By MIKE STOBBE

NEW YORK (AP) — Federal officials are reinstating hundreds of U.S. health workers who were laid off last year from a small health agency that aims to protect workers.

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In April, President Donald Trump’s administration gutted the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, where scientists, engineers and others conduct research and recommend ways to prevent work-related injury, illness, disability and death.

Government officials laid off close to 900 of NIOSH’s 1,000 employees. The layoffs were part of the Republican president’s remaking of the federal workforce led by then-adviser Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, but they drew harsh rebukes from firefighters, coal miners, medical equipment manufacturers and a range of others.

Some employees were brought back last year amid legal challenges and political pressure, including those who staffed a health monitoring program for miners in West Virginia. But now all the terminations have been rescinded, according to the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents workers at NIOSH and parts of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The administration’s attempt to lay off nearly every NIOSH worker was shameful and illegal, considering that much of NIOSH’s work is required by law,” AFGE national president Everett Kelley said in a statement.

A U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokesman on Wednesday confirmed that laid-off NIOSH employees were being reinstated.

“The Trump Administration is committed to protecting essential services — whether it’s supporting coal miners and firefighters through NIOSH, safeguarding public health through lead prevention, or researching and tracking the most prevalent communicable diseases,” spokesman Andrew Nixon said in a statement.

Nixon did not respond to questions about how many workers were being reinstated, why the workers were laid off or why HHS decided to rescind the layoffs. It’s unclear how many of the laid-off NIOSH workers have taken other jobs or decided to retire and won’t be returning, officials said.

It’s likely that many have moved on and won’t be returning, said Michael Barasch, an attorney who represents 9/11 survivors and their families. He has helped clients enroll in the NIOSH World Trade Center Health Program that provides medical monitoring and treatment.

He described the NIOSH layoffs and their impact as “horrifying.” More agency workers may be coming back now, but the layoffs last year delayed diagnosis and treatment and it’s likely that “people died because of these cuts,” he said.

At the end of last year, the CDC had about 10,800 full-time workers, or about 20% fewer than the number with the agency before the April layoffs began, according to the CDC.

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

By TRÂN NGUYỄN

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A federal three-judge panel on Wednesday allowed California to use a new voter-approved U.S. House map that is designed to boost Democrats in the 2026 midterms.

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In a 2-1 ruling, a three-judge panel in Los Angeles denied requests from state Republicans and the U.S. Justice Department to block the map from being used in future elections. The complaint accused California of violating the Constitution by using race as a factor to favor Hispanic voters when drawing the new district lines.

The map, aimed at giving Democrats a shot at flipping as many as five House seats next year, was decisively approved by voters through Proposition 50 in November. The effort was pushed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is eying a 2028 presidential run, to counter a similar effort in Texas backed by President Donald Trump to help Republicans win five House seats. California Republicans currently hold nine of the state’s 52 congressional seats.

The ruling is a victory for Democrats in the state-by-state mid-decade redistricting battle that could help determine which party wins controls of the U.S. House in 2026. Following the tit-for-tat showdown between the nation’s two most populous states, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio have adopted new district lines that could provide a partisan advantage. The Justice Department has only sued California.

“Republicans’ weak attempt to silence voters failed,” Newsom said in a statement.

Republicans are expected to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. A representative for state Republicans didn’t immediately respond to a request for comments.

California Democrats said that the new map was legal because it was drawn for partisan advantage. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that partisan gerrymandering is a political question and not one for the federal courts to decide. The court agreed, saying there was not strong evidence to support the maps were drawn based on race.

“After reviewing the evidence, we conclude that it was exactly as one would think: it was partisan,” the judges wrote.

The ruling also comes after the Supreme Court ruled last December to allow Texas to use its new map for the 2026 election because it was drawn with partisan goals. Conservative Justice Samuel Alito wrote in a concurring opinion that the California map was also approved for political advantage, signaling it may also stand.

New U.S. House maps are drawn across the country after the Census every 10 years. Some states like California rely on an independent commission to draw maps while others like Texas let politicians draw them. The effort to create new maps in the middle of the decade is highly unusual.

House Democrats need to gain just a handful of seats next year to take control of the chamber, which could thwart Trump’s agenda for the remainder of his term and open the way for congressional investigations into his administration.

By MARCIA DUNN

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — An astronaut in need of doctors’ care departed the International Space Station with three crewmates on Wednesday in NASA’s first medical evacuation.

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The four returning astronauts — from the U.S., Russia and Japan — are aiming for an early Thursday morning splashdown in the Pacific near San Diego with SpaceX. The decision cuts short their mission by over a month.

“Our timing of this departure is unexpected,” NASA astronaut Zena Cardman said before the return trip, “but what was not surprising to me was how well this crew came together as a family to help each other and just take care of each other.”

Officials refused to identify the astronaut who needed care last week and would not divulge the health concerns.

The ailing astronaut is “stable, safe and well cared for,” outgoing space station commander Mike Fincke said earlier this week via social media. “This was a deliberate decision to allow the right medical evaluations to happen on the ground, where the full range of diagnostic capability exists.”

Launched in August, Cardman, Fincke, Japan’s Kimiya Yui and Russia’s Oleg Platonov should have remained on the space station until late February. But on Jan. 7, NASA abruptly canceled the next day’s spacewalk by Cardman and Fincke and later announced the crew’s early return. Officials said the health problem was unrelated to spacewalk preparations or other station operations, but offered no other details, citing medical privacy. They stressed it was not an emergency situation.

NASA said it would stick to the same entry and splashdown procedures at flight’s end, with the usual assortment of medical experts aboard the recovery ship in the Pacific. It was another middle-of-the-night crew return for SpaceX, coming less than 11 hours after undocking from the space station. NASA said it was not yet known how quickly all four would be flown from California to Houston, home to Johnson Space Center and the base for astronauts.

One U.S. and two Russian astronauts remain aboard the orbiting lab, just 1 1/2 months into an eight-month mission that began with a Soyuz rocket liftoff from Kazakhstan. NASA and SpaceX are working to move up the launch of a fresh four-person crew from Florida, currently targeted for mid-February.

Computer modeling predicted a medical evacuation from the space station every three years, but NASA hasn’t had one in its 65 years of human spaceflight. The Russians have not been as fortunate. In 1985, Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Vasyutin came down with a serious infection or related illness aboard his country’s Salyut 7 space station, prompting an early return. A few other Soviet cosmonauts encountered less serious health issues that shortened their flights.

It was the first spaceflight for Cardman, a 38, biologist and polar explorer who missed out on spacewalking, as well as Platonov, 39, a former fighter pilot with the Russian Air Force who had to wait a few extra years to get to space because of an undisclosed health issue. Cardman should have launched last year but was bumped to make room on the way down for NASA’s Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who were stuck nearly a year at the space station because of Boeing’s capsule problems.

Fincke, 58, a retired Air Force colonel, and Yui, 55, a retired fighter pilot with the Japan Air Self-Defense Force, were repeat space fliers. Finke has spent 1 1/2 years in orbit over four missions and conducted nine spacewalks on previous flights, making him one of NASA’s top performers. Last week, Yui celebrated his 300th day in space over two station stays, sharing stunning views of Earth, including Japan’s Mount Fuji and breathtaking auroras.

“I want to burn it firmly into my eyes, and even more so, into my heart,” Yui said on the social platform X. “Soon, I too will become one of those small lights on the ground.”

NASA officials had said it was riskier to leave the astronaut in space without proper medical attention for another month than to temporarily reduce the size of the space station crew by more than half. Until SpaceX delivers another crew, NASA said it will have to stand down from any routine or even emergency spacewalks, a two-person job requiring backup help from crew inside the orbiting complex.

The medical evacuation was the first major decision by NASA’s new administrator Jared Isaacman. The billionaire founder of a payment processing company and two-time space flier assumed the agency’s top job in December.

“The health and the well-being of our astronauts is always and will be our highest priority,” Isaacman said in announcing the decision last week.

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

A 47-year-old man found with homemade explosives and hundreds of rounds of high-powered ammunition after a traffic stop in Oak Park Heights and who prosecutors say identifies as a “sovereign citizen” was sentenced Wednesday to three years and four months in federal prison.

Wayne Robert Lund, of Stillwater, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis in September to possessing unregistered firearms, one of four charges in a December 2024 indictment. Charges of being a felon in possession of explosives, firearms and ammunition were dismissed as part of a plea deal.

Lund, after his November 2024 arrest, told police the “bomb items were actually used for his rocket hobby and is trying to get his rocket to different heights,” according to a criminal complaint filed in Washington County District Court, where he was initially charged in connection with the case.

According to state and federal court documents, Lund was pulled over on Minnesota 36 shortly after 2 a.m. Nov. 2, 2024, for driving with expired plates and a revoked license. His SUV was also uninsured, and a search of his car before it was towed turned up seven CO2 canisters with wicks and an eight-inch PVC pipe bomb in the trunk.

Officers called the St. Paul Bomb Squad, which identified the CO2 cartridges from photos as suspected “cricket” bombs, an informal term used by law enforcement to describe small, destructive devices built by packing explosives into a CO2 cartridge and adding a fuse.

Wayne Robert Lund (Courtesy of the Sherburne County Sheriff’s Office)

Homes and businesses in the immediate area of the impound lot were evacuated.

Other officers responded to a hotel room in Stillwater that Lund had been renting and evacuated the area around it. They recovered another cricket bomb, more than a hundred empty CO2 cartridges, a jug with explosive black powder, a three-ring binder entitled “List of Pyro Chemicals and Terms,” and documents related to “American Nationals and the Minnesota State Assembly (i.e., sovereign citizen movement),” court documents say.

A locked personal safe in the hotel room contained 804 rounds of ammunition, seven high-capacity rifle magazines filled with nearly 200 rounds of high-velocity .223-caliber ammunition, an airsoft grenade and a small amount of meth.

FBI agents executed a search warrant on a chest freezer belonging to Lund on property in Houlton, Wis., and found another cricket bomb, empty CO2 metal cartridges, black powder precursors and a gallon-sized milk jug half-filled with explosive powder.

In an interview with authorities, Lund admitted to building the cricket bombs in Wisconsin by filling them with one to two grams of explosive material, which he made, and inserting a wick into them, but he said they were rocket engines. He also said he has an interest in explosives as a hobby.

According to FBI bomb technicians, however, the cricket bombs were “destructive devices” that when ignited would “combust and possibly emit shrapnel from the exploding cartridge casing,” the indictment said.

Sentencing

Lund, whose criminal history includes a 2014 threats of violence conviction, faced a guideline sentence between 46 and 57 months in prison at Wednesday’s sentencing.

Lund’s attorney Daniel Gerdts said in a defense sentencing memo that Lund disputes the claim he’s a sovereign citizen, who believe they are not subject to federal, state or local laws.

“He has admitted that his conduct violated the valid laws of this land, and he has accepted responsibility for it,” Gerdts wrote. “In other words, the ‘sovereign citizen’ label does not apply to Mr. Lund — as he has patiently tried to explain to everyone who has tried to pigeon-hole him in that camp.”

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Gerdts added that Lund “is a proud, honorably discharged, military veteran” who has “interacted respectfully with all of the investigators, jailors and court personnel during the pendency of this case.”

Assistant U.S. District Attorney Benjamin Bejar asked U.S. District Judge Michael Davis to hand down the maximum sentence.

“Despite the defendant’s objection to the (presentence report) reference of him as an American National Assembly member endorsing sovereign citizen ideology, the evidence gathered in this case and the defendant’s own words underscore the defendant’s belief and reliance on such ideology,” Bejar wrote in the prosecution’s sentencing memo.

Lund will be on supervised release for two years following his 40-month prison term.