Comment on Senate Passes Short-Term Government Funding Measure

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Vermont is poised to pass a groundbreaking measure forcing major polluting companies to help pay for damages caused by the climate crisis, in a move being closely watched by other states including New York and California. Modeled after the EPA’s Superfund program, which forces companies to pay for toxic waste cleanup, the climate superfund bill would charge major fossil fuel companies doing business within the state billions of dollars for their past emissions. The measure would make Vermont the first US state to hold fossil fuel companies liable for their planet-heating pollution.

Last month, the UK’s four-year-long review of medical interventions for transgender youth was published. The Cass Review, named after Hilary Cass, a retired pediatrician appointed by the National Health Service to lead the effort, found that “there is not a reliable evidence base” for gender-affirming medicine. As a result, the report concludes, trans minors should generally not be able to access hormone blockers or hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and instead should seek psychotherapy.

Dr. Leilah Zahedi-Spung spent four years in medical school, four years in an OB-GYN residency, and three years in a maternal-fetal medicine fellowship learning how to care for high-risk pregnant patients. In her decade-plus of medical training, she learned that in some cases, the only rational and responsible option for medical intervention is an emergency abortion.

It’s 1963. You’re an African spiny mouse in Egypt. You mostly eat dates, but you’re known to consume the dried flesh of local mummies; your species was here long before they were. In another 60 years, it’ll be discovered that your fur hides regenerative, bony scales called osteoderms—an incredible adaptation long thought exclusive to armadillos and reptiles.

Last month, the Department of Justice released new guidance reaffirming disabled people’s right to vote, and the ways that their voting rights are protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act. “For too long,” the release from the department’s Civil Rights Division says, “many people with disabilities have been excluded from this core aspect of citizenship” and “prevented from voting because of prejudicial assumptions about their capabilities.” That includes many people living under guardianships or conservatorships, in which a person’s civil rights are placed under the control of a guardian, often a family member.

America is just waking up to the true meaning of the Trump phenomenon.