leadership at the tax collection agency, the people said.

Earlier this month, the IRS began layoffs that could end up cutting as many as 20,000 staffers — up to 25% of the total workforce.

Shapley had been installed to replace Melanie Krause, who resigned from her role as acting IRS commissioner over a deal between the IRS and the Department of Homeland Security to share immigrants’ tax data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to help it identify and deport people illegally in the U.S.

Krause had replaced acting Commissioner Douglas O’Donnell, who announced his retirement from the agency after roughly 40 years of service in February as furor spread over DOGE gaining access to IRS taxpayer data.

Trump’s nominee to head the IRS, former U.S. Rep. Billy Long of Missouri, has not yet been confirmed.

The PWHL’s first expansion team will be based in Vancouver with an announcement scheduled for next week, a person with knowledge of the decision confirmed to The Associated Press on Friday.

The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because the league has not revealed its plans. The Province newspaper in Vancouver first reported the city being selected for PWHL expansion.

On hold for now is the league announcing a second expansion city, with Seattle being considered, the person said. The league has other candidates for expansion if discussions break down with officials in Seattle, the person added.

The Vancouver expansion announcement is expected to be made Wednesday, with media invited to attend a press conference billed as being an “historic announcement for sport in Vancouver and British Columbia.” The new team is expected to be based out of the Pacific Coliseum, the former home of the NHL Canucks.

The PWHL declined to verify any details, saying, “We’re continuing to finalize decisions related to expansion and look forward to sharing more details soon.”

The six-team league has spent the past six months evaluating more than 20 markets for the potential to expand by as many as two franchises. The decision to select Vancouver meets several key criteria for the women’s pro league founded by Dodgers owner Mark Walter, who serves as the PWHL’s financial backer, and tennis icon Billie Jean King in June 2023.

Aside from being a large market, the region has a growing girls’ hockey base, which was evident in January, when a PWHL neutral site game in Vancouver drew a sellout crowd of 19,038 — the fourth-largest turnout for a league game.

Geography also plays a factor with the league seeking to broaden its reach across North America. The league currently has five teams — New York, Boston, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto — based in the northeast, and the Minnesota Frost in St. Paul.

PWHL officials have privately expressed concern of a start-up pro women’s league being launched on the west coast. Adding an expansion team in Seattle would make the most sense in part because of its proximity to Vancouver, while also already home to two pro women’s teams, the WNBA Storm and NWSL Reign FC.

The PWHL’s neutral site game in Seattle in January drew a crowd of 12,608.

Other potential markets include Denver, Detroit and Quebec City, though it’s more likely the PWHL would desire a second expansion team based in the U.S.

The PWHL’s nine-city Takeover Tour of neutral games this season drew a combined 123,601 fans in helping the league top the 1 million mark in attendance last month.

The PWHL’s regular season resumes next week — with each team having three games left — following a three-week break coinciding with the IIHF women’s world championships in the Czech Republic. The Frost have nine players there, including Team USA members Taylor Heise, Kendall Coyne Schofield, Britta Curl-Salemme, Grace Zumwinkle, Lee Stecklein and Kelly Pannek.

The Frost next play April 27 against New York at Xcel Energy Center. The four-team playoffs are set to open in the first week of May.

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By MARY CLARE JALONICK

WASHINGTON (AP) — Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen was flying home from El Salvador on Friday after meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongly deported there by the Trump administration. It’s unclear what will happen next in the case.

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More Democrats have said they will fly to El Salvador to push for his release, but the partisan pressure hasn’t yielded any results. President Donald Trump and El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele have dug in on keeping Abrego Garcia out of the United States, even as officials in Trump’s Republican administration have called his deportation a mistake and the U.S. Supreme Court has called on the administration to facilitate his return.

Bukele posted images of Van Hollen’s meeting with Abrego Garcia on Thursday and said that the prisoner in the country’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, “gets the honor of staying in El Salvador’s custody.” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has said he will “never live in the United States of America again.”

The fight over Abrego Garcia is the latest partisan flashpoint as Democrats have struggled to break through and push back during the opening few months of Trump’s second time in office.

Democrats say the fight isn’t just about one man’s immigration status but about Trump’s defiance of the courts that have repeatedly weighed in on the case. A federal appeals court said Thursday in a blistering order that the Trump administration’s claim that it can’t do anything to free Abrego Garcia from the prison in El Salvador and return him to the United States “should be shocking.”

Republicans aren’t budging

But Republicans appear to have only become more determined to keep Abrego Garcia out of the country. They have sharply criticized Van Hollen’s trip and claimed that Abrego Garcia has ties to the MS-13 gang. His attorneys say the government has provided no evidence of gang involvement and he has never been charged with any crime related to such activity.

Democrats “have time and again prioritized politics over the safety and security of Americans,” Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said in a statement Friday. “It is utterly divorced from reality.”

Van Hollen, who will talk to reporters after landing in the Washington area later Friday, has said he won’t stop fighting for the release of Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen who was living in Maryland.

“This is about bringing home a man they ADMIT should’ve never been abducted,” Van Hollen posted on X.

The Democratic senator posted a photo of his meeting with Abrego Garcia on Thursday evening but did not provide an update on his status. He said he had called Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, “to pass on a message of love” and would provide a full update upon his return.

It’s unclear how the meeting was arranged, where they met or what will happen to Abrego Garcia. Vasquez Sura said in a statement released by an advocacy group that “we still have so many questions, hopes, and fears.”

After days of denying that he knew much about Abrego Garcia, Trump on Friday said he knew Abrego Garcia was “unbelievably bad” and called him an “illegal alien” and a “foreign terrorist.”

The president also responded Friday with a social media post saying Van Hollen “looked like a fool yesterday standing in El Salvador begging for attention.”

Lots of Congress members are visiting the prison, or trying

Several House Republicans have visited the notorious gang prison in support of the Trump administration’s efforts. Rep. Riley Moore, a West Virginia Republican, posted Tuesday evening that he’d visited the prison where Abrego Garcia is being held. “I leave now even more determined to support President Trump’s efforts to secure our homeland,” Moore wrote on social media.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials acknowledged in a court filing earlier this month that Abrego Garcia’s deportation was an “administrative error.” The government’s acknowledgment sparked immediate uproar from immigration advocates, but White House officials have dug in on the allegation that he’s a gang member.

The fight has also played out in contentious court filings, with repeated refusals from the government to tell a judge what it plans to do, if anything, to repatriate him. The three-judge panel from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously refused Thursday to suspend the judge’s decision to order sworn testimony by Trump administration officials and said the judiciary will be hurt by the “constant intimations of its illegitimacy” while the executive branch “will lose much from a public perception of its lawlessness.”

Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, nominated by President Ronald Reagan, a Republican, wrote that he and his two colleagues “cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos.”

Since March, El Salvador has accepted from the U.S. more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants — whom Trump administration officials have accused of gang activity and violent crimes — and placed them inside the country’s maximum-security gang prison just outside San Salvador.