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  • Climate change created conditions for Canada fires, scientists say, as Trump blames mismanagement

    Climate change created conditions for Canada fires, scientists say, as Trump blames mismanagement

    Human-caused climate change doubled the likelihood of the tinderbox weather conditions that sparked Canada’s massive summer wildfires and in turn angered U.S. President Donald Trump, according to a study released Thursday.

    And fire and climate scientists said Trump, who has talked about punishing Canada for poor fire management and sending days of choking smoke across the border, should look more in the mirror than up north when it comes to blame. They point to the United States’ huge historical emissions of heat-trapping gases from the burning of coal, oil and gas.

    The fire weather conditions in the Northwest Territories and northwestern Ontario, while unusual but not that rare, were still made twice as likely by global warming, said Thursday’s study by World Weather Attribution, a group of international scientists who examine extreme weather conditions to see if there are climate change fingerprints. It’s about the same as the team found for summer fires in France, but not nearly as clear a climate fingerprint as they calculated in Spanish fires, which the scientists said were 20 times more likely because of climate change.

    The study, which was done so quickly it has not been peer reviewed yet, looked at the weather conditions that are connected to large wildfires and the Canadian index for those conditions, which are heat, lack of rain, humidity and wind. The researchers found the doubling of frequency when — using scientifically accepted techniques to search for climate fingerprints — they compared current conditions to a world without the 2.5 degrees of warming that’s occurred since the industrial age and burning of fossil fuels started. The weeklong weather conditions that led to the fires in Ontario are now the type that can happen every six years or so, the report said.

    “In a pre-industrial climate this would have been much less likely to occur, maybe once in a lifespan. So climate change has made those events more likely,” said study co-author Jonathan Boucher, a fire scientist at Canada’s Forest Service.

    Hotter, drier conditions connected to burning

    Outside climate and fire scientists said the flash study made sense and reflects a world where hotter and drier conditions are making fires burn more often and more intensely.

    “Mother Nature’s been burning. Now she’s on amphetamines and she burns more and more,” said Thompson Rivers University fire scientist Mike Flannigan, a Canadian expert who wasn’t part of the study.

    Hazardous smoke spread across both the United States and Canada, choking large cities such as New York.

    By burning more and more fossil fuels, “we’re putting nails in our coffins,” Flannigan said.

    In the larger and remote Northwest Territories fires, where more than 5,000 square miles burned, it’s clear the spark was from lightning but it was the climate conditions that took that initial ignition and made the fire burn intensely and spread too fast to control, said Boucher and report lead author Theodore Keeping, a climate scientist at Imperial College in London.

    While people start about half of Canada’s wildfires — accidentally or on purpose — fires sparked by lightning are responsible for more than 90% of the land area burned in Canada, Flannigan said.

    “What we’re facing here is more of a climate related problem than a forest management problem,” Boucher said.

    That’s not how Trump sees it.

    Trump blames mismanagement, but scientists point to carbon

    “A lot of damage has been done. They’re not managing their forests properly,” Trump said July 21. “And the wind has a tendency to blow right over New York City, right over, you saw Detroit, they had to close the whole place. Michigan was really affected. They had to close businesses for four days. It’s very serious what they’re doing, and they don’t seem to be able to do anything about it. If they managed their forests, they wouldn’t have the fires.”

    When asked Sunday about punishing Canada, Trump on Air Force One told reporters he has decided on a punishment, adding “you’ll find out about it soon.”

    Canadian climate and fire scientists said Trump doesn’t understand the root causes.

    “Smoke does not carry a passport, but carbon pollution does have a history. That history shows that the United States contributed more than any other country,” said University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver. “President Trump is pointing at the smoke while ignoring America’s fingerprints on the climate conditions behind it.”

    Study co-author Friederike Otto, an Imperial College London climate scientist, said, “if you care about anyone but the super rich, you have to stop burning fossil fuels because the impacts are here and they’re now and have huge consequences.”

    Canada has warmed 65% more than the United States in recent decades. In the past 30 years, the amount of land annually burned by Canadian wildfires has gone up by about 50% while the amount in the United States has more than doubled.

    A big problem that Trump doesn’t appear to understand is that much of Canada’s forests are remote, northerly and full of spruce and pine that burns hard and fast, all making it difficult to get a handle on, Boucher and Flannigan said.

    “In Canada, when things are extreme, you have about a 30-minute window to put that fire out,” Flannigan said. “If you don’t get there in 30 minutes, you’re out of luck. And many of the fires that start in Canada are northern remote areas that are more than 30 minutes away from an airport. So even with perfect detection systems, we would get there too late and these fires are going to burn.’’

    ___

    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

  • Testing is underway on vaccines to intercept brewing colon cancer before it takes root

    Testing is underway on vaccines to intercept brewing colon cancer before it takes root

    Dr. Stacy Norton was only 7 years old when her mother died of colon cancer, one of several family members struck by aggressive tumors at unusually young ages. Decades later, Norton rolled up her sleeve to help test if a new kind of vaccine might protect her and her own children from cancer.

    The Houston doctor is among an estimated 1 million Americans who have Lynch syndrome, a faulty gene passed from a parent that puts them at extremely high risk of colorectal cancer and more vulnerable to certain other cancers, too. They’re often urged to get yearly colonoscopies — far more often than usual — that can spot and remove precancerous growths called polyps.

    Now scientists are creating vaccines that aim to go further, teaching the immune system to intercept this type of brewing colon cancer before it turns into a full-fledged tumor. At least three potential Lynch syndrome vaccines are in development, including two in early clinical trials in the U.S. and a third beginning in Britain.

    The shot that Norton helped test appears promising enough that its lead researcher, Dr. Eduardo Vilar-Sanchez of the MD Anderson Cancer Center, expects a larger study to begin early next year.

    “It gives me hope,” said Norton, 59, of Houston Methodist Willowbrook Hospital. She had already survived a different Lynch-caused cancer and has two children in their 20s who inherited her mutation. If a vaccine pans out, “perhaps they won’t have to have a colonoscopy every single year for the rest of their lives.”

    Lynch syndrome is caused by an inherited genetic mutation

    Everyone has what are called mismatch-repair genes, which are essentially spellcheckers to help fix DNA mistakes that can occur when our cells multiply. With Lynch syndrome, one of those genes can’t do its job properly, making it harder for the body to stop a buildup of abnormalities that can lead to tumors, often before age 50.

    Colorectal cancer is the most common consequence. The average person has a 5% risk of developing it during their lifetime. A Lynch carrier’s risk can reach as high as 80% depending on which faulty gene they inherit, Vilar-Sanchez said.

    Another big risk is endometrial, or uterine, cancer. Lynch carriers also are more likely to get other cancers including pancreatic, stomach, ovarian and certain skin cancers — and a kind of brain tumor that killed Norton’s sister at age 25.

    Norton knew some of her mother’s relatives had also experienced colon cancer, but she was in her 40s before a gene test confirmed she has Lynch syndrome. She switched from every-so-often to yearly colonoscopies. As an obstetrician/gynecologist familiar with other Lynch risks, Norton also decided to have a precautionary hysterectomy. Surgeons discovered early-stage cancer in her removed uterus.

    Possible vaccines to stop gene-caused cancer

    Today there are two cancer-preventing vaccines, the HPV and hepatitis B shots that block infection from those tumor-causing viruses. But developing vaccines to prevent gene-caused cancer is more challenging than alerting the body to foreign intruders like a virus.

    Lynch-fueled growths “tend to accumulate hundreds of mutations that are going to generate proteins that are novel, not made by our normal cells,” Vilar-Sanchez said. “You can train the immune system to recognize those proteins.”

    In a first-step study, Norton and 44 other Lynch carriers tested a vaccine made by Swiss biotech Nouscom that teaches the immune system to spot 209 of those abnormalities in Lynch-caused precancers. That revved up tumor-eliminating T cells and a year later, colonoscopies showed fewer precancerous growths and no advanced polyps, the MD Anderson team reported in Nature Medicine.

    “Can we even further stimulate the immune system” to keep up with Lynch syndrome-spurred tumor formation, asked Dr. John Marshall, a Georgetown University oncologist and adviser to the Colorectal Cancer Alliance who wasn’t involved with the study. “This early paper suggests that yeah, maybe we can.”

    For the first time since 2014, Norton’s own colonoscopies one and two years after vaccination were polyp-free. She’s also part of a subset of study participants given a booster shot a year later; more data on that is expected this fall.

    Oxford University researchers are beginning initial testing of a similar approach to attack Lynch-spurred precancers, a vaccine made by Massachusetts-based Moderna using the mRNA technology behind its COVID-19 shot.

    And scientists are awaiting results from a slightly larger study comparing California-based ImmunityBio’s Tri-Ad5 vaccine, which flags some different cancer markers, to a placebo.

    Is Lynch syndrome tied to the rise in young adult colon cancer?

    About 158,000 people are diagnosed with colorectal cancer in the U.S. each year, most of them over 50. Cases in younger adults are increasing, though it isn’t clear why.

    Lynch syndrome affects about 1 in 279 people. While most don’t know it, more may be learning they have the inherited disorder, Vilar-Sanchez said, as genetic testing is increasingly discussed with people with Lynch-related cancer in the family or who get certain tumors at young ages. That in turn can show if close relatives might also be at risk.

    For the average person, U.S. guidelines call for routine colorectal cancer screening — with a colonoscopy or other kinds of tests — to begin at age 45. But at any age, get a checkup for symptoms such as blood in stool or rectal bleeding; changes in bowel habits such as diarrhea, constipation or narrowing of stool that lasts more than a few days; unintended weight loss; and cramps or abdominal pain.

  • New kind of flu shot is on the way as the FDA approves Moderna’s mRNA-based vaccine

    New kind of flu shot is on the way as the FDA approves Moderna’s mRNA-based vaccine

    WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration has approved a new kind of flu vaccine for older people, the first made with the same mRNA technology that was key to ending the COVID-19 pandemic, manufacturer Moderna said.

    The shot, named mFlusiva, is intended for adults age 50 or older. Other brands of flu shots already have begun arriving in pharmacies ahead of fall vaccination season, and Moderna said late Wednesday that it expects some of its new version to be available soon at select retailers.

    While there already are multiple flu vaccine options in the U.S., including three specifically recommended for people age 65 or older, tens of thousands of Americans die from influenza every year, and older adults are among the most vulnerable.

    Flu vaccines must be updated annually to best match circulating strains of the virus. Vaccines made with the Nobel Prize-winning mRNA technology are faster to manufacturer than other types, and experts say this additional option might help if the shape-shifting flu virus mutates in a way that requires suddenly brewing new doses.

    Moderna said the FDA granted full approval for mFlusiva’s use in people ages 50 to 64, based on a study of 40,000 people that found 27% fewer flu cases among people who got the new shot compared with those who got a different common flu vaccine brand. For people 65 or older, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based manufacturer said the FDA granted what’s called accelerated approval for the shot — based on a smaller study showing it generated a strong immune response compared with an existing high-dose vaccine for seniors — while it conducts an additional study.

    Moderna’s data showed no major safety issues although the shot did cause some temporary reactions including injection site pain, fever, headache, tiredness and aches that occurred somewhat more than with today’s flu shots.

    The FDA action comes after a highly unusual public dispute over mFlusiva earlier this year. A then-top FDA official blocked the company’s application, a sign of the agency’s heightened vaccine scrutiny under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Days later, the agency changed course after Moderna publicly challenged the ruling — and in June a panel of independent advisers to the FDA unanimously recommended the vaccine’s approval.

  • Fauci contempt vote reflects the enduring politics of COVID

    Fauci contempt vote reflects the enduring politics of COVID

    NEW YORK — Dr. Anthony Fauci is sitting before Congress, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is on TV debating COVID lockdowns, and Americans can’t agree on what science to trust.

    You might think it’s 2020 again.

    Six years after COVID-19 thrust the world into the fear and uncertainty of a global pandemic, Republicans in power aren’t leaving it in the past. Instead, they’ve returned its familiar political arguments to center stage for new scrutiny, demanding accountability for the scientists and media figures whom they feel deceived and mistreated Americans years ago.

    The efforts ramped up last week, when a Republican-led Senate committee chaired by Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul subpoenaed the now-retired, 85-year-old Fauci to testify about his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

    The former National Institutes of Health immunologist repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment, after accusing the lawmakers of trying to coerce him to perjure himself to justify criminal charges. In response to his choice, on Thursday, the committee passed a vote to hold Fauci in contempt, a stunning move that could motivate the Justice Department to initiate an investigation.

    Separately, Kennedy, a politically independent former anti-vaccine activist who now serves as the Republican President Donald Trump’s health secretary, spent part of his weekend in a combative live debate with CNN host Dana Bash about the pandemic’s management and the media’s role.

    Political scientists and historians say the focus on COVID grievances half a decade after the virus’ peak demonstrates how some wounds it opened have never been closed. Democrats, meanwhile, have slammed the federal government’s blaming of Fauci as a performative distraction that’s not based in facts.

    While both Paul and Kennedy have spent years airing their frustrations about COVID, the Republican takeover of Congress and the White House last year created a new platform for them to steer how America remembers the pandemic, and who is held responsible for it, according to Matt Dallek, a political scientist at George Washington University.

    It’s also allowed them to use the administration’s resources to surface new information.

    “The response to COVID has become a touchstone for Trump’s Republican Party,” Dallek said. “They’re using their power now to argue they were right all along.”

    Pandemic grievances have simmered for years

    When the coronavirus began spreading widely in 2020, under Trump’s first administration, groups of Americans revolted against requirements imposed by local authorities and businesses telling people to wear masks and stay at home to control the spread of the virus.

    Vaccines supercharged those sentiments. Figures like Kennedy, then a leader of the anti-vaccine movement, accused the federal government of trampling on personal liberties by supporting vaccine mandates and social media takedowns of dissenting ideas.

    While Trump has long expressed pride in his first-term Operation Warp Speed effort to disseminate COVID-19 vaccines quickly, saving millions of lives, his second administration has taken a different tone.

    Under Kennedy’s leadership, U.S. regulators have limited the availability of COVID-19 vaccines for Americans. Kennedy on CNN on Sunday questioned whether the COVID-19 vaccines protected children, even as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says on its website that they “help keep children from getting really sick from COVID-19.”

    Frances Lee, a Princeton University political scientist, said debates over COVID-19 have erupted on the fringes for years. Now that some of the leaders of those debates are in power, they’re hashing it out on the national stage — something she said needed to happen eventually.

    “There are aggrieved parties, people who have a sense that they were done wrong during the pandemic and that there’s never been an accounting for that,” Lee said. “Most people don’t want to think about this topic, but nevertheless there are constituencies – so Congress is speaking to those constituencies.”

    Lee said Kennedy’s decision to surface numerous diary entries that Fauci had made on a government computer – and Paul’s decision to publicize them last week – created an opening for “the first real showdown” in years around the pandemic’s handling.

    While some of the entries – including Fauci’s uncertainty in the pandemic’s earliest days about how best to curb the virus — already were reflected in a 2024 memoir and in interviews at the time, they have nonetheless drawn attention from people who blame Fauci for policies they believe infringed on their rights as hundreds of thousands of people were dying.

    Also discussed at Fauci’s hearing last week was whether NIH-funded research in China played a role in how the pandemic started. The day of the hearing, Trump’s White House also directed social media followers to a federal website that used to feature information on COVID vaccines, testing and treatment that now promotes the theory that the pandemic originated with a lab leak.

    Many scientists believe the virus most likely emerged in nature and jumped from animals to people, coming to light when it spread at a wildlife market in the Chinese city of Wuhan. There’s no new scientific evidence supporting the theory that the virus might instead have leaked from a laboratory, a theory Paul champions. A GOP-led subcommittee that studied the question in 2024 found no evidence linking Fauci to wrongdoing.

    Fauci has long said publicly that he was open to both theories but that there’s more evidence supporting COVID-19’s natural origins.

    Republican lawmakers aren’t stopping at the contempt vote. Sen. Ron Johnson said Thursday that Kennedy’s department had given a subcommittee he chairs a copy of Fauci’s cellphone from his time in government. Johnson indicated he intended to investigate it.

    “Hopefully, this device will address many of the questions he refused to answer at last week’s hearing,” he wrote on social media.

    Many doubt that Republicans’ COVID fact-finding is genuine

    As Republicans hold up scrutiny of Fauci as important accountability, Democrats have called it disingenuous. Paul said Thursday he’d invited Fauci to appear for a private, transcribed interview, but Democrats accused him of not allowing the full, bipartisan committee to be present for it.

    Paul also referred the committee’s contempt vote directly to the Justice Department, instead of to the full Senate. He said he did not “want to waste time” with that route, while Democrats insisted all senators should get a chance to vote.

    Last week’s hearing, at which Fauci pleaded the Fifth, came after the immunologist had repeatedly appeared before Congress over the years and talked about his thinking in the beginning of the pandemic and how it changed over time. Critics have raised concerns that the ordeal surrounding him will deter scientists from taking government jobs for fear of being similarly targeted.

    Paul has long argued that Fauci should be criminally investigated, based on his belief that the scientist has been dishonest to Congress about National Institutes of Health-funded research and COVID’s origins. Fauci’s attorney last week called Paul’s accusations about the scientist “false and disgraceful.” More than 150 infectious-disease experts also came to Fauci’s defense, writing that “no credible evidence has been produced to support these absurd charges.”

    Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute said the hearing didn’t represent legitimate truth seeking.

    “They were looking for a platform in which they could attack him, and he would not respond, and he would say ‘plead the Fifth’ over and over again,” Ornstein said.

    He said while some Republicans are likely true believers that Fauci committed crimes, bringing him to the forefront serves a dual purpose in a midterm election year — distracting voters from less favorable headlines, including on the economy and foreign conflicts.

    Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, said there are real lessons to learn from the pandemic, including more deeply examining which efforts to contain the virus worked and didn’t work. But he said Republicans in Congress aren’t chasing those.

    “A review of revisionist history will accomplish nothing,” he said. “We won’t be any better prepared for the next pandemic.”

  • Iran war renews concerns about the lasting toll of traumatic brain injuries to U.S. troops

    Iran war renews concerns about the lasting toll of traumatic brain injuries to U.S. troops

    WASHINGTON — When Joe Shearer was a Marine fighting in Iraq, a blast from an enemy mortar round knocked him down and made him vomit. He got up and kept going despite a searing headache.

    When a roadside bomb struck his Humvee convoy months later, the explosion’s shock wave swept through his body before headaches and sleeplessness set in for days.

    “As long as you got back up and could go back on patrol, that’s kind of what you did,” he said.

    Shearer, 40, of Colorado Springs, Colorado, links both events in 2005 to traumatic brain injuries, which were only recently diagnosed. He’s still plagued with symptoms ranging from dizziness and migraines to forgetting daily tasks and responsibilities to his wife and children.

    The lasting effects of traumatic brain injuries are raising fresh concerns about the toll of the Iran war on American troops who are suffering those wounds during a conflict without a clear end. Nearly 700 U.S. service members have been wounded by drone and missile attacks on bases in the Middle East and other fighting. Most have experienced traumatic brain injuries, or TBIs, and returned to duty, according to public statements from military officials.

    The Pentagon’s chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, last month called the vast majority of injuries over a two-week period “minor concussions.”

    Doctors can’t predict who may have lasting effects from a TBI

    Concussions often are termed “mild” TBIs, and many people recover within weeks. But sometimes those with seemingly mild initial symptoms go on to have problems persisting for months or years, such as headaches, dizziness, or difficulties with memory or attention that’s sometimes called “brain fog.”

    Doctors have no way to predict who will suffer lasting problems, a vexing enough question that there’s medical debate over whether to retire the term “mild TBI.” Repeated blows are known to increase the chances of lasting problems, including a degenerative brain disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. It has gained attention for links to deaths in the National Football League and other sports.

    It’s imperative that people recover from a concussion before doing activities that put them at increased risk of another, said Dr. David Okonkwo, a University of Pittsburgh brain trauma specialist.

    Doctors also are still learning how explosive blasts injure the brain versus a physical blow.

    “The blast wave itself can be injurious,” said Dr. James Kelly, an emeritus professor of neurology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and chief medical scientist at the Invisible Wounds Foundation, which is focused on military brain injuries. “It’s a different cellular injury. Blast is a different thing than a blunt injury to the head.”

    Troops have been facing a new type of warfare with Iran in which drones may explode closer to their heads, as opposed to the ground-level roadside bombs and improvised explosives that were more common in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Democratic lawmakers are calling for an investigation into the care that wounded troops received following an Iranian drone strike in Kuwait that killed six U.S. soldiers early in the war. Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin pressed the military in a letter on Wednesday to release the findings of its investigation into the March 1 attack.

    “I spoke directly with Wisconsinites who sustained traumatic brain injuries from (President Donald) Trump’s war in Iran and went weeks without so much as a screening, let alone specialized care, for their injuries,” Baldwin said in a statement.

    Defense Health Agency spokesman Peter Graves said in an email that “it is policy that service members are screened for TBI.”

    Experts say the military has made strides in screening and treating TBIs, a signature injury in Afghanistan and Iraq. More than 500,000 service members were diagnosed between 2000 and 2025, with 82% of cases considered mild and not all of them related to combat. But advocates say the injuries could still be undercounted because symptoms often overlap with post-traumatic stress disorder and other conditions.

    A TBI diagnosis can emerge years later

    Neither of the two blasts Shearer experienced in Iraq produced obvious injuries, and medics prioritized Marines who were more badly hurt.

    “You don’t want to be the guy who goes to sick call or says, ‘Oh, I’m hurt,’ because you’re away from your team,” Shearer said. “There’s this culture of you don’t want to be seen as lesser or weak, so you hide injuries inherently.”

    When he came home at age 19, he denied he had PTSD and didn’t know what a TBI was. Plagued by nightmares, sleeplessness and headaches, he initially turned to drugs to self-medicate and considered suicide.

    Shearer eventually got help for PTSD, but it took years for him to consider that he suffered traumatic brain injuries. He was working for the Wounded Warrior Project and screening fellow vets for TBIs when he realized he checked many of the same boxes.

    He’s since been diagnosed and received treatment. But challenges remain, including vertigo and light sensitivity. He also forgets important conversations with his family.

    “I know that some of that stuff is stereotypical, but for me, it’s got a different ring to it,” Shearer said. “There will be no memory of the conversation happening.”

    The brain can adapt with treatments and therapies

    Memory loss is something Army veteran Frank Sonntag also experienced following a TBI from a mortar blast in Iraq in 2004.

    He was in his 50s and training reservists when he felt a blast of wind against his ear from an explosion 70 feet (21 meters) away. He didn’t know he was hurt and didn’t seek treatment for two years, ignoring intensifying headaches and brain fog.

    It got to the point where it took 30 minutes to write an email, while colleagues told him he spoke one word every 10 seconds. He considered suicide and was diagnosed only after he got lost driving home. Neurologists prescribed medication for his migraines, among other treatments.

    “Speech therapy was one of the greatest things I had,” added Sonntag, 75, of Queen Creek, Arizona. “They taught me how to practice the words I was speaking and how to put sentences together again.”

    Kelly Parker, director of independent services at the Wounded Warrior Project, said it’s hard to predict an injury’s trajectory.

    “If you’ve seen one TBI, you’ve seen one TBI,” she said.

    Screening, early treatment and support can be crucial to returning to a more normal life. Physical, speech and art therapies can lead to improvements, she said.

    “There’s still so much we don’t know about the brain, but one thing that we do know is it can heal itself,” Parker said. “We know that new neural pathways can be created, and we absolutely believe that the brain can adapt. We’ve seen it happen.”

    Army veteran Spencer Milo said some people struggle to understand why he’s still dealing with migraines, seizures and forgetfulness after so many years out of uniform.

    His first TBI occurred in Iraq in 2008, when his Humvee smashed into a wall to evade fire. His second came from the blast of a suicide bomber in Afghanistan in 2011.

    “I’ve had fellow service members that were even with me on those days, and they’re like, ‘Dude, why can’t you just kick it?’” said Milo, 41, of Parker, Colorado. “I really wish it was that simple. It’s tough because when you can’t see something, it’s hard to believe that it’s really there.”

  • At least 230 Black boys died in jail. Their families want answers — and justice.

    At least 230 Black boys died in jail. Their families want answers — and justice.

    Phyllis Hammond knew she needed to act the moment she emerged from her walk through the woods. She climbed into her car, tears streaming, and said a prayer.

    God use me, in whatever and however way possible, to bring justice.

    A week earlier, Hammond, 69, had received a letter from a genealogist with an unsettling revelation.

    Her uncle, Amos Hammond, had died in 1921 at the age of 18 at the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children, a segregated juvenile jail in Maryland with a documented history of abuse and neglect. He was among hundreds of Black boys and teens the state buried across the road from the facility in a forest in Prince George’s County.

    Hammond had never heard of an uncle named Amos. But the more she learned, the more she realized Amos was family. This spring she visited the graves, marked by crumbling cinder blocks with no names, and left resolved: “I’m going to be that voice those boys didn’t have.”

    Hammond began that work this week, when she was recognized by Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown as a voting member of the state’s newly formed Commission on the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children — an investigative body created by lawmakers earlier this year to unearth buried truths the state ignored for more than a century.

    “We are determined to be the voice and to take a role in major decision-making throughout this entire process,” Hammond said Tuesday at the first commission meeting. “We are firm and committed in our belief that no decision should be made about our children without full engagement and participation with the families.”

    Hammond articulated her priorities: to ensure the commission is independent, unflinching and centered on the wishes of the boys’ living relatives as they weigh whether to exhume the remains, identify them, and determine the children’s true manner of death.

    The commission will be chaired by Brown, the first Black attorney general in state history, and is composed of two dozen voting members and another 10 nonvoting advisory members, all with interest or expertise in forensic anthropology, archaeology, state history, juvenile justice policy and civil rights law. Members include Sen. Will Smith (D-Montgomery) and Del. Jeffrie E. Long Jr. (D-Calvert), who sponsored the commission legislation, and Prince George’s County Executive Aisha Braveboy.

    In addition to Hammond, two other living relatives will serve on the commission: Dorothy Givens, 83, representing her uncle Fred Ames Jr., and Linda F. Gorham, on behalf of her cousin Richard Saunders.

    The Washington Post first reported on the abandoned and overgrown graves a year ago, after former leaders of the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services (DJS) made their existence public. A Post investigation found that at least 230 children died at the House of Reformation between 1870 and 1939, the most comprehensive public accounting to date based on state records, newspaper archives and death certificates.

    Black Caucus lawmakers visited the site last August, and its members later championed a law signed by Gov. Wes Moore (D) that allocates $1 million for the commission’s initial budget. The African American Heritage Preservation Program awarded another $200,000 in grant funding.

    “This is the state of Maryland, all of us, finally doing what should have been done long ago,” Brown said at the meeting, explaining that the body is expected to submit a preliminary report on its work by the end of 2027 and a final report in December 2029. He told members that the House of Reformation commission may be the most significant investigative body that Maryland has created in the past decade, especially as the Trump administration works to strip recognition of the legacy of racism from the nation’s history.

    “We’re meeting at a time when many in our federal leadership are turning away from acknowledging the history that made this country what it is,” Brown said. “That makes what we’re doing here more important, not less. The state of Maryland is choosing to look clearly at a painful chapter of its own history, not to perform accountability, but to actually pursue it.”

    The year since the House of Reformation gravesite’s public rediscovery has been both revelatory and fraught, a navigation of tensions over institutional racism, state power and the people impacted by both. Those tensions were made clear at the Tuesday afternoon meeting, where the families reminded commission members that for them, this process is personal.

    “We are mourning,” said Gorham, a licensed psychologist. “I know we talked about remains and records, but just know that … we have souls that need to be tended to.”

    Running parallel to the commission’s efforts is the Forgotten Children Initiative at Georgetown University — a first-of-its-kind research effort founded by youth justice advocate and former DJS deputy secretary Marc Schindler that is working to identify similar abandoned cemeteries nationwide. He and former DJS secretary Vincent Schiraldi oversaw the state’s earliest efforts in 2024 to uncover the House of Reformation’s history, and Schindler wanted to continue the work after he left the government.

    To date, the Forgotten Children Initiative’s lead genealogist, Malissa Ruffner, has contacted 73 potential living relatives for 24 of the boys. Family members for about a dozen of the boys have responded.

    Ruffner’s previous genealogical work includes helping to identify the living descendants of the 272 enslaved people who were sold in 1838 by Georgetown’s Jesuit founders. She said that she has been able to find some family members for the House of Reformation children within a few hours and others have taken days — a process that includes sifting through decades of birth and death certificates, state records, newspaper archives, census information and obituaries.

    The families identified so far have already developed an intense bond, forged by shared grief and righteous rage. In June, they visited the abandoned cemetery in the woods to hold a funeral — the kind of dignified ceremony the boys did not receive a century ago.

    So far, the families have met privately with Brown. They were not in attendance at a May ceremony at the Cheltenham juvenile detention facility where the House of Reformation once stood. That gathering, held by current DJS leaders, state lawmakers and the governor, served as a history lesson for the broader community and ended with the unveiling of a road marker that acknowledges the institution’s segregated past.

    “Loving your country does not mean lying about its history,” Moore said that day. “Loving your country does not mean pretending like the awful and dark and bad spots did not happen. It means being able to embrace everything, flaws and all, and say that every day is an opportunity for us to be better.”

    Moore said he was “committed” to honoring the boys, including locating the grave of each one in the woods.

    That work will likely take years and a great deal more money than the $1.2 million currently allocated, the attorney general said at Tuesday’s meeting. The commission will rely on the expertise of forensic anthropologists and archaeologists who have overseen similar investigations, including Erin Kimmerle, who led a years-long excavation project at the Dozier School for Boys in Florida, a reform facility where officials buried dozens of children who died in state custody.

    Kimmerle, an advisory commission member, told the group that they should approach this process with the sensitivity of a homicide investigation.

    “For them, the past is the present,” she said of the families. “Historic justice and modern justice are interwoven.”

    Gorham emphasized that point.

    “It doesn’t matter that Richard, my cousin, died when he was 15 in 1935. I still feel it,” she said. “There’s a really deep thing that’s happening here. If you’re serving, I want you to feel it.”

    For Hammond, among the commission’s most important missions is using their power to ensure no child detained in state custody is ever treated the way her uncle Amos was. To crystalize that conviction, she read the room a poem she wrote after visiting the abandoned cemetery for the first time.

    “If these woods could talk, I wonder what they would say?” she read. “If these woods could talk, do you think they could share each of these boys’ tragic lives and deaths while entrusted in the hands of the juvenile system? If these woods could talk, could they share the pain and the scars that they endured across their fragile bodies?”

    “If these woods could talk,” she continued, “I wonder if these woods would have raised their voices loud and clear against the lawlessness of what they’d seen, heard and became a part of.”

    “If only these woods could talk,” she said, “maybe many lives could have been saved.”

  • HHS proposes cutting many federal education and health guidelines for Head Start

    HHS proposes cutting many federal education and health guidelines for Head Start

    The Trump administration unveiled a proposal Thursday to overhaul the regulations for Head Start, the early-education program that serves roughly 700,000 children across the country.

    The proposal would eliminate many existing federal rules, shifting some authority to states and local authorities; add new dietary and physical fitness requirements for students; and cap administrative overhead payments. The changes could free up $2.2 billion to serve as many as 268,000 more children, administration officials said.

    “It’s a program that works for the most vulnerable, of course, kids in our society,” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told reporters. “And it’s really important we protect it.”

    Over the past few weeks, reports that the administration planned to eliminate many federal regulations have alarmed some Head Start advocates about the future of the program. In June, a report from the conservative Heritage Foundation called on the administration to deregulate the program and eventually eliminate it altogether. And an early draft of a White House budget last year reportedly proposed zeroing out the budget for Head Start, though the final version maintained funding for the program after widespread pushback.

    Also last year, the Government Accountability Office found President Donald Trump’s administration improperly withheld about $825 million from Head Start for months.

    The Trump administration, however, said the latest proposal is intended to eliminate red tape, cut administrative costs, and create more flexibility for programs.

    “We built this rule around trusting local leaders to make the decisions that are best for their local communities,” said HHS Assistant Secretary Alex Adams, who leads the Administration for Children and Families.

    Administration officials said the proposal would also strengthen dietary regulations to “provide nutrient-dense, whole foods” for children and require sites to give students at least 30 minutes of physical activity for every 3.5 hours in the classroom.

    They also said they hope to free up enough money to serve more children by eliminating other regulations and reducing the cap on administrative costs from 15% to 5%.

    “If we get this proposed rule right, we will grow the number of Head Start spots,” Adams said. Officials said the proposal would preserve requirements that programs involve families in children’s learning and recognize parents as children’s primary teachers.

    Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington), a longtime advocate for Head Start, immediately blasted the proposal to remove many federal regulations.

    “After Congress and the nation forcefully rejected Trump’s efforts to destroy Head Start, this administration now wants to quietly gut Head Start by eliminating the basic health and safety standards our kids rely on,” she said in a statement.

    Khari Garvin, who oversaw the Head Start program during the Biden administration, said he was deeply concerned by the Trump administration’s plans to eliminate many regulations, including those governing class size and teacher compensation.

    “It’s the health, safety and quality benchmarks that the federal standards bring,” Garvin said. He said the HHS proposal would “take the program backwards significantly.”

    The American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement that doing away with the regulations would violate the laws governing Head Start.

    “This proposed rule is an illegal attempt to dismantle the Head Start program by removing the very standards that Congress required to be in place to ensure children receive high-quality early education and comprehensive services,” said Ming-Qi Chu, deputy director of the ACLU Women’s Rights Project. “The administration cannot defy the laws that Congress wrote simply because it disagrees.”

    The administration said it plans to formally publish the proposal in the Federal Register on Friday, kicking off a 60-day public comment period. Administration officials would then need to review the comments and issue a final rule, a process that can take months. Any changes could be delayed even further if the ACLU or another organization challenges the move in court.

    “This will take a lot of time to implement,” said Tommy Sheridan, deputy director of the National Head Start Association, a nonprofit that advocates for Head Start.

    The Head Start program was started more than 60 years ago as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty. Local sites typically provide free early education, child care, health screenings, and other services for children up to 5 years old from low-income families. Though it has an educational component, Head Start is overseen by HHS, not the Education Department.

    Research on the program has found mixed results. A federal study of the modern Head Start program, released in 2010, found most of the benefits faded by the end of first grade. But another study in 2022 found the children of former Head Start participants saw meaningful increases in wages and graduation rates as adults, suggesting the program may have a positive impact across generations.

    Some conservatives have long sought to eliminate the program, saying it hasn’t produced enough tangible results to justify the annual $12 billion cost.

    “While the program should sunset, it is reasonable at this point to deregulate the program and provide more autonomy to local operators,” said ​​​​Jonathan Butcher, acting director for the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation, the conservative group behind Project 2025, the policy blueprint that called for the government to “eliminate the Head Start program.”

    Trump administration officials also noted that Head Start has gradually shrunk over the years, including a reduction of roughly 100,000 slots for children during the Biden administration.

    Sheridan of the National Head Start Association said many sites have been forced to shrink over time because they haven’t received enough money to keep up with inflation. Garvin, the former director of the Office of Head Start, also noted that the Biden administration allowed some Head Start programs to add more infants and very young children, who require smaller class sizes. And some programs needed to spend more on compensation to help attract and retain instructors.

    Both the National Head Start Association and the First Five Years Fund, an advocacy group for early-childhood education, said they plan to review the Trump administration’s proposal closely and submit formal comments.

  • Trump, Hegseth clashed at Camp David over Iran missile depletion concerns

    Trump, Hegseth clashed at Camp David over Iran missile depletion concerns

    President Donald Trump’s frustration over the Iran war boiled over at Camp David last week, where he demanded answers from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on why he had apparently been misled on extreme munitions shortages that now threaten to limit military options with Iran, two people familiar with the exchange told The Washington Post.

    The encounter took place on the sidelines of his Cabinet meeting at Camp David on Friday where Trump vented at Hegseth that he thought the munitions issue “had been fixed,” according to both people familiar with the conversation, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation.

    The shortages, particularly in long-range guided missiles and air-defense interceptors, have been part of the reason Trump has pulled back from launching additional massive strikes against Iran in recent days, one of the sources said.

    Trump said Monday that he had ordered and subsequently called off “the biggest attack since World War II,” pending claims of new negotiations over the Strait of Hormuz.

    The president asserted overnight that the United States has “massive amounts” of munitions, saying in a post on Truth Social that “large amounts are being manufactured and shipped to the U.S. as needed.” The “‘leakers’ of these treasonous statements are being hunted down,” he added.

    While the United States has announced new production agreements for some of the most critical munitions, such as Patriot air defense missiles, the munitions themselves can take as long as two years to produce, and there’s no immediate relief in sight for the shortages.

    In the first month of fighting alone, the U.S. fired off more than 850 Tomahawk cruise missiles and more than 1,000 Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) systems, The Post previously reported.

    The U.S. also used more than 1,300 of the Army’s tactical ballistic missiles in the initial weeks of fighting, one U.S. official told The Post. The ATACMs stockpile — a short-range missile also in demand by Ukraine — is drained to the extent that there’s basically none left, said one of the people familiar, an assessment also reported earlier this week by Reuters.

    The scarcity of defensive munitions has had an impact beyond the Middle East. Ukraine is running out of air defenses, and there are few options with which to replenish from Western stockpiles, leaving them exposed to Russia’s long-range attacks.

    The lack of interceptor missiles is also altering how the U.S. decides whether to employ munitions against an incoming threat, based on where it’s assessed to be heading and whether or not it’s “a factor,” the U.S. official told The Post, a change in tactics that was first reported by NBC News.

    Back at Camp David, as he was confronted by Trump over the bare weapons stockpile, Hegseth defended himself and blamed his deputy, Stephen Feinberg, for the shortages and for not ensuring Trump was fully apprised of the issue, both people familiar said.

    The exchange underscored Trump’s increasing frustration with his defense secretary, who was one of the biggest early advocates for taking military action against Iran, convincing Trump it would be a quick and relatively easy win, according to multiple officials.

    “This is 100% fake news. Literally never happened. And President Trump has the utmost confidence in Secretary Hegseth,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt in response to questions from The Post.

    More than five months after the start of the conflict, and with 18 U.S. service members killed and hundreds injured, Iran and the U.S. remain at a stalemate, with increasing concern from Arab neighbors about the long-term economic effects of the war and the impact of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

    “Secretary Hegseth did not mislead anyone about our munitions posture, and he did not blame Deputy Secretary Feinberg. These claims about depleted stockpiles, internal disagreements, the Secretary’s position on Iran … are equally fictional,” Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell said.

    In a July Senate hearing, Hegseth sparred with Democrats over whether he had provided Trump with honest assessments of the Iran war, including the risks an extended campaign would pose for U.S. military inventories.

    During the hearing, Hegseth declined to discuss his advice to the president and repeatedly blamed any shortages on the Biden administration’s handling of the military, not on the operations that have occurred under Trump’s watch.

    Hegseth, Feinberg and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine have asked lawmakers to provide them $67 billion in additional military funding to help cover the costs of the Iran war, with Hegseth telling lawmakers in testimony last month the request filled an “urgent, necessary” need to refill the military’s stockpiles.

    Senate Republicans have yet to agree on a strategy to take up the package.

    The administration’s overall defense budget request for the coming fiscal year is a record $1.5 trillion and includes tens of billions of dollars to build missiles. But the proposal has stalled as Democrats object to the massive increase, leaving the Pentagon without a clear path to replenishing critical weaponry.

    Ever since Signalgate, where Hegseth sent classified information to a chat group that included a reporter just months after being confirmed to the role, rumors have swirled about how long the defense secretary would remain in Trump’s good graces. The president has consistently praised Hegseth, saying he looks straight out of “central casting” and that “he loves war.”

    Since taking office, Trump has launched military operations in seven countries: Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria and Venezuela.

    The successful operation to capture former Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro appeared to further secure Hegseth’s position. But the stalemate over the Strait of Hormuz and the massive cost and length of the Iran war has eroded Trump’s confidence in him, one of the people familiar with the Camp David conversation said.

    “Secretary Hegseth isn’t going anywhere, and he’s going to continue to work side by side with Deputy Secretary Feinberg to execute President Trump’s agenda,” Parnell said in response to questions about that exchange and the munitions depletion.

    Stockpile pressures are not a new challenge. Before the war even started, Caine warned Trump that the U.S. did not have the stockpiles necessary to sustain a prolonged conflict.

    But the pace and sheer volume of munitions expended by both sides has rapidly accelerated the depletion of key U.S. offensive and defensive munitions.

    From Feb. 28 to April 7, which marked the first day of the ceasefire, the U.S. struck more than 13,000 targets in Iran. It has also defended against more than 8,500 incoming Iranian munitions or drones.

    The U.S. launched Operation Epic Fury already facing shortfalls in critical munitions.

    In the summer of 2025, it expended more than a quarter of its total inventory of THAAD interceptors during Israel’s 12-Day war and Operation Midnight Hammer, where U.S. forces struck Iran’s nuclear sites. The current conflict “has made those inadequacies even worse,” said Brad Bowman, an Army veteran and senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

    While Hegseth and the Pentagon have announced numerous new industry framework agreements to rebuild the arsenal, defense firms “aren’t going to start bending metal until you have a contract and congressional appropriations,” Bowman said.

    As a result, it could be years before the inventories are rebuilt. “We’re often talking years between spending what we need to spend, getting the contracts signed, and delivery,” he said. “You don’t just flip the switch and suddenly the munition appears in the hands of the warfighter.”

  • Tupac Shakur was killed in Las Vegas in 1996. Here’s who was there that night

    Tupac Shakur was killed in Las Vegas in 1996. Here’s who was there that night

    LAS VEGAS — New details about one of hip-hop’s most enduring mysteries — the 1996 killing of rap icon Tupac Shakur — could finally come to light in the upcoming trial of Duane “Keffe D” Davis.

    Davis, 63, is accused of orchestrating the drive-by shooting near the Las Vegas Strip that also wounded rap music mogul Marion “Suge” Knight. Davis’ jury trial will begin Monday, nearly three years after he was arrested in 2023. He pleaded not guilty.

    On the night of Sept. 7, 1996, Shakur was in the passenger seat of a black BMW that Knight was driving when a white Cadillac pulled up on their right side and gunfire erupted. Knight was wounded but survived. Shakur died a week later at the age of 25.

    Police and prosecutors say the shooting stemmed from a fierce competition for dominance in a musical genre that pitted East Coast members of a Bloods gang sect against West Coast members of a Crips sect that Davis has said he led in Compton, Calif.

    That night, three others were with Davis in the Cadillac, but none of them faced charges in Shakur’s killing before they died.

    Here’s what we know about who was in both vehicles from authorities, court records, grand jury testimony, interviews, and Davis’ 2019 tell-all memoir, Compton Street Legend.

    Tupac Shakur

    Shakur is considered one of the most influential rappers of all time. He had five No. 1 albums, was nominated for six Grammy Awards, and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2017. He received a posthumous star in 2023 on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and he will appear in the upcoming video game Stranger than Heaven.

    His death came as his fourth solo album, All Eyez on Me, remained on the charts, with some 5 million copies sold. He also used the stage names 2Pac and Makaveli. As an actor, he starred in several films.

    Shakur was born Lesane Parish Crooks in New York in 1971, and his name was changed a year later. His late mother, Afeni Shakur, and late stepfather Mutulu Shakur were active in the Black Panther Party in New York. Tupac Shakur was not close with his biological father, William “Billy” Garland.

    Two of the rapper’s siblings, Sekyiwa “Set” Shakur and Maurice “Mopreme” Shakur, have criticized authorities for inaction and slowness in charging anyone with their brother’s death.

    Marion “Suge” Knight

    Knight founded Death Row Records, a Los Angeles-based music label that represented Shakur at the time of his death. Knight’s moniker was shortened from “Sugar Bear,” his nickname growing up in Compton.

    Knight and Shakur were headed to a nightclub when their car was shot at near the Las Vegas Strip. Knight was grazed by a bullet or shrapnel.

    Now 61, Knight is serving a 28-year prison sentence in California for running over and killing a Compton businessperson outside a burger stand in January 2015. The case capped the former rap music mogul’s downfall from his heyday as one of the biggest — and most feared — names in the music industry.

    Davis said he and Knight knew each other growing up and even played on the same youth football team in Compton. Knight went on to play college football at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Briefly, during the 1987 NFL players’ strike, he was a replacement player for the Los Angeles Rams.

    In his memoir, Davis describes Knight and himself as the “only living eyewitnesses to what truly happened.”

    “Like two rams locking horns, Suge and I looked each other dead in the eye,” he writes when describing the moments right before the shooting.

    Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson

    Law enforcement authorities long suspected that Anderson was the gunman. He was 22 at the time. Though Davis was his uncle and 12 years older, he described their relationship as that of brothers, friends, and even father-son.

    Shortly before the drive-by shooting, Anderson was beaten in a brawl at the MGM Grand casino involving Shakur and his associates, including Knight. Authorities, authors, and Davis himself say the shooting was an act of retaliation for beating up Anderson.

    “Them jumping on my nephew gave us the ultimate green light to do something,” Davis writes in the book.

    Davis said he obtained a handgun from an associate and tossed it into the back seat of the Cadillac but did not say who fired the fatal shots. Anderson was sitting in the backseat of the car, behind his uncle.

    Neither the Cadillac nor the gun used in the shooting were recovered, according to retired Las Vegas police Detective Clifford Mogg, who was assigned to the investigation in early 2018.

    “We were never able to identify the person who rented the car, where it was rented from, and then when it comes to the gun, we have never recovered as of this date, the weapon that was used in the murder,” Mogg said in testimony to the grand jury.

    Anderson, who denied involvement in Shakur’s killing, died two years later in what police said was an unrelated shooting at a Compton car wash.

    Deandrae “Freaky” Smith

    Also known as “Big Dre,” Smith was in the back seat of the car that night, sitting next to Anderson.

    Although authorities have said they believe Anderson pulled the trigger, the grand jury testimony challenged that theory.

    Denvonta Lee, a former associate of Davis, told the grand jury that it was Smith who shot Shakur and Knight. He said Anderson tried reaching over Smith but didn’t have a “clear shot” out the left-rear passenger window.

    The former associate, who wasn’t in the car but recounted a conversation he had with Smith days after the shooting, said Smith took the gun from Anderson, opened fire and let Anderson take credit for Shakur’s death.

    Smith was 30 when he died in 2004 of natural causes, according to the Los Angeles County coroner’s office.

    Terry “Bubble Up” Brown

    Brown was driving the Cadillac from which the shots were fired.

    Davis said in his memoir that they were driving toward Las Vegas Boulevard that night but spotted Shakur “hanging out of the window” of the BMW and waving to fans. Davis told Brown to make a U-turn, and they drove slowly past the rapper’s convoy until Davis said they “found who we were seeking.”

    Brown died in a 2015 shooting at a medical marijuana dispensary in Compton.

    The Los Angeles County coroner’s office said his full name was Terry Tyrone Brown, although Brown has been referred to as both “Terrence” and “Terrance” in investigative records.

  • National Gallery studied whether Freedom 250 IndyCar vibrations will affect art

    National Gallery studied whether Freedom 250 IndyCar vibrations will affect art

    When the Freedom 250 Grand Prix kicks off this month as part of President Donald Trump’s summer celebrations, IndyCar racers will weave at speeds up to 185 mph among federal buildings, the National Gallery of Art, the National Archives, and the Smithsonian Institution’s Hirshhorn, Air and Space, and American Indian museums.

    One of those institutions, the National Gallery of Art, has studied vibrations ahead of the race as it prepares for possible effects on its art — but it’s declining to say what it found.

    “In preparation for the Freedom 250 Grand Prix, the National Gallery conducted an extensive vibration study and based on the results we have implemented a set of measures to ensure the safety of our staff, visitors, collection, and facilities during the race,” gallery spokesperson Chris Abanavas said in a statement. “While we are not releasing the specifics, I can share that any such measures are only being taken out of a great abundance of caution.”

    The study didn’t raise concerns about structural risk to the buildings, Abanavas added. The race will also limit attendance at the free museum to ticket holders to the event’s secured area.

    The Smithsonian determined the race, which will take place Aug. 22-23, will not threaten any objects in its collections and has taken no special precautions as a result, a Smithsonian official said. But the institution will monitor the situation before and during the race, so it can protect exhibits if that changes.

    While the event is a first for D.C., it is not the first such race to pass through city streets and near museums, which commonly face vibrations from construction, musical events, and large crowds. But some historic preservationists worry the risk to delicate art pieces, historic documents, and priceless murals near the circuit has been underexamined.

    In March, the National Park Service consulted with the D.C. State Historic Preservation Office about the IndyCar event, noting that it saw “no adverse effects.” The letter did not mention the museums along the route. (The National Park Service and the National Archives did not respond to a request for comment.)

    Some preservationists who spoke with the Washington Post called the analysis insufficient and said a more comprehensive review of potential damage to historic properties or artifacts would have taken years, not months.

    “I can’t think of any place in that whole area that goes where the speed limit is higher than 25 miles an hour,” said Michelle Arcari Rose, a former associate general counsel at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which has sued to stop Trump’s White House ballroom project. “So whereas people think these grand prix races aren’t a problem, we certainly don’t know, right? It’s a huge risk to then unleash cars at 185 miles per hour in a place where we’ve never had cars really going more than 25 miles an hour.”

    Mary Okin, assistant director of the nonprofit Living New Deal, sent a letter last week to the National Park Service and other agencies expressing concern that the event was permitted “without meaningful” consultation with “known preservation stakeholders.” The letter and the National Gallery of Art’s vibration study were first reported by the New Republic.

    “Such vibrations are well above normal street traffic and even go beyond those of jackhammers, pile drivers, and even freight trains,” she wrote.

    Okin is calling for safeguards including temporary sound barriers and damage assessments to help protect buildings such as the Wilbur J. Cohen Building, which sits on the circuit’s south edge and houses fragile New Deal-era murals.

    “They’re vulnerable,” said Okin, whose organization has worked on the building’s preservation. “Excess vibrations and sound, as well as the construction of the racetrack itself, could very well cause damage.”

    The General Services Administration, the body that manages real estate for the federal government, reviewed the proposed route for potential impacts on its assets and identified no areas of concern, a spokesperson said in a statement.

    “The White House and [IndyCar owner] Penske have followed all appropriate protocols and been in close coordination with all relevant agencies to ensure this is also the safest and most secure race for all visitors to enjoy,” said Davis Ingle, a White House spokesperson.

    While many major motorsport races are held on permanent road courses or oval tracks, temporary street circuits are a familiar part of international racing.

    IndyCar stages several events on public roads in cities such as St. Petersburg, Fla.; Long Beach, Calif.; Detroit; and Toronto, while Formula One also races on street courses in places including Monaco, Singapore, and Las Vegas. The roads are closed, lined with concrete barriers, and transformed into racecourses for the events before reopening to traffic.

    One of the closest comparisons with D.C.’s race is the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, in which the street circuit runs next to the Dalí Museum. A museum spokesperson said the collection has remained safe and secure throughout the event’s history. The museum has not conducted race-specific vibration studies, but its galleries were built to museum standards and the collection is continuously monitored.

    Green Savoree Racing Promotions, which organizes the St. Petersburg race, said the museum closes to visitors while racing is underway and reopens after the event concludes. The promoter also noted that the museum is housed in a hurricane-rated building constructed to Florida standards, allowing the artwork to remain in place during extreme weather, and said it was not aware of any additional precautions being necessary during the race.

    In a statement, a Freedom 250 Grand Prix spokesperson said race organizers have “tremendous respect for the history and the structures surrounding the racing circuit in Washington, D.C.”

    “IndyCar has successfully hosted races on downtown street circuits in urban areas for decades,” the spokesperson said. “With this excellent track record and the thorough preparation we have done for this event working closely with all the appropriate local and federal agencies, we do not anticipate any impact on the structures surrounding the circuit” as a result of the race.

    Researchers have started paying closer attention to how vibrations from construction, live music, and major events may affect the art and artifacts inside museums.

    One 2023 report studied the effects of vibrations from music and a NASCAR street race on museums in Chicago. In that case, racecars passed a south wall of the Art Institute of Chicago, near galleries holding a Van Gogh exhibition.

    Advisers who reviewed data and consulted with NASCAR beforehand told the museum vibrations from the cars shouldn’t pose a major risk, according to the report. Afterward, they found museumgoers’ foot traffic caused greater vibrations in gallery floors than the race outside. (An author of the report declined to be interviewed, and the Art Institute says it works with specialists before any major activity that might cause vibrations.)

    On Tuesday, there were few apparent changes at the National Gallery of Art except for enclosures set up around some artworks outside.

    The I.M. Pei-designed triangular skylights, which abut a cascading sunken fountain and illuminate the underground cafe, have been boarded up. Between the West Building and the Sculpture Garden, a massive Alexander Calder sculpture made of sheet metal, Tom’s, has been enclosed in a protective barrier.

    Some sculptures and installations were boarded up “out of an abundance of caution,” said Abanavas, citing “the increased visitor traffic around the National Mall this summer for events including the Grand Prix.”

    As of publication, the Post did not identify significant changes to public collections inside the National Gallery of Art’s East Building, which closely faces the racetrack on Pennsylvania Avenue.