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A look inside the playbook on transgender health bills

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:34:50 GMT

Aaron and Lacey Jennen’s roots in Arkansas run deep. They’ve spent their entire lives there, attended the flagship state university, and are raising a family. So they’re heartbroken at the prospect of perhaps having to move to one of an ever-dwindling number of states where gender-affirming health care for their transgender teenage daughter, Sabrina, is not threatened.“We were like, ‘OK, if we can just get Sabrina to 18 … we can put all this horrible stuff behind us,’” Aaron Jennen said, “and unfortunately that’s not been the case, as you’ve seen a proliferation of anti-trans legislation here in Arkansas and across the country.”At least 17 states have enacted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors, though judges have temporarily blocked their enforcement in some, including Arkansas. An Associated Press analysis found that often those bills sprang not from grassroots or constituent demand, but from the pens of a handful of con...

Uvalde families dig in for new test of gun industry protections

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:34:50 GMT

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — After Mayah Zamora was shot and wounded at Robb Elementary School, her family did what many mass shooting survivors do: They sued.They sued the store off Main Street in Uvalde, Texas, that sold the teenage gunman his AR-style rifle. They sued the gun maker. And they sued police who waited 77 minutes outside Mayah’s fourth-grade classroom before stopping the shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers.“Mainly what we are looking for is some sort of justice,” said Christina Zamora, Mayah’s mother.As the grim frequency of gun violence continues, both the U.S. government and gun manufacturers have reached large settlements in recent years following some of the nation’s worst mass shootings. In April, the Justice Department announced a $144 million settlement with relatives and families of a 2017 Texas church attack, which was carried out by a former U.S. airman with a criminal history.The lawsuits, relatives and victims of mass shooting...

Nevada fentanyl penalty bills have mixed results in hearings as Democrats amend proposals

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:34:50 GMT

CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) — A bill that would enhance fentanyl penalties in Nevada did not pass after a hearing in an Assembly committee, while a companion bill was significantly amended in a last-minute shift for Nevada Democratic leadership’s plans to send fentanyl legislation to the governor’s desk.The amended legislation starts low-level trafficking charges at 28 grams of possession for fentanyl, which was formerly proposed at 4 grams. The alteration came on Friday evening in the Assembly Judiciary Committee, hours before the deadline for most bills to pass out of their second committee.For months, harm reduction experts and some Democrats have warned the legislation starting at 4 grams would repeat “war on drug” policies that criminalized low-level users. Those concerns animated bill hearings and back-door discussion, which were pushed by Democratic leadership but questioned by many rank-and-file Assembly members.Fentanyl trafficking charges in Nevada currently start a...

G7 leaders’ communiqué to mention foreign interference, Canadian official says

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:34:50 GMT

HIROSHIMA, Japan — A senior Canadian government official says the G7 leaders’ communiqué at the summit in Hiroshima, Japan, will make mention of foreign interference, after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau raised the issue of Chinese foreign interference to other leaders.The official gave the information during a briefing with the media, and is not being named because they are not authorized to discuss the details publicly.G7 countries are expected to release the communiqué for the summit today, as leaders anticipate the arrival of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday.The document is typically released on the final day of the summit and outlines the countries’ shared priorities.However, the G7 summit’s schedule was adjusted to accommodate the in-person appearance by Zelenskyy.His appearance comes after G7 nations all announced new sanctions on Russia Friday.This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 20, 2023. The Canadian Press

Transgender health: Comparing model bills to real proposals

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:34:50 GMT

Many of this year’s statehouse proposals to restrict gender-affirming care for youths, as introduced or enacted, are identical or very similar to some model legislation, or ready-made bills suggested to lawmakers by interest groups, an Associated Press analysis has found.The AP obtained the texts of more than 130 bills in 40 state legislatures from Plural, a public policy software company, and analyzed them for similarities to model bills touted by the conservative groups Do No Harm and the Family Research Council.Some statehouse bills share similarities with Do No Harm’s model legislation and a 2021 Arkansas bill endorsed as a model by the Family Research Council. The model bills have similar preambles, including the assertion — rebutted by major medical organizations — that the risks of gender-affirming care outweigh its benefits.They both also include nearly the same list of circumstances under which the care would be permitted and similar descriptions of how the provisions...

Biden meeting with Indo-Pacific leaders at G7 summit while confronting stalemate over US debt limit

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:34:50 GMT

HIROSHIMA, Japan (AP) — President Joe Biden was seeking to rally regional cooperation against China on the margins of the Group of Seven summit Saturday, while confronting a stalemate in Washington over how to ensure the U.S. avoids default.Hoping to avert an outcome that would rattle the global economy and prove to be a boon to Beijing, Biden began his third day in Japan at the annual meeting of the world’s most powerful democracies with a briefing by staff on the latest fits and starts in the showdown over how to raise the federal debt limit. The president on Saturday was also squeezing in meetings aimed at challenging China’s buildout across the Indo-Pacific, including with the so-called Quad partnership made up of the U.S., Australia, Japan and India. The Quad members originally had been scheduled to meet in Sydney next week, but rescheduled their meeting for the sidelines of the G-7 to allow Biden to make an early return to Washington on Sunday in hopes of finalizing a deal to ...

2024 Republican hopefuls rush to defend Marine who put NYC subway rider in fatal chokehold

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:34:50 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis urged the nation to show Daniel Penny that “America’s got his back.” Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley called for New York’s governor to pardon Penny, and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy donated $10,000 to his legal defense fund.Republican presidential hopefuls have lined up to support Penny, a 24-year-old U.S. Marine veteran who was caught on video pinning an agitated fellow subway passenger in New York City to the floor in a chokehold. The passenger, 30-year-old Jordan Neely, later died from compression of the neck, according to the medical examiner.Penny has been charged with manslaughter. His attorneys say he acted in self-defense.He’s already become a hero to many Republicans, who have trumpeted Penny as a Good Samaritan moving to protect others in a Democrat-led city that has seen crime rates rise. The support has been unwavering, despite the fact that Neely, who was Black, never got physical with anyone on th...

Low-income tenants lack options as old mobile home parks are razed

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:34:50 GMT

PHOENIX (AP) — Alondra Ruiz Vazquez and her husband were comfortable in Periwinkle Mobile Home Park for a decade, feeling lucky to own their mobile home and pay about $450 a month for their lot in a city with spiraling rents.But now they and dozens of other families have until May 28 to leave the Phoenix park, which nearby Grand Canyon University purchased seven years ago to build student housing. Two other mobile home communities are also being cleared this spring for new developments in a city where no new parks have been built in more than 30 years. “I’m here, well, because I have nowhere to go,” said Isabel Ramos, who lives at Periwinkle with her 11-year-old daughter. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.”The razing of older mobile home parks across the United States worries advocates who say bulldozing them permanently eliminates some of the already limited housing for the poorest of the poor. Residents may have to double up with relatives or live in their car...

Mother of 8-year-old girl who died in Border Patrol custody says pleas for hospital care were denied

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:34:50 GMT

McALLEN, Texas (AP) — The mother of an 8-year-old girl who died in Border Patrol custody said Friday that agents repeatedly ignored pleas to hospitalize her medically fragile daughter as she felt pain in her bones, struggled to breathe and was unable to walk.Agents said her daughter’s diagnosis of influenza did not require hospital care, Mabel Alvarez Benedicks said in an emotional phone interview. They knew the girl had a history of heart problems and sickle cell anemia.“They killed my daughter, because she was nearly a day and a half without being able to breathe,” the mother said. “She cried and begged for her life and they ignored her. They didn’t do anything for her.The girl died Wednesday on what her mother said was the family’s ninth day in Border Patrol custody. People are to be held no more than 72 hours under agency policy, a rule that is violated during unusually busy times. The account is almost certain to raise questions about whether the Border Patrol...

Mexico moving migrants away from borders to relieve pressure

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 10:34:50 GMT

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico is flying migrants south away from the U.S. border and busing new arrivals away from its boundary with Guatemala to relieve pressure on its border cities.In the week since Washington dropped pandemic-era restrictions on seeking asylum at its border, U.S. authorities report a dramatic drop in illegal crossing attempts. In Mexico, officials are generally trying to keep migrants south away from that border, a strategy that could reduce crossing temporarily, but experts say is not sustainable.The U.S. Department of Homeland Security reported Friday that in the week since the policy change, Border Patrol averaged 4,000 encounters a day with people crossing between ports of entry. That was down dramatically from the more than 10,000 daily average immediately before.Between the migrants who rushed to cross the border in the days before the U.S. policy change and Mexico’s efforts to move others to the country’s interior, shelters in northern border citi...