Tag: trump administration
Baltimore picked for federal program to help eradicate HIV/AIDS
Article via BaltimoreSun
Baltimore is one of dozens of hotspots the federal government plans to target as it aims to drastically reduce HIV and AIDS nationwide during the next decade, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The city, along with Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, is among the areas where the federal health department estimates about half of new HIV cases occur — including 48 of some 3,000 counties nationwide, seven states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. The department plans to direct funding to those areas to boost resources for fighting HIV and AIDS.
But the day after President Donald Trump announced the initiative in his State of the Union address, neither the Maryland Department of Health nor the Baltimore City Health Department had received details about how the initiative might be implemented locally.
The program was among the public health goals Trump mentioned in his State of the Union address Tuesday.
“In recent years we have made remarkable progress in the fight against HIV and AIDS,” Trump said. “Scientific breakthroughs have brought a once-distant dream within reach. My budget will ask Democrats and Republicans to make the needed commitment to eliminate the HIV epidemic in the United States within 10 years. Together, we will defeat AIDS in America.”
While Trump spoke of eliminating HIV within 10 years, the program’s actual goals are to reduce new HIV infections by 75 percent in five years and 90 percent in a decade, according to a statement posted by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.
Maryland ranked fifth of all U.S. states and territories in HIV diagnosis rates, with 20.4 diagnoses per 100,000 people in 2017, according to data from the state health department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Baltimore City and Prince George’s County had the highest diagnosis rates in the state that year. In Baltimore, the rate of new HIV diagnoses among patients age 13 and older was 44.7 per 100,000 people in 2017, according to the city health department.
In Baltimore, 231 new HIV cases were diagnosed in 2017, the most recent year for which data were available, said Dr. Adena Greenbaum, assistant commissioner of the clinical services and HIV/STD prevention for the Baltimore City Health Department. She said the city already surpassed its goal of a 25 percent reduction in annual HIV diagnoses between 2010 and 2020.
More than 12,000 people are living with HIV in the city, she said. Statewide, there were 30,566 adults or adolescents living with HIV at the end of 2017, according to state health department data.
Federal health officials analyzed data on the spread of HIV to identify the counties with the highest number of new HIV diagnoses and states with high rates of HIV in rural areas, according to information from the department. The initiative will provide funding to those jurisdictions in phases, “starting with the areas with the highest burden,” according to the federal health department.
The Maryland Annual HIV Epidemiological Profile for 2017 estimated 11.6 percent of people living with HIV in Maryland had not been diagnosed.
Of those people who were diagnosed with HIV in Baltimore, about 73 percent were men, 24 percent were women and 3 percent identified as transgender according to Greenbaum. About 80 percent of those patients were black, 13 percent were white and 3 percent were Hispanic. And 37 percent of all the new cases were diagnosed in people younger than 30, she said.
“HIV does not affect all communities equally. That’s true nationwide and it’s also true in Baltimore, and there are those who are disproportionately affected by HIV,” Greenbaum said. “We cannot address HIV without reducing disparities and reducing health inequities.”
The city health department already offers free HIV testing, works with community groups and clinics to reduce the stigma around HIV and AIDS, and is aiming to increase access to a pill that can prevent HIV infection for people who are exposed to the virus. The department also works to link HIV and AIDS patients with health care providers by making appointments and arranging transportation for them.
“We would certainly welcome any additional resources that were available to Baltimore City to be able to increase our efforts surrounding HIV prevention and treatment,” Greenbaum said.
The federal health department said it plans to meet with community members to develop plans tailored to communities in the program and ensure the initiative is meeting their needs.
While Trump spoke of wiping out HIV in 10 years, the program’s actual goals are to reduce new infections by 75 percent in the next five years and by 90 percent in a decade.
Azar said the initiative would increase investments to existing programs in geographic hotspots, establish a new program through community health centers to provide medicine to protect persons at highest risk, use data to target services and fund the creation of a local HIV HealthForce in these targeted areas.
The proposal was met with a mix of skepticism and cautious optimism by activists in the fight against AIDS. And state and local health officials warned the administration not to take money from other programs to finance the initiative.
“This effort cannot move existing resources from one public health program and repurpose them to end HIV without serious consequences to our public health system,” said Michael Fraser, CEO of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, in a statement.
While Trump spoke of wiping out HIV in 10 years, the program’s actual goals are to reduce new infections by 75 percent in the next five years and by 90 percent in a decade.
Azar said the initiative would increase investments to existing programs in geographic hotspots, establish a new program through community health centers to provide medicine to protect persons at highest risk, use data to target services and fund the creation of a local HIV HealthForce in these targeted areas.
The proposal was met with a mix of skepticism and cautious optimism by activists in the fight against AIDS. And state and local health officials warned the administration not to take money from other programs to finance the initiative.
“This effort cannot move existing resources from one public health program and repurpose them to end HIV without serious consequences to our public health system,” said Michael Fraser, CEO of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, in a statement.
It’s unclear how much the federal program will cost. Funding for the initiative, in addition to investments in current efforts to fight HIV/AIDS, is expected to be part of Trump’s budget request for fiscal 2020.
AIDS activists said they’re ready to work with the White House but also wary because of Trump’s previous efforts to slash Medicaid, the health insurance program for low-income people, and his administration’s ongoing drive to roll back newly won acceptance and rights for LGBTQ people.
“To date, this administration’s actions speak louder than words and have moved us in the wrong direction,” said AIDS United, which funds and advocates policies to combat AIDS.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
Worker fired from Trump golf course says Trump knew undocumented people were employed
Article via HuffingtonPost
An undocumented worker who was fired from one of President Trump‘s golf courses over the weekend said he believes Trump knew undocumented people worked at his various clubs.
Gabriel Sedano and multiple other undocumented workers spoke to NBC News about their experiences being employed by the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester County, New York. It was their first on-camera appearance since they were abruptly fired last week.
Sedano told NBC’s Kate Snow that he believes the Trump National Golf Club employers knew they were hiring undocumented workers.
“That’s what I think, because they need employees and they don’t check really good,” Serano told Snow. “I cannot be sure about that but he gotta know.”
Sedano said that he spoke to Trump multiple times over the fourteen years that he was employed as a maintenance worker at the club. Sedano told The Washington Post on Saturday that he “started to cry” when he was fired.
He is from Mexico and had worked at the club since 2005.
“I told them they needed to consider us,” Sedano said. I had worked almost 15 years for them in this club, and I’d given the best of myself to this job.”
About a dozen employees were abruptly fired last week from the New York golf club because they were found to be in the country illegally.
The firings followed reports last year that undocumented immigrants were hired and subsequently fired at a Trump property in New Jersey.
The workers in New York were told that the Trump company had recently audited their immigration documents, which were found to be fake, the Post reported. Those documents were submitted years prior to their firing.
Sedano and other workers interviewed by NBC said they presented false documents when they were hired by the Trump club. They told NBC they believe they were hired so that the organization could save money by paying low wages with no benefits to the workers, who were vulnerable due to their immigration status.
The president’s son, Eric Trump, in a statement to NBC pointed to the undocumented workers as “one of the reasons my father is fighting so hard for immigration reform.”
“We have tens of thousands of employees across our properties and have very strict hiring practices,” Eric Trump told the news network. “If any employee submitted false documentation in an attempt to circumvent the law, they will be terminated immediately. We take this issue very seriously.”
Trump has made his hard-line immigration policies a central issue of his presidency, most recently triggering the longest government shutdown in U.S. history over his demand for $5.7 billion in funding for a Southern border wall, which Democrats refused.
The attorney representing Sedano and other undocumented workers who were fired told NBC that they are heading to Capitol Hill to meet with Democrats.
Trump claimed women were gagged with tape. Then Border Patrol tried to find some evidence.
Article via Vox
An internal email, sent two weeks after Trump started making the claim, asked agents for “any information” about what Trump was describing.
It’s become a staple of President Donald Trump’s riffs on the horrors of the US-Mexico border, something he knows so well that he doesn’t even need it scripted on a teleprompter: Human traffickers gag women with tape so they can’t breathe before packing them into vans and driving them across the border illegally.
But two weeks after Trump had started talking about tape-gagged women — when a January 17 Washington Post article had questioned the claim — a top Border Patrol official had to email agents to ask if they had “any information” that the claim was actually true.
The email, shown to Vox by a source within Border Patrol, was sent as a “request for information” by an assistant Border Patrol chief, apparently on behalf of the office of Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan (referred to internally as “C-1”). It asked agents to reply within less than two hours with “any information (in any format)” regarding claims of tape-gagged women — and even linked to the Post article “for further info.”
Vox’s source indicated that they and others in their sector hadn’t heard anything that would back up Trump’s claims, but wasn’t sure if agents in other sectors had provided information. However, no one from the Trump administration has come forward to offer evidence for the claim, either before or after the internal Border Patrol email was sent. (Customs and Border Protection did not respond to a request for comment.)
The text of the email, whose subject line was “Quick Turnaround: RFI taped-up women smuggled into the U.S.,” is as follows:
All,
We require your assistance on a quick turnaround for C-1.
Please forward any information that you may have (in any format) regarding claims “that traffickers tie up and silence women with tape before illegally driving them through the desert from Mexico to the United States in the backs of cars and windowless vans.” Reference the news article below for further info.
We require this information to be submitted to BPHQG2 by 1200 EST.
V/R,
Armando Sianez — Acting Assistant Chief
US Border Patrol Headquarters
It’s not clear where Trump is getting his information — but it doesn’t appear to be through official intelligence
Donald Trump’s rhetoric about the border is built on a lie: the idea that the US-Mexico border is a lawless place where American citizens are constantly in grave danger, and where criminals are able to smuggle drugs and people without any risk of apprehension. That big picture — as Vox and the rest of the media has made clear again and again — bears very little resemblance to the truth.
But the claim about women gagged with tape and packed into vans has attracted particular attention because it’s quickly become a centerpiece of Trump’s rhetoric — according to the Post, as of Friday he’d made 10 references to it in 22 days — without anyone knowing exactly where he got it from.
Border experts have told the Post and other reporters that they’ve never heard of anything like what Trump is talking about.
But it’s extremely hard to prove that such things have never happened — especially because the president has access to classified information that experts speaking to journalists do not.
That’s where traditional fact-checking tends to run into a wall. While journalists might suspect that Trump is making things up, it’s possible that he’s just repeating something he heard in a briefing (or, less plausibly, read in an intelligence report) that wasn’t open to the public.
The internal Border Patrol email provided to Vox, however, makes that seem a lot less likely.
Requests for information to the field usually aren’t made to get information backing up particular claims — much less claims being made by the president, and much less claims the president had been making for, at that point, two weeks. The implication of the email is that — after CBP had already been asked for evidence by the Post and declined comment— high-level border officials didn’t have any evidence they could point to to prove that Trump was telling the truth.
It’s possible that Trump got his intel from another agency — such as Homeland Security Investigations, which is part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement — and that CBP simply didn’t know anything about it (which would raise its own set of questions about inter-agency intelligence-sharing).
But that is much less likely than the possibility that Trump heard something that wasn’t actual intelligence, and repeated it as truth.
As the Post points out, Trump started talking about tape gags the day after a meeting with representatives of the National Border Patrol Council, the union representing Border Patrol agents. It’s possible that the claims first came up in that meeting. (NBPC did not respond to Vox’s request for comment.) If that’s true, union officials were talking about things that the management of their agency knew nothing about.
That could mean that Border Patrol management is simply out of touch with the realities of the border.
Or it could mean that one of Trump’s favorite border riffs is a piece of thirdhand gossip that Border Patrol had to scramble to try to back up.
Check out some Lovelyti videos:
‘If there’s a concrete wall in front of you, go through it,’ Trump said in 2004 speech
Donning an emerald green graduation gown, Donald Trump stood grinning on the stage at Wagner College in Staten Island as a faculty member offered a glowing introduction in May 2004: “A New York original. Everyone knows something about him and everyone has an opinion concerning him,” the faculty member said.
Trump was there to give the commencement address to the class of 2004 and to accept an honorary doctorate of humane letters. He drew laughs from the crowd while describing his transition from real estate magnate to television celebrity — “I’m a star, and there’s nothing like it.” He took a half-baked stab at self-deprecation, joking that the Guinness Book of World Records “has me down as the greatest personal financial comeback of all time.”
But even then, talk of concrete walls managed to seep its way into Trump’s monologue — only this time, as Comedy Central’s Trevor Noah pointed out Wednesday on “The Daily Show,” the message was a bit different from the one he would preach years later as president.
“I’ll tell you, to me, the second-most important thing after love what you do is never, ever give up,” Trump told the students, motioning his hands and raising his index finger the same way he does at campaign rallies. “Don’t give up. Don’t allow it to happen. If there’s a concrete wall in front of you, go through it. Go over it. Go around it. But get to the other side of that wall.”
Read more via TheWashingtonPost
Trump demands Mexico send migrants back to countries of origin after border patrol fires tear gas
Trump tweeted Monday that Mexican officials should remove migrants from the border by airplane, bus or “any way you want.”
President Donald Trump tweeted Monday that Mexican officials should ship the thousands of Central American migrants seeking entry into the U.S. back to their countries of origin by any means necessary, claiming that “many” are “stone cold criminals.”
Trump suggested that Mexico send the migrants back to countries such as Guatemala and Honduras by airplane, bus, or “anyway you want.” The president also threatened to shut down the U.S. Southern Border “permanently” if needed.
The tweet comes after U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials fired tear gas on hundreds of migrants who sought to enter the U.S. on Sunday near San Diego. That interaction led to U.S. officials shutting down the San Ysidro Port of Entry between San Diego and Tijuana for more than six hours.
In a statement, border patrol said it used tear gas and pepper spray after several migrants tossed rocks at agents, who were struck. No injuries were reported.
“DHS will not tolerate this type of lawlessness and will not hesitate to shut down ports of entry for security and public safety reasons,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in a Sunday statement.
Some migrants, meanwhile, said they sought to cross over illegally after they were denied access at the port of entry, where they could claim asylum. It is not illegal to seek asylum.
The hundreds of migrants who assembled along the Mexican side of the border on Sunday morning were a part of a larger group of about 6,000 who crammed into shelters in Tijuana. Many of the migrants are fleeing violence in their home countries.
Article via NBCNews
Michelle Obama says she will ‘never forgive’ Trump for putting her ‘family’s safety at risk’
- In her coming book, “Becoming,” the former first lady Michelle Obama said she would “never forgive” Donald Trump for promoting the false birther conspiracy, according to excerpts published ahead of the book’s release.
- During the 2012 US presidential election, Trump advocated the racist conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama was not a US citizen and touted the demonstrably false claim that Obama’s birth certificate was not real.
- Michelle Obama reportedly called the conspiracy “crazy and mean-spirited” and said it endangered her family.
- “What if someone with an unstable mind loaded a gun and drove to Washington?” she wrote, according to The Washington Post. “What if that person went looking for our girls? Donald Trump, with his loud and reckless innuendos, was putting my family’s safety at risk.”
Michelle Obama’s memoir, “Becoming,” lays out some of the former first lady’s most damning statements on record against President Donald Trump, according to excerpts published ahead of the book’s release next week.
In the book, Obama reportedly chastised Trump for promoting what she called the “dangerous” birther conspiracy that she said jeopardized her family’s safety.
“The whole [birther] thing was crazy and mean-spirited, of course, its underlying bigotry and xenophobia hardly concealed,” Obama wrote, according to a Washington Post review. “But it was also dangerous, deliberately meant to stir up the wingnuts and kooks.”
For years, even prior to the 2012 US presidential election, Trump advocated the racist conspiracy theory that questioned the authenticity of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate and his citizenship.
Read more via BusinessInsider
Transgender fight could prove major test for Supreme Court
The fight over civil rights protections for transgender people could prove to be a major test for the Supreme Court, particularly its conservative wing, as justices weigh whether to take up the issue this term.
The court has a request before it to hear a case challenging whether civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex in employment extend to transgender workers.
It’s a dispute that may have a significant impact on the Trump administration’s reported plans to exclude federal protections for transgender people by narrowly defining gender.
The New York Time reported last week that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is leading an effort to write a rule that defines gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth, a move that would affect civil rights laws banning gender discrimination in education programs that receive federal funding.
While the pending case before the justices deals with civil rights in the workplace, experts say a Supreme Court ruling could very well affect the administration’s planned gender rule.
“If the Supreme Court took it and held what the majority of courts are holding — that sex discrimination includes transgender people — the administration would be hard pressed to go ahead with that rule,” said Diana Flynn, litigation director at Lambda Legal, a group that advocates for LGBT rights.
Several federal statutes prohibit sex discrimination in employment, education and health care, and legal analysts say each one has the same underlying language and concept.
“Courts tend very strongly to read them together,” said Harper Jean Tobin, director of policy at the National Center for Transgender Equality. “A ruling under one law would be very likely to impact other laws.”
The case pending before the Supreme Court centers on Aimee Stephens, a transgender woman who alleges she was fired from her job as a funeral director and embalmer after she told her employer she would begin living and working openly as a woman.
Ruling in her favor, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals said discrimination against employees, either because of their failure to conform to sex stereotypes or their transgender and transitioning status, is illegal under Title VII — the law that bans discrimination based on sex in employment.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing Stephens, says there’s no need for the Supreme Court to take the case because the majority of courts have issued rulings in line with the 6th Circuit.
“The Seventh, Ninth, and Eleventh Circuits agree with the Sixth Circuit’s alternative holding for respondents that when a decision maker discriminates against someone for being transgender, that discrimination is inherently based on sex,” the ACLU argued in its brief.
If the justices decide to weigh in, it could challenge the ideals of conservatives on the bench like Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee who prides himself on basing his decisions on the text of the law.
Transgender advocates say you can’t discriminate against someone who is transgender without thinking about their sex.
“I think it would hypocritical in the extreme for justices, who claim to be texturalists, to rule against Aimee Stephens,” said Tobin.
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which is representing the funeral home in its appeal, disagrees.
“The claim rests on a faulty premise,” said Jim Campbell, a senior counsel at ADF. “Title VII does not define sex and should be given its understanding of when it was defined in 1964.”
Back then, he said, sex referred to male or female based on biology and physiology.
ADF’s argument relies heavily on a 2007 ruling from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, which said discrimination on the basis of transgender status is not a violation of Title VII.
The Department of Justice Department (DOJ) also argued in a brief last week that Title VII does not apply to discrimination against an individual based on his or her gender identity. DOJ said justices should first take up two other pending cases challenging whether anti-discrimination protections in Title VII extend to sexual orientation.
Transgender advocates say Stephens should prevail even if the justices take the case because the 6th Circuit ruled that the funeral home discriminated against Stephens based on a sex stereotype.
“Circuit courts have uniformly agreed that all people, including those who are transgender, may bring sex discrimination claims under Title VII if their employers discriminate against them because of sex stereotypes related to behavior and appearance,” ACLU argued.
There’s no guarantee the justices will agree to hear the dispute. Court watchers have said the justices may try to avoid weighing politically charged issues after the highly partisan confirmation fight over Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Chief Justice John Roberts stressed the importance of an independent judiciary in a speech earlier this month at the University of Minnesota Law School.
“Now the court has from time to time erred and erred greatly, but when it has it has been because the court yielded to political pressure,” he said.
ADF’s Campbell said Dec. 3 is the earliest the justices could announce a decision on whether to take up the Stephens case.
As for an administration rule narrowly defining sex, that could take several months at a minimum.
Under the federal rulemaking process, HHS would have to propose a rule, accept and review public comments and then issue a final regulation.
While advocacy groups like the Transgender Law Center have vowed to fight any rule that attempts to remove legal protections for transgender people, they will have to wait for a finalized rule before taking legal action.
Article via TheHill