The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial expanded a recently imposed gag order to include family members of the court and family members of the Manhattan district attorney, according to a late Monday ruling.

This comes after Trump leveled comments against the judge’s daughter in recent days.

Earlier Monday, the Manhattan district attorney’s office had asked the judge to expand the gag order to stop the former president from attacking family members of people involved in the case.

“This Court should immediately make clear that defendant is prohibited from making or directing others to make public statements about family members of the Court, the District Attorney, and all other individuals mentioned in the Order,” prosecutors wrote in a motion to Judge Juan Merchan on Monday.

Last week, soon after Merchan issued a gag order stopping Trump from making statements about witnesses, jurors, prosecutors, court staff or the family members of prosecutors and court staff, Trump launched a series of posts on his social media platform. The gag order did not cover District Attorney Alvin Bragg or the judge or his family.

Trump said Merchan was “compromised” and he identified by name the judge’s daughter who works for a political consulting firm. Trump then cited posts on X from an account he said belonged to the daughter. A spokesman for the court said the judge’s daughter deactivated her account two years ago and the posts were not from her.

Trump has argued he has a First Amendment right to defend himself and engage in campaign speech.

“Defendant knows what he is doing, and everyone else does too. And we all know exactly what defendant intends because he has said for decades that it is part of his life philosophy to go after his perceived opponents ‘as viciously and as violently’ as he can,” prosecutors wrote.

“But the suggestion that defendant is merely engaging in political counter-speech is an obvious fiction that this Court should emphatically reject,” prosecutors wrote. “None of defendant’s attacks in the past week consist of campaign advocacy. Instead, defendant has viciously and falsely smeared the Court and the family member for no reason other than the Court’s presiding over this criminal trial.”

Trump may appeal gag order

Trump’s lawyers oppose any expansion of the gag order that they say already goes too far and indicated they might appeal the order issued by Merchan last week.

“The Court should reject the People’s invitations to expand the gag order, which is already an unlawful prior restraint that improperly restricts campaign advocacy by the presumptive Republican nominee and leading candidate in the 2024 presidential election,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in an opposition filing Monday.

Trump’s defense team says the gag order as it stands does not apply to family members of the judge or Bragg, pointing to news reports similarly interpreting the order to say that family members like Merchan’s daughter are fair game for Trump’s public criticisms.

“Accordingly, because the gag order expressly does not apply to family members of the Court or the District Attorney, and because the challenged social media posts were not intended to materially interfere with these proceedings, President Trump did not violate the gag order and no contempt warning would be appropriate.”

Trump’s lawyers also asked Merchan to allow them to file a recusal motion to remove the judge from the case, now just two weeks before the trial is set to begin, “based on changed circumstances and newly discovered evidence.”

Merchan denied a similar recusal motion from Trump last year.

This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.

NBC News on Tuesday ousted former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel, just days after her hiring as a paid political analyst sparked intense backlash from the network’s top television anchors over McDaniel’s role in subverting the 2020 election and attacks on the press.

“There is no doubt that the last several days have been difficult for the News Group,” NBCUniversal News Group President Cesar Conde said in a memo to staff. “After listening to the legitimate concerns of many of you, I have decided that Ronna McDaniel will not be an NBC News contributor.”

“I want to personally apologize to our team members who felt we let them down,” Conde continued. “While this was a collective recommendation by some members of our leadership team, I approved it and take full responsibility for it.”

Ahead of the network’s decision, McDaniel spent the day Tuesday interviewing attorneys in preparation for a potential legal battle with NBC, a person familiar with the matter told CNN. Creative Artists Agency, the talent agency that brokered McDaniel’s deal with NBC, also parted ways with her, the person said.

The reversal comes after journalists and anchors at both NBC and its cable news sibling MSNBC publicly denounced the decision to hire McDaniel as a paid analyst in a stunning and unprecedented on-air rebuke of network brass that has embarrassed the Peacock Network.

McDaniel, who recently stepped down from the RNC under pressure from former President Donald Trump, was involved in attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

As head of the RNC, she was involved in a phone call in 2020 to pressure Michigan county officials not to certify the vote from the Detroit area, where Joe Biden had a commanding lead. McDaniel told the officials, regarding the certification: “Do not sign it. … We will get you attorneys.”

In the years since, McDaniel continued to claim that the election had “problems” and that Biden did not legitimately win the election, fanning the flames of election denialism.

NBC’s announcement Friday that it had hired McDaniel was quickly met with alarm by the network’s journalists. The revolt spilled into public view on Sunday when McDaniel appeared on “Meet the Press” with moderator Kristen Welker in her first interview since she was hired by the network. Welker disclosed that the interview had been scheduled to take place prior to NBC announcing McDaniel would become a paid contributor for the network, stating that she had no involvement in her hiring.

Following the interview, Chuck Todd, NBC News’ chief political analyst, delivered a stinging on-air criticism of NBC executives for their decision to hire McDaniel, telling Welker, “I think our bosses owe you an apology for putting you in this situation.”

“There’s a reason a lot of journalists at NBC News are uncomfortable with this,” Todd said, explaining that under McDaniel, the RNC engaged in “gaslighting” and “character assassination” when dealing with the news media.

The following day, MSNBC hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough joined Todd in protesting the decision on their program “Morning Joe.”

“To be clear, we believe NBC News should seek out conservative Republican voices to provide balance in their election coverage, but it should be conservative Republicans, not a person who used her position of power to be an anti-democracy election denier,” Brzezinski said. “We hope NBC will reconsider its decision. It goes without saying that she will not be a guest on ‘Morning Joe’ in her capacity as a paid contributor.”

Nicolle Wallace, host of MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House,” later joined in the rebuke, saying on her program that the network’s decision to hire McDaniel was nothing short of a potential threat to democracy.

“NBC News is, either wittingly or unwittingly, teaching election deniers that what they can do stretches well beyond appearing on our air and interviews to peddle lies about the sanctity and integrity of our elections,” Wallace told viewers.

Rachel Maddow — the network’s biggest star — later devoted the first half-hour of her prime-time program to the controversy, saying the decision to hire McDaniel was “inexplicable.”

Maddow took issue with McDaniel’s long track record of demonizing the news media, including launching ugly attacks on NBC News journalists and MSNBC hosts.

“We do not take it personally when we get attacked, when they say they want to put us on trial and execute us for treason,” she said.

“And so I want to associate myself with all my colleagues at MSNBC and NBC News who have voiced loud and principled objections to our company for putting on the payroll someone who hasn’t just attacked us as journalists, but someone who is part of an ongoing project to get rid of our system of government,” she said of McDaniel. “Someone who is still trying to convince Americans that this election stuff doesn’t really work. That this last election wasn’t a real result. That American elections are fraudulent.“

The on-air revolt ensnared NBC’s top leaders, including NBCUniversal News Group chair Cesar Conde, NBC News president Rebecca Blumenstein and senior vice president of politics Carrie Budoff Brown, who were responsible for McDaniel’s hiring. MSNBC boss Rashida Jones did not object to her hire at the time.

“Mistakes will be made,” Maddow said. “But our resilience as a democracy is going to be recognizing when decisions are bad ones and reversing those bad decisions. Hearing legitimate criticism, responding to it, and correcting course. Not digging in. Not blaming others. Take a minute. Acknowledge that maybe it wasn’t the right call.”

During her time as RNC chair, McDaniel repeatedly assailed the press, which has become increasingly popular in Republican circles over the last several years as Trump demonizes journalists and news institutions.

McDaniel echoed many such attacks, labeling the press as “fake news” and calling the media “corrupt.” At times, she even targeted NBC News and MSNBC with dishonest attacks.

NFL owners officially voted to ban the ‘hip-drop tackle’ from the sport on Monday, after an annual league meeting in Florida.

The tackle has long been a topic of debate and was cited as the reason behind multiple injuries in the NFL.

According to the NFL, the hip-drop tackle in question involves a swivel technique in which a player “grabs the runner with both hands or wraps the runner with both arms” and “unweights himself by swiveling and dropping his hips and/or lower body, landing on and trapping the runner’s leg(s) at or below the knee.”

From next season, the tackle will result in a 15-yard penalty and an automatic first down, the league announced.

However, not everyone is happy with the decision.

“Just fast forward to the belts with flags on them,” former three-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year JJ Watt said on X, formerly known as Twitter, in response to the news.

Miami Dolphins safety Jevon Holland also criticized the decision, posting on X: “Breaking news: Tackling Banned.”

CNN has reached out to the NFL for comment about the criticism.

Baltimore Ravens star Mark Andrews was one victim of the tackle last season, suffering a serious ankle injury after being brought down by the controversial technique in November.

Earlier this year, Andrews said he didn’t blame the player who tackled him and would not weigh in on the conversation over whether or not to ban the technique.

“It kind of was just an unfortunate event,” he said. “I’m just going to let everybody else do their thing. If they want to ban the tackle, fine. I’m going to go hard no matter what. I don’t blame the guy. He was just playing hard.”

The league also voted for two other changes during Monday’s meeting, firstly “to protect a club’s ability to challenge a third ruling following one successful challenge” and secondly “to allow for an enforcement of a major foul by the offense prior to a change of possession in a situation where there are fouls by both teams.​”

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Alaska Airlines flight 1282, on which a door plug blew off the side of the plane shortly after takeoff on January 5, was scheduled to be taken out of service for maintenance the night of the incident, the airline said Tuesday.

Although Alaska Airlines did not say why the plane was set to be taken out of service, the airline told the New York Times, which first reported the scheduled safety check, that the plane was set to be removed from service to investigate two separate warning lights that alerted the crew to a potential pressurization problem on the plane over the 10 days prior to the blowout.

Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, told CNN on January 8 that she was aware the plane had pressurization issues before the door plug blew out, and the safety regulator planned on probing Alaska Airlines about the incident. But the NTSB later clarified that it believed the pressurization warnings were unrelated to the side of the plane blowing out mid-air.

The NTSB said the warning started appearing just weeks after the plane was delivered, in early December, and most recently happened the day before the door plug blowout incident.

Max Tidwell, the vice president for safety and security for Alaska Airlines, told the New York Times that the airline did not believe the indicator lights posed a serious enough problem to take the plane out of service sooner without carrying passengers.

Such deferred maintenance is common and legal, and the plane had made 154 successful flights before the blowout.

In its preliminary investigation, the NTSB found that Boeing probably did not put required bolts in the door plug. The bolts are designed to prevent that part from blowing off the plane.

It’s not clear that an expedited maintenance schedule would have led Alaska Airlines to discover that problem. However, engineers were concerned enough about the warning lights that the airline prevented the plane from carrying passengers on long-haul routes over water in case of emergency, according to The New York Times.

“The U.S. aviation system is the safest in the world because it relies on layers: redundant systems, robust processes and procedures, and the willingness to stop and ensure things are right before every takeoff,” Alaska Airlines said in a statement. “We remain confident in our maintenance and safety actions leading up to the incident. We look forward to continuing our participation in a robust investigation led by the NTSB to ensure something like this never happens again.”

Alaska Airlines’ (ALK) stock fell marginally in after-hours trading. The airline has largely avoided heavy scrutiny in the incident as blame has largely been laid on Boeing following the preliminary results of the probe. Boeing has been subject to congressional hearings, production and delivery delays, multiple federal investigations — including a criminal probe — and a stock that has lost more than a quarter of its value this year, shaving more than $40 billion off the company’s market valuation.

Although the revelation that the plane was scheduled for service the same day as the blowout does not necessarily suggest any wrongdoing by Alaska Airlines, it does raise further concerns about policies and regulations surrounding maintenance of America’s fleet of aircraft.

A powerful House committee advanced a bill on Thursday that could lead to a nationwide ban against TikTok on all electronic devices, renewing lawmakers’ challenge to one of the world’s most popular social media apps and highlighting unresolved fears that TikTok may pose a Chinese government spying risk.

The measure that sailed unanimously through the House Energy and Commerce Committee would prohibit TikTok from US app stores unless the social media platform — used by roughly 170 million Americans — is quickly spun off from its China-linked parent company, ByteDance.

If enacted, the bill would give ByteDance 165 days, or a little more than five months, to sell TikTok. If not divested by that date, it would be illegal for app store operators such as Apple and Google to make it available for download. The bill also contemplates similar prohibitions for other apps “controlled by foreign adversary companies.”

It’s the most aggressive legislation targeting TikTok to come out of a congressional committee since company CEO Shou Chew testified to lawmakers last year that the app poses no threat to Americans.

“Today, we will take the first step in creating long-overdue laws to protect Americans from the threat posed by apps controlled by our adversaries, and to send a very strong message that the US will always stand up for our values and freedom,” said Washington Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the panel’s chair.

New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, its ranking Democrat, compared the bill to prior efforts to regulate the US airwaves, citing testimony from national security officials from a closed-door hearing earlier Thursday.

“I take the concerns raised by the intelligence community this morning very seriously,” Pallone said. “They have asked Congress to give them more authority to act in these narrowly defined situations, and I believe that this bill will do that.”

The bill was introduced with some bipartisan support earlier this week by Wisconsin Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher, who chairs a House select committee on China, and the ranking member of that committee, Illinois Democratic Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi. The legislation also has the support of the White House and House Speaker Mike Johnson, though its prospects in the Senate are unclear.

House lawmakers voted unanimously in the same session Thursday to advance a second bill, one that would limit US companies’ ability to sell Americans’ personal information to foreign adversaries.

US officials have cited the widespread commercial availability of US citizens’ data as another source of national security risk. The US government and other domestic law enforcement agencies are also known to have purchased US citizens’ data from commercial data brokers.

TikTok launches opposition

TikTok is mounting a push against the bill, including trying to mobilize its user base.

The company has served some users with full-screen pop-ups in the app warning that the bill “strips 170 million Americans of their Constitutional right to free expression.”

“This will damage millions of businesses, destroy the livelihoods of countless creators across the country, and deny artists an audience,” reads the notification, a copy of which was reviewed by CNN.

The call to action concludes with a link prompting users to dial their members of Congress and express their opposition to the bill. Multiple congressional staffers told CNN Thursday that House offices are being flooded with phone calls — in some cases in the hundreds — amid the campaign.

Many of the calls appear to be coming from teenagers and the elderly, some of whom seem to be “confused” about why they are exactly calling or why TikTok might be at risk, one GOP aide told CNN.

Speaking to reporters on the Capitol steps Thursday, Gallagher rejected characterizations of the bill as a TikTok ban.

“It’s not a ban,” he said. “It puts the choice squarely in the hands of TikTok to sever their relationship with the Chinese Communist Party. As long as ByteDance no longer owns the company, TikTok can continue to survive. People can continue to do all the dumb dance videos they want on the platform, or communicate with their friends, and all that stuff. But the basic ownership structure has to change.”

In a post on X, TikTok rejected lawmaker claims about the legislation providing options for TikTok.

“This legislation has a predetermined outcome: a total ban of TikTok in the United States,” the company wrote. “The government is attempting to strip 170 million Americans of their Constitutional right to free expression. This will damage millions of businesses, deny artists an audience, and destroy the livelihoods of countless creators across the country.”

During Thursday’s session, Texas Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw dismissed criticisms that lawmakers didn’t understand the technology they were trying to regulate.

“It’s not because we’re old, and grumpy, and don’t understand TikTok, and how you use it for your business, and how you use it to communicate with your friends,” Crenshaw said. “I was on social media long before any of the Gen Z-ers who are mad about TikTok. I understand.”

In addition to potentially barring app stores from hosting TikTok, the bill could also restrict TikTok traffic or content from being carried by “internet hosting services,” a broad term that encompasses a variety of industries including “file hosting, domain name server hosting, cloud hosting, and virtual private server hosting.”

That language could mean many more parts of the economy will be affected by the bill than just TikTok, Apple and Google.

Fears of spying

For years, US officials have warned that China’s intelligence laws could enable Beijing to snoop on the user information TikTok collects, potentially by forcing ByteDance to hand over the data.

Policymakers fear the Chinese government could use the personal information to identify intelligence targets or to facilitate mass disinformation campaigns that could disrupt elections and sow other chaos.

So far, the US government has not publicly presented any evidence the Chinese government has accessed TikTok user data, and cybersecurity experts say it remains a hypothetical albeit serious concern.

They also say governments can already buy vast troves of personal data from data brokers or use commercial spyware to hack individual phones with ease.

State and federal lawmakers have already banned TikTok from government-owned devices, but have repeatedly run aground in trying to broaden restrictions to Americans’ personal devices.

Last year, Senate lawmakers proposed legislation clamping down on TikTok but triggered concerns that it could give the executive branch too much power.

Efforts to ban TikTok date to the Trump administration, which used a series of executive orders to try to force app stores not to offer TikTok and to compel ByteDance to spin off the company. Those efforts also stalled amid legal challenges, though it led TikTok to engage in negotiations with the US government about how it could secure Americans’ personal data. Those talks are ongoing, even as TikTok has moved to store US user data on US-based servers controlled by the tech giant Oracle.

In Montana, a federal judge last year temporarily blocked a statewide ban on TikTok, calling the legislation overly broad and threatening Montanan users’ First Amendment rights to access information through the app.

A legislative factsheet from the sponsors of the House bill claims the proposal does not censor speech.

“It is focused entirely on foreign adversary control—not the content of speech being shared,” the factsheet says.

But the overall effect of the bill would still implicate Americans’ free speech rights, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

“We’re deeply disappointed that our leaders are once again attempting to trade our First Amendment rights for cheap political points during an election year,” said Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the ACLU. “Just because the bill sponsors claim that banning TikTok isn’t about suppressing speech, there’s no denying that it would do just that. We strongly urge legislators to vote no on this unconstitutional bill.”

And the bill would also threaten the free-speech rights of tech powerhouses Apple and Google, said a major trade group representing those companies.

“The government may not tell private parties, including digital service companies, what speech they may publish. The First Amendment forbids it,” said Stephanie Joyce, senior vice president of the Computer and Communications Industry Association. “The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act would infringe the First Amendment rights of private businesses, including app stores, to curate and display content they believe is appropriate for their communities.”

CNN’s Haley Talbot and Melanie Zanona contributed to this report.

Prosecutors in Arizona have issued several grand jury subpoenas in recent weeks to people connected to efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election in that state, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

The subpoenas suggest the state-level probe is accelerating ahead of the 2024 presidential election, when Trump is expected to once again be on the ballot as the Republican nominee. Sources told CNN that Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes could be nearing a decision on whether to bring criminal charges.

Mayes, a Democrat, has primarily focused her investigation on the 11 fake electors from Arizona and those who helped organize them, but sources familiar with the probe say she is also looking into individuals tied to the former president’s national campaign as well. Politico first reported the grand jury subpoenas were issued.

Arizona prosecutors have asked witnesses about meetings attended by Trump where the plan to put forward slates of fake GOP electors across the country was mentioned, including one in the Oval Office on December 16, 2020, the sources said.

They have also inquired about several other boldfaced names who aided Trump’s attempt to upend Joe Biden’s 2020 election win, including conservative attorney John Eastman, the sources added.

Questions about Eastman, who was among those pushing fringe legal theories for overturning the 2020 election results and intimately involved in the fake electors scheme, primarily focused on his actions in the weeks and days leading up to January 6, 2021, according to the same sources.

Among those who have been interviewed by Arizona prosecutors in recent months is pro-Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro.

CNN has identified Chesebro as one of Trump’s unindicted co-conspirators in special counsel Jack Smith’s federal indictment of the former president, which details how he was a driving force behind the fake electors plot.

Chesebro has also pleaded guilty in the sprawling conspiracy case in Georgia for his role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results there and met with prosecutors from several other states who are investigating the fake electors plan.

Arizona prosecutors asked Chesebro about the December 2020 Oval Office meeting he also described during an earlier interview with investigators in Michigan, sources said.

During that Oval Office meeting, Chesebro says he told Trump he could still win – and explained how the “alternate electors” he helped assemble in Arizona and six other states gave Trump an opening to continue contesting the election until Congress certified the results on January 6, 2021, according to audio of his Michigan interview obtained by CNN.

“I ended up explaining that Arizona was still hypothetically possible — because the alternate electors had voted,” Chesebro told Michigan state investigators, later adding that this made it “clear (to Trump) in a way that maybe it hadn’t been before, that we had until January 6 to win.”

“And that, you know, created a real problem,” Chesebro added.

CNN has reached out to lawyers for Eastman and Chesebro for comment.

Eleven fake electors for Trump convened at the state Republican Party headquarters in Phoenix, on December 14, 2020. They broadcast themselves preparing to sign the documents, allegedly provided by a Trump campaign attorney, claiming that they were the legitimate representatives of the state’s electoral votes.

By that time, Trump’s loss in the state – by fewer than 11,000 votes – had already been certified by its Republican governor, affirming that Biden won Arizona in the 2020 presidential election.

But in the weeks that followed, some of the fake electors continued to push for Vice President Mike Pence to reject the legitimate Democratic slate of electors.

CNN’s Kyung Lah, Marshall Cohen and Katelyn Polantz contributed to this report.

Jack Teixeira, the Air National Guardsman accused of posting a trove of classified documents online, is expected to plead guilty to federal charges on Monday, according to a source familiar with the matter.

In a court filing Thursday, prosecutors in Boston asked for a so-called Rule 11 hearing – proceedings to discuss a change of plea. He previously pleaded not guilty.

Teixeira, a Massachusetts native who was 21 when he was arrested, is charged with six counts of willful retention and transmission of classified information related to national defense. It is not yet clear what charge he plans to plead guilty to, nor what any potential deal he struck with prosecutors looks like.

Teixeira has been held in federal custody since his arrest in April.

CNN has reached out to the Justice Department for comment.

Teixeira faces spending decades in prison if convicted. Typically, any deal struck between criminal defense attorneys and prosecutors would include a lower range of potential prison time, though any eventual sentence is up to a judge.

According to prosecutors, Teixeira, a junior enlisted airman who worked within the Massachusetts Air National Guard’s 102nd Intelligence Wing, was repeatedly warned by his superiors over inappropriately accessing classified intelligence.

Still, prosecutors allege, Teixeira began posting information about the documents online around December 2022, and photos of documents in January 2023. Teixeira allegedly posted the documents to a small group on Discord, a social media platform popular with gamers.

The documents, some of which have been reviewed by CNN, included a wide range of highly classified information, including eavesdropping on key allies and adversaries and blunt assessments on the state of the Russia-Ukraine war.

Once the document leak was discovered, law enforcement embarked on a sprawling and fast-moving search for the leaker’s identity.

Prosecutors allege that after the leak was publicized, Teixeira destroyed his electronics and obtained a new phone number and email address. He was taken into custody at his home in Massachusetts about a week later, CNN reported.

Family physician and public health specialist Dr. George Rust has warned some of his colleagues about a potential measles outbreak in Florida “for at least the past year,” he said, because of the rise in vaccine hesitancy in pockets of the community.

Now, his fears have come true.

The Florida Department of Health in Broward County is investigating six cases of measles as part of an outbreak at an elementary school in Weston. Two additional cases in children younger than 10 were reported by the Florida Department of Health, raising the county total to eight. Broward County Public Schools said the total within the district remains at six.

Statewide, “most kids in our public schools have had the vaccine, although there’s been some slippage in that in recent years. The kids who are not vaccinated, if they’re exposed to measles, 90% of them will get measles. So it’s a highly infectious disease, very contagious,” said Rust, a professor in the Florida State University College of Medicine and director of the university’s Center for Medicine and Public Health, who provides medical expertise to local public health departments.

On Tuesday, Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo wrote in a letter to parents and guardians about the outbreak that it is “normally recommended” for people who have been exposed to measles and who are not vaccinated against the virus or who do not have a history of infection to stay home for up to 21 days, the length of the incubation period for measles. However, his letter leaves that up to choice.

The state health department is “deferring to parents or guardians to make decisions about school attendance,” Ladapo wrote.

The letter contradicts guidance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which states that “unvaccinated children, including those who have a medical or other exemption to vaccination, must be excluded from school through 21 days after their most recent exposure.”

So, “there’s the possibility that children who are not immunized and who are susceptible to measles are attending school, potentially getting measles and then transmitting it to other kids,” Rust said. “Now, you’ve, on the one hand, allowed parents to make their own choices for the child who was not immunized, but you’ve also taken away some choices for those parents who may feel that their children should be protected.”

He added that “most public health experts” would agree that excluding unvaccinated children from the classroom during a measles outbreak protects that child from infection while reducing the risk of the virus spreading.

Measles is a highly contagious disease that can lead to complications and turn deadly, according to the CDC. Symptoms may include fever, cough, runny nose, watery eyes and a rash of red spots. In rare cases, it may lead to pneumonia, encephalitis or death. Measles also can weaken the immune system and may “delete” its immune memory.

“The CDC recommendations are telling us the right thing to do,” Rust said. “For the parents, keep your kid at home if they’re not immunized, and maybe go get them immunized.”

Experts recommend that children get the measles, mumps and rubella or MMR vaccine in two doses: the first between 12 months and 15 months of age, and a second between 4 and 6 years old. One dose is about 93% effective at preventing measles if you come into contact with the virus. Two doses are about 97% effective.

Nationwide, about 92% of US children have gotten the MMR vaccine by age 2, according to a 2023 report from the CDC – below the federal target of 95%.

“Local transmission of measles had been largely eliminated in the US, but we see sporadic outbreaks, especially when immunization levels drop even a little bit,” Rust said.

“If a susceptible person travels overseas and comes in contact with measles, they can bring it back into our communities and transmit it to others while they are still asymptomatic,” he said. “Measles is highly contagious – 90% of unvaccinated people who are exposed are likely to catch it – but vaccinated people are 97% protected.”

The measles virus can spread when an infected person coughs or sneezes, lingering in the air for up to two hours after they leave a room.

Cases have emerged in several states this year. As of Thursday, 35 measles cases have been reported by 15 jurisdictions: Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York City, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington, according to the CDC. In comparison, a total of 58 cases were reported for all of last year.

“We have had scattered cases throughout the years in those who are unvaccinated. Recently, we know from the Louisiana Department of Health that two individuals, both of whom were unvaccinated and had traveled out of state, have been diagnosed with measles in the Greater New Orleans Area,” Dr. Katherine Baumgarten, the system medical director for infection control and prevention at Ochsner Health in New Orleans, wrote in an email Friday.

“Unfortunately, we’ve seen a decrease in the overall vaccination rate for measles as well as other diseases. This is very concerning and can most likely be attributed to children falling behind on the scheduled childhood vaccines through the recent pandemic and overall vaccine hesitancy in recent years,” she said. “With the decrease in vaccination rate, the highly contagious measles virus has reappeared and could spread through the general public among those unvaccinated.”

CNN’s Carlos Suarez contributed to this report.

My Pillow owner and right-wing conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell will have to pay $5 million because of a contest he initiated at one of his “cyber symposium” events after the 2020 election, a federal judge confirmed Wednesday.

Robert Zeidman, a software developer, took Lindell up on a so-called “Prove Mike Wrong” challenge at an event the election-denier hosted. Participants in the challenge could win $5 million if they proved data Lindell provided about the 2020 election wasn’t real election data, according to rules the participants agreed to. The contest allowed participants to arbitrate if needed.

Zeidman responded in the challenge with a 15-page report saying that the data Lindell put forth wasn’t complete or representative of possible data that had been captured in real time from the internet, according to a federal court decision Wednesday.

Zeidman lost the challenge initially, but then took Lindell to arbitration, and won.

Lindell had hoped a federal judge would wipe out the $5 million award to Zeidman. But the judge, John Tunheim of the US District Court in Minnesota, refused to do so on Wednesday.

“The panel was tasked with the difficult job of interpreting a poorly written contract,” Tunheim wrote, about the prior decision to award Zeidman the $5 million. “The Court fails to identify evidence that the panel exceeded its authority,” he added.

“The data was just so obviously bogus,” Zeidman previously told CNN. “It surprised me.”

CNN’s Sara Murray contributed to this report.

Special counsel David Weiss charged a former FBI informant with lying about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden’s involvement in business dealings with Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, undercutting a major aspect of Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into the president.

Alexander Smirnov, 43, is facing charges in connection with lying to the FBI and creating false records. He was arrested Thursday at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, after his arrival in the US from overseas, and will make his initial appearance in federal court Thursday afternoon.

CNN is working to determine whether Smirnov has an attorney.

The indictment alleges that Smirnov’s story to the FBI “was a fabrication, an amalgam of otherwise unremarkable business meetings and contacts that had actually occurred but at a later date than he claimed and for the purpose of pitching Burisma on the Defendant’s services and products, not for discussing bribes to [Joe Biden] when he was in office.”

Congressional Republicans have championed Smirnov’s now-discredited allegations for roughly a year, though not by name. They fought with the FBI to obtain memos about what Smirnov told investigators and publicly released the materials over the FBI’s objections. The congressional Republicans repeatedly praised Smirnov as “credible” and put his uncorroborated claims front-and-center in their impeachment inquiry into the president.

While announcing the impeachment inquiry, then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said “a trusted FBI informant has alleged a bribe to the Biden family.” The FBI is now using some of the same memos that congressional Republicans released as part of their indictment against Smirnov.

House Oversight Chair James Comer said in a Thursday statement to CNN that his investigation into the president does not revolve around Smirnov or his claims made in the FD-1023 – a form the FBI uses to memorialize information gathered from confidential sources – that Republican legislators have cited.

“To be clear, the impeachment inquiry is not reliant on the FBI’s FD-1023. It is based on a large record of evidence, including bank records and witness testimony, revealing that Joe Biden knew of and participated in his family’s business dealings,” the Kentucky Republican said.

He said the FBI had previously defended Smirnov’s credibility.

“When asked by the committee about their confidence in the confidential human source, the FBI told the committee the confidential human source was credible and trusted, had worked with the FBI for over a decade, and had been paid six figures,” Comer added.

According to court records, Smirnov told an FBI agent that he had spoken with the owner of Burisma about the company’s efforts to buy a company in the United States.

As part of his report to the FBI, the indictment alleges, Smirnov also noted that someone referred to as “Businessperson 1” was on the board of Burisma and was also the son of an individual referred to as “Public Official 1.” Though the indictment does not identify these individuals, sources identified “Public Official 1” as Joe Biden and “Businessperson 1” as Hunter Biden.

During Joe Biden’s campaign for presidency, Smirnov allegedly submitted reports to the FBI about two meetings with Burisma executives from 2015 and 2016, during which the executives admitted that they hired Hunter Biden to “protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems.” Smirnov also allegedly reported that executives paid $5 million each to Joe and Hunter Biden while Joe Biden was vice president so that Hunter would “take care of all those issues through his dad,” referring to a criminal investigation being conducted by the then-Ukrainian prosecutor general into Burisma.

“In truth and fact, the Defendant had contact with executives from Burisma in 2017, after the end of the Obama-Biden Administration and after the then Ukrainian Prosecutor General had been fired in February 2016, in other words, when [Joe Biden] had no ability to influence U.S. policy and when the Prosecutor General was no longer in office,” the indictment states.

It continues, “In short, the Defendant transformed his routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against [Joe Biden], the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political parties for President, after expressing bias against [Joe Biden] and his candidacy.”

CNN’s Annie Grayer contributed to this report.