The Trump administration announced Friday morning sweeping changes to the rules protecting transgender people from discrimination in health care. Combined with an announcement earlier this week ending gender identity protections in homeless shelters, the administration has now taken steps to exclude transgender people from almost every aspect of public life, including employment, housing, health care, education, prisons, and the military.
The Trump administration has been forecastin...
politics
Trump uses 1996 welfare reform bill to go after immigrants who use public benefits
President Trump is getting serious about going after immigrants who use public benefits.
In a presidential memorandum issued Thursday, Trump announced he will direct federal agencies to enforce a longstanding rule requiring the sponsors — usually U.S. citizen family members — of immigrants to reimburse the government for any public benefits they use, including Medicaid, SNAP, TANF, and the federal Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
“Financial sponsors who...
Health Department announces new rule weakening nondiscrimination protections for trans people
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced a new rule Friday that would seriously harm transgender people’s access to health care.
The department announced a revision to the nondiscrimination section of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), known as “Section 1557.” That provision prevented discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, disability, age, and sex. Under the Obama administration, the department interpreted sex discrimination to ...
Cory Booker would put an ‘Office of Reproductive Freedom’ in the White House
Amid a nationwide onslaught of anti-abortion bills whose reach and cruelty seem to be, like the universe, expanding at ever-increasing rates, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) announced Wednesday that, if elected president, he would create a White House Office of Reproductive Freedom on his first day in the White House.
“Republican-controlled state legislatures across the country are mounting a coordinated attack on abortion access and reproductive rights,” he said in a statement.
“A ...
Alabama Senate hopeful who authored an ACA repeal sells ‘free’ pro-life stickers — for $4 each
Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-AL), who claims to be “pro-life” despite his repeated votes to take health insurance away from millions of people, is hoping to cash in on his state’s new unconstitutional abortion ban.
Byrne, who is seeking his party’s nomination to challenge Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) next year, is currently giving away “free” pro-life stickers with his campaign logo on them — as long as you donate $4 to his campaign.
Alabama Gov. ...
HUD proposes purging 55,000 kids and their undocumented family members from public housing
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) submitted a proposed rule to evict all undocumented immigrants from public housing to the federal register Friday, setting in motion the first step towards finalizing a plan that could impact tens of thousands of undocumented parents and their U.S. citizen children.
Under this proposed rule, HUD would be prohibited from “making financial assistance available to persons other than United States citizens.” The current r...
Trump and anti-vaxxers, together at last
Last week, the Trump administration asked a federal appeals court to repeal the Affordable Care Act in its entirety. Their argument is fundamentally flawed in numerous ways, not the least of which is the fact that it relies on a dissenting opinion that is explicitly at odds with a binding decision by the Supreme Court’s majority.
On Wednesday, a handful of conservative groups weighed in with amicus briefs supporting this attack on Obamacare. They include an organization founde...
Warren lends her 2020 spotlight to long-languishing $100 billion opioid plan
The consensus among leading public health experts has long been that the spiraling U.S. opioid epidemic cannot be effectively curbed with half-measures.
Some in Congress have been trying to act on the recommendations from experts, introducing legislation to spend $10 billion a year on treatment, research, prescriber monitoring, and other consensus priorities. But as heroin-like chemicals continue to push the overall overdose death toll to grim new yearly records, that call to action...
As his state is ravaged by a drug epidemic, Mitch McConnell fundraises off ‘Cocaine Mitch’ T-shirts
Kentucky has been one of the states his hardest by drug addiction in recent years, with some of the highest rates of drug overdose deaths. Meanwhile, the state’s senior U.S. senator, Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, is selling T-shirts branding him “Cocaine Mitch” as a fundraiser for his 2020 re-election campaign.
The nickname stems from the 2018 West Virginia Republican Senate primary. In that race, coal baron Don Blankenship, the former Massey Energy C...
‘Caravan’ of Americans crossed Canadian border to purchase affordable insulin
For Quinn Nystrom, and millions of other Americans living with Type 1 Diabetes, insulin affordability is a “real crisis issue.”
So Nystrom took it upon herself to find a temporary solution. Last week, she and seven others organized a four-car “caravan” from Minneapolis, Minnesota, to drive 600 miles across the border to Fort Francis, Ontario, in Canada to purchase the life-saving insulin they all needed.
“It was a black and white difference,” Nystrom told ThinkProgress of her...