Â鶹ŮÓÅ

Skip to main content

The independent source for health policy research, polling, and news.

Subscribe Follow Us
  • Trump 2.0

    Trump 2.0

    • Agency Watch
    • State Watch
    • Medicaid Watch
    • Rural Health Payout
  • Public Health

    Public Health

    • Vaccines
    • CDC & Disease
    • Environmental Health
  • Audio Reports

    Audio Reports

    • What the Health?
    • Health Care Helpline
    • Â鶹ŮÓÅ Health News Minute
    • An Arm and a Leg
    • Health Hub
    • HealthQ
    • Silence in Sikeston
    • Epidemic
    • See All Audio
  • Special Reports

    Special Reports

    • Bill Of The Month
    • The Body Shops
    • Broken Rehab
    • Deadly Denials
    • Priced Out
    • Dead Zone
    • Diagnosis: Debt
    • Overpayment Outrage
    • Opioid Settlement Tracking
    • See All Special Reports
  • More Topics

    More Topics

    • Elections
    • Health Care Costs
    • Insurance
    • Prescription Drugs
    • Health Industry
    • Immigration
    • Reproductive Health
    • Technology
    • Rural Health
    • Race and Health
    • Aging
    • Mental Health
    • Affordable Care Act
    • Medicare
    • Medicaid
    • Children’s Health

  • High Postcancer Medical Bills
  • Federal Workers’ Health Data
  • Cyberattacks on Hospitals
  • ‘Cheap’ Insurance

Morning Briefing

Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations

  • Email

Friday, Feb 14 2025

Full Issue

Bulwark Of Courts Blocks Trump's Health Care Policy Agenda

Federal judges on Thursday blocked executive orders regarding transgender care, USAID, and birthright citizenship. Also, news outlets examine the fallout of funding cuts, medical research freezes, webpage deletions, and more.

A federal judge on Thursday blocked executive orders signed by President Donald Trump that target transgender people and their health care, giving temporary relief to LGBTQ+ individuals and their families, who braced for legal battles to continue. At least one health system — the hospital affiliated with the University of Virginia — said it would resume providing services that had been paused under the order. (Portnoy and Rizzo, 2/13)

A federal judge on Thursday moved to extend by one week a temporary restraining order preventing the Trump administration from carrying out plans that would all but dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development. The order, which Judge Carl Nichols of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said he would file later Thursday, continues to stall a directive that would put a quarter of its employees on administrative leave while forcing those posted overseas to return to the United States within 30 days. (Demirjian and Sullivan, 2/13)

A federal judge in Boston on Thursday blocked an executive order from President Donald Trump that would end birthright citizenship for the children of parents who are in the U.S. illegally, becoming the fourth judge to do so. The ruling from U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin came three days after U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante in New Hampshire blocked the executive order and follows similar rulings in Seattle and Maryland. (Casey and Catalini, 2/14)

More on the federal freeze —

A proposal by the Trump administration to reduce the size of grants for institutions conducting medical research would have far-reaching effects, and not just for elite universities and the coastal states where many are located. Also at risk could be grants from the National Institutes of Health to numerous hospitals that conduct clinical research on major diseases, and to state universities across the country. North Carolina, Missouri and Pennsylvania could face disproportionate losses, because of the concentration of medical research in those states. (Badger, Bhatia, Cabreros, Murray, Paris, Sanger-Katz and Singer, 2/13)

After surviving teen homelessness and domestic violence in West Virginia, 23-year-old Ireland Daugherty was finally feeling stable. ... Ashley Cain, 36, was celebrating four years of sobriety and working with a nonprofit that trains workers to remediate long-abandoned factories and coal mines into sites for manufacturing and solar projects. Federally funded programs provided both women with a social safety net and employment in one of the nation’s poorest states, where nonprofits play a vital role in providing basic services like health care, education and economic development. (Willingham, 2/14)

If a teacher wanted to find guidance in early January on how to support LGBTQ students, they could have accessed a government website for resources. That web page no longer exists. It’s one of more than 350 government web pages related to the LGBTQ community that have been deleted from federal government websites, according to a report published Thursday by the Center for American Progress, a liberal research and advocacy group. (Butler, 2/13)

The Trump administration’s early moves to restrict scientific studies and limit payments to universities and other institutions have stoked concerns that some academics may look to leave the U.S. The question is, where will they go? (Joseph, 2/14)

Â鶹ŮÓÅ Health News: Â鶹ŮÓÅ Health News’ ‘What The Health?’: Courts Try To Curb Health Cuts

Some of the Trump administration’s dramatic funding and policy shifts are facing major pushback for the first time — not from Congress, but from the courts. Federal judges around the country are attempting to pump the brakes on efforts to freeze government spending, shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development, eliminate access to health-related webpages and datasets, and limit grant funding provided by the National Institutes of Health. (Rovner, 2/13)

Talk to us —

We’d like to speak with personnel from the Department of Health and Human Services or its component agencies about what’s happening within the federal health bureaucracy. Please or contact reporter Arthur Allen directly by email or Signal at ArthurA@kff.org or 202-365-6116.

On USAID —

The Trump administration's freeze on foreign aid delivered through the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and the subsequent shutdown and dismantling of the agency altogether, has sent shockwaves throughout the community of people working on tuberculosis (TB) treatment, diagnosis, and prevention. The 90-day funding freeze, which sources tell CIDRAP News came with no warning or ability to make contingency plans, has left no parts of the global TB control community untouched. (Dall, 2/13)

In the town of Sarmada in northern Syria, Dr. Mohammad Fares unlocked a clinic that once bustled with patients. Now it’s empty, and shelves of medicine reduced to a few boxes of bandages and expired drugs. This is what it looks like after the Trump administration halted U.S. foreign assistance last month. The U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, issued stop-work orders during a 90-day review for what the administration has alleged is wasteful spending. (Badendieck and Alsayed, 2/14)

This is part of the Morning Briefing, a summary of health policy coverage from major news organizations. Sign up for an email subscription.
Newsletter icon

Sign Up For Our Newsletter

Stay informed by signing up for the Morning Briefing and other emails:

Recent Morning Briefings

  • Tuesday, April 21
  • Monday, April 20
  • Friday, April 17
  • Thursday, April 16
  • Wednesday, April 15
  • Tuesday, April 14
More Morning Briefings
RSS Feeds
  • Podcasts
  • Special Reports
  • Morning Briefing
  • About Us
  • Republish Our Content
  • Contact Us

Follow Us

  • RSS

Sign up for emails

Join our email list for regular updates based on your personal preferences.

Sign up
  • Editorial Policy
  • Privacy Policy

© 2026 Â鶹ŮÓÅ