Feds erase trans health rights shield
The Trump administration on Friday finalized a regulation that will erase protections for transgender patients against discrimination by doctors, hospitals and health insurance companies — a move announced on the four-year anniversary of the massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., and in the middle of Pride Month.
The rule is part of a broad Trump administration effort across multiple areas of policy — including education, housing and employment, as well as health care — to narrow the legal definition of sex discrimination so that it does not include explicit protections for transgender people.
The Affordable Care Act in 2010 established broad civil rights protections in health care, barring discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, age or disability in “any health program or activity” that receives federal financial assistance.
The Obama administration interpreted the provision about sex discrimination to include discrimination on the basis of gender identity. Under the original 2016 rule, health care providers and insurers would have been required to provide and cover medically appropriate treatment for transgender patients.
Roger Severino, director of the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services, the unit responsible for the rule, said Friday that the move was “equivalent to housekeeping” and that the federal government was “updating our books to reflect the legal reality” that sex discrimination language does not explicitly refer to the legal status of transgender people.
Treasury chief refuses to say who got virus aid
Building ramparts of secrecy around a $600 billionplus coronavirus aid program for small businesses, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has moved from delay to denial in refusing outright to disclose the recipients of taxpayer-funded loans.
Mr. Mnuchin told Congress at a hearing this week that the names of loan recipients and amounts are “proprietary information.” While he claimed the information is confidential, ethics advocates and some lawmakers see the move as an attempt to dodge accountability for how the money is spent.
Businesses struggled to obtain loans in the early weeks of the program, and several hundred publicly traded companies received loans despite their likely ability to get the money from private financial sources.
“Given the many problems with the program, it is imperative American taxpayers know if the money is going where Congress intended — to the truly small and unbanked small business,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., said.
Rising global heat ties record for hottest May
Earth’s temperature spiked to tie a record high for May, U.S. meteorologists reported Friday.
Last month, the global average temperature was 60.3 degrees, tying 2016 for the hottest May in 141 years of record keeping, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That’s 1.7 degrees higher than the 20th-century average.
Parts of Africa, Asia, western Europe, and South and Central America had record warmth.
“We continue to warm on the long term, and in any given month, we’re likely to be knocking on the door, close to a record in the era that we’re in,” said NOAA climate monitoring chief Deke Arndt.
The last seven Mays, from 2014 to 2020, have been the seven warmest Mays on record.