By CURT ANDERSON, Associated Press

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — Florida will work to phase out all childhood vaccine mandates in the state, building on the effort by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis to curb vaccine requirements and other health mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic.

DeSantis also announced on Wednesday the creation of a state-level “Make America Healthy Again” commission modeled after similar initiatives pushed at the federal level by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

On the vaccines, state Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo cast current requirements in schools and elsewhere as an “immoral” intrusion on people’s rights bordering on “slavery,” and hampers parents’ ability to make health decisions for their children.

“People have a right to make their own decisions, informed decisions,” said Ladapo, who has frequently clashed with the medical establishment, at a news conference in Valrico, Florida, in the Tampa area. “They don’t have the right to tell you what to put in your body. Take it away from them.”

The state Health Department, Ladapo said, can scrap its own rules for some vaccine mandates, but others would require action by the Florida Legislature. He did not specify any particular vaccines but repeated several times the effort would end “all of them. Every last one of them.”

Florida would be the first state to eliminate so many vaccine mandates, Ladapo added.

Democratic state Rep. Anna Eskamani, who is running for Orlando mayor, said in a social media post that scrapping vaccines “is reckless and dangerous” and could cause outbreaks of preventable disease.

“This is a public health disaster in the making for the Sunshine State,” she said on the social platform X.

Meanwhile, the Democratic governors of Washington, Oregon and California announced Wednesday that they created an alliance to safeguard health policies, contending that the administration of President Donald Trump is politicizing public health decisions.

The partnership plans to coordinate health guidelines by aligning immunization plans based on recommendations from respected national medical organizations, according to a joint statement from Gov. Bob Ferguson of Washington, Gov. Tina Kotek of Oregon and Gov. Gavin Newsom of California.

In Florida, vaccine mandates for child day care facilities and public schools include shots for measles, chickenpox, hepatitis B, Diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis (DTaP), polio and other diseases, according to the state Health Department’s website.

Under DeSantis, Florida resisted imposing COVID vaccines on schoolchildren, requiring “passports” for places that draw crowds, school closures and mandates that workers get the shots to keep their jobs.

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“I don’t think there’s another state that’s done as much as Florida. We want to stay ahead of the curve,” the governor said.

The state “MAHA” commission would look into such things as allowing informed consent in medical matters, promoting safe and nutritious food, boosting parental rights regarding medical decisions about their children, and eliminating “medical orthodoxy that is not supported by the data,” DeSantis said. The commission will be chaired by Lt. Gov. Jay Collins and Florida first lady Casey DeSantis.

“We’re getting government out of the way, getting government out of your lives,” Collins said.

The commission’s work will help inform a large “medical freedom package” to be introduced in the Legislature next session, which would address the vaccine mandates required by state law and make permanent the recent state COVID decisions relaxing restrictions, DeSantis said.

“There will be a broad package,” the governor said.

Hockey fans in Minnesota have been cheering for men named “Parise” for more than 50 years. Starting in 2025, they can visit one in the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame.

Former Minnesota Wild star Zach Parise was announced as one of the five members of the USHHF’s class of 2025 on Wednesday, and will be formally inducted later this year. He was a standout forward in his home state for nine seasons after his late father, J.P., was a star forward for the Minnesota North Stars in the 1970s.

Parise, 41, played youth hockey in Bloomington before playing two seasons of prep school hockey at Shattuck-St. Mary’s in Faribault and two more seasons of college hockey at North Dakota, where he was a Hobey Baker Award finalist in 2004.

Picked by the Devils in the first round in 2003, he played the first eight seasons of his NHL career in New Jersey, helping the Devils reach the Stanley Cup Final in 2012. Weeks later, he was part of the largest off-season day in Wild history, when Parise and defenseman Ryan Suter – the NHL’s two most sought-after free agents that summer – each signed a 13-year, $98 million contracts with Minnesota.

While the newcomers reignited fan interest in the Wild, their impacts on the ice did not ultimately translate into notable success in May and beyond. Minnesota advanced past the first round of the NHL playoffs in 2014 and 2015, but won just two second round games. Both Parise and Suter were bought out of their Wild contracts in the summer of 2021.

Parise was also a key player for Team USA in the 2010 and 2014 Winter Olympics.

He played two more seasons with the New York Islanders, and joined the Colorado Avalanche mid-season in 2024 before retiring that spring. He and his family make their home in the Minneapolis suburbs and Parise has done some volunteer coaching with the Edina High School boys’ prep program.

Also included in the 2025 class for the USHHF, which has been based in Eveleth, Minn., since it opened in 1973, were photographer Bruce Bennett, Devils star Scott Gomez, women’s hockey trailblazer Tara Mounsey and former Wisconsin standout Joe Pavelski.

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Hockey fans in Minnesota have been cheering for men named “Parise” for more than 50 years. Starting in 2025, they can visit one in the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame.

Former Minnesota Wild star Zach Parise was announced as one of the five members of the USHHF’s class of 2025 on Wednesday, and will be formally inducted later this year. He was a standout forward in his home state for nine seasons after his late father, J.P., was a star forward for the Minnesota North Stars in the 1970s.

Parise, 41, played youth hockey in Bloomington before playing two seasons of prep school hockey at Shattuck-St. Mary’s in Faribault and two more seasons of college hockey at North Dakota, where he was a Hobey Baker Award finalist in 2004.

Picked by the Devils in the first round in 2003, he played the first eight seasons of his NHL career in New Jersey, helping the Devils reach the Stanley Cup Final in 2012. Weeks later, he was part of the largest off-season day in Wild history, when Parise and defenseman Ryan Suter – the NHL’s two most sought-after free agents that summer – each signed a 13-year, $98 million contracts with Minnesota.

While the newcomers reignited fan interest in the Wild, their impacts on the ice did not ultimately translate into notable success in May and beyond. Minnesota advanced past the first round of the NHL playoffs in 2014 and 2015, but won just two second round games. Both Parise and Suter were bought out of their Wild contracts in the summer of 2021.

Parise was also a key player for Team USA in the 2010 and 2014 Winter Olympics.

He played two more seasons with the New York Islanders, and joined the Colorado Avalanche mid-season in 2024 before retiring that spring. He and his family make their home in the Minneapolis suburbs and Parise has done some volunteer coaching with the Edina High School boys’ prep program.

Also included in the 2025 class for the USHHF, which has been based in Eveleth, Minn., since it opened in 1973, were photographer Bruce Bennett, Devils star Scott Gomez, women’s hockey trailblazer Tara Mounsey and former Wisconsin standout Joe Pavelski.

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Minnesota summers suit Wild prospect Aron Kiviharju fine

The latest weapon in Chicago’s war against rats is plant-based, naturally flavored and nutritious.

It’s a birth control pellet made with corn and peanuts, and a team of researchers and volunteers will be serving it to discerning rats in a four-block area of Lincoln Park for a year.

The aim is to reduce the rat population without harming urban wildlife, including owls and hawks, which can die after eating poisoned rodents.

The study was sparked by the high-profile deaths of three beloved Lincoln Park owls — mom, dad and owlet — who made their home near North Pond and died in rapid succession last April and May. The deaths were all linked to rat poison, which causes internal bleeding.

“We just realized we had to do something,” said Judy Pollock, former president of the Chicago Bird Alliance, which raised $32,000 for the study and is working with partners including the Lincoln Park Zoo, the Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation and 43rd Ward Ald. Timmy Knudsen.

The Chicago study comes at a time when the poisonings of high-profile birds of prey have helped launch rat contraception studies in New York and Boston.

New York lost Flaco the Eurasian eagle-owl, who famously flourished in the city after escaping the Central Park Zoo, to a 2024 building collision. But testing showed Flaco had been exposed to a level of rat poison that would have been “debilitating and ultimately fatal” even without the accident — and may have made the accident more likely, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society.

In 2023, a barred owl known as Owen was rescued near Boston’s Faneuil Hall after ingesting rat poison. Owen lost an eye but survived.

The Lincoln Park owls nested in an easily accessible park, and some fans would visit them on a daily basis.

Then all three owls died in the course of a single month.

“It was really sad and there were a lot of people that watched it and as a result, I think, a lot of people are very interested in our work,” Pollock said.

The contraceptive pellets, which are distributed in black feeding stations about the size of a traditional rat-bait box, look a lot like dry cat food and are sized for carrying (by a rat). The active ingredient is an extract of thunder god vine, an Asian plant that has been used for centuries in traditional Chinese medicine.

Thunder god vine, which is used to treat inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, has a notable side effect: It can decrease fertility, according to Alaina González-White, director of operations at Wisdom Good Works, the Arizona nonprofit that is supplying the contraceptive used in the Chicago study.

The Wisdom Good Works contraceptive targets both male and female rats, González-White said, interrupting ovulation in the females and inhibiting sperm development in the males.

While standard rat poisons accumulate in the animal’s body, the active ingredient in the Good Works contraceptive is rapidly metabolized in the rat’s liver. The rats need to continue to consume the pellets to maintain the contraceptive effect.

The contraceptive is formulated for rats and mice, so other animals would have to eat very large amounts to be rendered infertile, and even then, the effect would be reversible, according to Wisdom Good Works founder Loretta Mayer, who spoke at a recent webinar hosted by the Chicago Bird Alliance.

Mayer, the co-inventor of the contraceptive, which is called Good Bites, said that Wisdom Good Works hasn’t seen any negative effects on birds, dogs or squirrels.

During a study in the historic Jamaica Plain neighborhood in Boston that began in 2023, the rat population declined by 56% to 70% over the course of 16 months, Mayer said.

Asked if Chicago could expect similar results, Mayer quipped: “Well, if I knew that I’d be in Las Vegas, making my fortune. Our experience tells us that … a 50% reduction would be an expected reduction.”

She added, “If I were a betting woman, I’d probably bet somewhere around a 60-65% reduction level.”

Contraceptives address the great challenge of rat control: the animals’ rapid rate of reproduction, according to Maureen Murray, assistant director of the One Health initiative at Lincoln Park Zoo.

Murray, who is leading the Chicago rat contraception study, said rats can breed every three weeks, and they produce up to 12 pups in a litter.

Two rats can produce about 1,250 rats in the course of a year, according to the global pest control company Rentokil.

Killing a rat does, of course, end reproduction, but it’s incredibly difficult to kill enough rats to make a lasting dent in the population, Murray said. And when you kill rats, the remaining animals will multiply faster, because they have more access to resources such as food.

Rats in an alley in the 1900 block of North Halsted Street, Aug. 12, 2025, in Chicago. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)

The Chicago rat contraception study will monitor the effects of the contraceptives using multiple measures. Researchers will look at how much of the contraceptive is consumed, how many rats are visiting the feeding stations, and how much rat activity is picked up at separate stations dubbed rat cams.

The rat cams — upside down buckets with wildlife cameras hanging from the “ceiling” and peanut butter inside — will be stationed in areas where rats travel, such as along fences. Small holes in the buckets will allow the rats to enter and exit.

The researchers will also be using the rat cams to monitor four neighboring blocks where contraceptive pellets won’t be distributed. That’s to help assure the researchers that any drop in the rat population in the area with pellets is due to contraception, rather than broader factors such as weather or sanitation.

A rat’s range varies, but the animals typically stay within an area smaller than a city block.

A 50% reduction in rats would be a great outcome for the study, said Gloria Pittman, Chicago deputy commissioner of the Department of Streets and Sanitation, at the Chicago Bird Alliance webinar.

Streets and Sanitation helped choose the areas where the contraceptive is being placed and is part of the team that is monitoring the results.

Knudsen, the 43rd Ward alderman, said in a news release that if all goes well with the study — and he believes it will — he wants to pitch a citywide rat contraception program.

“It would be great if contraception could be one of the tools in the tool kit for rats,” said Murray. “I’m not sure that any one single tool is going to be the best in all scenarios, but I think having another tool so that we are less reliant on rat poison will benefit everyone. It will benefit people, it will benefit pets and it will benefit wildlife.”

nschoenberg@chicagotribune.com