To honor the United States justice system, you may wish to hang this portrait in a prominent location where it will be seen and remembered by patriotic, compassionate, loyal Americans.
There was a time when America was admired as the world’s moral leader, a place where a poor person could work hard and achieve wealth and respect. We were known as “the city upon a hill.”
Those days are lost.
Today, a president posts a disgusting comment and doesn’t lose followers, the government hires masked thugs to abduct people from the streets and send them to the hell-hole “Alligator Alcatraz” without any trial, and the Supreme Court justices vote to absolve the president from any punishment for any crime, no matter how heinous.
It has become evident that our once-admired nation has transformed into a symbol of evil rather than freedom.
We should return the Statue of Liberty to France and allow a more worthy nation to flaunt it. The America of Trump, Thune, Johnson, Roberts, the GOP and FOX News is nothing more than a “Gulf of America” banana dictatorship.
What happens when religious ignorance, bigotry, hatred and cruelty are in charge?
What if the people who are being “protected” don’t want the government to make their medical decisions?
Trump administration moves to cut off transgender care for childrenThe sweeping proposals include cutting off federal Medicaid and Medicare funding from hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to children. They contradict the recommendations of major medical groups.By ALI SWENSON, MATTHEW PERRONE and DEVI SHASTRI
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday unveiled a series of regulatory actions designed to effectively ban gender-affirming care for minors, building on broader Trump administration restrictions on transgender Americans.
We don’t know any gay people — we don’t even like them — but John Kennedy and I know more than the doctors about what’s best for them.
The sweeping proposals — the most significant moves this administration has taken so far to restrict the use of puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgical interventions for transgender children — include cutting off federal Medicaid and Medicare funding from hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to children and prohibiting federal Medicaid dollars from being used to fund such procedures.
“This is not medicine, it is malpractice,” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.said of gender-affirming procedures on children in a news conference on Thursday.
“Sex-rejecting procedures rob children of their futures.”
Thursday’s announcements would imperil access in nearly two dozen states where drug treatments and surgical procedures remain legal and funded by Medicaid, which includes federal and state dollars.
The proposals run counter to the recommendations of most major U.S. medical organizations.And advocates for transgender children strongly refuted the administration’s claims about gender-affirming care and said Thursday’s moves would put lives at risk.
“The multitude of efforts we are seeing from federal legislators to strip transgender and nonbinary youth of the health care they need is deeply troubling,” said Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, of The Trevor Project, a nonprofit suicide prevention organization for LBGTQ+ youth, who called the changes a “one-size-fits-all mandate from the federal government” on a decision that should be between a doctor and patient.
Proposed rules would threaten youth gender-affirming care in states where it remains legalMedicaid programs in slightly less than half of states currently cover gender-affirming care. At least 27 states have adopted laws restricting or banning the care. The Supreme Court’s recent decision upholding Tennessee’s ban means most other state laws are likely to remain in place.
Nearly all U.S. hospitals participate in the Medicare and Medicaid programs, the federal government’s largest health plans that cover seniors, people with disabilities and low-income Americans. Losing access to those payments would imperil most U.S. hospitals and medical providers.
The same funding restrictions would apply to a smaller health program, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, when it comes to care for people under the age of 19, according to a federal notice posted Thursday morning.
Kennedy also announced Thursday that the HHS Office of Civil Rights will propose a rule excluding gender dysphoria from the definition of a disability.
In a related move, the Food and Drug Administration issued warning letters to a dozen companies that market chest-binding vests and other equipment used by people with gender dysphoria. Manufacturers include GenderBender LLC of Carson, California and TomboyX of Seattle.
The FDA letters state that chest binders can only be legally marketed for FDA-approved medical uses, such as recovery after mastectomy surgery.
Now, a medical journal has published the most reliable estimate yet and the numbers are low, reflecting more clearly on medical practices now being weighed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Fewer than 1 in 1,000 U.S. adolescents with commercial insurance received gender-affirming medications — puberty blockers or hormones — during a recent five-year period, according to the study released Monday.
At least 26 states have adopted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors, and most of those states face lawsuits. A decision by the Supreme Court in a Tennessee case is expected later this year. President-elect Donald Trump has promised to roll back protections for transgender people.
“We are not seeing inappropriate use of this sort of care,” said lead author Landon Hughes, a Harvard University public health researcher. “And it’s certainly not happening at the rate at which people often think it is.”
The researchers analyzed a large insurance claims database covering more than 5 million patients ages 8 to 17.
Only 926 adolescents with a gender-related diagnosis received puberty blockers from 2018 through 2022. During that time, 1,927 received hormones. The findings, published in JAMA Pediatrics, suggest that fewer than 0.1% of all youth in the database received these medications.
There are only two sexes (male and female). There also is only one color (white), one religion (Christianity), one political party (Republican), and one nationality (native-born American whose parents also are native-born). My ICE will deport everyone else. (But I’m not a hate-mongering bigot).
The researchers found that no patients under age 12 were prescribed hormones, an indication that doctors are appropriately cautious about when to start such treatments, Hughes said.
“I hope that our paper cools heads on this issue and ensures that the public is getting a true sense of the number of people who are accessing this care,” he said.
The database included insurance plans in all 50 states, but did not include youth covered by Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for low-income people.
The study did not look at surgeries among transgender adolescents. Other researchers have found that those procedures are extremely rare among young people.
Not all transgender youth proceed with medical treatments, said Dr. Scott Leibowitz, co-lead author of the adolescent standards of care for the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, a leading transgender health group.
Transgender adolescents “come to understand their gender at different times and in different ways,” he said, noting that the best care should include experts in adolescent identity development who can work with families to help figure out what’s appropriate for each young person.
Leibowitz, who has worked in gender clinics in several U.S. cities, said the study “adds to the growing evidence base about best practices when serving transgender and gender diverse youth.
As America sinks lower on the national morality scale, Trump and Kennedy will tell doctors how to cure heel spurs in the military.
Country’s trade deficit narrows to a 5-year low.By Ana Swanson, The New York Times.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. trade deficit in goods and services narrowed more than 10%from August to September, as the Trump administration’s tariffs continued to weigh on trade,
data from the Commerce Department showed.
Imports grew just 0.6% from August to $342.1 billion, while exports rose 3% in the month, to $289.3 billion, according to data released Thursday.
Because exports grew more than imports, the U.S. trade deficit shrank, in line with the Trump administration’s goals.
At $52.8 billion, the trade deficit in goods and services hit its lowest level in September since June 2020, when the United States was in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trade experts have cautioned against drawing too many conclusions from a few months of Data and said that trade patterns have recently been distorted by businesses’ efforts to avoid paying tariffs.
President Donald Trump has long seen the trade deficit as a sign of economic weakness.
Trump repeats a standard error: treating the trade deficit as a report card on national health. His reason: The word “deficit” confuses people.
If we send more money to foreigners than they send us, that’s a moneydeficit. If they send us more goods and services than we send them, that’s our goods and servicessurplus.
A trade is an exchange of presumed equals (“I’ll send you ‘A’ if you send me ‘B.'”)
So why is it called a trade “deficit”? Isn’t it also a trade “surplus”?
Further, the U.S. creates dollars at will by pressing a few computer keys. Virtually no labor or raw materials are required, and we can make dollars endlessly.
The goods and services we receive rely on labor and raw materials, which are limited resources. We offer something that costs us nothing to create, and in return, we receive valuable items; yet, we refer to this as a “deficit.”
It’s quite strange. I would gladly accept that kind of “trade” any day of the year.
It feels more like stealing than trading. Each year, I experience what some might call a “deficit” with my grocer, my favorite restaurants, my gas station, and others. I exchange dollars—currency that my government can produce at no cost—for valuable food and gasoline.
I don’t feel cheated. While I worked for some of my income, as a retiree, most of my current earnings come to me effortlessly. Despite that, I can still exchange those dollars for valuable goods and services.
And still, by the current definition, I’m running a “trade deficit.” It’s nuts.
I wouldn’t have had to work as much if my government had given me dollars for health care, food, housing, education, etc., which it easily could have done at virtually no effort, just by punching a few more computer keys.
The sweeping tariffs Trump has imposed on imports from countries around the world thisyear, including on automobiles, metals and furniture, have led to big swings in trade.
Before tariffs went into effect, many U.S. businesses brought in a surge of products toavoid paying import taxes.
After Trump’s global tariffs took effect on August 7, imports slowed sharply, then recovered somewhat in September.
On August 29, the Trump administration also ended the “de minimis” exemption, whichallowed foreign shipments valued at less than $800 to come into the United States tariff-free.
Opponents criticized the rule as a loophole that penalized U.S. manufacturers in favor offoreign competitors.
That’s another way of saying, “Make imports more expensive to consumers, so American manufacturers can charge consumers more and/or deliver inferior products.“
That might help a few American manufacturers, but do you want higher prices and inferior quality?
Is this good news or bad news? If Americans are buying fewer goods because they are more expensive or harder to obtain, the deficit will decrease. However, this also means a reduction in consumer welfare, which is essentially what inflation and recessions mean.
Currently, we are trading inflation for a shrinking trade deficit—a lousy trade by any definition.
In short, Trump has made trade worse to make the “trade deficit” numbers look better.
SUMMARY
The term “trade deficit” is often misunderstood; it can actually be considered a trade surplus by logical standards. We receive valuable and often scarce goods and services in exchange for dollars, which our government can produce in unlimited quantities at virtually no cost or effort.
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 