Nineteen states, along with the District of Columbia, have joined a lawsuit directed at the Department of Health and Human Services intending to block a recent declaration by health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that would stop gender-affirming care for trans youth.

The health department’s declaration came out on December 18, would block puberty blockers, hormone therapy and gender affirmation surgery for people under 18, calling them unsafe. The lawsuit is led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who vowed last week to protect transgender youth against Trump administration policies.

“Secretary Kennedy cannot unilaterally change medical standards by posting a document online, and no one should lose access to medically necessary health care because their federal government tried to interfere in decisions that belong in doctors’ offices,” James said Tuesday.

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The suit says the HHS is required to solicit public comment before enacting a policy change. While there is a public comment period that ends on February 17, according to the Baltimore Sun, the suit accuses the HHS of using the declaration to enact the new policy immediately.

“Healthcare decisions should be made by doctors and patients — not by politicians in Washington threatening to destroy providers’ careers and spreading fear among transgender youth and their families,” Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown said in a statement. “This isn’t just about following the law — though HHS is clearly violating it. This is about protecting vulnerable young people who deserve the same dignity, respect, and access to medical care as anyone else.”

The eighteen state attorneys general are from California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin and Washington. They have been joined by the attorney general from the District of Columbia and the governor of Pennsylvania.

The declaration also mentions that the Food and Drug Administration warned the manufacturers of chest binders that it is illegal to market them to children for treating dysphoria. This move has come under fire from said manufacturers who point out that while binders can be used for patients who have had a mastectomy, blocking them from being used for dysphoria is”clearly discrimination.”

Despite leading the HHS, Kennedy has no medical background. Rather, he was an anti-vaccine activist who shared the widely debunked conspiracy theory that the combined mumps, measles and rubella vaccine caused autism. There is no link between the MMR vaccine—or any other vaccine—and autism. Kennedy has also urged the CDC to stop an ad campaign encouraging people to get the flu shot. Under his tenure, a measles outbreak happened in the southwestern U.S., as well as the first measles-related death in a decade. Measles can be prevented by vaccination.

Image via Reuters

Democratic candidate for Illinois’ 9th congressional district Kat Abughazaleh announced that she would be officially dropping X, formerly known as Twitter, and called on other politicians to follow her lead.

Abughazaleh made her announcement on X, BlueSky and YouTube Monday morning. She pointed to the “algorithms that reward” right-wing extremism on the platform since billionaire Elon Musk bought the site in 2022.

“For years, many of us — governments, journalists, and the public — have considered Twitter a necessity for communication, the standard for social media. That is no longer the reality and it’s time we act like it. And to anyone running for office — especially my opponents — I encourage you to break from the site as well,” Abughazaleh wrote.

Effective immediately, I'm leaving Twitter.

And I'm calling on other candidates to stop enriching Elon Musk — directly or indirectly. He needs us. We don't need him. pic.twitter.com/4YcXwuQNnB

— Kat Abughazaleh (@KatAbughazaleh) December 22, 2025

In a YouTube video, she elaborated.

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“Look, I used to love using Twitter. It was a big start in my career as a researcher and journalist. But the site has transformed from one of the best sources for on-the-ground news to a supercharged engine of radicalization. And like with everything the right ruins, it doesn’t suck just because of ideology. Staff from moderation to engineering has been gutted,” she said.

Abughazaleh added that while she has a checkmark on X, it was given to her “against my will,” and clarified that she does not pay for it. She also said her campaign has refused to pay for advertising on the platform, but she felt that “our presence on that site still enriches [Musk] indirectly, and it’s time to put our money where our mouth is.”

She called on her opponents and other candidates to follow her lead, saying, “Inaction is complicity and I am sick of my own.”

“If we want to set a new standard, we have to actually do it. Let’s be better and stand up for what we believe in because Elon Musk needs us. We definitely don’t need him,” Abughazaleh concluded.

Though many politicians, especially progressive ones like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have accounts on the X rival Bluesky, both maintain a presence on X as well.

Journalists have written about the difficulty of leaving X, with Foreign Press Correspondents USA publishing a piece laying out both sides of the argument. X has a larger user base than many of its competitors; Bluesky is perhaps the most popular option, but according to Backlinko, it has 40.2 million users and 3.5 daily active users. X, comparatively, has 561 million active users with 132 million daily active users.

But while X has more users, the Foreign Press Correspondents USA points out that the platform has more harassment against journalists than other platforms. X also has changed its policies on content moderation, loosening regulations to allow misinformation and conspiracy theories to spread widely.

Abughazaleh is tied for first with Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss in the Democratic primary for the 9th district, according to recent polling. Biss has not responded to her call, and maintains an X account, but is more active on Bluesky.

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) called for stronger regulation on SNAP benefits despite admitting that in her state, less than 1% of those getting benefits “stole” from the program.

Mace posted to X Wednesday morning in a now-deleted post warning that people were defrauding the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, colloquially known as food stamps.

“Nearly 550,000 South Carolinians rely on SNAP, yet the system remains wide open to waste, fraud, and abuse. In just the first quarter of Fiscal Year 2025, South Carolina reported 4,209 stolen benefits — clear proof SNAP fraud is costing taxpayers their hard earned money,” Mace wrote.

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Using her own figures, that means that only 0.77% of people who use SNAP benefits in South Carolina are abusing the system.

READ MORE: ‘He Sued to Block Kids From Getting SNAP’: Trump Torched for Biblical Defense of Children

Mace used the unimpressive figure to promote the Food Assistance Integrity and Responsibility Act, or FAIR Act, which she says would “restore integrity and accountability to SNAP by requiring photo identification on every EBT card and verification at the point of use.”

“This legislation aligns directly with President Trump’s mission to crack down on SNAP fraud and protect taxpayer dollars from being siphoned off by criminals gaming the system,” she wrote.

The FAIR Act would require recipients to have their photos placed on their Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards. States would also be asked to issue additional EBT cards for households with multiple people who use the program.

However, it appears this would do little to stop SNAP fraud, as most fraud is done via cloning an EBT card or card skimming, according to WCBD-TV.

The bill would also require money to be spent on redesigning EBT cards to include a photo. A similar bill proposed in Michigan was criticized by State Rep. John Fitzgerald, who said the costs to start the proposed program would mean that any savings to the state in benefits fraud would be “likely negligible.”

“I’m just concerned that we’re going to front load the cost too much for not enough reward if we’re overhauling the system,” Fitzgerald said about the Michigan proposal.

There is not yet information available about how much Mace’s proposal would cost to implement.

Image via Shutterstock