TV News LIES

NYU Langone Health, one of New York City’s major hospital networks, announced this week that it will shut down its gender‑affirming care program for minors, as the Trump administration escalates threats to strip federal funding from providers that treat trans youth.

In a statement to the Guardian, spokesperson Steve Ritea said that “given the recent departure of our medical director, coupled with the current regulatory environment, we made the difficult decision to discontinue our Transgender Youth Health Program.” He added that the hospital’s pediatric mental health services will continue.

The move comes after months of sustained pressure from the administration, including an executive order signed shortly after Trump returned to office declaring that the federal government will not “fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so‑called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another”.

NYU Langone reportedly began cancelling appointments for minors soon after the order was issued. New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, directed the hospital to resume care, warning that the network risked violating state anti‑discrimination laws. A federal judge later issued a temporary restraining order blocking the administration’s directive from taking effect.

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The Trump administration cannot proceed with plans to rescind $602 million in public health grants from four Democratic-led states, a federal judge in Illinois ruled Thursday.

U.S. District Judge Manish S. Shah determined the four states — Colorado, Illinois, California and Minnesota — were likely to succeed in their claim that the government’s desired termination of the grants was based on “arbitrary, capricious, or unconstitutional rationales.”

Shah, an appointee of former President Obama, blocked the administration from taking any action for 14 days while litigation is ongoing.

The states’ attorneys general sued several Trump officials on Wednesday, about a week after the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announced it had ordered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to claw back millions in funding from blue states.

Those cuts were targeted at “states fraught with waste and mismanagement,” according to an OMB spokesperson.

The states framed the administration’s directive as “part of their ongoing campaign to punish Plaintiff States using the tool of federal funding for partisan political purposes,” arguing that it would harm “essential public health infrastructure” as well as the testing and treatment of deadly diseases.

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The U.S. government has given an ultimatum to the international group that helps provide vaccines to children in the world's poorest countries.

In a statement sent to NPR, The Department of Health and Human Services said that Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance must remove the ingredient thimerosal from its vaccines — or else the U.S. will "withhold future new funding." The news was first reported by Reuters on Wednesday.

At the heart of the U.S. demand is an unsubstantiated theory that the mercury in thimerosal could be linked to autism. Thimerosal is a chemical compound that is added to vaccines as a preservative.

This is the latest development in the changing relationship between Gavi — which says it has provided vaccines for 1.1 billion children in lower-resource countries and prevented 18 million deaths — and the United States, once a major funder of the vaccine group.

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California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced just one day after the U.S. officially withdrew from the World Health Organization (WHO) that his state would become the first to join the organization’s Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, in a seeming rebuke of the Trump administration’s withdrawal from international collaborations.

Newsom traveled this week to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he was scheduled to speak at an event but was  canceled at the last moment. During his trip, he met with WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

“As President Trump withdraws the United States from the World Health Organization, California is stepping up under Governor Gavin Newsom — becoming the first, and currently the only, state to join the WHO’s Global Outbreak Alert & Response Network (GOARN), strengthening public health preparedness and rapid response coordination,” Newsom’s office said in a statement.

This announcement comes just one day after the U.S.’s withdrawal from the WHO became official after nearly 80 years of membership, having been a founding member of the organization.

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The United States officially left the World Health Organization on Thursday after a year of warnings that doing so would hurt public health in the U.S. and globally, saying its decision reflected failures in the U.N. health agency’s management of the COVID-19 pandemic.

President Donald Trump gave notice that the U.S. would quit the organization on the first day of his presidency in 2025, via an executive order.

According to a press release from the U.S. Health and State Departments, the U.S. will only work with the WHO in a limited fashion in order to effectuate the withdrawal.

“We have no plans to participate as an observer, and we have no plans of rejoining,” a senior government health official said. The U.S. said it plans to work directly with other countries - rather than through an international organization - on disease surveillance and other public health priorities.

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Dr. Jonathan Reiner, cardiologist to the late former Vice President Dick Cheney, called on Monday for a congressional inquiry into President Trump’s fitness. 

Reiner, a CNN medical analyst, cited Trump’s recent letter to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, in which he appeared to link his threats to acquire Greenland to his having not been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

“This letter, and the fact that the president directed that it be distributed to other European countries, should trigger a bipartisan congressional inquiry into presidential fitness,” Reiner wrote on the social platform X. 

Trump’s message, which was shared with multiple European ambassadors, questioned why Denmark has a “right of ownership” over Greenland, a semiautonomous Arctic territory rich in minerals and seen as key to security in the region.

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