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The Trump administration on Thursday announced new measures to target hospitals and doctors providing care to trans youth. Under the new rules unveiled by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dr. Mehmet Oz, who leads Medicaid and Medicare, the government would strip federal funding for any hospitals that provide pediatric gender-affirming care. The new rules were announced a day after the House of Representatives narrowly approved a bill that aims to criminalize providing gender-affirming medical care for any transgender person under 18 and subject providers to hefty fines and prison time.
"This is a drastic departure from any concern about science, concern about parents and their rights," says Chase Strangio, co-director of the American Civil Liberties Union's LGBTQ & HIV Project. "It is putting hospitals in an impossible situation, and just another example of this administration undermining and threatening all of our health and welfare."
We also speak with Dr. Jeffrey Birnbaum, a pediatrician and adolescent medicine specialist who works with transgender youth in New York City. He says the families he works with are "terrified right now," but vows to continue his work. "I refuse to stop providing this care, knowing that I could potentially face 10 years in prison and a felony charge. I'm willing to go down that route, if necessary."
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We get an update on the extraordinary case of Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland father who first made headlines in March when he was wrongfully deported to El Salvador and held in the notorious CECOT mega-prison. Ábrego García was returned to the United States after months of public outrage, but his ordeal continued as the Trump administration has threatened to deport him to Uganda, Eswatini and Liberia, despite having no ties to those African countries. Last week, a federal judge ordered him released from an ICE jail in Pennsylvania and blocked further arrests as a denial of due process.
Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of Ábrego García's attorneys, says the administration's actions are primarily meant "to punish him" for standing up for his rights. "It's also about the government using him, more or less at random, to stand for the principle that they get to do whatever they want, whenever they want, to whomever they want — and, specifically, courts can't stop them."
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Supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal are on a 103-mile, 12-day march ending Tuesday in Frackville, Pennsylvania, where he is imprisoned at the Mahanoy state prison. The march ends on the same day Abu-Jamal was arrested in 1981 for the murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner, for which he has always maintained his innocence. One of the best-known political prisoners in the world, Abu-Jamal was an award-winning journalist and co-founder of the Philadelphia chapter of the Black Panther Party before his incarceration, and has continued to write and speak from prison. Human rights groups say he was denied a fair trial, with evidence unearthed in 2019 showing judicial bias and police and prosecutorial misconduct. Abu-Jamal is now 71 years old, and advocates say he is being denied proper medical care in prison, permanently risking his eyesight.
"We're marching today to demand freedom for Mumia and all political prisoners," says activist Larry Hamm.
"We ration healthcare in this country, and in particular for prisoners," says Noelle Hanrahan, part of Abu-Jamal's legal team, who is demanding "that Mumia get specialist care … and that he is given the treatment that he deserves."
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