Briefing: Data Security, Archives & History + Trans Healthcare
We have updates on voting by mail from Data Security, notes on further erasure of marginalized people from the Archives & History team, and a quick check-in from Trans Healthcare on the FTC WPATH suit and the ultra-punitive proposed HHS rule to defund hospitals that provide gender-affirming care.
Yesterday, we posted a special briefing from our Immigration team on the “smarter and quieter” ICE, which is still out there raiding communities, arresting more immigrants than ever, and killing people.
Data Security
The Data Security team added 16 items to our timeline, including the latest news on Trump’s executive order restricting voting by mail. Three federal district judges and an appeals court have issued conflicting decisions on the order and the rule proposed by the USPS to carry it out:
- Judge Indira Talwani granted a summary judgment against implementation of the order and the rule for the November election in 24 states.
- An order from Judge Emmett Sullivan blocked the rule based on a 2021 settlement with the NAACP, but the DC Circuit Court of Appeals stayed the ruling because they found the USPS’s appeal likely to succeed.
- Judge Carl Nichols declined to block the executive order and USPS rule because the plaintiffs could not yet show that they had been harmed.
All three cases are under appeal, and the Brennan Center for Justice has renewed a request to Judge Talwani to block the rule on behalf of eight non-partisan voting rights groups.
Archives & History
The Archives & History team added 11 new entries to our timeline. In Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park, the administration removed mentions of slavery from text accompanying Thomas Jefferson’s portrait at the Second Bank of the United States. A federal appeals court also reversed a lower court ruling that had forced the restoration of panels about slavery previously removed from the same park’s President’s House Site, which is a memorial to the nine enslaved people who worked in George Washington’s household during his presidency. And another federal appeals court ruled that the administration can continue erasing mentions of slavery, LGBTQ+ history, and climate change from signs at national parks while the court considers the legality of the underlying executive order.
Finally, in a move that may signal an attempt to replace the leadership of the Smithsonian Institution, the White House released a report describing museum leaders as “people who don’t want you to love your country” and “cannot be trusted to tell America’s story honestly and in a way that is inspiring, unifying, and worthy of our great republic." House Democrats released a counter-report, “The White House Campaign to Seize Control of the Smithsonian and Rewrite American History.”
Transgender Healthcare
We added 2 new items to our timeline this week. Judge James Boasberg allowed a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit against the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) to go forward in the Northern District of Texas while a second FTC lawsuit against the group proceeds in his court in Washington, DC. And HHS appears to have declined to finalize its proposed rule to block hospitals that provide gender-affirming care from receiving Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements for other healthcare. HHS didn’t withdraw the rule, though, so it remains in limbo for now.
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