By Megan R. Wilson

In today’s issue:

• Federal judge halts SNAP junk food bans in five states, ruling USDA overstepped authority on soda and candy restrictions
• A study showing the benefits of the covid vaccine that had been blocked by the Trump administration has been published in a prestigious peer-reviewed journal

Hey there, and welcome back to Health Brief. Do you have any health policy tips, documents or intel? Email me at megan.wilson@washpost.com, or message me securely on Signal at megan.434.

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Nearly two dozen states have been allowed to implement restrictions on what people on SNAP are allowed to buy. (Nam Y. Huh/AP Photo)

A federal judge narrowly blocked the Trump administration’s effort to allow states to restrict purchases of soda, candy and other junk foods with federal food assistance benefits, finding the policy exceeded federal authority.

The Department of Agriculture, which oversees the program, has granted waivers to 23 states allowing them to ban unhealthy purchases with SNAP benefits. States have taken varying approaches, but generally have applied the prohibition to soft drinks, candy, energy drinks and sodas — or some combination of those items.

“Congress defined what ‘food’ is supposed to be, and it did not authorize the agency to amend or waive the definition it enacted,” U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson wrote in the Monday ruling. “It did not authorize the agency to cut types of food out of SNAP entirely.”

“The federal defendants and the states may have a genuine desire to improve the health of SNAP households by encouraging healthy choices at the store,” Jackson wrote. “But what they cannot do is violate the law and their own regulations along the way.”

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Why it matters: The ruling threatens one of the Trump administration’s most visible efforts to use federal nutrition programs to shape healthier eating habits — and it could complicate similar restrictions being pursued by other states.

“The decision may provide a road map for future challenges,” according to the Food Research and Action Center, a nonprofit group working to address hunger. “In states that have not yet implemented restrictions, policymakers should weigh whether to proceed while litigation may continue and additional USDA guidance may follow.”

USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins, meanwhile, vowed in a social media post to “keep fighting to Make America Healthy Again.” However, an agency spokesperson wouldn’t answer questions about whether the department planned to appeal the ruling.

“The idea that taxpayer funds should not be used to purchase junk food should not be controversial,” a USDA spokesperson said in a statement.

The nonprofit group National Center for Law and Economic Justice and law firm Shinder Cantor Lerner sued the federal government on behalf of people who receive SNAP benefits in five states: Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee and West Virginia.

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→ The ruling only applies to the bans in those states. But Katharine Deabler-Meadows, a senior attorney at the National Center for Law and Economic Justice, called the ruling a “major step in restoring essential food assistance to the millions of families that rely on SNAP nationwide.”

The plaintiffs argued that the restrictions are not only unlawful, they could also cause confusion among low-income people and retailers trying to comply with the new rules, and make it harder for consumers to shop or manage chronic health conditions such as diabetes.

ICYMI: The Post’s Rachel Roubein reported in April about how the differing rules among states moving to block soda and candy purchases with food stamps have created a patchwork of requirements that are increasingly difficult for both beneficiaries and retailers to maneuver.

Stores that violate SNAP rules can lose the ability to accept benefits, which can account for a significant share of sales depending on the location.

Following the ruling, the National Association of Convenience Stores said that the waivers “do not make SNAP more efficient, they make it more confusing.”

“Our members are the ones who have to navigate these complex changes at the register every day,” said Margaret Hardin Mannion, director of government relations for NACS. “This was never a workable system, and we are pleased to see the court agreed.”

Critics of the policies have also argued that diet-focused restrictions don’t actually improve overall nutrition, while proponents cheer a decrease in sales of certain products, such as candy and soda, following the prohibitions.

Key background: The move to block SNAP recipients from purchasing unhealthy items has been a key goal of the Trump administration and the MAHA movement pioneered by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

When top health officials were deciding how much money to give states in rural health assistance, whether state leaders were moving to make such restrictions became a component in those calculations.

An estimated 42 million people — or 12 percent of the U.S. population — receive SNAP benefits.

While roughly 10 percent of residents in most states involved in the lawsuit rely on the program, participation is significantly higher in West Virginia, where about 16 percent of residents receive benefits.

Back in April, my Washington Post colleague Lena H. Sun reported that a study showing how the covid-19 vaccine was beneficial for healthy adults had been scuttled by leadership at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention amid concerns about its methodology.

On Tuesday, that study appeared in JAMA Network Open, a leading peer-reviewed medical journal, Lena reports in her latest update to the saga.

The study showed that the vaccine reduced the risk of emergency department visits and hospitalizations among healthy adults by about half last winter.

Why it matters: The findings largely reinforce years of evidence showing covid vaccines continue to reduce the risk of severe illness. But the bigger story is the study’s unusual path to publication — which had been delayed and then blocked.

Now, the same analysis has cleared peer review at a leading medical journal, and outside experts are pushing back on the administration’s earlier criticisms.

• Jay Bhattacharya, the CDC’s interim director, reportedly had concerns about the methods used to calculate vaccine effectiveness, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services said previously.
• Key quote: “Science was never the issue,” said Michelle Barron, one of the study’s authors and senior medical director of infection prevention and control for UCHealth, a nonprofit health system in Colorado. “Certainly it was within [the CDC’s] purview to keep it out, for whatever reason, but it was clearly not for scientific reasons that the study was withheld from publication in the MMWR,” she said, referring to the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
• What the agency is saying now: An HHS spokesperson did not directly address the author’s allegation Tuesday that the paper was withheld because it conflicted with the administration’s vaccine agenda. Emily Hilliard, a spokesperson for the department, told Lena that the CDC evaluates studies using rigorous scientific methods and reviews methodological concerns before publication.

Kennedy, the founder of a prominent anti-vaccine group, has been an outspoken critic of covid shots, once referring to them as the “deadliest vaccine ever made.”

A commentary accompanying the report in JAMA Network Open said the methodology in question, known as test negative design, has limitations like any study. But those shortcomings are well understood, actively studied and outweighed by the method’s practicality for routine vaccine-effectiveness monitoring, wrote Natalie Dean, associate professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health.

Read the full story: “CDC’s chief blocked a covid vaccine study. Now it’s in a top medical journal.”

“Eli Lilly gave extraordinary obesity drug access to a 79-year-old patient. Who was it?” reports STAT’s Lizzy Lawrence.

‘“A GLP-1 weight loss boom took compounding to a new level. Houston-based Empower Pharmacy cashed in.,” Julian Gill reports for the Houston Chronicle.

“Why insurers say ACA premiums must spike in 2027, too,” Nona Tepper writes at Modern Healthcare.

“Organ donation overhaul nears critical moment,” writes Maya Goldman at Axios.

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