GOP Tennessee AG reacts to oral arguments in Supreme Court transgender rights case: ‘Feel really good’

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said he’s feeling “really good” about the arguments delivered Wednesday before the Supreme Court in a case over transgender treatment.

The historic case, United States v. Skrmetti, questions whether a Tennessee law passed last year violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

Tennessee Senate Bill 1 (SB1) prohibits all medical treatments intended to allow “a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex” or to treat “purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity.”

Read more on Fox News.

What I Saw Outside the Supreme Court Amid Oral Arguments About Whether States Can Protect Minors from ‘Gender-Affirming Care’

About 1,000 transgender activists and parental rights champions rallied outside the Supreme Court as it heard oral arguments in a case that will decide whether states may ban transgender medical interventions for children.

LGBTQ+ activists with the American Civil Liberties Union, Lambda Legal, the Human Rights Campaign, the Gender Liberation Movement, the Young Feminist Party, and other groups bused in protesters for the “Free to Be Ourselves Rally” on the court’s left.

Medical watchdog Do No Harm hosted doctors, detransitioners, and other allies on the right side.

Read more on The Daily Signal.

Supreme Court heard arguments on Tennessee ban on transgender care. What does the science say?

Last year, Tennessee banned doctors from medically slowing down a teenager’s puberty or giving them hormones or surgery to alter their gender.

Families of transgender teens in the state sued to protect their right to make their own medical decisions, and now the case is before the U.S. Supreme Court. Oral arguments ended Wednesday and the court is expected to decide by the summer.

The Tennessee law says it has a “compelling interest in encouraging minors to appreciate their sex” and in prohibiting the procedures “that might encourage minors to become disdainful of their sex.”

Read more on USA Today.

Transgender rights take center stage at the US Supreme Court. Here’s what to know

Among the groups backing Tennessee’s approach is Do No Harm, Inc., a conservative medical advocacy group whose chairman told CNN that while the organization doesn’t oppose gender-affirming care for adults, it believes such care should not be administered to minors.

“Adults can do as they as they will, and there are perfectly fine people that have transitioned. That’s their business,” said Dr. Stanley Goldfarb. “But we feel that children just are really unable to do this in a way that involves informed consent, primarily, and that many of them are just children that are very troubled.”

Read more on CNN.

Ben & Jerry’s promotes petition for ‘gender-affirming care’ before Supreme Court hearing

Ben & Jerry’s shared a petition from the American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday asking social media users to sign it to show their support for “gender-affirming care.”

The petition was shared on the ice cream brand’s social media account on the eve of the Supreme Court hearing oral arguments on Tennessee’s Senate Bill 1, a law barring puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries for minors, and whether it violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. The ACLU’s petition says states such as Tennessee banning medication to transgender youth has threatened the “well-being” of children and their families.

Read more on the Washington Examiner.

FREE OF CHARGE: Protesters Flock to Supreme Court to Oppose Ban on ‘Gender-Affirming Care’

Organizations in favor of child sex changes will protest the Supreme Court as the nine justices hear oral arguments Wednesday in a case that will decide whether states may ban irreversible transgender medical interventions for children.

LGBTQ+ activists with the American Civil Liberties Union, Lambda Legal, Human Rights Campaign, Gender Liberation Movement, Young Feminist Party, and other groups are busing in protesters for a “Free to Be Ourselves Rally” Wednesday morning outside the Supreme Court Building during the arguments in United States v. Skrmetti.

The high court eventually will rule on the constitutionality of a Tennessee law that protects children from gender-transition procedures. The defendant in the case is Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, a Republican.

Read more on The Daily Signal.

The Surprising New Front in the Fight against ‘Equity’: Red-State Licensing Boards

When appointing members to Tennessee’s medical board, governor Bill Lee is required by law to consider important criteria — at least nine of the twelve members must be physicians with at least six years of experience and degrees from respected medical schools.

The three other board members, representing the public at large, should be non-physicians and health care consumers with no financial interest in any health care facility. Board appointees should represent the state’s geographic diversity.

Oh, and it is also helpful to be black.

According to Tennessee law, the governor is required “to the extent feasible” to ensure that at least one member of the state’s medical board is an African American.

Read more on National Review.

Transgender care for minors gets first Supreme Court review: What to know

The Supreme Court will soon hear arguments in a landmark case that could set a pivotal precedent on states’ authority to regulate transgender hormone therapy procedures for minors.

At the heart of the set for oral arguments Wednesday is whether Tennessee’s Senate Bill 1 (SB1), a law barring puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries for minors, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

While Republican lawmakers, including incoming President-elect Donald Trump, have sounded alarms about matters of fairness surrounding biological men competing on female sports teams, a larger underbelly of concern is brewing over the more than 14,000 minors who have undergone transgender-related procedures since 2019.

Read more on the Washington Examiner.

EXCLUSIVE: Biden-Harris Admin Opened Floodgates For Taxpayer-Funded Sex Changes On Kids

The Biden-Harris administration opened the door for a massive increase of taxpayer-funded transgender interventions, including child sex-change surgeries, and the Daily Caller News Foundation has obtained enough data to give a partial estimate of the cost.

From January 2018 to September 2023, 16 states spent more than $165 million funding “gender transition services” — including puberty blockers, hormones, and sex-change surgeries — with more than $45 million spent on interventions for children 17 and younger, according to data obtained by the DCNF through a series of public record requests.

The DCNF asked states to provide reimbursement data for gender transition services covered through state insurance and medical assistance programs, such as Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which is funded through Medicaid. The states were able to identify gender transition services through medical billing codes such as International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes. Published by the World Health Organization, ICD codes provide comprehensive diagnostic information for diseases and injuries and create a valuable dataset used in medical research.

Read more on the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Pressure grows for UMich to end its failed $250 million DEI experiment

The University of Michigan has spent about a quarter of a billion dollars on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts since 2016, but that has done nothing to unite or improve the campus community, and in fact in many ways DEI dogma produced more strife and division.

That sums up a lengthy article published recently in the New York Times Magazine headlined “The University of Michigan Doubled Down on D.E.I. What Went Wrong?”

It included interviews by more than 60 students, faculty, alumni and administrators, a stack of internal documents, and several outside research projects on the subject of UMich’s DEI efforts.

Read more on The College Fix.

In Search of a Second Opinion

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When patients turn to professional societies like the AMA or the American College of Physicians or the American Association of Pediatrics for vital health information, one might expect that the information is based on publications in prestigious medical journals of carefully designed and meticulously interpreted studies. Dr. Marty Makary, in his book Blind Spots, shows how wrong these assumptions can be.

Makary is a frequent commentator on health-related topics. He is a surgeon and surgical oncologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Blind Spots consists of several examples where the medical establishment has perpetuated a myth often based on a single academic’s opinion that became ingrained in the culture as “truth” despite the flimsiest of evidence. Using examples like avoiding exposure to peanuts in infants, producing an epidemic of peanut allergies, or denying the benefits of hormone replacement therapy in perimenopausal women, resulting in premature deaths and suboptimal health outcomes, Makary proves his case against groupthink in medicine. He goes on to rail against the overuse of antibiotics because of their potential for altering the microbial composition in the GI tract. Recent research shows that this effect of antibiotics may contribute to serious complications, including risks for cancer and cardiovascular disease.

Read more on The Washington Free Beacon.

University of Oklahoma criticized for allegedly requiring education students to study social justice curriculum

The University of Oklahoma has been accused of not complying with a statewide requirement preventing certain kinds of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies.

The Daily Caller has reported that the University of Oklahoma forces undergraduate education students to take a course entitled “Schools and American Culture” that involves the development of a “social justice curriculum” and advocates “centering the needs, histories and realities of marginalized and minority populations.”

The class additionally covers topics such as “critical race theory” and “critical whiteness.” One of the required books for the course is entitled “Handbook of Critical Race Theory in Education.

Read more on Campus Reform.

New study concludes medical societies teaching left-leaning positions unrelated to health

A medical group whose stated mission is “to keep identity politics out of medical education, research, and clinical practice” has release a study that concludes a vast majority of those surveyed have adopted left-wing ideologies in practices that have nothing to do with health. 

The group, Do No Harm, conducted a study that analyzed 28 medical societies since 2010 and found 26 of them have published statements about racism or affirmative action. 

The study also found that 57% of the medical societies put out statements about climate change while 18% gave standpoints on wars in the Middle East.

Read more on Just The News.

Medically woke: Report finds U.S. medical societies back liberal policies unrelated to research

A vast majority of leading American medical societies have adopted left-leaning political positions unrelated to their health specializations, the anti-woke medical advocacy group Do No Harm reported in a new study made public this week.

Since 2010, the group found that 26 out of 28 — 93% — of the nation’s leading medical societies have published statements on affirmative action or racism, 57% on climate change, 50% on immigration, 39% on Ukraine, and 18% on the ongoing war in the Middle East.

Three have spoken publicly on all five issues, despite the face that the topics range far from their fields of expertise: the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Cardiology and the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

Read more on The Washington Times.

EXCLUSIVE: 26 Medical Societies Have Issued Political Calls to Action on Topics Like Racism, Climate Change

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The majority of American medical societies have released statements infusing political ideology into their missions, according to a new study by medical watchdog Do No Harm.

Out of 28 medical specialty societies, 26 have adopted official positions relating to affirmative action or racism, climate change, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, immigration policy, or conflict between Israel and Hamas, since 2010.

Almost every society included in the study had issued a statement on racism or affirmative action, many of which feature calls to political action which falls outside the scope of health care.

Read more on The Daily Signal.

EXCLUSIVE: Philly Kids Hospital ‘Leading The Nation’ In Sex Changes

Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia is one of the top offenders in the United States when it comes to irreversible sex change procedures for children, according to a digital campaign launching Tuesday.

The hospital, known as “CHOP,” boasts that it is the first United States hospital devoted exclusively to the care of children. It has programs devoted to helping children explore and attempt to change their gender — and according to the advocacy group Do No Harm, the hospital is “leading the nation” in offering “life-altering sex related interventions for minors.”

Do No Harm is targeting CHOP with a new digital campaign that will make Philadelphia parents aware of the hospital’s devotion to gender ideology. The campaign also includes a video that discusses how much money CHOP has made from child transgender interventions and urges the hospital itself to “stop the harm.”

Read more on The Daily Wire.

Temple opens DEI event after race discrimination complaint

Temple University changed an event for educators who identify as Black, Indigenous and people of color to include white staff as well after a federal civil rights complaint was filed against it by Dr. Mark Perry of Do No Harm.

On Nov. 14, Perry filed a complaint against Temple with the Philadelphia Office for Civil Rights for holding “an event that illegally excludes non-BIPOC teaching assistants and faculty based on their race,” and notified the university’s president, counsel and other offices of his complaint, according to emails obtained by The Center Square.

Read more on The Center Square.

Advocacy group sues Tennessee over racial requirements for medical boards

A nonprofit dedicated to opposing diversity initiatives in medicine has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the requirements surrounding the racial makeup of key medical boards in Tennessee.

The Virginia-based Do No Harm filed the lawsuit earlier this month, marking the second legal battle the group has launched in the Volunteer State in the past year.

In 2023, Do No Harm filed a similar federal lawsuit seeking to overturn the state’s requirement that one member of the Tennessee Board of Podiatric Medical Examiners must be a racial minority. That suit was initially dismissed by a judge in August but the group has since filed an appeal to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Read more on AP News.