BOSTON (AP) — Two-time defending U.S. champion Amber Glenn survived the interminable wait to get back on the ice Friday night after she had fallen in her short program at the figure skating world championships.
Then came an even more painful turn in the new leader’s chair, which was introduced this year to bring athletes closer to the fans, and where Glenn sat bathed in bright lights until someone surpassed her score. At one point, the camera cut to Glenn and she was shown on the TD Garden scoreboards and TV monitors while she distractedly scrolled through her phone.
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Isabeau Levito, of the United States, performs during the women's free skating program at the figure skating world championships, Friday, March 28, 2025, in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Isabeau Levito, of the United States, performs during the women's free skating program at the figure skating world championships, Friday, March 28, 2025, in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Amber Glenn, of the United States, performs during the women's free skating program at the figure skating world championships, Friday, March 28, 2025, in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Amber Glenn, of the United States, performs during the women's free skating program at the figure skating world championships, Friday, March 28, 2025, in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Amber Glenn, of the United States, performs during the women's free skating program at the figure skating world championships, Friday, March 28, 2025, in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Amber Glenn, of the United States, performs during the women's free skating program at the figure skating world championships, Friday, March 28, 2025, in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
“I don’t love it,” she told reporters with a wince. “Awkward and stressful.”
She may have skated to “I Will Find You” by Audiomachine.
But her personal mantra is more like “The Waiting is the Hardest Part.”
“I kept thinking, ‘OK, 10 minutes and it’s over' — you know, counting down until I was done,” Glenn said. “Just because it’s been such a tough two months of training since nationals.”
Not long after Glenn finished, Alysa Liu became the first American women’s figure skating world champion since Kimmie Meissner in 2006, dethroning three-time defending champion Kaori Sakamoto on Friday with a free skate that earned her the biggest of the standing ovations of the night for a U.S. contingent that placed three skaters in the top five.
Mone Chiba of Japan earned bronze, American Isabeau Levito was fourth and Glenn came in fifth — a disappointing finish for one of the favorites heading into the event, but quite a climb from ninth place after falling on her opening triple axel Wednesday.
“Go Team USA. That’s all I can say,” Liu said. “I’m so proud of both Isabeau and Amber for putting up such great performances and such great fight. They were really fun to be with this week.”
A 25-year-old from Plano, Texas, who was unbeaten heading into worlds, Glenn landed that same triple axel in her free skate. She made a minor mistake on her triple lutz-double toe combination, and had to change up a couple of jumps for simpler options in the middle of the program, but she still posted a solid free-skate score of 138.00 points.
“Of course, I’m upset about making a mistake on my easiest jump,” she said. “But I’m proud of myself for fighting.”
Glenn received a huge ovation from the American crowd – some of them waving rainbow flags for the outspoken bisexual and pansexual skater – and a torrent of stuffed animals poured onto the ice.
“They really got me through the program, even after mistakes,” she said. “It startled me after the loop going into my axel-axel because I went to step and the crowd went wild” -- she gasped -- “I went ‘Oh, shoot.’ But I walked back in, so I was proud of that.”
Talking to reporters while Levito skated — and insisting that they leave a clear view of the monitor as she rooted on her U.S. teammate — Glenn said she was happy to bounce back after her disappointing short program.
“I did not feel good physically here. I felt horrible, mentally," she said. “So, coming into this event, I didn’t exactly feel like the powerful (fighter) that I need to be in my short program. I kind of felt a bit timid, and I’m just happy I was able to fight through that.”
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Isabeau Levito, of the United States, performs during the women's free skating program at the figure skating world championships, Friday, March 28, 2025, in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Isabeau Levito, of the United States, performs during the women's free skating program at the figure skating world championships, Friday, March 28, 2025, in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Amber Glenn, of the United States, performs during the women's free skating program at the figure skating world championships, Friday, March 28, 2025, in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Amber Glenn, of the United States, performs during the women's free skating program at the figure skating world championships, Friday, March 28, 2025, in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Amber Glenn, of the United States, performs during the women's free skating program at the figure skating world championships, Friday, March 28, 2025, in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Amber Glenn, of the United States, performs during the women's free skating program at the figure skating world championships, Friday, March 28, 2025, in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Employees across the massive U.S. Health and Human Services Department received notices Tuesday that their jobs were being eliminated, part of a sweeping overhaul designed to vastly shrink the agencies responsible for protecting and promoting Americans’ health.
The cuts include researchers, scientists, doctors, support staff and senior leaders, leaving the federal government without many of the key experts who have long guided U.S. decisions on medical research, drug approvals and other issues.
“The revolution begins today!” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote on social media as he celebrated the swearing-in of his latest hires: Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the new director of the National Institutes of Health and Martin Makary, the new Food and Drug Administration commissioner. Kennedy's post came just hours after employees began receiving emailed layoff notices. He later wrote “Our hearts go out to those who have lost their jobs” but said that the department needs to be “recalibrated" to emphasize disease prevention.
Kennedy announced a plan last week to remake the department, which, through its agencies, is responsible for tracking health trends and disease outbreaks, conducting and funding medical research, and monitoring the safety of food and medicine, as well as for administering health insurance programs for nearly half the country.
The plan would consolidate agencies that oversee billions of dollars for addiction services and community health centers under a new office called the Administration for a Healthy America.
HHS said layoffs are expected to save $1.8 billion annually — about 0.1% — from the department’s $1.7 trillion budget, most of which is spent on Medicare and Medicaid health insurance coverage for millions of Americans.
The layoffs are expected to shrink HHS to 62,000 positions, lopping off nearly a quarter of its staff — 10,000 jobs through layoffs and another 10,000 workers who took early retirement and voluntary separation offers. Many of the jobs are based in the Washington area, but also in Atlanta, where the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is based, and in smaller offices throughout the country.
Some staffers began getting termination notices in their work inboxes at 5 a.m., while others found out their jobs had been eliminated after standing in long lines outside offices in Washington, Maryland and Atlanta to see if their badges still worked. Some gathered at local coffee shops and lunch spots after being turned away, finding out they had been eliminated after decades of service.
One wondered aloud if it was a cruel April Fools' Day joke.
At the NIH, cuts included at least four directors of the NIH’s 27 institutes and centers who were put on administrative leave, and nearly entire communications staffs were terminated, according to an agency senior leader, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution.
An email viewed by The Associated Press shows some senior-level employees of the Bethesda, Maryland, campus who were placed on leave were offered a possible transfer to the Indian Health Service in locations including Alaska and given until the end of Wednesday to respond.
At least nine high-level CDC directors were placed on leave and were also offered reassignments to the Indian Health Service. Some public health experts outside the agency saw it as a bid to get veteran agency leaders to resign.
At CDC, union officials said programs eliminated because of the layoffs focused on smoking, lead poisoning, gun violence, asthma and air quality, and occupational safety and health. The entire office that handles Freedom of Information Act requests was shuttered. Infectious disease programs took a hit, too, including programs that fight outbreaks in other countries and labs focused on HIV and hepatitis in the U.S. and staff trying to eliminate tuberculosis.
At the FDA, dozens of staffers who regulate drugs, food, medical devices and tobacco products received notices, including the entire office responsible for drafting new regulations for electronic cigarettes and other tobacco products. The notices came as the FDA’s tobacco chief was removed from his position. Elsewhere at the agency, more than a dozen press officers and communications supervisors were notified that their jobs would be eliminated.
“The FDA as we’ve known it is finished, with most of the leaders with institutional knowledge and a deep understanding of product development and safety no longer employed," said former FDA Commissioner Robert Califf in an online post. Califf stepped down at the end of the Biden administration.
The layoff notices came just days after President Donald Trump moved to strip workers of their collective bargaining rights at HHS and other agencies throughout the government.
Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington predicted the cuts will have ramifications when natural disasters strike or infectious diseases, like the ongoing measles outbreak, spread.
“They may as well be renaming it the Department of Disease because their plan is putting lives in serious jeopardy,” Murray said Friday.
The intent of cuts to the CDC seems to be to create “a much smaller, infectious disease agency,” but it is destroying a wide array of work and collaborations that have enabled local and national governments to be able to prevent deaths and respond to emergencies, said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.
Cuts were less drastic at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, where Trump's Republican administration wants to avoid the appearance of debilitating the health insurance programs that cover roughly half of Americans, many of them poor, disabled and elderly.
But the impact will still be felt, with the department slashing much of the workforce at the Office of Minority Health.
Jeffrey Grant, a former CMS deputy director, said the office is not part of a diversity, equity and inclusion program, the kind Trump's Republican administration has sought to end.
“This is not a DEI initiative. This is meeting people where they are and meeting their specific health needs,” said Grant, who resigned last month and now helps place laid-off CMS employees into new jobs.
Beyond layoffs at federal health agencies, cuts are beginning at state and local health departments as a result of an HHS move last week to pull back more than $11 billion in COVID-19-related money. Some health departments have identified hundreds of jobs that stand to be eliminated, “some of them overnight, some of them are already gone,” said Lori Tremmel Freeman, chief executive of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.
A coalition of state attorneys general sued the Trump administration on Tuesday, arguing the cuts are illegal, would reverse progress on the opioid crisis and would throw mental health systems into chaos.
HHS has not provided additional details or comments about Tuesday’s mass firings, but on Thursday it provided a breakdown of some of the cuts.
—3,500 jobs at the FDA, which inspects and sets safety standards for medications, medical devices and foods.
—2,400 jobs at the CDC, which monitors for infectious disease outbreaks and works with public health agencies nationwide.
—1,200 jobs at the NIH, the world’s leading medical research agency.
—300 jobs at the CMS, which oversees the Affordable Care Act marketplace, Medicare and Medicaid.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Chris Van Beneden, left, who worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 25 years, and Julie Edelson, who worked there for 10, protest in support of the CDC in front of its Atlanta headquarters on Tuesday, April 1, 2025 after layoffs were announced. (AP Photo/Ben Gray)
People protest in support of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in front of the headquarters in Atlanta on Tuesday, April 1, 2025 after layoffs were announced. (AP Photo/Ben Gray)
Lynn Sokler, who retired from the CDC three weeks ago after working there almost two decades, protests with others in support of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in front of the headquarters in Atlanta, Tuesday, April 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Ben Gray)
Barbara Marston, who retired from the CDC in 2022 after working there over two decades, is reflected in the window of a car leaving the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta, Tuesday, April 1, 2025, after layoffs were announced. (AP Photo/Ben Gray)
Barbara Marston, who retired from the CDC in 2022 after working there over two decades, makes a heart for a person leaving the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta, Tuesday, April 1, 2025, after layoffs were announced. (AP Photo/Ben Gray)
Peter Cegielski, who retired from the CDC in 2020 after working there over two decades, protests in support of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in front of the headquarters in Atlanta, Tuesday, April 1, 2025, after layoffs were announced. (AP Photo/Ben Gray)
People protest in support of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in front of the headquarters in Atlanta, Tuesday, April 1, 2025 after layoffs were announced. (AP Photo/Ben Gray)
Lynn Sokler, who retired from the CDC three weeks ago after working there almost two decades, protests with others in support of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in front of the headquarters in Atlanta, on Tuesday, April 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Ben Gray)
This Tuesday, April 1, 2025 photo shows the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention building in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Ben Gray)
Chris Van Beneden, who worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 25 years, protests in support of the CDC in front of its Atlanta headquarters on Tuesday, April 1, 2025 after layoffs were announced. (AP Photo/Ben Gray)
A sign about tuberculosis taped to a light pole across the street from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta on Tuesday, April 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Ben Gray)
Chris Van Beneden, left, who worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 25 years, and Julie Edelson, who worked there for 10, protest in support of the CDC in front of its Atlanta headquarters on Tuesday, April 1, 2025 after layoffs were announced. (AP Photo/Ben Gray)
People protest outside of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta on Tuesday, April 1, 2025 after layoffs were announced. (AP Photo/Ben Gray)
Hundreds of employees wait in line wrapped around the outside of the Health and Human Services headquarters building, Tuesday morning, April 1, 2025 in Washington. (AP Photo/Amanda Seitz)
Hundreds of employees wait in line wrapped around the outside of the Health and Human Services headquarters building, Tuesday morning, April 1, 2025 in Washington. (AP Photo/Amanda Seitz)
Hundreds of employees wait in line wrapped around the outside of the Health and Human Services headquarters building, Tuesday morning, April 1, 2025 in Washington. (AP Photo/Amanda Seitz)
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks during an event announcing proposed changes to SNAP and food dye legislation, Friday, March 28, 2025, in Martinsburg, W. Va. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
FILE - The Department of Health and Human Services building is seen in Washington, April 5, 2009.(AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
