TV News LIES

The Trump administration is slashing about 1,300 employees, or 10% of the workforce, at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to two agency employees who requested anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak for the agency. Staff were notified Friday of the cuts.

And as many as 1,500 employees at the National Institutes of Health were also laid off Friday, according to an employee at the agency who was not authorized to speak publicly,.

"Lots of tears here," according to another who asked not to be named out of fears of losing their job.

The layoffs at both agencies targeted probationary employees — a broad category that includes recent hires and long-time staffers who were recently moved to a new position. At the NIH, there may be some exceptions for certain personnel, such as those involved in clinical care, the employee said.

"This is absolutely tragic," said one current CDC employee. "If we lose these people we lose important capacity and in a very real sense we lose our CDC future."

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A second federal judge on Friday paused President Donald Trump's executive order halting federal support for gender-affirming care for transgender youth under 19.

U.S. District Court Judge Lauren King granted a temporary restraining order after the Democratic attorneys general of Washington state, Oregon and Minnesota sued the Trump administration last week. Three doctors joined as plaintiffs in the suit, which was filed in the Western District of Washington.

The decision came one day after a federal judge in Baltimore temporarily blocked the executive order in response to a separate lawsuit filed on behalf of families with transgender or nonbinary children. Judge Brendan Hurson's temporary restraining order will last 14 days but could be extended, and essentially puts Trump's directive on hold while the case proceeds. Hurston and King were both appointed by former President Joe Biden.

Trump signed an executive order last month halting federal funding for institutions that provide the care and directing federally run insurance programs, including Medicaid and TRICARE for military families, to exclude coverage for it. The order also calls on the Department of Justice to pursue litigation and legislation to oppose it.

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In a massive victory for abortion rights supporters, a Missouri judge on Friday blocked a licensing requirement for abortion clinics that providers said prevented them from offering the procedure.

Planned Parenthood announced shortly after the judge’s ruling that its clinics would once again perform abortions in Missouri.

“Abortion services are resuming in Missouri!” Planned Parenthood Great Plains, an affiliate that operates in Missouri, announced on Facebook. “We are excited to soon offer care at select Missouri health centers, ensuring safe, compassionate and essential reproductive healthcare for those who need it.”

Infant mortality rates have increased in states that adopted abortion bans after the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, according to a new study.

Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the University of California, Berkeley, and two other academic institutions looked at live birth data across all 50 states from 2013 until 2023.

They then determined there were 478 infant deaths across 14 states with complete abortion bans or bans after six weeks of pregnancy that they say wouldn’t have happened if the bans were not in place.

Abortion is almost completely banned in 12 states including Texas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Alabama, Idaho, Oklahoma, Tennessee and West Virginia with some exceptions for rape, incest, or when continuing a pregnancy endangers the life of the mother.

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Multiple measles outbreaks have been reported already this year, with one in Texas ballooning from six cases to 48 in just over a week.

“Due to the highly contagious nature of this disease, additional cases are likely to occur in Gaines County and the surrounding communities,” the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) said on Friday.

The majority of cases in Texas involve children under the age of 17, the Texas DSHS said. Thirteen have been hospitalized.

A teen from Lea County, New Mexico — just over the border from Gaines County, Texas — was also infected, though the patient has had no known contact with any of the Texas patients, the New Mexico Department of Health said Tuesday.

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Jackie Martin – who had been getting rehab at the nursing home after suffering a back fracture – still could not take more than a few steps without being out of breath.

But Jackie’s care there, which had started two weeks earlier, was eating into UnitedHealth’s bottom line.