By JEFF MARTIN, HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH and JOHN SEEWER

ATLANTA (AP) — A barrage of bullets launched at the headquarters of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week by a man authorities say was angry over COVID-19 vaccinations is the latest attack directed at health care workers amid hostility lingering from the pandemic.

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Some public health care workers say the shooting that killed a police officer and rattled the CDC campus shouldn’t be surprising in the face of ongoing misinformation and animosity about the safety of immunizations.

“All of us, anybody who stands up for science or vaccines, will at some level get hate mail or a phone call that’s unnerving or a death threat,” said Paul Offit, the co-inventor of a rotavirus vaccine.

Just four years ago, while hospitals overflowed with unvaccinated patients, school board members, local leaders and doctors were regularly confronted in public with taunts comparing them to the Taliban, Nazis and leaders of Japanese internment camps. Sometimes the conflicts descended into violence and harassment.

The distrust and anger that grew since then has been amplified by U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said Offit, who heads the vaccine education center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Kennedy has been a leading voice in spreading false information about vaccines, scientists and public health leaders, often using heated rhetoric that says they have caused mass death and injury. People he describes in such language have said his comments have led to threats, intimidation and even violence.

Kennedy denounces violence but criticizes CDC’s work

Kennedy, who toured the CDC campus on Monday, said no one should face violence while working to protect the health of others and called political violence wrong. But he went on to criticize the agency’s pandemic response.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., center, visits the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta, Monday, Aug. 11, 2025. (Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)

“One of the things that we saw during COVID is that the government was overreaching in its efforts to persuade the public to get vaccinated, and they were saying things that are not always true,” Kennedy said during a television interview with Scripps News later in the day.

A spokesperson for Kennedy blasted any notion that blamed vaccine misinformation for Friday’s attack.

“This narrative is pure fiction, built on anonymous complaints and a willful disregard for the facts,” said Andrew Nixon of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “Secretary Kennedy is not advancing an ‘anti-vaccine agenda’ — he is advancing a pro-safety, pro-transparency, and pro-accountability agenda.”

Authorities have said that 30-year-old Patrick Joseph White had written about his discontent with the COVID-19 vaccine before he opened fire on the CDC.

White also had verbalized thoughts of suicide, which led to law enforcement being contacted several weeks before the shooting, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. White died at the scene of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on Friday after killing DeKalb County Police Officer David Rose.

Shooting rattles CDC campus

Following the attack, CDC employees were asked to scrape off old CDC parking decals from their vehicles. But even before that, some workers had taken steps to become less visible, including not wearing their public health service uniform, said Yolanda Jacobs, a union leader who represents some CDC workers.

The CDC’s new director told employees this week that no act of violence can diminish their mission to protect public health.

The notable bullet marks on the windows of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters are visible on Sunday Aug. 10, 2025. (Miguel Martinez/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)

“We know that misinformation can be dangerous. Not only to health, but to those that trust us and those we want to trust,” Dr. Susan Monarez told employees during an “all-hands” meeting Tuesday, her first since the attack capped her first full week on campus as director.

The federal agency, tasked with tracking diseases and responding to health threats, has been hit by widespread staff cuts, key resignations and heated controversy over long-standing CDC vaccine policies upended by Kennedy.

“What happened on Friday is a direct result of that misinformation,” said Sarah Boim, a former CDC worker whose job was targeted for elimination earlier this year. “Health Secretary Kennedy is one of the biggest pushers of misinformation.”

The shooting, she said, left her in tears.

“My friends and family still work in those buildings,” she said. “My mom works in one of those buildings.”

In the aftermath, officials are assessing security and encouraging staff to report any new threats, including those based on misinformation about the CDC and its vaccine work.

Anti-vaccine tension has been building

Despite its prominence since the pandemic, anti-vaccine rhetoric leading to harassment and violence took root before then.

In 2019, an anti-vaccine activist assaulted California state Sen. Richard Pan, streaming it live on Facebook, after Pan sponsored a bill to make it more difficult to get a vaccine exemption. Another threw blood at Pan and other lawmakers.

The attacks came after Kennedy spoke outside the California Capitol, two large posters behind him featured Pan’s image, with the word “LIAR” stamped across his face in blood-red paint.

Pan, a pediatrician, blames Kennedy for what happened then and now at the CDC.

“And you wonder why someone would go shoot up the CDC,” Pan said. “Because he basically told them that those are the people you should hurt.”

Hollingsworth reported from Kansas City, Missouri, and Seewer reported from Toledo, Ohio.

By FABIOLA SÁNCHEZ and MEGAN JANETSKY

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico sent 26 alleged cartel figures to face justice in the United States because the Trump administration requested them and Mexico did not want them to continue running their illicit businesses from Mexican prisons, officials said Wednesday.

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The mass transfer was not, however, part of wider negotiations as Mexico seeks to avoid higher tariffs threatened by U.S. President Donald Trump, the officials said.

“These transfers are not only a strategic measure to ensure public safety, but also reflect a firm determination to prevent these criminals from continuing to operate from within prisons and to break up their networks of influence,” Mexican Security Minister Omar García Harfuch said in a news conference on Wednesday.

The 26 prisoners handed over to American authorities on Tuesday included figures aligned with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel among others. They were wanted by American authorities for their roles in drug trafficking and other crimes. It comes months after 29 other cartel leaders were sent to the U.S. in February.

In the exchange, the U.S. Justice Department promised it would not seek the death penalty against any of the 55 people included in the two transfers, which experts say may help avoid any violent outburst by the cartels in response. Authorities said the operation involved nearly a thousand law enforcement officers, 90 vehicles and a dozen military aircraft.

Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum said earlier Wednesday that the transfers were “sovereign decisions,” but the move comes as the Mexican leader faces mounting pressure by the Trump administration to crack down on cartels and fentanyl production.

García Harfuch also confirmed Wednesday that a U.S. government drone — non-military — was flying over central Mexico, but at the request of Mexican authorities as part of an ongoing investigation.

So far, Sheinbaum has tried to show the Trump administration a greater willingness to pursue the cartels than her predecessor — a change that has been acknowledged by U.S. officials — and continued to slow migration to the U.S. border, in an effort to avoid the worst of Trump’s tariff threats. Two weeks ago, the two leaders spoke and agreed to give their teams another 90 days to negotiate to avoid threatened 30% tariffs on imports from Mexico.

“Little by little, Mexico is following through with this demand by the Americans to deliver drug capos,” said Mexican security analyst David Saucedo. “It’s buying (the Mexican government) time.”

Saucedo said the Mexican government has been able to avoid a burst of violence by cartels – a reaction often seen when capos are captured – in part, because Ovidio Guzmán, a son of infamous capo Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, showed it’s possible to negotiate with U.S. prosecutors. Ovidio Guzmán pleaded guilty last month to drug trafficking and other charges and hopes for a lighter sentence in exchange for his cooperation.

But Saucedo warned that if such mass prisoner transfers continue, the Latin American country is bound to see another outburst of violence in the future.

By VALERIE GONZALEZ

Two South Texas bakery owners are guilty of concealing and harboring employees in the U.S. illegally, a jury found Wednesday afternoon following a trial that only lasted three days.

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Leonardo Baez and Nora Avila-Guel, a Mexican couple who have legal permanent residence in the U.S., were charged after being arrested at their bakery along with eight employees in February. It’s a rare case in which business owners are charged with criminal offenses rather than just a fine.

Six of the employees had visitor visas, and two were in the country illegally. None had permission to work in the U.S. Employees lived in a room with six beds and shared two bathrooms in the same building as the bakery, according to the federal affidavit.

Baez and Avila-Guel were tried this week in Brownsville, a border city about a 20 minutes’ drive southeast of their Los Fresnos bakery. The jury heard from five government witnesses, including an agent who was present during the raid, before U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez, Jr. The defense presented no witnesses.

Videos of the interviews with the two employees in the country without visas or work authorization were played during the trial. Both employees said they were not held against their will and were compensated for their work, according to local reporting.

Baez and Avila-Guel were allowed to return to work while they awaited trial. When they reopened their bakery in April, the business had a steady stream of customers return to lend their support. They will continue to be released on bond until their sentencing, which is scheduled for November.

Reunited country trio Rascal Flatts will return to the road next year, with a Jan. 23 stop planned at St. Paul’s Xcel Energy Center, a venue they last played in 2011.

Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday through Ticketmaster. Chris Lane and Lauren Alaina will open.

Second cousins Gary LeVox and Jay DeMarcus were pursuing fame in Nashville in 1999 when they met guitarist Joe Don Rooney, who was leading Chely Wright’s band at the time. The trio hit it off and formed Rascal Flatts. They signed a record deal at the end of that year and had their debut single “Prayin’ for Daylight” at radio stations in February 2000.

The single was an instant hit and, for the next decade, Rascal Flatts landed 22 singles in the Top 10, including “Bless This Broken Road,” “Fast Cars and Freedom,” “What Hurts the Most” and “My Wish.” That said, their biggest selling single to date — a cover of Canadian musician Tom Cochrane’s “Life Is a Highway” — only made it to No. 18 on the country charts.

They continued to score radio hits in the ’10s, but by the end of the decade they announced they were embarking on a farewell tour in 2020. It was postponed due to the pandemic and never happened. In late 2021, LeVox quietly announced the band had broken up.

But in late 2024, the trio revealed they had reunited. After performing together for the first time in nearly five years at Donald Trump’s Commander in Chief Ball, they hit the road for a sold out tour celebrating the band’s 25th anniversary.

Starting Sept. 3, Xcel Energy Center will be named Grand Casino Arena. Minnesota Sports & Entertainment and Grand Casino announced a 14-year naming rights partnership on June 17.

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