If you’ve ever spent time pondering what to do with that can of beans in your pantry, you’d be better off wondering what you can’t do. No matter what you’re cooking or baking, “the possibilities are endless,” says Maggie Michalczyk, a registered dietitian nutritionist in Chicago. You can add beans to almost anything. Beans are versatile, nutritious, and inexpensive, she says, making them an easy way to jumpstart your protein and fiber goals for the day. One cup of pinto beans, for example, has 18 grams of fiber and 14 grams of protein. Plus, they contain disease-fighting antioxidants, as well as essential nutrients like folate, iron, and potassium. Research suggests regularly eating beans can help prevent heart disease, reduce the risk of colorectal cancer and Type 2 diabetes, and improve gut health. Advertisement Michalczyk uses beans in both sweet and savory dishes. There are more than 400 kinds, which can be overwhelming, so if you’re just starting your legume journey, she advises zeroing in on a few before broadening your repertoire. Chickpeas, for example, “are kind of a blank-slate bean,” she says. “You can season them in lots of different ways.” Black beans are ideal for Mexican dishes and chili, while white beans take on the taste of whatever you add them to, making them a great addition to salads and soups. We asked bean enthusiasts to share their favorite—and most surprising—things to do with beans.

If your doctor told you that a vaccine against dementia was available, would you be interested? According to a study published April 2 in the journal Nature by researchers in the U.S. and Germany, this question might not be hypothetical anymore. The varicella-zoster virus—which causes varicella (chickenpox) in childhood and zoster (shingles) after lying dormant in nerve cells and re-activating later in life—is one virus that scientists have hypothesized can cause dementia, because it infects the nervous system. We have vaccines against both conditions. The chickenpox vaccine protects children from the initial viral infection, and the separate shingles vaccine prevents the virus from reactivating in previously infected adults (which is most adults born before widespread chickenpox vaccination began in the late 1990s), stopping it from causing the painful shingles rash. Advertisement The traditional way to find out if vaccinating adults against this virus could prevent dementia later in life would be to conduct a randomized controlled trial. We’d take a group of adults and randomly divide them into two groups: the “control” group that would get no vaccine, and the “intervention” group that would get the vaccine. Then, we’d look to see if there was a difference in rates of dementia between the two groups over time. The problem here is that because dementia is a disease of old age, we’d have to closely follow thousands of patients, collecting health information over many years—which is no simple task. The researchers behind this new study, including Markus Eyting and Pascal Geldsetzer of Stanford University, didn’t do any of this, though. They were clever enough to realize this experiment had already happened—purely by accident—yet its results remained a mystery waiting to be uncovered.

The Supreme Court on Friday let the Trump administration temporarily suspend $65 million in teacher-training grants that the government contends would promote diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, an early victory for the administration in front of the justices. The court’s order was unsigned, which is typical when the justices act on emergency applications. The temporary pause will remain in effect while the case is appealed. The decision was 5 to 4, with five of the court’s conservatives — Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil M. Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Brett M. Kavanaugh — in the majority. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. voted with the court’s three liberal justices in dissent. The order came in response to one of a series of emergency requests by the Trump administration asking the justices to intervene and overturn lower court rulings that have temporarily blocked parts of President Trump’s agenda. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The grants at issue in the case helped place teachers in poor and rural areas and aimed to recruit a diverse work force reflecting the communities it served. In February, the Education Department sent grant recipients boilerplate form letters ending the funding, saying the programs “fail to serve the best interests of the United States” by taking account of factors other than “merit, fairness and excellence,” and by allowing waste and fraud. Eight states, including California and New York, sued to stop the cuts, arguing that they would undermine both urban and rural school districts, requiring them to hire “long-term substitutes, teachers with emergency credentials and unlicensed teachers on waivers.” Judge Myong J. Joun of the Federal District Court in Massachusetts temporarily ordered the grants to remain available while he considered the lawsuit. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, in Boston, rejected a request from the Trump administration to undo Judge Joun’s order, saying the government’s arguments were based on “speculation and hyperbole.” In temporarily blocking the cancellation of the grants, Judge Joun said that he sought to maintain the status quo. He wrote that if he failed to do so, “dozens of programs upon which public schools, public universities, students, teachers and faculty rely will be gutted.” On the other hand, he reasoned, if he did pause the Trump administration action, the groups would merely continue to receive funds that had been appropriated by Congress.In its brief order, the court said that the challengers had “not refuted” the Trump administration’s claim that “it is unlikely to recover the grant funds once they are disbursed.” By contrast, the order stated, “the government compellingly argues that respondents would not suffer irreparable harm” while the grants are paused. The court said it had relied on statements by the challengers that “they have the financial wherewithal to keep their programs running.”In a dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, countered that allowing the grants to be terminated would “inflict significant harm on grantees — a fact that the government barely contests.” She added: “Worse still, the government does not even deign to defend the lawfulness of its actions.” In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the teacher training efforts would be harmed by the court’s action. “States have consistently represented that the loss of these grants will force them — indeed, has already forced them — to curtail teacher training programs,” she wrote. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT When the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene, Sarah M. Harris, the acting solicitor general, wrote in an emergency application that Judge Joun’s order was one of many lower-court rulings thwarting government initiatives. “The aim is clear: to stop the executive branch in its tracks and prevent the administration from changing direction on hundreds of billions of dollars of government largesse that the executive branch considers contrary to the United States’ interests and fiscal health,” she wrote. She added: “Only this court can right the ship — and the time to do so is now.” In response, the states said that the justices should decide one dispute at a time. The brief added that the cancellation of the grants had not been accompanied by reasoning specific to each grant. The boilerplate letters, it said, “did not explain how the grant-funded programs engaged in any of the purportedly disqualifying activities.”

The New York State Education Department on Friday issued a defiant response to the Trump administration’s threats to pull federal funding from public schools over certain diversity, equity and inclusion programs, a remarkable departure from the conciliatory approach of other institutions in recent weeks. Daniel Morton-Bentley, the deputy commissioner for legal affairs at the state education agency in New York, wrote in a letter to federal education officials that “we understand that the current administration seeks to censor anything it deems ‘diversity, equity & inclusion.’” “But there are no federal or state laws prohibiting the principles of D.E.I.,” Mr. Morton-Bentley wrote, adding that the federal government has not defined what practices it believes violate civil rights protections. The stern letter was sent one day after the federal government issued a memo to education officials across the nation, asking them to confirm the elimination of all programs it argues unfairly promote diversity, equity and inclusion. Title I funding for schools with high percentages of low-income students was at risk pending compliance, federal officials said. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT New York’s stance differed from the muted and often deferential responses across academia and other major institutions to the Trump administration’s threats. Some universities have quietly scrubbed diversity websites and canceled events to comply with executive orders — and to avoid the ire of the White House. A divide emerged last spring as the presidents of several universities, including Harvard and Columbia, adopted cautious responses when confronted by House Republicans at congressional hearings regarding antisemitism. In contrast, K-12 leaders, including David C. Banks, chancellor of New York City’s public schools at the time, took a combative approach. The latest wave of pushback is spreading. In Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson, a Democrat, told reporters on Friday that the city would take the Trump administration to court if it snatched away funding, according to The Chicago Tribune. “We’re not going to be intimidated by these threats,” Mr. Johnson said. “It’s just that simple. So whatever it is that this tyrant is trying to do to this city, we’re going to fight back.” Unlike universities that rely on federal funding for medical and scientific research, public school districts are more insulated from threats to their bottom line because 90 percent of their funding comes from state and local taxes.The Trump administration’s memo used a broad interpretation of a Supreme Court decision in 2023 that declared race-based affirmative action programs were unlawful at colleges and universities. That ruling did not address issues involving K-12 schools. The expansive reasoning did not sit well with New York. The state’s letter argued that the case did “not have the totemic significance that you have assigned it” — and that federal officials were free to make policy pronouncements, but “cannot conflate policy with law.” Mr. Morton-Bentley also called out what he described as an about-face within the top ranks of the administration. He pointed out that the education secretary in President Trump’s first term, Betsy DeVos, once told staff that “diversity and inclusion are the cornerstones of high organizational performance.” She also said that “diversity and inclusion are key elements for success” for “building strong teams,” he wrote. “This is an abrupt shift,” Mr. Morton-Bentley said, adding that the federal government has “provided no explanation for how and why it changed positions.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The Trump administration’s memo included a certification letter confirming compliance that officials must sign and return to the Education Department within 10 days. New York indicated that it would treat the demand as a request rather than a requirement. “No further certification will be forthcoming,” the state’s letter said.

A federal judge permanently barred the Trump administration on Friday from limiting funding from the National Institutes of Health that supports research at universities and academic medical centers, restoring billions of dollars in grant money but setting up an almost certain appeal. The ruling by Judge Angel Kelley, of the Federal District Court in Massachusetts, made an earlier temporary order by her permanent and was one of the first final decisions in the barrage of lawsuits against the Trump administration. But it came about in an unusual way: The government asked the court to enter that very verdict earlier on Friday so it could move ahead with an appeal. The decision nonetheless was an initial win for a diverse assortment of institutions that conduct medical research. After the Trump administration announced the policy change in February, scores of research hospitals and universities issued dire warnings that the proposal threatened to kneecap American scientific prowess and innovation, estimating that the change could force those institutions to collectively cover a nearly $4 billion shortfall. Under the Trump administration’s plan, the National Institutes of Health could cap the funding it provides to cover the “indirect costs” of research — for things like maintenance of buildings, utilities and support staff — at 15 percent in the grants it hands out. Historically, when the agency awarded grants, it could allocate close to 50 percent in some cases to cover the indirect costs associated with a given study. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The Trump administration said it had conceived of the policy as a way of freeing up more federal dollars to pay for research directly — covering scientists’ salaries or buying necessary equipment — as opposed to the many tangential costs that hospitals and laboratories incur in maintaining their facilities and other overhead expenses. But critics described that reasoning as disingenuous, as the changes the administration had proposed would paradoxically force institutions to cover the bill, and most likely shed staff and scale down research projects in the process. During hearings in February, lawyers described a dizzying array of laboratories under construction and clinical drug trials underway that institutions would be forced to abandon if they had to cover overhead costs on their own, more or less overnight. Judge Kelley had consistently agreed, ruling repeatedly that the policy appeared unnecessarily reckless and would inflict serious harm on important medical research. After initially barring the Trump administration from implementing the change in February, she extended her order twice while the lawsuit played out. The government wrote that the case presented “dispositive legal issues” that it would address more fully when the case reached a court of appeals. Editors’ Picks His Life Savings Were Mailed to Him by Paper Check. Now, It’s Gone. Timothée Chalamet Is Living a Knicks Fan’s Dream It’s Time to Put Away Your Winter Clothes. Here’s How to Store Them Safely. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The decision also came as the scientific and research community was grappling with even more dire threats to its work from the avalanche of cuts recently to the Department of Health and Human Services. Many of the grant officers at the National Institutes of Health and other divisions appeared to have been swept up in those layoffs. Earlier on Friday, a coalition of 16 states sued the Trump administration over the withholding of grants that cover the direct costs of medical research, arguing that those, too, had been suspended, leaving research in those states in more explicit jeopardy.

Donald Trump has called tariffs the “most beautiful word” in the dictionary. He’s said they will make Americans “rich” and restructure the economy for the better. Standing in the Rose Garden on Wednesday, with political and business leaders around the world watching closely, Trump bet his faith in tariffs against the hard reality of economics as he launched what is expected to be one of the single largest increases in U.S. trade barriers in a century. Trump announced he was signing an executive order “instituting reciprocal tariffs on countries throughout the world. Reciprocal—that means they do it to us and we do it to them.” In practice, the White House said that will translate into a new 10 percent tariff on all imported goods, and additional import taxes on 60 other countries. Those additional tariffs vary and were determined by looking at the rules in those countries around U.S. exports, according to the White House. Trump’s new tariff regime will be on top of various tariffs the U.S. already has in place, and ones Trump had already set in motion targeting imports of cars, steel and aluminum. The reciprocal tariffs would go into effect Thursday, he said. Speaking to staff, cabinet secretaries and reporters gathered outside the West Wing, Trump gave a rambling and sometimes contradictory explanation of his tariff plan. He said that his administration would calculate what a country charges the U.S. imports through tariffs, “non-monetary barriers and other forms of cheating” and would charge the country half of that in a flat rate. The new tariffs were not a “full reciprocal,” he said. “I would like to have done that.” Reading from a large chart, he said goods coming from China, for example, would be charged a duty of 34%, goods from the European Union would carry a 20% tariff, Vietnam would have 35% and Taiwan 32%. An eight-page chart handed out to reporters in the Rose Garden listed 60 countries as being charged rates above the baseline of 10%. Trump had previously announced a separate 25% tariff on all auto imports that is slated to kick in on April 3. He’s imposed 20% tariffs on all imports coming from China and put in place 25% duties on steel and aluminum. He had previously delayed 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada over his accusation that those countries weren’t doing enough to stop fentanyl from coming to the U.S. That delayed tariff kicks in Wednesday and will be stacked on top of the new sweeping tariffs Trump announced. Trump has called the day of his announcement “Liberation Day” and billed it as a moment he is remaking the American economy. He promised that income from the new tariffs would reduce taxes and pay down U.S. debt. American businesses have struggled in recent weeks to plan ahead as Trump’s tariff threats have injected so much uncertainty into their supply chains. Stock indices have dipped. Expectations of inflation have soared. Investors are rattled. Last month, JPMorgan Chase lowered its prediction for GDP growth by 0.3% because of the uncertainty around Trump’s trade policy. Leading economists say the costs of tariffs are mostly passed on to consumers. On the campaign trail last year, Trump often disputed that. More recently, he has said Americans will have to brace for some temporary economic pain in order to strengthen the U.S. economy over the longer term. But he didn’t mention that on Wednesday. Trump's announcement will test his support among Republicans in Congress—all of whom will be hearing about the fallout from their constituents. Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley expressed concerns about how the new tariffs will impact farmers in his state. As an example of the ripple effect, he pointed to potash, a fertilizer from Canada that is essential for soybean production. “If that goes up by 25% that's going to hurt the family farm already not making money,” he tells TIME.

The Trump Administration is withholding millions of dollars allocated for family planning services from more than a dozen organizations. Enacted in 1970, the federal family planning program known as Title X makes millions of dollars available to clinics that provide health care services like birth control, cancer screenings, and STI testing for people from low-income households. On March 31, Planned Parenthood—one of the largest Title X providers—said in a press release that nine of its affiliates received notices from the federal government that their Title X funding would be withheld starting April 1. According to Planned Parenthood, more than three-quarters of its affiliates receive Title X funding, and in 2023, there were more than 1.5 million visits to Planned Parenthood health centers that received Title X funding. One of the nine affiliates affected is Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawai’i, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky (PPGNHAIK), which serves those four states as well as Idaho and western Washington. Its CEO, Rebecca Gibron, estimates that, as a result of the freeze, about $3 million a year will now be withheld from five of the six states PPGNHAIK serves: Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Alaska, and Hawaii. Gibron says that over half of PPGNHAIK’s health centers across six states serve more than 40,000 patients a year through Title X. “In our states, we are a safety net provider providing affordable birth control, cancer screenings, STI testing, and treatment,” Gibron says. “These patients rely on Title X for their health care, and without this program, patients may have no access to this care at all.” Planned Parenthood Action Fund President and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson said in a press release that if people aren’t able to access this care, cancers could go undetected, access to birth control could be reduced, and sexually transmitted infections could increase. A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) told TIME in an email that the department is withholding Title X funds from 16 organizations “pending an evaluation of possible violations of their grant terms, including based on Federal civil rights laws and the President’s Executive Order 14218, ‘Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders,’” which Trump signed on Feb. 19. The Executive Order declares that undocumented immigrants are prohibited “from obtaining most taxpayer-funded benefits.” “HHS is conducting this evaluation to ensure these entities are in full compliance with Federal law and applicable grant terms, and to ensure responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars,” the spokesperson said. They did not respond to questions about the details of the “possible violations,” how much money was being withheld from the affected organizations, and which organizations were being impacted by the funding freeze. On March 25, the Wall Street Journal reported that HHS was considering freezing $27.5 million out of the more than $200 million allocated for Title X’s annual budget. Gibron calls the withholding of funds "politically motivated.” She accuses the Trump Administration of wanting to “shut down Planned Parenthood health centers to appease their anti-abortion backers,” saying that the Title X freeze is the “latest attempt” by the Administration to defund Planned Parenthood. “The fact is that Planned Parenthood health centers across the country serve millions of patients every year, regardless of their immigration status, political affiliation, race, or gender—everyone is welcome in a Planned Parenthood health center,” Gibron says. “Access to fundamental reproductive and sexual health services is health care that everyone needs.” In 2019, during the first Trump Administration, the federal government implemented a new restriction on Title X recipients, barring them from providing abortion referrals (Title X dollars don’t fund abortion services). The Guttmacher Institute, which researches and supports sexual and reproductive health and rights, found that that the restriction—often referred to as the“domestic gag rule”—combined with the COVID-19 pandemic, led to the loss of 981 health care centers from the Title X program and resulted in about 2.4 million fewer patients receiving care through the federal program in 2020 compared with 2018. The Biden Administration rescinded the domestic gag rule in 2021. Essential Access Health, which distributes Title X funds to clinics in California and Hawaii, said in a press release shared with TIME that it also received a notice that its Title X funds were being temporarily withheld while the group responds to “an inquiry regarding compliance with federal policy and practices related to civil rights and Executive Orders focused on DEI activities within 10 days.” The day he took office, Trump signed an Executive Order aimed at dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts. “This unprecedented, arbitrary, and immediate pause in distribution of critical resources is harmful to patients and providers,” Essential Access Health said in a press release shared with TIME. “Any funding delay is detrimental, and an extended delay would devastate our family planning safety net.” On April 3, 162 House Democrats signed and sent a letter to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., urging the department to restore the Title X funds that were being withheld. The letter, shared exclusively with TIME, called Title X “a cornerstone of safety-net care” and said that “freezing funds for this essential program will harm communities that otherwise may not have access to care.” “We hope your agency will not be so reckless as to upend nearly half a century of bipartisan achievement and place Title X on the [Department of Government Efficiency] chopping block without hearing firsthand the consequences of that action,” the letter said. HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the letter on April 3. Reproductive rights experts have condemned the Trump Administration’s move to freeze Title X funds. Amy Friedrich-Karnik, director of federal policy at the Guttmacher Institute, says she wasn’t shocked by the move, but that it is “absolutely devastating.” According to Friedrich-Karnik, early estimates from Guttmacher Institute experts indicate that between 600,000 and 1.25 million people could be impacted by this funding freeze annually, based on the most recently available data on Title X from 2023. “The impact of that program on people’s access to needed reproductive health care services is so clear—how people have benefitted from that access and how it is a program that fills a very important gap for folks who can’t get health care elsewhere," Friedrich-Karnik says. “Not only are reproductive health care services like contraception, STI testing, cancer screenings at risk, [but] for many people, this is their only touchpoint with the health care system at all.” According to data from the HHS Office of Population Affairs, about 83% of patients who received care from clinics that received Title X funding in 2023 had family incomes at or below 250% of the federal poverty level. Friedrich-Karnik says data also shows that people of color are disproportionately likely to access Title X services. She calls the freeze “a direct attack on health equity,” adding that Title X was established “to ensure that historically underserved communities were able to access health care and reproductive health care,” and the Trump Administration’s actions are penalizing Title X recipients “for doing exactly what the program is set up to do.” Friedrich-Karnik says that the freeze is “definitely an attack” on people from low-income households, “who already have the most barriers to accessing health care services.”

Floodwaters covered highways from Arkansas to Ohio. Schools in waterlogged communities called off Friday classes. And river towns across the South and Midwest piled up sandbags ahead of a weekend when forecasters expect intense rain and major floods. The preparations for heavy flooding intensified on Thursday following an outbreak of tornadoes and heavy winds overnight. The storm leveled homes and businesses and killed at least seven people in three states, including a fire chief in Missouri and a teenage girl in Tennessee. At least two offices of the National Weather Service have said they are delaying or skipping sending staff into the field to survey damage from this week’s severe weather, a key step that meteorologists usually use to confirm whether or not a tornado has struck. On Wednesday night, the Weather Service office in Louisville, Ky., said in a statement to local news organizations that it would be unable to do storm surveys because of the active threat of severe weather, a concern that was echoed on Thursday by Justin Gibbs, the meteorologist in charge of the Paducah, Ky., office, who said the ongoing rain and flooding would slow down the survey process. McNairy County in Tennessee, one of the hardest-hit areas of the state and where at least one person has been killed by the storms, is experiencing “widespread communications issues,” the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency said in a statement. The officials said that several inches of rain and damaging winds continue to threaten western Tennessee, including McNairy County, through the end of Thursday and potentially on Saturday.

Last year was a busy hurricane season with storm after storm racing across the Caribbean, bringing multiple storms ashore in Florida, ravaging rains to the Carolina mountains and strong winds to downtown Houston; another robust season is likely to occur in the Atlantic in 2025. Phil Klotzbach, a researcher at Colorado State University, said that this year’s season was likely to be an above-average — but not hyperactive — one. In his team’s annual forecast on Thursday, the researchers said they expected a hectic season of 17 named storms, including nine hurricanes — four of them potentially reaching major status, meaning Category 3 or higher. In a typical season, there are 14 named storms with seven hurricanes, three of them major. “Things aren’t as primed as they were last year at this time,” Dr. Klotzbach said. “We’re still dealing with pesky heat in the subtropical eastern Atlantic and Caribbean. That combo historically has led to busy hurricane seasons.” In April of last year, this same team forecast an extremely active season, and their forecast looked reasonably accurate. Storms took off early in the season with Beryl, which set a record for the earliest point in a season that a storm has ever reached a Category 5. Then, at the peak of hurricane season, everything went quiet. There was a long lull, and questions over whether the forecast was a bust, but then the Atlantic ignited again, producing storms like Helene, which lashed Florida before bringing damaging flooding to the southern Appalachians, and Milton, which launched itself just south of Tampa, bringing terrifying tornadoes up and down the Florida peninsula. Last year had so many destructive storms that the World Meteorological Organization, which is responsible for naming hurricanes, announced on Wednesday that it had retired the names of three Atlantic storms: Beryl, Helene and Milton. Names are on a six-year rotation, but are retired when a storm causes significant damage or noteworthy activity. This year, Dr. Klotzbach’s team said, they expect an above-average probability of major hurricanes to make landfall along the continental United States coastline and in the Caribbean. Dr. Klotzbach and his colleagues projected some probabilities that a major hurricane may affect the United States: about a 3 percent chance of one coming within 50 miles of New York and a 35 percent chance for Florida. This is slightly above the regular occurrence of 2 percent for New York and 29 percent for Florida in an average season. This year, they believe, the steering current around a high-pressure system in the Atlantic may tend to be stronger. In a hurricane season without El Niño, like this one is likely to be, that would push storms farther to the west and create more favorable conditions for storms to form in the western half of the Atlantic basin. “We certainly saw that difference in 2023 compared to 2024,” Dr. Klotzbach said. It’s reasonable to take this forecast with a grain of sea salt; the seasonal forecast in April hasn’t always been the most accurate. Colorado State University’s April forecast for the 2023 hurricane season called for a slightly below-average season with 13 named storms. Instead, there were 20. But Dr. Klotzbach says the accuracy of the April forecast is improving.

At least two offices of the National Weather Service have said they are delaying or skipping sending staff into the field to survey damage from this week’s severe weather, a key step that meteorologists usually use to confirm whether or not a tornado has struck. On Wednesday night, the Weather Service office in Louisville, Ky., said in a statement to local news organizations that it would be unable to do storm surveys because of the active threat of severe weather, a concern that was echoed on Thursday by Justin Gibbs, the meteorologist in charge of the Paducah, Ky., office, who said the ongoing rain and flooding would slow down the survey process. The statement from the Louisville office also cited a “lack of available staffing” as one of its reasons, prompting some to question whether the Weather Service, which has faced significant staffing cuts under the Trump administration, was able to perform its mission. In February, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is the parent agency of the Weather Service, cut hundreds of employees, and more are expected. Last month, forecasters temporarily reduced balloon launches at a handful of sites, eliminating some of the data that produces weather forecast models. Officials have declined to speculate on future impacts. Ryan Sharp, the acting meteorologist in charge in Louisville, said his office was focused on addressing the flood concerns and the ongoing severe threats. The statement, he said, was intended to indicate that some of the staff had taken leave for spring break, and he added that those employees have since returned to work.