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A federal judge on Thursday struck down controversial Biden administration rules that protected transgender students from discrimination and set rules for how schools handle complaints of sexual harassment, saying the administration had overstepped its authority. The regulation represents the Biden administration’s interpretation of Title IX, the half-century-old federal law barring discrimination on the basis of sex in K-12 schools, colleges and universities that receive federal funding. Biden’s changes took effect in August, but only in 24 states. In the rest of the country, the new rules had been put on hold in response to court challenges. Unlike those previous rulings, Thursday’s decision from a federal district court in Kentucky affects the entire country. (Meckler, 1/9)

California Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) introduced Senate Bill 59, also known as the “Transgender Privacy Act,” on Thursday. SB 59 would protect the privacy of transgender and nonbinary people by automatically making all court records related to their gender transition sealed and confidential to reduce risks that they will be “outed,” the senator’s office said. (Larson, 1/9)

In 2019, then-HUD Secretary Ben Carson tried to institute a rule allowing single-sex homeless shelters to turn away transgender people. (Gonzalez, 1/10)

Dr. Hector Granados felt puzzled when he first heard of the allegations. The El Paso pediatrician had just finished his hospital rounds early in the morning last fall when he received a call from a friend. The friend saw in the news that Texas was suing Granados. (Totiyapungprasert, 1/10)

One change Meta made this week was to eliminate restrictions on some attacks on immigrants, women, and transgender people. Specifically, its hateful conduct policy now allows “allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like ‘weird.’”... "A trans person isn't a he or she, it's an it," reads a new guideline telling moderators what is now allowed on Facebook and Instagram. (Newton, 1/9)

Some social media policy experts and public health experts are worried that the end of fact-checking could lead to the spread of medical and science misinformation and disinformation. This is especially worrisome as the U.S. is in the throes of respiratory virus season and is fighting the spread of bird flu. "There's going to be a rise in all kinds of disinformation, misinformation, from health to hate speech and everything in between," Megan Squire, deputy director for data analytics and open-source intelligence at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told ABC News. "[Health] is supposed to be a nonpartisan issue, and … we do see people trying to leverage health [misinformation], in particular, toward a political end, and that's a real shame." (Kekatos, 1/10)

More than 15,000 doctors across the country signed an open letter urging senators to vote against President-elect Trump’s nominee for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS): Robert F. Kennedy Jr.  In the letter, physicians say they are “appalled” by Trump’s “reckless” appointment of Kennedy, arguing he would be “dangerous” if confirmed to the top public health post. “This appointment is an affront to the principles of public health, the tireless dedication of medical professionals, and the trust that millions of Americans place in the health care system,” the letter reads. The letter was published online Thursday by the Committee to Protect Health Care. (O'Connell-Domenech, 1/9)

President-elect Donald J. Trump’s advisers have spent months trying to identify a disease that will help them build their case for closing the border. According to four people familiar with the discussions, they have looked at tuberculosis and other respiratory diseases as options and have asked allies inside the Border Patrol for examples of illnesses that are being detected among migrants. (Kanno-Youngs and Aleaziz, 1/9)

President-elect Donald Trump’s vowed crackdown on immigration could strain an already struggling elder care workforce that relies on foreign-born workers in nursing homes and home health settings. Industry players and experts argue that increasing the long-term care workforce requires more immigration, and Trump’s plans could further undermine efforts to shore up the workforce as need for services increases with an aging population. (Hellmann, 1/9)

The Senate on Thursday came closer to passing a bill requiring the deportation of undocumented immigrants charged with minor crimes after most Democrats joined Republicans to advance it. All but eight Democrats and one independent voted to begin debate on the bill, easily exceeding the 60-vote threshold to avoid a filibuster. The legislation, which passed the House with bipartisan support earlier this week, appears to be on a smooth path to garnering the presidential signature of Donald J. Trump when he takes office this month. (Demirjian, 1/9)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: �鶹Ů�� Health News' 'What The Health?': New Year, New Congress, New Health Agenda

The new, GOP-led, 119th Congress and President-elect Donald Trump have big legislative plans for the year — which mostly don’t include health policy. But health is likely to play an important supporting role in efforts to renew tax cuts, revise immigration policies, and alter trade — if only to help pay for some Republican initiatives. (1/9)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Listen To The Latest '�鶹Ů�� Health News Minute'

This week on the �鶹Ů�� Health News Minute: Hyperthermia deaths are rising, and millions of people could lose Medicaid if the incoming Republican-controlled Congress follows through on proposed cuts to federal funding. (1/9)

Tens of thousands of young people — single people, in particular — have left states with near-total abortion bans. A new paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonprofit economic research organization, estimated population changes by analyzing address-change data collected by the United States Postal Service. It found that since the 2022 fall of Roe v. Wade, the states with near-total abortion bans — 13 at the time of the analysis — appear to have lost 36,000 people per quarter. Single-person households, which typically skew younger, were more likely to move out of states with bans. (Luthra, 1/9)

The New Mexico Supreme Court on Thursday struck down abortion restrictions by conservative cities and counties, helping to ensure the state remains a go-to destination for people from other states with bans. The unanimous opinion, in response to a request from state Attorney General Raúl Torrez, reinforces the state’s position as having some of the most liberal abortion laws in the country. (Lee, 1/9)

The Pharmacist Abortion Access Project (PAAP) was launched by Uplift International, a leading advocate for global health and human rights, in collaboration with Honeybee Health, an online pharmacy.  The program is the first of its kind in the country, but organizers are hopeful that other states will follow. It is launching as abortion rights advocates brace for new attacks on abortion access under the Trump administration. (Weixel, Choi and O'Connell-Domenech, 1/9)

A new bill would further clamp down on abortions in Indiana by banning procedures using pills and requiring women to file an affidavit of rape to meet one of the state’s few exceptions. Its future is uncertain since it was filed by a Senate Republican — Indianapolis Sen. Mike Young — who has clashed with caucus leadership over Indiana’s abortion ban. (Kelly, 1/8)

Two Humboldt County women allege they were denied emergency abortion care at Providence St. Joseph Hospital, sparking controversy over religious freedom. (LaFever, 1/8)

Jennifer Welch is stepping down as president and chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood of Illinois after more than seven years in the role, the organization announced Wednesday. Welch’s resignation comes at a critical time for Planned Parenthood of Illinois, which has been a leader in providing reproductive health care amid national uncertainty over abortion rights. (Jinich, 1/9)

Medical students at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston are developing artificial intelligence tools to help them learn how to provide all-options pregnancy counseling without putting themselves or their patients at risk of prosecution under the state’s abortion ban. (Paun, Schumaker and Ollstein, 1/7)

Many Americans have flocked to the U.S. Capitol this week to pay their respects to former President Jimmy Carter, who died on December 29 at the age of 100. A cornerstone of the 39th president’s legacy is his fight for gender equity. For decades, Carter championed women and girls through his domestic policy and global advocacy work — and even channeled his values to advocate for gender equity in his church denomination. (Padilla and Barclay, 1/9)

Enrollment of Black and Hispanic students in medical schools dropped precipitously last year after the Supreme Court banned the consideration of race in admissions, according to data released Thursday by the Association of American Medical Colleges. (McFarling, 1/9)

Health systems divested hospitals at a record pace last year, a new report shows. Nearly two-thirds of the 72 announced hospital transactions in 2024 involved an organization that was selling facilities, according to the latest data from Kaufman Hall. That’s double the percentage in 2023 and the highest tally tracked by the consultancy, the report released Thursday shows. (Kacik, 1/9)

UnitedHealth Group and Amedisys have asked the courts to dismiss the federal government's challenge to their $3.3 billion merger, arguing that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has not made a clear enough case that it would be anticompetitive. In the filing, submitted Wednesday in federal district court in Maryland, the companies said that the DOJ has not clearly outlined the regions in which the combination would limit competition. It lists “hundreds of local home health markets,” “dozens of hospice markets,” and “hundreds of local labor markets" in its complaint, according to the motion, which should, the companies argue, lead to dismissal. (Minemyer, 1/9)

Prospect Medical Holdings, the owner of three struggling Connecticut hospitals in Waterbury, Manchester, and Vernon, is working with restructuring advisors to explore ways to address the company’s financial challenges, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. The hospitals, which Prospect acquired in 2016, have faced worsening financial and operational problems in recent years. (Golvala, 1/9)

Sarasota Memorial Health Care System on Monday opened a new emergency care center in Lakewood Ranch. It is Sarasota Memorial’s fourth emergency care center, and the second freestanding emergency facility not attached to a hospital campus. (1/9)

Individual coverage health reimbursement arrangements, or ICHRAs, are either the future of health coverage or merely a blip on the radar, depending on who you ask. ICHRAs allows employers to offer workers tax-free money to buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act (ACA), rather than being told to select a plan. (Tong, 1/9)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Health Care AI, Intended To Save Money, Turns Out To Require A Lot Of Expensive Humans

Preparing cancer patients for difficult decisions is an oncologist’s job. They don’t always remember to do it, however. At the University of Pennsylvania Health System, doctors are nudged to talk about a patient’s treatment and end-of-life preferences by an artificially intelligent algorithm that predicts the chances of death. But it’s far from being a set-it-and-forget-it tool. A routine tech checkup revealed the algorithm decayed during the covid-19 pandemic, getting 7 percentage points worse at predicting who would die, according to a 2022 study. There were likely real-life impacts. (Tahir, 1/10)

Across Southern California, people are taking precautions as the air quality index — a measure that includes fine particles — reached hazardous levels for some neighborhoods, including Pasadena. Air purifiers in Home Depots around Central Los Angeles are sold out. Dr. Puneet Gupta, assistant medical director for the Los Angeles County Fire Department, said emergency room doctors tell him people with breathing problems are coming in by ambulance, driving themselves and with family. (Pineda and Webber, 1/9)

The fires burning across Los Angeles County have sent billowing plumes of black smoke into the air, posing a major health threat even as quick-moving flames have blowtorched homes, schools and other buildings. That’s because wildfire smoke contains fine particulates, known as PM2.5, which are one-seventieth the width of a single human hair and can easily infiltrate the heart and lungs. While the fires are currently concentrated on the West Coast, the threat isn’t limited to that region. Residents nationwide need to be cautious because wildfire smoke can travel, said Susan Anenberg, chair of the environmental and occupational health department at George Washington University. (Ajasa, 1/9)

Mental health experts say that most people are resilient and do not develop a mental health condition as a result of trauma from a natural disaster. However, those with more exposure to the event -- such as losing a home, losing a loved one or experiencing injury -- are at higher risk, the experts said. (Kekatos, 1/10)

“One of the biggest challenges ahead will be getting people who lost their homes into permanent, long-term housing,” Victor M. Gordo, the mayor of Pasadena, said on Wednesday. Pasadena, which is battling the Eaton fire, has already lost hundreds of homes. ... “It’s very possible that this event is going to cause a big increase in homelessness, even though the people who got pushed out of their homes are people of means,” said Jonathan Zasloff, who lost his home in Pacific Palisades this week and teaches land use and urban policy at the University of California. (Kaye and Dougherty, 1/10)

Los Angeles County officials accidentally sent an evacuation text to all residents in error on Thursday evening as wildfires continue to spread rapidly throughout the area. The city’s emergency management department retracted the statement on X and in text messages to residents. (Fields, 1/9)

In 2006, Kareena Lynde was working in Shasta Lake, California, on a hotshot crew — a group of highly trained wildland firefighters — when she started to notice a sharp pain in her abdomen. At first she chalked up the discomfort, plus symptoms like bloating and nausea, to the nature of her work, with its long, arduous hours and unhealthy backcountry meals. (Kutz, 1/9)

Direct neighbors of houses burned in the Marshall fire suffered measurable increases in volatile organic compounds from toxic smoke in their homes, and hundreds more residents reported headaches and other health problems, according to companion University of Colorado studies published in late December. (Booth, 1/9)

The United States has the highest rate of drug overdose deaths out of 30 countries, according to a new report from the health nonprofit the Commonwealth Fund. Overdose deaths in the U.S. dipped slightly around 2018 after a years-long rise. But those deaths began to rise again in 2019 and shot up during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  (O'Connell-Domenech, 1/9)

Kentucky will receive $110 million to settle its lawsuit accusing one of the nation’s largest grocery chains of helping fuel the opioid epidemic, the state’s attorney general said Thursday. The state will use the money it is getting in its settlement with The Kroger Co. to combat an addiction that has ravaged communities and given the state some of the nation’s highest overdose death rates. (Schreiner, 1/9)

A new study questioned the clinical utility of an algorithm meant to predict opioid use disorder (OUD) risk based on 15 genetic variants. The variants are used in the AvertD test, which the FDA approved in December 2023 to predict opioid addiction risk. (George, 1/9)

Americans are drinking more as they hit midlife — and suffering the consequences. People between the ages of 35 and 50 reported record-high levels of binge drinking in 2022. One recent study found that the greatest increase in heavy alcohol use between 2018 and 2022 was among people in their 40s. Doctors are particularly concerned about rising alcohol consumption among middle-aged women, as more of them develop alcohol-related liver and heart disease. (Blum, 1/9)

Excessive alcohol use is often unrecognized and underreported by patients. To that end, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends screening adults for unhealthy alcohol use in primary care settings and offering those engaged in risky drinking with brief behavioral counseling interventions. Brief counseling interventions can range from feedback on the patient’s screener to a conversation about the impacts of excessive alcohol use on health to a plan to reduce alcohol use, with a referral as needed. The American Medical Association (AMA), too, makes clear that physicians should establish routine alcohol screenings. Despite this, not all doctors regularly screen—and even those who do may not intervene with patients who need it. (Gliadkovskaya, 1/9)

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) hasn't met mandated targets for inspections of domestic and foreign food facilities since 2018. FDA officials, who have said they need more inspectors to meet their targets, haven't developed goals or measures to ensure its inspections are keeping the food supply safe, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said yesterday in a new report. The FDA is tasked with ensuring the safety of nearly 80% of the US food supply, including fruits, vegetables, processed foods, and most seafood.  (Van Beusekom, 1/9)

Over-the-counter protein powders may contain disturbing levels of lead and cadmium, with the highest amounts found in plant-based, organic and chocolate-flavored products, according to a new investigation. (LaMotte, 1/9)

Veterans diagnosed with several types of blood and urinary tract cancers who served in certain overseas locations during the Persian Gulf War and post-9/11 era now have a path to easily file claims with the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to an announcement Wednesday. The VA has finalized efforts to add acute and chronic leukemias; multiple myeloma and associated diseases; and bladder, ureter and similar cancers to the list of diseases presumed to be related to military service in the Middle East, parts of Africa, and South and Central Asia, including Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. (Kime, 1/9)

California's state veterinarian in a January 7 statement announced a ban on all poultry and cattle exhibitions until further notice as part of the state's efforts to curb the spread of H5N1 avian flu to people and to uninfected animals. ... In other developments, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) confirmed 4 more H5N1 detections in dairy cattle, 3 in California and apparently 1 in Michigan that the state first announced in October 2024. The new confirmations push the national total to 923 and California's total to 706. (Schnirring, 1/9)

The China Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) today announced the country's first confirmed clade 1b mpox cases, which involve a foreigner who had lived in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and four close contacts. China is the twelfth country outside of Africa to detect clade 1 mpox, which is different from the clade 2 mpox virus spreading globally. The novel clade 1b virus is thought to spread more easily among contacts, including in households. Most cases have been linked to travel to affected African countries. Outside of Africa, limited secondary transmission has now been reported in the United Kingdom, Germany, and China. (Schnirring, 1/9)

A Wisconsin woman who at age 12 stabbed her sixth grade classmate nearly to death to please online horror character Slender Man will be released from a psychiatric hospital, a judge ordered Thursday after a trio of experts testified that she has made considerable progress battling mental illness. Morgan Geyser, now 22, has spent nearly seven years at the Winnebago Mental Health Institute. (Richmond, 1/9)

The family of late Tennessee Titans legend Frank Wycheck announced the tight end tested positive for chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) stage III. Wycheck died at 52 after falling at his home in Chattanooga, Tenn., in Dec. 2023. Researchers from Boston University’s CTE Center confirmed the stage III diagnosis for Wycheck (stage IV being the most severe). The family announced shortly after his death that it would work with experts for brain injury and CTE research. Wycheck retired from the NFL at age 32 after suffering several concussions in his career. (Holder and Rexrode, 1/9)

When Dr. Nir Barzilai met the 100-year-old Helen Reichert, she was smoking a cigarette. Dr. Barzilai, the director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, recalled Mrs. Reichert saying that doctors had repeatedly told her to quit. But those doctors had all died, Mrs. Reichert noted, and she hadn’t. Mrs. Reichert lived almost another decade before passing away in 2011. How much of a person’s longevity can be attributed to lifestyle choices and how much is just luck — or lucky genetics? It depends on how long you’re hoping to live. (Smith, 1/8)

German researchers, led by Georg Schett, achieved lupus remissions using CAR-T therapy, offering new hope for other autoimmune disease treatments. (Joseph, 1/9)

Zyn represents success for Philip Morris’ “smokeless” strategy and also a major challenge: How can the company sell cigarette alternatives that aren’t so tempting it gets in trouble for hooking kids? (Huet, 1/2)

Break your leg hundreds of miles from the nearest hospital or have a heart attack, and you might not be so pleased to be offshore. Of course, every cruise ship has a medical center — but how big is it — and what do they do in there? Are the doctors general practitioners or is it more like the ER? And if worst comes to worse — what happens if a passenger dies onboard? Dr. Aleksandar Durovic, who’s spent the past 20 years as a medic on cruise ships, says that a doctor’s life on the high seas is very different from one on terra firma. (Buckley, 1/8)

Washingtonians are likelier to live alone than residents of any other major U.S. city, according to a recent study — a recipe for loneliness that one European company sees as a business opportunity. Brussels-based Cohabs is buying up properties in D.C. with the aim of converting them into “co-living” spaces, where as many as 36 housemates will share common areas, events and — according to the firm’s marketing — a cure for urban loneliness. (Wiener, 1/7)

Here’s what stood out at CES — the most useful, weird and wonderful new tech from the world’s largest consumer electronics show in Las Vegas. (Hunter, 1/7)

Not all innovation is good, according to a panel of self-described dystopia experts that has judged some products as “Worst in Show.” (Parvini, 1/9)

Joe Biden is leaving behind a legacy that, as many have pointed out, is mixed at best. But there is one area where the outgoing president has consistently shone: public health. (Leana S. Wen, 1/9)

The advance of H5N1 bird flu reminds us that novel pathogens remain a stubborn threat. Although a full-blown pandemic doesn’t appear imminent, the virus’s ability to infect a wide range of species — from migratory birds to dairy cattle — heightens the chance that it could evolve into a strain that spreads more readily to and among humans. (Scott Gottlieb and Mark B. McClellan, 1/10)

My wife's cancer was caused by the human papillomavirus, which nearly every person will contract at some point in their lives, because nearly every person is sexually active at some point in their lives. The vast majority of us never know we have HPV; however, each year about 47,000 of us in this country develop cervical, throat and other forms of cancer associated with the virus. (Paul Thornton, 1/10)

Maybe you were alarmed when the surgeon general last week said that consuming alcohol is a leading preventable cause of cancer and that alcoholic beverages should carry warning labels more like those for cigarettes. (Charles M. Blow, 1/8)

The U.S. healthcare system’s increasing complexity is taking an unbalanced toll on rural America. Shrinking access, growing health disparities and rising mortality rates put the well-being of 60 million people – roughly one in five Americans – at risk. The situation is dire, and immediate action is imperative to reverse that trajectory. (Niranjan Bose, et al., 1/6)