Latest Morning Briefing Stories
Parents Fear Losing Disability Protections as Trump Slashes Civil Rights Office
The Education Department’s civil rights office often intervenes when students face discrimination based on race, sex, religion, or disability and their families can’t resolve complaints locally. Parents fear the effort to gut the federal agency will leave them with nowhere to seek justice.
Affirmative Action Critics Refuse To Back Down in Fight Over Medical Bias Training
A nonprofit fighting affirmative action in medicine and a Los Angeles ophthalmologist have launched a long-shot legal appeal aimed at ending California’s requirement that every continuing medical education class include training to recognize and address unconscious bias.
Climate Activists Cite Health Hazards in Bid To Stop Trump From ‘Unleashing’ Fossil Fuels
Buoyed by a Montana court ruling upholding state residents’ right to a “clean and healthful environment,” nearly two dozen people ages 7 to 24 hope to block the Trump administration’s executive orders on energy.
Blue States That Sued Kept Most CDC Grants, While Red States Feel Brunt of Trump Clawbacks
The Trump administration’s cuts of public health funds to state and local health departments had vastly uneven effects depending on the political leanings of where someone lives, a new KFF Health News analysis shows.
Optum Rx Invokes Open Meetings Law To Fight Kentucky Counties on Opioid Suits
In a Goliath-versus-David fight, UnitedHealth Group’s pharmacy benefit manager, Optum Rx, has filed lawsuits in five counties to stop them from including the company in national opioid litigation.
KFF Health News' 'What the Health?': Next on Kennedy’s List? Preventive Care and Vaccine Harm
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of Health and Human Services, is eyeing an overhaul of two more key entities as part of his ongoing effort to reshape health policy. And President Donald Trump signed an executive order last week that would enable localities to force some homeless people into residential treatment. Anna Edney of Bloomberg News, Joanne Kenen of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Politico Magazine, and Shefali Luthra of The 19th join KFF Health News’ Julie Rovner to discuss these stories and more. Also, Rovner interviews Sara Rosenbaum, one of the nation’s leading experts on Medicaid, to mark Medicaid’s 60th anniversary this week.
Immigrant Kids Detained in ‘Unsafe and Unsanitary’ Sites as Trump Seeks To End Protections
President Donald Trump’s Justice Department seeks to terminate the Flores Settlement Agreement, which since 1997 has required U.S. immigration officials to hold migrant children in facilities that are safe and sanitary, among other protections. Even with the consent decree in place, court records show unsafe conditions for immigrant kids.
Entre marzo y junio, abogados de menores inmigrantes recopilaron estos testimonios, y otros de jóvenes y familias detenidas, en lo que describen entornos “con apariencia carcelaria” en distintos puntos de Estados Unidos.
KFF Health News' 'What the Health?': Here Come the ACA Premium Hikes
Medicaid may have monopolized Washington’s attention lately, but big changes are coming to the Affordable Care Act as well. Meanwhile, Americans are learning more about what’s in Trump’s big budget law, and polls suggest many don’t like what they see. Julie Appleby of KFF Health News, Jessie Hellmann of CQ Roll Call, and Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico join KFF Health News’ Julie Rovner to discuss these stories and more. Also this week, Rovner interviews historian Jonathan Oberlander to mark Medicare’s 60th anniversary.
Louisiana Upholds Its HIV Exposure Law as Other States Change or Repeal Theirs
State lawmakers unsuccessfully attempted to extend the law this year to cover the intentional exposure of other sexually transmitted infections.