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WASHINGTON — The ads were jarring: a man with a hole in his throat where his larynx, or voice box, had once been. A woman whose teeth and jaw had been removed after oral cancer. Another woman speaking in a robotic voice, which was altered when her larynx was removed: “I wish I’d never seen a cigarette in my entire life.” A black screen followed, saying she died two days later.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 14-year ad campaign, called Tips From Former Smokers, was highly memorable and, research shows, highly effective in motivating people to quit. Last year, though, as tobacco companies gave millions to political organizations related to the Trump administration, the campaign went dark.

There is no definitive evidence linking the donations to the lapse of the ad campaign. But the decision to terminate it was one of several steps the administration has taken to unravel federal government antismoking initiatives that had long had bipartisan support during a time when the administration has delivered significant policy wins to tobacco companies.

The CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health, which managed the campaign and worked with states on smoking cessation measures, has been shut down for more than a year, after its staff was laid off as part of the administration’s government downsizing efforts. While hundreds of other federal health employees were eventually rehired, the smoking office staff members have not been.

Even after Congress restored the office’s funding late last summer, its employees have remained on paid leave as litigation challenging the firings plays out.

In recent weeks, under pressure from Congress, the CDC has given states diminished funding to air ads from the campaign’s archive, but the federal government will not produce new ads or negotiate contracts for them to air nationwide. The ads had prompted millions of smokers to dial state quit lines for help on how to stop smoking. In interviews, people who ran quit lines in several states said that since the ads went off the air, calls have plummeted along with enrollment in programs that offered counseling and nicotine gum and patches.

The abandonment of an effort that was widely regarded as a public health triumph has puzzled antismoking activists who point out that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s platform was based on ending chronic diseases, which are a well-known consequence of smoking.

“We find it very ironic in an administration that wants to make America healthy again that we’re cutting all of these resources related to smoking and vaping,” said Nancy Brown, CEO of the American Heart Association.

Helping adults stop smoking is one of the most evidence-backed ways to improve the public’s health. Smoking rates in the United States have fallen significantly, to less than 10% of adults, compared with 42% of adults in the early 1960s. Still, smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death and disease in the country, causing about 490,000 premature deaths each year.

A national survey of adults who smoked from 2012 through 2018 found that the Tips from Former Smokers campaign was associated with more than 16 million people attempting to quit smoking and 1 million succeeding. During those years alone, the campaign was associated with saving an estimated $7.3 billion in healthcare costs.

“It’s crazy that they have cut this funding if they really want to save lives and save money,” said Sally Herndon, who ran North Carolina’s tobacco control program until her retirement last year.

Emily Hilliard, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement that the CDC “remains committed to tobacco prevention and control and continues to support this priority through outreach, education, and surveillance.”

The cuts have come as tobacco companies have aggressively lobbied the administration for policy changes that would likely increase their market share of vaping and other nicotine products.

The New York Times recently reported that Reynolds American, which makes Newport and Camel cigarettes, saw a coveted new federal policy take shape that would allow an entire new class of flavored e-cigarettes onto the market. The initiative was announced just days after a $5 million donation and lunch with President Donald Trump at his golf course in Florida. Executives from Altria, which makes Marlboro cigarettes, were also present.

The new policy was crafted over the objections of Marty Makary, then the FDA commissioner, who cited it as the reason for his resignation in May. It stunned some public health experts, who say the FDA set aside one of its central authorities: to approve or reject individual products based on their merits.

“It’s very clear this guidance is a gift to the tobacco industry on a silver platter with a side of public health malpractice,” said Brian King, a former leader of the FDA’s tobacco division and executive vice president for U.S. programs of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

Opponents of the policy say flavored vapes will introduce young people who have never smoked to nicotine products.

But Hilliard, the health department spokesperson, said the FDA was focused on protecting youth and a “science-based review process for tobacco products.”

She added: “Cigarette smoking remains the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the United States. And the agency supports the development of products that may provide less harmful alternatives for adults who smoke.”

The federal cuts to antismoking programs and what some view as lenient new policies represent a reversal of decades of setbacks for tobacco companies under both Democratic and Republican administrations.

The CDC’s shuttered Office on Smoking and Health employed experts on effective tobacco interventions who worked with state health officials to advance antismoking policies such as bans on indoor smoking, higher tobacco taxes, and education for parents about e-cigarettes.

The office sent most of its $240 million budget to states each year, but shortly after laying off the staff, in April 2025, the CDC notified states that their annual funding for tobacco control would not be coming.

Many state tobacco control offices cut their own staff as a result, including in New York, Texas, and North Carolina. Late last year, Congress reinstated some funding to states that had relied on the CDC office for expertise.

“We know that we really save lives and save money with tobacco prevention and control,” said Herndon, who until recently led North Carolina’s tobacco control efforts. “But without the training and technical assistance and support from the Office on Smoking and Health, a lot of the newer staff coming along are struggling to know what to do.”

The Tips From Former Smokers campaign went off the air around September of last year, though some larger states such as New York and California continued to run some antismoking ads.

Since then, calls to 1-800-QUIT-NOW lines — which traditionally experience a 30% spike in the weeks after an ad campaign — have fallen off significantly.

National data on the quit line call volume was not compiled for the last year after the federal employee in charge was let go, said Thomas Ylioja, president of the North American Quitline Consortium.

But at Quit for Life, an organization that operates quit lines in 19 states, Guam, and Washington, D.C., calls fell by 25% in the first half of 2026 compared with the first half of 2025 when the ads were on the air, according to Nick Fradkin, the group’s director of public health strategy.

Officials in other states said calls had fallen off too — by about 45% in Texas, 25% in California, and 18% in New York. In Virginia, enrollment in the quit line counseling services fell by half from October 2025 through February 2026, said Logan Anderson, a spokesperson for the Virginia Department of Health.

In recent weeks, the CDC offered $40 million, down from the usual $65 million, for states to air archived antismoking ads. It is unclear whether new ads will be created.

In North Carolina, at least, “we don’t have the media machine that produced those fabulous ads,” Herndon said.

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. — At the base of Yosemite Falls, where white waters roared down a granite cliff, a couple jockeyed through dense crowds to try to take the perfect waterfall selfie. A family of five traded off resting in the single available seat on a wooden bench. A tourist tripped over a toddler, who fell and began wailing.

There was one spectacle at Yosemite National Park last weekend not in the glossy brochures: the visitors themselves.

The crown jewel of the nation’s park system, Yosemite is even more crowded than usual this year, after a decision by the Trump administration to do away with summer reservations here and at other popular parks.

In the first half of 2026, visitors to and employees of California’s regal wilderness park reported hourslong traffic jams, waits at entrance stations, and long lines just to purchase a bite to eat.

Employees of Yosemite and organizations that support it say that the hordes of visitors are demoralizing staff and damaging the park, as well as its reputation. Many visitors are determined to make the most of their visit, even with long waits. But some travelers have abandoned their plans altogether and driven out of the park’s gates after being turned away from every at-capacity major attraction.

”This is a far cry from the awe-inspiring sights Yosemite is known for,” the state’s two U.S. senators, Democrats Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, wrote in a letter last week to the administration criticizing the cancellation of Yosemite’s reservation system.

July is already the busiest month across national parks. And at Yosemite, it’s shaping up to be chaotic.

On the morning of July 3, so many people had already arrived at Yosemite Valley, known for its sprawling meadows and towering palace of granite rock faces, that by 7 a.m. drivers were circling lot after lot as they tried to find a spot.

“The traffic is terrible in the park,” said Lakshmi Duddukuru, 41, who spent 45 minutes of her first trip to Yosemite searching for a parking space. She spoke as she scaled the steep Mist Trail, where throngs of hikers were ascending in a slowly snaking line.

Yosemite offers free shuttles to transport visitors between popular destinations, but many were too full to pick up any of the dozens of people waiting at the stops. On one bus, a frustrated driver trying to squeeze in more sightseers shouted, “If you’re not touching somebody, you’re not close enough.”

Yosemite Valley helped inspire the creation of the national park system, as it was the first federally protected land to be designated for public use, under an act signed in 1864 by President Abraham Lincoln. Its waterfalls and glacier-carved monoliths, such as Half Dome and El Capitan, have made it one of the country’s most beloved national parks — and most visited.

In 2020, Yosemite began experimenting with a summer reservation system to manage its ever-growing summer crowds. But Yosemite, as well as Arches National Park and Glacier National Park, did away with reservations this year, after President Donald Trump signed an executive order urging parks to rescind restrictions to improve access and help local economies.

Ray McPadden, Yosemite’s superintendent, said that a reservation system should be a last resort. In previous years the park had to turn families away because they hadn’t booked a visit in advance, he said, which was unfair to them and meant a loss of fees that could have gone toward fixing up trails, campgrounds, and bathrooms.

McPadden thinks the park is not overly crowded, except on holidays and Saturdays, he said. He expects a 12% increase in visits compared with last year, which would be about 4.7 million visitors, and the second-busiest year in the park’s history.

“No secret: Yosemite is really popular,” he said. “We are having a great summer.”

Some park employees disagree. The union local representing Yosemite staff, NFFE Local 465, said in a statement that the decision to end the reservation system had undermined staff and was “disheartening and disappointing,” particularly when the park was short-staffed after federal cuts. Gridlock traffic inside lengthens staff members’ commutes and makes it difficult, if not impossible, for them to perform their duties, the local said.

Advocacy organizations point out that Yosemite did not benefit much from fee revenue over the holiday weekend. As part of his overhaul of the National Park Service, Trump ended free park entry on some days, such as Martin Luther King’s Birthday, while granting free park admission to U.S. residents on Trump’s birthday, which coincides with Flag Day, as well as July 3, 4, and 5.

They worry that overcrowding encourages people to go off trail, and that guests aren’t as supervised as they once were. The bumper-to-bumper traffic also means that ambulances and other emergency vehicles can be delayed.

The overcrowding “is an environmental disaster for the park, and it’s a safety issue for visitors,” said Mark Rose, the Sierra Nevada program manager for the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association.

For the most part, however, visitors seemed unfazed by the crowds. The magnificence of Yosemite’s glassy rivers and giant sequoias is difficult to diminish, and tourists said they expected summer crowds when they traveled.

Duddukuru, who was visiting from Chicago, said that despite the delays the park was “wonderful.” She and her family had to wait 45 minutes to board a shuttle, but then spotted a bear, so the delay felt worth it, she said.

Sasha Rubeiz, 23, said one particularly narrow trail felt a little dicey with so many other hikers, but they were mostly not a bother on her first, “unreal” visit here. She tilted her head up toward soaring pine trees and blue skies.

“I’m looking up more than down,” said Rubeiz, who lives in Sacramento, Calif.

McPadden said he was working on solutions to some of the crowding issues, including new fencing and boulders to stop people from parking illegally. He said he hoped to install digital signs showing guests which parking lots are already full so they don’t waste time circling.

He would not say whether a reservation system would return next year. “I try to follow the facts, which generally are very, very positive here in the park,” he said.

Brett Birkbeck, a police officer who lives in Huntington Beach, Calif., ate a hot dog and drank red wine out of a plastic cup as he set up camp at dusk under pine trees.

Birkbeck, 49, said the crowds could not put a damper on his annual summer trip to Yosemite, during which he and his friends hike and grill ribs for a week in one of the most spectacular places on Earth.

“I call it pressing the reset button on the year,” he said.

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.