Robert F. Kennedy

As fluoride skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. starts his first full week as Health and Human Services Secretary, debate over community water fluoridation simmers.

Dr. Mandy Cohen is director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but she will be leaving office in January after about 18 months in the job. President-elect Donald Trump on Friday night said he picked Dave Weldon, a former Congressman from Florida, to be the agency’s next chief.

North Carolina's first absentee ballots for the November election will now be distributed starting late next week.

Ordered by the North Carolina Supreme Court to reprint absentee ballots, the state elections board said it's unsure when it can start sending ballots to voters who have requested them.

The highest courts in two states have ruled differently on efforts by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be removed from their presidential ballots. A divided North Carolina Supreme Court affirmed late Monday that he should be omitted from that state's ballots.

A last-minute order from the North Carolina Court of Appeals blocked state elections officials from proceeding with the statutory start of mailing out absentee ballots.

The North Carolina Court of Appeals has ordered the State Board of Elections to stop printing ballots. The mail-in ballots were supposed to start going out Friday. The Court of Appeals instead says the ballots must be re-printed without Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s name.

A state trial judge denied Kennedy's request for a temporary restraining order to delay the start of sending out absentee ballots and an order that elections officials remove his name.

In a hearing the day before absentee ballots are set to start getting sent out to North Carolina voters, a Wake County Superior Court judge will consider Robert F. Kennedy's demand to have his name removed.

While Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sues to get removed from North Carolina's ballot, the presidential candidate is fighting for access to New York's ballot.