Rather than directly banning Medicaid reimbursement for transgender care, the rule would bar any hospital that accepts Medicaid funding from providing gender-affirming care for trans youth at all, regardless of whether that care is paid for by Medicaid.

The new rule contains no exceptions for patients already receiving care... For many, this would amount to forced medical detransition.

This rule appears to violate multiple U.S. statutes and constitutional limits on federal authority.

The government attempts to get around this by stating that gender affirming care is not part of “the practice of medicine.”

A story of the kind of disdain Palestine Action hunger strikers experience in UK prisons.

“Can you ring an ambulance? I’m scared”. They hung up on her.

[hours later] the nurse returned and informed her that “you don’t decide if you go to hospital, I do”.

What happened

Going against policy, the UK's EHRC chose to not record (or perhaps even destroy) the meeting minutes for a 2023 consultation with trans groups after one of its worst acts towards their rights.

This meeting was the day after the EHRC sent its now infamous letter to Kemi Badenoch, suggesting the Government to rewrite the Equality Act by redefining the words sex, man, and woman to mean “biological sex"

Context for Americans etc.

For context, the EHRC is the UK's primary human rights organisation. However, since Kishwer Falkner's takeover in 2020, the organisation has taken a clear trans-exclusive direction that has only gotten worse over time.

They offer guidance to businesses and the government on how to interpret human rights laws. That guidance authority has been used to twist the meaning of legislation intended to protect minority groups, against all legal precedent, to instead use as a basis for removing the rights of trans people specifically.

The EHRC has since rarely met with trans organisations when deciding how to advise on their rights. Instead, they frequently meet with trans hate groups like Sex Matters. This is to the point that their views closely mirror these hate groups.

Back to the article

Looking at the meeting notes, it's clear why they chose to hide them, as they were entirely unable to justify their change in definition of sex and gender, and they knew that it went against the stances of most other human rights organisations.

Have a read for yourself. The long pauses are wild.

Edit: Also covered by the Guardian here

After recently announcing they'd like to take the gold and jewellery of incoming immigrants, Nazi style, last week, the UK government has now revealed it's latest plan to make immigrant lives worse, possibly fatally.

The government now plans to restrict access to benefits (unemployment or health-based financial help) immigrants without Settled Status.

Settled Status, previously available for anyone who has been in the country for more than 5 years, will now also be raised to up to 20 years for legal entry and 30 years for illegal entry.

This double-whammy of changes will likely result in huge amounts of unnecessary suffering, homelessness and possibly death.

If that wasn't enough, homelessness is a lot more expensive than paying out benefits, so this is likely to further add to the financial burden of the country.

Who is to say whether the government will stop there? How long until they start revoking settled statuses and kicking out people who have lived here for decades (like myself)?

On top of this, all of these actions embolden the far-right. People are regularly having to stop them from trying to harass refugees currently being kept in hotels.

...I could have told you that 🤷

Source: https://x.com/BriannaWu/status/1984574165643403370

Not my usual kind of source (Xitter), but I want any centrists out there who ask trans people to "just get along" / compromise with actual hate groups that want them eradicated to know that it doesn't work.

There is no such thing as a reasonable bigot, by definition.

The UK government admits that building camps to hold immigrants in would be more expensive than the current arrangement that holds them in hotels during the asylum seeking process, but says that it is worth it because it will please the right-wing protesters that fearmonger about immigrants being dangerous.

Opinion time: This is a terrible idea, as:

• You should never give ground to racists.
• Hotels are designed with paying customers in mind, so they are at least bearable to stay in. These camps will be designed by people who actively hate those who will stay in them, and as has been seen time and time again, that will mean borderline inhumane living conditions.

Adding to the above, Sex Matters (the anti-trans-rights organization) sees this as an opportunity to out all trans people, and given how often the EHRC listens to them, and how the government accepts the EHRC's guidance, there is real chance that this is very dangerous.

If you are a UK resident and are against the introduction of Digital ID, a petition is available to vote against it's introduction. So far it has gained over 1.7 million signatures. Only yesterday it was at just under a million.

Sorry for the weird source, a YouTube Post, but this is where I first saw it.

Part of the Republicans' Big Beautiful Bill includes a stipulation (that Planned Parenthood is challenging in court) that no federal funding or Medicaid dollars would be given to clinics that provide abortion. It was already against the law for any organization to use federal dollars towards abortion services other than for cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the pregnant person. In other words, no one's tax dollars were being used to fund abortions.

Activists say this was a targeted move to finally 'defund' Planned Parenthood, a long-term goal of Republicans.

Medical facilities, including Planned Parenthood, need that money to stay open. So, the Wisconsin branches, even though they're in a state where abortion is legal, will stop performing abortions since they can't afford to lose the federal money.

Microsoft has terminated the Israeli military’s access to technology it used to operate a powerful surveillance system that collected millions of Palestinian civilian phone calls made each day in Gaza and the West Bank, the Guardian can reveal.

Microsoft told Israeli officials late last week that Unit 8200, the military’s elite spy agency, had violated the company’s terms of service by storing the vast trove of surveillance data in its Azure cloud platform, sources familiar with the situation said.

The decision to cut off Unit 8200’s ability to use some of its technology results directly from an investigation published by the Guardian last month. It revealed how Azure was being used to store and process the trove of Palestinian communications in a mass surveillance programme.

surprise surprise

Every time you hear a right-winger accusing someone of something, there's a good chance they have done it themselves.

It is likely protesting the Palestine Action ban.

When the right talk about free speech, they only defend the free speech of bigots and right-wing politicians.

As soon as someone disagrees with them or calls them out, suddenly speech isn't so free after all.