Ban on gender-affirming care for minors takes effect in North Carolina after veto override
CBSN
Transgender youth in North Carolina on Wednesday lost access to the gender-affirming treatments many credit as live-saving after the Republican-controlled General Assembly overrode the Democratic governor's veto of that legislation and others touching on gender in sports and classroom instruction.
GOP supermajorities in the House and Senate enacted —over Gov. Roy Cooper's opposition— a bill barring medical professionals from providing hormone therapy, puberty-blocking drugs and surgical gender-transition procedures to anyone under 18, with limited medical exceptions.
The policy takes effect immediately, but minors who had begun treatment before Aug. 1 may continue receiving that care if their doctors deem it medically necessary and their parents consent.
More employees of the Environmental Protection Agency were informed Wednesday that their jobs appear in doubt. Senior leadership at the EPA held an all-staff meeting to tell individuals that President Trump's executive order, "Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing," which was responsible for the closure of the agency's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion office, will likely lead to the shuttering of the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights as well.
In her first hours as attorney general, Pam Bondi issued a broad slate of directives that included a Justice Department review of the prosecutions of President Trump, a reorientation of department work to focus on harsher punishments, actions punishing so-called "sanctuary" cities and an end to diversity initiatives at the department.
The quick-fire volley of tariffs between the U.S. and China in recent days has heightened global fears of a new trade war between the world's two largest economies. Yet while experts think the battle is likely to escalate, they also say the early skirmishes offer hope for an agreement on trade and other key issues that could head off a larger conflict.