Trump isn’t gutting medical research. He’s cleaning up a corrupt system. | Opinion

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Of all the meltdowns over President Donald Trump’s reforms, the freak-out after his funding change this month at the National Institutes of Health is among the most telling.

The news media and major universities claim that our country’s world-leading system of medical research is being destroyed, so Americans should expect fewer lifesaving breakthroughs.

In fact, the president is devoting more money to research while forcing universities to stop wasting resources on administrative bloat and ideological adventures. I can personally attest that this move is the correct one.

Read more in USA Today.

CU Boulder ends ‘underrepresented minority’ med school scholarship after being sued

University eliminates language favoring racial minorities from scholarship

The University of Colorado Boulder has revised a scholarship for “underrepresented” minorities following a federal lawsuit from Do No Harm.

The medical reform group sued the public university for its med school scholarship focused on radiation oncology. The scholarship now says it is “open to all applicants.”

Read more in The College Fix.

‘Misgendering’ trans people on their death certificates could be jailable offense under blue-state bill

A bill before the Colorado state legislature would require a deceased person’s gender identity be recorded on their certificate of death under penalty of a fine and/or jail time for anyone who “knowingly and willfully violates” the measure, which one critic told Fox News was an “insane” effort that compels speech.

Under the proposed law – sponsored by Democratic state Reps. Karen McCormick and Kyle Brown and state Sen. Mike Weissman – if a document memorializing the decedent’s gender identity is presented, the individual completing the death certificate must record the decedent’s sex based on that identity. If this is thwarted in any way, the penalty is a class 2 misdemeanor, which in Colorado is punishable by up to 120 days in jail and/or a fine of up to $750.

“The state registrar must also amend the certificate of death to reflect a legal name change if the appropriate legal name change documentation is submitted to the state registrar,” the bill states. 

Read more in Fox News.

‘Absolutely Nuts’: Blue State Bill Aims To Jail Those Who ‘Misgender’ Dead People

A Colorado bill could put doctors, government employees or morticians in jail if they accurately record the sex of deceased people who identified as transgender.

The Colorado House is scheduled to hold a hearing on Feb. 25 examining legislation that would make it a crime not to abide by the chosen “gender identity” of deceased individuals on their death certificates. Medical experts expressed alarm at the attempt to erase biological reality from crucial state-issued documents.

“It’s dangerous and absolutely nuts to threaten doctors with a misdemeanor if they won’t forge a death certificate. But it’s what I’d expect in Colorado,” Dr. Travis Morrell, a Colorado physician and senior fellow with the conservative-leaning medical group Do No Harm, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Read more in the Daily Caller.

Nonprofit says ‘crazy fad’ of gender reassignment ideology is ‘a fever that is breaking’

(The Center Square) – Last month, President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning medical providers from performing gender reassignment or affirming procedures, such as mastectomies or prescribing puberty blockers, to individuals below the age of 19. In response, many medical centers and hospitals have since suspended those services.

Meanwhile, some states such as Washington have filed lawsuits against the EO, while California has threatened legal action against medical providers who discontinue those services.

Nevertheless, a senior fellow with a nationwide nonprofit that has investigated the practice of youth gender reassignment procedures says the EO indicates that it’s “a fever that is breaking.”

Read more in The Center Square.

I Was Fired From Old Dominion for Asking Questions About DEI

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When the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania were forced out of their jobs, I wondered: How did those schools’ boards of directors let their ships come so close to sinking? Having now been forced out of a university board myself, I wonder if most board members fear rocking the boat until it has already capsized.

Read more in the Wall Street Journal.

California Attorney General Accuses Children’s Hospital of Discrimination for Pausing Sex-Change Drugs for Kids

California attorney general Rob Bonta accused Children’s Hospital Los Angeles of illegal discrimination over its decision to halt sex-changes for kids—a necessary move to protect its bottom line after President Donald Trump issued an executive order barring federal funds from going to hospitals that provide such interventions.

The Jan. 28 order declared that the federal government won’t “fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another.” It threatens to withhold federal money from hospitals that provide puberty blockers, hormone therapy, or surgical procedures to transgender youth under the age of 19.

The contradicting demands from Trump and Bonta puts Children’s Hospital Los Angeles in an especially tight bind since it receives significant funding from Medicaid.

Read more in the Washington Free Beacon.

Mandatory ‘Indigenous Health’ class for U. Alberta nursing students teaches ‘systemic racism’

Professor says students learn ‘from Indigenous ways in terms of health promotion and being at one with nature’

A required nursing class at the University of Alberta teaches students about “systemic racism” and “Indigenous ways” of understanding “health … and being one with nature,” a dean of the nursing school told The College Fix.

However, the course has prompted concerns about a growing emphasis on “identity politics” in healthcare.

Read more in The College Fix.

Washington AG files lawsuit against Trump’s EO on youth gender reassignment procedures

(The Center Square) – Washington Attorney General Nick Brown has filed a multi-state lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s executive order banning gender reassignment procedures, such as mastectomies and puberty blockers, on children.

Trump’s EO states that “it is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures.”

Brown argued at a Feb. 7 news conference that the EO was not only “disgusting,” but it was illegal for violating the Fifth and Tenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

Read more in The Center Square.

NYC Comptroller Brad Lander backs sex-change operations for minors, opposes Trump trans ban

City Comptroller Brad Lander lamented an underage kid’s access to puberty blockers in a tirade against President Trump’s executive order banning federal funding for sex-change surgeries and other treatments.

“I literally this morning was talking to a mom whose kid has puberty blockers prescribed by a doc at NYU Langone,” Lander, a candidate for mayor, said during an interview with LGBT activist Marti Cummings. “She had to explain to him why his doctor is not going to continue to see him any more.”

Lander said he backed a legal opinion from state Attorney General Letitia James’ that said denying “gender affirming care” violates the state’s human rights law.

Read ore in the New York Post.

Civil rights officials probe four US medical schools over antisemitism at 2024 commencement ceremonies

The Office of Civil Rights within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced investigations into four medical schools over alleged antisemitic incidents during their 2024 commencement ceremonies. 

While HHS did not identify the schools subjected to these investigations, the Wall Street Journal reported that Harvard, Columbia, Brown and Johns Hopkins medical schools were the targets. The investigations will come after a school year riddled with what critics have described as antisemitic incidents after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel. 

“After October 7, we saw Jew-hatred explode not just on college campuses and city streets, but in the medical profession. This has caused a lot of concern that anti-Jewish bias in medicine endangers the lives of Jewish patients – and these concerns have not been conclusively addressed to date,” said Gerard Filitti, senior counsel at The Lawfare Project, which provides pro bono legal services to protect the civil rights of the Jewish community. “The investigations announced by HHS are a crucial first step towards addressing these concerns.”

Read more in Fox News.

Letitia James harms kids by telling NY hospitals to ignore trans order

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What’s more important: Playing politics or protecting kids?

New York Attorney General Letitia James just gave her answer — and it’s the wrong one. She’s perfectly fine endangering kids for the sake of her own political gain.

That’s the grim reality now that AG James has demanded that NYU Langone — one of New York’s most important hospitals — restart transgender treatments for minors.

Read more in the New York Post.

DEI oaths in taxpayer-funded medical schools draw legal threats, bump against Trump orders

Rhode Island College got a break a year ago when the Supreme Court declined to review whether its taxpayer-funded officials could be held personally liable for failing a social work studentwho refused to lobby for legislation he opposed, a vehicle for possibly overturning the SCOTUS-created doctrine of “qualified immunity.”

Public universities are still testing the legal limits of what they can force students to say, even if it’s not clear what they expect students to do, prompting confrontations with free-speech groups and likely the second Trump administration, which has wasted no time invoking executive power against all forms of diversity, equity and inclusion.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression sent a legal warning letter Friday to the University of Connecticut School of Medicine for apparently requiring freshmen to recite what FIRE called an “ideologically-charged version of the Hippocratic Oath” at their “white coat ceremony” last summer, which kicks off their medical education. (Starting at 43:30, an official calls the oath “slightly modified and updated.”)

Read more in Just The News.

Pfizer resolves conservative challenge to diversity fellowship program

Pfizer has resolved a lawsuit by a conservative group that alleged that a fellowship program that the drugmaker established to boost the pipeline of Black, Latino and Native American people in leadership positions at the company unlawfully discriminated against white and Asian-American applicants.

According to papers filed on Friday in Manhattan federal court, Pfizer will stop accepting new fellows and has already opened its program to applicants regardless of their race after being sued in 2022 by Do No Harm, an advocacy group opposed to diversity initiatives in medicine.

The settlement came after the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Jan. 10 reversed a judge’s decision to dismiss the case and gave Do No Harm a new shot at establishing that it had the necessary legal standing to pursue the litigation.

Read more in Reuters.

Pfizer, Anti-DEI Group End Suit Over Diversity Fellowship

Pfizer Inc. and a conservative group agreed to end litigation challenging the legality of the company’s multi-year Breakthrough Fellowship Program designed to build a diverse pipeline of scientific talent.

Attorneys for the pharmaceutical giant and plaintiff conservative advocacy group Do No Harm made the announcement in a joint stipulation of dismissal filed with the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on Friday.

Read more in Bloomberg Law.

Pfizer Agrees to End Racially Discriminatory Fellowship, Resolving Anti-DEI Lawsuit

Pfizer has agreed to end its fellowship designed exclusively for black, Latino, and Native American applicants as part of its resolution of an anti-DEI lawsuit, in which the plaintiff argued the program illegally discriminated against whites and Asians.

The pharmaceutical giant said it will stop accepting new fellows to the program, according to court documents approved on Friday. The case is now dismissed following the agreement.

Do No Harm, a policy advocacy group that opposes diversity, equity, and inclusion in medicine, sued Pfizer in September 2022 for illegally barring whites and Asians from applying for its Breakthrough Fellowship Program. Created in 2021, the program sought to boost the pipeline of black, Latino, and Native American leaders within the drug company. By 2025, Pfizer hoped to train 100 diverse fellows.

Read more in the National Review.

Pfizer Drops Discriminatory DEI Fellowship After Do No Harm Lawsuit

Pfizer publicly dropped race-based selection criteria from an internship program that discriminated against white and Asian applicants, settling a lawsuit with Do No Harm, an organization committed to safeguarding the medical industry from leftwing ideology.

The pharmaceutical giant settled with Do No Harm after the organization launched a lawsuit challenging Pfizer’s Breakthrough Fellowship program, which originally excluded white and Asian would-be applicants on the basis of their race.

Do No Harm Chairman Dr. Stanley Goldfarb touted the victory, noting that the settlement amounts to an admission from the company that they were previously engaged in unlawful racial discrimination.

Read more in The Daily Wire.

Med schools less likely to hire white male professors, study finds

Authors argue it is racial minorities and women who need help

White male doctors are less likely to get hired for entry-level positions, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

However, the authors argue the “culture and practices surrounding faculty appointments and promotions” needs to be “transform[ed]” – to support women and racial minorities.

Read more in The College Fix.