care

Spirits. Cosmetics. Apparel. Fragrance. As the categories most closely associated with the rise of celebrity brands become increasingly saturated, A-list talent is venturing into new terrain — and taking on names like Clinique, L’Oreal, Kiehl’s and Harry’s in the process.

With the likes of Beau Domaine, Papatui and Loved01, male stars such as Brad Pitt, Dwayne Johnson and John Legend, respectively, have broken into the growing market for men’s skincare, which was estimated at $18 billion in 2025 and is projected to nearly double by 2034, according to Precedence Research.

“Beauty is almost becoming its own genre, like music and sports,” says Katie Martin, executive vice president and managing director of e-commerce and marketing agency Front Row. “It’s becoming more genderless, community-based and something people talk about and share.”

Even as men’s shaving products and fragrances aligned with celebrities — think Johnny Depp for Dior’s Sauvage — have long been accepted, there’s been a cultural shift when it comes to beauty. Quickly vanishing is the stigma of men buying and using their own skincare products. In many quarters, it’s desirable and even expected for men to care about their skin. And celebrity skin, often seen in revealing high-def and on the big screen, is certainly a model to emulate.

“Men’s personal care habits have shifted significantly in the past decade, and many more men are open to and interested in taking care of themselves, skin included,” says Allison Collins, co-founder and managing director of advisory firm the Consumer Collective. “This shift started with younger millennial and Gen Z men, but has stretched upwards — and now skincare is something many men are into.”

(Photos by Dana Richards / Golden Hours)

With Papatui, Johnson, whose long career as a wrestler and actor defines a certain brand of masculinity, hopes to change the perception that skincare for men is complicated. “That’s something we’re actively changing. Taking care of yourself on the outside is just as important as the inside,” he says. “Just like training, nutrition or recovery. Papatui removes the intimidation and makes it straightforward and focused on what men really need.”

Johnson founded the company after learning important tips from dermatologists over the years, which he says made a difference given his long work days, demanding training regimen and constant travel.

“I wanted products that feel good, are powered by high-performing formulas, and fit into a busy guy’s routine. I’m hands-on with everything along with our incredible team of experts,” Johnson says.

Another selling point is the line’s availability at Target and Walmart. “Dwayne Johnson’s line is super-approachably priced, which is good for today’s market when consumers are a bit more strapped for cash,” notes Collins.

Johnson is especially proud of the fact that he’s getting guys to use under-eye patches for hydration, brightening and smoothing fine lines. His own routine is pretty basic: cleanse, tone and moisturize along with using the line’s other products including facial scrub, antiperspirant and body washes.

(Photos by Tamera Darden and John Campos / Loved01)

After collaborating with other brands including Kiehl’s and SKII, Legend’s Loved01 launched in 2024 with a pop-up store at Westfield Century City and at CVS locations around the country. It is now sold mostly via QVC, on Amazon and on the company’s website. A TikTok shop launched in early December.

“We’re really trying to meet our customers where they are and adjust to the way they’re buying things,” Legend says. “We were getting much more traction through e-commerce and so we’ve really been focused on that along with television.”

The company just released its hydrating cream cleanser, joining other bestselling products like hand wash, face and body moisturizer, cleansing wipes and face and body oil.

“We believe that it shouldn’t cost luxury prices to get the kind of care that everybody deserves,” Legend says. ”That was one of the beats for the company from the very beginning, that everybody deserved great skincare with great ingredients and that are vegan and cruelty-free with wonderfully sourced ingredients from Mother Nature.”

“John Legend is famous for being a really good family guy and his brand is about increasing equity and how people buy into their family,” says Martin.

Pitt espouses a concept of simplicity in his men’s skincare routine — a three-step ritual starting with cleansing, serum to target signs of aging and then cream to lock in moisture.

Teaming with the Perrin family, winemakers in the South of France, Beau Domaine incorporates organic grape water, known for its soothing and moisturizing properties, into some of its products. The three-step regimen lists for $279 on the brand’s website, which also boasts enthusiastic reviews from users.

“Brad Pitt does have a higher price point, and you could say he’s leaning on ease, but it is probably much more about being premium. And of course Brad Pitt is premium,” says Martin. “He is obviously very well known for being very good-looking. They’ve been really smart there with the equity that Brad holds as a celebrity.”

Whatever the target demographic, all three companies are representative of the evolution of celebrity brands to include the full gamut of product categories and meet the needs of a changing marketplace. And with men’s skincare set for further growth, you can bet you’ll see more Hollywood names in the space before long.

Jan. 3 (UPI) — Nine child care centers shown in a viral video alleging fraud were inspected and operating normally, Minnesota officials said on Friday.

Officials with Minnesota’s Department of Children, Youth and Families in a news release said state inspections of the daycare centers showed those that were open had children inside of them and were operating as expected.

“Children were present at all sites except for one — that site was not yet open for families for the day when inspectors arrived,” DCYF officials said.

They did not indicate if the inspections provided advanced notice to the respective daycares, and the news release referenced does not appear on the department’s webpage for news releases.

The most recent news release available is dated for Oct. 27, 2025, and department officials did not immediately respond to a UPI request for comment and access to the cited news release.

DCYF officials also provided information on the nine child care centers and the amounts they received through the state’s Child Care Assistance Program during the 2025 fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30.

The Future Leaders Early Learning Center received $3.68 million, followed by Minnesota Best Child Care Center, $3.4 million, and Minnesota Child Care Center, $2.67 million. All three are located in Minneapolis.

Quality Learning Center received $1.9 million, Mini Child Care Center $1.6 million, and Sweet Angel Child Care $1.54 million.

The Tayo Daycare received $1.09 million, ABC Learning Center $1.04 million and Super Kids Daycare Center $471,787.

The DCYF said the Mako Child Care Center closed in 2022.

The agency said investigators are taking a closer look at four of the nine daycare centers listed but did not identify which ones.

The DCYF released the information on the nine child care centers featured in the YouTube video posted by Nick Shirley that was titled: “I Investigated Minnesota’s Billion Dollar Fraud Scandal.”

The 42-minute video had more than 3.1 million views eight days after it was posted to the social media site.

The video spurred the Health and Human Services Department halt all funding to Minnesota child care centers pending a federal review.

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security investigate fraud claims.

“The onus is on the state to provide additional verification,” Andrew Nixon, HHS deputy assistant secretary for media relations, told CNN.

Minnesota officials have until Friday to provide the Trump administration with information verifying the names of children enrolled at the respective child care centers and their parents.

HHS officials also are requiring supporting evidence from day care centers that receive federal funding in all states to better ensure no fraud is occurring.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is facing a new legal complaint from a group of government employees affected by a policy that went into effect Thursday that eliminates coverage for gender-affirming care in federal health insurance programs.

The complaint, filed Thursday on the employees’ behalf by the Human Rights Campaign, is in response to an August announcement from the Office of Personnel Management that it would no longer cover “chemical and surgical modification of an individual’s sex traits through medical interventions” in health insurance programs for federal employees and U.S. Postal Service workers.

The complaint argues that denying coverage of gender-affirming care is sex-based discrimination and asks the personnel office to rescind the policy.

“This policy is not about cost or care — it is about driving transgender people and people with transgender spouses, children, and dependents out of the federal workforce,” Human Rights Campaign Foundation President Kelley Robinson said in a statement.

The complaint, filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, includes testimonies from four current federal workers at the State Department, Health and Human Services and the Postal Service who would be directly affected by the elimination of coverage.

For instance, the Postal Service employee has a daughter whose doctors recommended that she get puberty blockers and potentially hormone replacement therapy for her diagnosed gender dysphoria, which would not be covered under the new policy, according to the complaint.

The complaint notes that the workers are making the claim on behalf of themselves and a “class of similarly situated federal employees.”

The Trump administration has taken other steps to restrict care for transgender Americans, particularly minors. In December, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released proposals that would block gender-affirming care to minors, including a policy that would bar Medicare and Medicaid dollars to hospitals that provide such care to children.

Senior Trump officials, such as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., call gender-affirming care “malpractice” for minors. But such restrictions go against recommendations from major medical groups such as the American Medical Assn. and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Jan. 1 (UPI) — Insurance premiums are set to rise exponentially for Americans who have bought their health care policies through an Affordable Care Act exchange because Congress failed to extend subsidies for them.

Without the extension of the subsidies, people who have bought their health insurance through an ACA exchange will see their premiums increase by roughly 26% on average, with the increases expected to be higher in states that use the federal Healthcare.gov exchange while states that run their own exchanges may see lower increases, The Hill reported.

In 2025, about 24 million Americans bought health insurance through an ACA exchange, which are often referred to as Obamacare, which is the highest number of people who bought policies through the program since it debuted in 2010.

The government shutdown in the fall — which, at 43 days, was the longest in history — was centered around Democrats in the U.S. Senate pushing for an extension of enhanced ACA subsidies that were introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic to help Americans obtain insurance and care.

In recent weeks, bipartisan plans to extend the subsidies have emerged, including one in the Senate that calls for a three-year extension of the subsidies.

Among the Republicans who support the bipartisan bill are Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, who has not specifically commented on extending the subsidies but has said that he is concerned about people whose health insurance costs may increase in the ongoing absence of Congressional action, Fox News reported.

“I think who it’s most disappointing for are the people whose premiums are going to go up by two, three times,” Hawley told reporters this week. “So, it’s not good.”

During the shutdown, Democrat members of Congress pushed for an extension — it was their stated reason for voting against several bills to fund the federal government, causing and extending the shutdown — which Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., promised a vote on in mid-December.

Once the government reopened, the Senate voted on two health care related bills, one from Democrats and the other from Republicans, and both failed on party line votes.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s administration announced late Tuesday that it’s freezing child care funds to Minnesota and demanding an audit of some day care centers after a series of fraud schemes involving government programs in recent years.

Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services Jim O’Neill said on the social platform X that the move is in response to “blatant fraud that appears to be rampant in Minnesota and across the country.”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz pushed back on X, saying fraudsters are a serious issue that the state has spent years cracking down on but that this move is part of “Trump’s long game.”

“He’s politicizing the issue to defund programs that help Minnesotans,” Walz said.

O’Neill referenced a right-wing influencer who posted a video Friday claiming he found that day care centers operated by Somali residents in Minneapolis had committed up to $100 million in fraud. O’Neill said he has demanded Walz submit an audit of these centers that includes attendance records, licenses, complaints, investigations and inspections.

“We have turned off the money spigot and we are finding the fraud,” O’Neill said.

The announcement comes one day after U.S. Homeland Security officials were in Minneapolis conducting a fraud investigation by going to unidentified businesses and questioning workers.

There have been years of investigations that included a $300 million pandemic food fraud scheme revolving around the nonprofit Feeding Our Future, for which 57 defendants in Minnesota have been convicted. Prosecutors said the organization was at the center of the country’s largest COVID-19-related fraud scam, when defendants exploited a state-run, federally funded program meant to provide food for children.

A federal prosecutor alleged earlier this month that half or more of the roughly $18 billion in federal funds that supported 14 programs in Minnesota since 2018 may have been stolen. Most of the defendants in the child nutrition, housing services and autism program schemes are Somali Americans, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Minnesota.

O’Neill, who is serving as acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also said in the social media post Tuesday that payments across the U.S. through the Administration for Children and Families, an agency within the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, will now require “justification and a receipt or photo evidence” before money is sent. They have also launched a fraud-reporting hotline and email address.

The Administration for Children and Families provides $185 million in child care funds annually to Minnesota, according to Assistant Secretary Alex Adams.

“That money should be helping 19,000 American children, including toddlers and infants,” he said in a video posted on X. “Any dollar stolen by fraudsters is stolen from those children.”

Adams said he spoke Monday with the director of Minnesota’s child care services office and she wasn’t able to say “with confidence whether those allegations of fraud are isolated or whether there’s fraud stretching statewide.”

Trump has criticized Walz’s administration over the fraud cases, capitalizing on them to target the Somalia diaspora in the state, which has the largest Somali population in the U.S.

Walz, the 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee, has said an audit due by late January should give a better picture of the extent of the fraud. He said his administration is taking aggressive action to prevent additional fraud. He has long defended how his administration responded.

Minnesota’s most prominent Somali American, Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, has urged people not to blame an entire community for the actions of a relative few.

Golden writes for the Associated Press.

Dec. 30 (UPI) — U.S. Department of Health and Human Services officials have frozen federal child care funding to Minnesota amid accusations of fraud in that state and others.

HHS officials announced the action on Tuesday and credited a viral video that suggests rampant fraud is occurring at Minnesota child care centers that provide daycare services for few, if any, children.

“You have probably read the serious allegations that the state of Minnesota has funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to fraudulent daycares across Minnesota over the past decade,” said Jim O’Neill, HHS deputy secretary, in a social media post on Tuesday.

In response to the “blatant fraud that appears to be rampant in Minnesota and across the country,” O’Neill said HHS officials have taken three actions.

One is to require justification and a receipt or photo evidence before sending federal Administration for Children and Family funds to a state.

HHS also launched a fraud-reporting hotline and email address, and identified individuals shown in a viral social media video at Minnesota daycare centers that appeared to have no children.

“I have demanded from [Minnesota] Gov. Tim Walz a comprehensive audit of these centers,” O’Neill said. “This includes attendance records, licenses, complaints, investigations and inspections.”

Conservative activist Nick Shirley recorded and posted the viral video, which, along with FBI evidence, spurred U.S. Department of Homeland Security Sec. Kristi Noem on Monday to launch what she called a “massive investigation on childcare and other rampant fraud,” according to CBS News.

Minnesota Department of Children, Youth and Families Commissioner Tikki Brown told CBS News the department questions “some of the methods used in the video” but takes the fraud concerns raised in Shirley’s video “very seriously.”

State officials visited some of the daycare centers featured in the video and said two of them were closed earlier this year, but officials at one said they intend to resume operations.

CBS News looked at the records for several of the daycares cited and said all but two have active licenses to operate in Minnesota.

State records show all of the active locations had been visited by state regulators over the past six months, with no evidence of fraud found, but citations were issued for staff training, safety, equipment, and cleanliness violations.

The alleged daycare fraud comes amid federal investigations of 14 Medicaid-funded programs in Minnesota, but none involved child care.

Among them is an investigation into the Feeding Our Future program that was intended to feed at-risk children during the COVID-19 pandemic but has triggered dozens of federal fraud convictions and has embroiled Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., who helped to promote it.

That alleged fraud cost an estimated $250 million and largely occurred within the Somali community in the greater Minneapolis-St. Paul area, which prompted President Donald Trump to halt Temporary Protected Status for Somalians in Minnesota.

MINNEAPOLIS — A surge of federal officers in Minnesota follows new allegations of fraud by day care centers run by Somali residents.

President Trump has previously linked his administration’s immigration crackdown against Minnesota’s large Somali community to a series of fraud cases involving government programs in which most of the defendants have roots in the east African country.

Surge in federal officers

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and FBI Director Kash Patel both announced an increase in operations in Minnesota this week. The move comes after a right-wing influencer posted a video Friday claiming he had found that day care centers operated by Somali residents in Minneapolis had committed up to $100 million in fraud.

Tikki Brown, commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families, said at a Monday news conference that state regulators took the influencer’s allegations seriously.

Noem posted on social media that officers were “conducting a massive investigation on childcare and other rampant fraud.” Patel said the intent was to “dismantle large-scale fraud schemes exploiting federal programs.”

Past fraud in Minnesota

Minnesota has been under the spotlight for years for Medicaid fraud, including a massive $300-million pandemic fraud case involving the nonprofit Feeding Our Future. Prosecutors said it was the country’s largest COVID-19-related fraud scam and that defendants exploited a state-run, federally funded program intended to provide food for children.
In 2022, during President Biden’s administration, 47 people were charged. The number of defendants has grown to 78 throughout the ongoing investigation.

So far, 57 people have been convicted, either because they pleaded guilty or lost at trial.

Most of the defendants are of Somali descent.

Numerous other fraud cases are being investigated, including new allegations focused on child care centers.

In news interviews and releases over the summer, prosecutor Joe Thompson estimated the loss from all fraud cases could exceed $1 billion. Earlier this month, a federal prosecutor alleged that half or more of the roughly $18 billion in federal funds that supported 14 programs in Minnesota since 2018 may have been stolen.

Crackdown targeting Somalis

Trump’s immigration enforcement in Minnesota has focused on the Somali community in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, which is the largest in the country.

Trump labeled Minnesota Somalis as “garbage” and said he didn’t want them in the United States.

About 84,000 of the 260,000 Somalis in the U.S. live in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. The overwhelming majority are U.S. citizens. Almost 58% were born in the U.S and 87% of the foreign-born are naturalized citizens.

Among those running schemes to get funds for child nutrition, housing services and autism programs, 82 of the 92 defendants are Somali Americans, according to the U.S. attorney’s office for Minnesota.

Republicans have tried to blame Walz

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee, has said fraud will not be tolerated and his administration “will continue to work with federal partners to ensure fraud is stopped and fraudsters are caught.”

The fraud could be a major issue in the 2026 gubernatorial race as Walz seeks a third term.

Walz has said an audit due by late January should give a better picture of the extent of the fraud but allowed that the $1-billion estimate could be accurate. He said his administration is taking aggressive action to prevent additional fraud. He has long defended how his administration responded.

Minnesota’s most prominent Somali American, Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, has urged people not to blame an entire community for the actions of a relative few.

In 2013, before the Affordable Care Act helped millions get health insurance, California’s Placer County provided limited healthcare to some 3,400 uninsured residents who couldn’t afford to see a doctor.

For several years, that number has been zero in the predominantly white, largely rural county stretching from Sacramento’s eastern suburbs to the shores of Lake Tahoe.

The trend could be short-lived.

County health officials there and across the country are bracing for an estimated 10 million newly uninsured patients over the next decade in the wake of Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The act, which President Trump signed into law this summer, is expected to reduce Medicaid spending by more than $900 billion over that period.

“This is the moment where a lot of hard decisions have to be made about who gets care and who doesn’t,” said Nadereh Pourat, director of the Health Economics and Evaluation Research Program at UCLA. “The number of people who are going to lose coverage is large, and a lot of the systems that were in place to provide care to those individuals have either gone away or diminished.”

It’s an especially thorny challenge for states such as California and New Mexico where counties are legally required to help their poorest residents through what are known as indigent care programs. Under Obamacare, both states were able to expand Medicaid to include more low-income residents, alleviating counties of patient loads and redirecting much of their funding for the patchwork of local programs that provided bare-bones services.

Placer County, which estimates that 16,000 residents could lose healthcare coverage by 2028, quit operating its own clinics nearly a decade ago.

“Most of the infrastructure that we had to meet those needs is gone,” said Rob Oldham, Placer County’s director of health and human services. “This is a much bigger problem than it was a decade ago and much more costly.”

In December, county officials asked to join a statewide association that provides care to mostly small, rural counties, citing an expected rise in the number of uninsured residents.

New Mexico’s second-most populous county, Doña Ana, added dental care for seniors and behavioral health benefits after many of its poorest residents qualified for Medicaid. Now, federal cuts could force the county to reconsider, said Jamie Michael, Doña Ana’s health and human services director.

“At some point we’re going to have to look at either allocating more money or reducing the benefits,” Michael said.

Straining state budgets

Some states, such as Idaho and Colorado, abandoned laws that required counties to be providers of last resort for their residents. In other states, uninsured patients often delay care or receive it at hospital emergency rooms or community clinics. Those clinics are often supported by a mix of federal, state and local funds, according to the National Assn. of Community Health Centers.

Even in states like Texas, which opted not to expand its Medicaid program and continued to rely on counties to care for many of its uninsured, rising healthcare costs are straining local budgets.

“As we have more growth, more people coming in, it’s harder and harder to fund things that are required by the state Legislature, and this isn’t one we can decrease,” said Windy Johnson, program manager with the Texas Indigent Health Care Assn. “It is a fiscal issue.”

California lawmakers face a nearly $18-billion budget deficit in the 2026-27 fiscal year, according to the latest estimates by the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who recently acknowledged he’s mulling over a White House run, has rebuffed several efforts to significantly raise taxes on the ultrawealthy. Despite blasting the bill passed by Republicans in Congress as a “complete moral failure” that guts healthcare programs, the Democrat this year rolled back state Medi-Cal benefits for seniors and for immigrants without legal status after rising costs forced the program to borrow $4.4 billion from the state’s general fund.

H.D. Palmer, a spokesperson for the state’s Department of Finance, said that the Newsom administration is still refining its fiscal projections and that it would be premature to discuss potential budget solutions.

Newsom will unveil his initial budget proposal in January. State officials have said California could lose $30 billion a year in federal funding for Medi-Cal under the new law, as much as 15% of the state program’s entire budget.

“Local governments don’t really have much capacity to raise revenue,” said Scott Graves, a director at the independent California Budget & Policy Center with a focus on state budgets. “State leaders, if they choose to prioritize it, need to decide where they’re going to find the funding that would be needed to help those who are going to lose healthcare as a result of these federal funding and policy cuts.”

Reviving county-based programs in the near term would require “considerable fiscal restructuring” through the state budget, the Legislative Analyst’s Office said in an October report.

No easy fixes

It’s unclear how many people are enrolled in California’s county indigent programs, because the state doesn’t track enrollment and utilization. But enrollment in county health safety net programs dropped dramatically in the first full year of Affordable Care Act implementation, going from about 858,000 people statewide in 2013 to roughly 176,000 by the end of 2014, according to a survey at the time by Health Access California.

“We’re going to need state investment,” said Michelle Gibbons, executive director of the County Health Executives Assn. of California. “After the Affordable Care Act and as folks got coverage, we didn’t imagine a moment like this where potentially that progress would be unwound and folks would be falling back into indigent care.”

In November, voters in affluent Santa Clara County approved a sales tax increase, in part to backfill the loss of federal funds. But even in the home of Silicon Valley, where the median household income is about 1.7 times the statewide average, that is expected to cover only a third of the $1 billion a year the county stands to lose.

Health advocates fear that, absent major state investments, Californians could see a return to the previous patchwork of county-run programs, with local governments choosing whom and what they cover and for how long.

In many cases, indigent programs didn’t include specialty care, behavioral health or regular access to primary care. Counties can also exclude people based on immigration status or income. Before the ACA, many uninsured people who needed care didn’t get it, which could lead to them winding up in emergency rooms with untreated health conditions or even dying, said Kiran Savage-Sangwan, executive director of the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network.

Rachel Linn Gish, interim deputy director of Health Access California, a consumer advocacy group, said that “it created a very unequal, maldistributed program throughout the state.”

“Many of us,” she said. “including counties, are reeling trying to figure out: What are those downstream impacts?”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF, the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.

Dec. 21 (UPI) — House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, R-N.Y., said Sunday that he expects lawmakers to pass a bipartisan compromise on extending Affordable Care Act tax credits.

Jeffries said on ABC News’ “This Week” that lawmakers will pass a bi-partisan compromise to extend ACA tax credits extension in the House, potentially forcing Senate Republicans hand on health insurance subsidies for at least 22 million Americans who will face higher premiums in the new year.

Congress adjourned for Christmas without reaching a deal on extending on the tax credits, which Jeffries promised that House lawmakers will address in early January.

“That will put pressure on John Thune and Senate Republicans to actually do the right thing by the American people, pass a straightforward extension of the Affordable Care Act tax credits, so we can keep health care affordable for tens of millions of Americans who deserve to be able to go see a doctor when they need one,” Jeffries said.

Democrats have said if the two sides are unable to reach a deal on an extension, they will wield it against Republicans in next year’s midterm elections.

Rep. Pat Ryan, D-N.Y., has said access to affordable health care remains among the most pressing issues among voters.

“It’s just pathetic,” Ryan said. “The last time there was a major national Republican effort to repeal the ACA, we had an overwhelming wave where they got absolutely wiped out, and I think that’s likely what will happen here again.”

A handful of centrist Republicans in vulnerable congressional districts bypassed the authority of House Speaker Mike Johnson to team up with key Democrats to authorize a vote on a three-year tax credit extension when the House returns to Washington the week of Jan. 5.

Some Republican leaders have said they favor allowing Covid-era tax credits that made health care more affordable for millions of Americans to expire or be phased out over several years. Other members of the GOP, however, have said they favor extending the credits for longer.

By a vote of 51-48 Thursday, the Senate rejected a three year ACA extension with four Democrats joining the GOP to vote it down.

It was a game to remember for Londynn Jones. She played with confidence and showed her dribbling skills and displaying her all-around skills as she finished the game with a career-high 28 points in the USC women’s basketball team’s 86-39 win over Cal Poly on Thursday night at Galen Center.

In the first part of the game, Jones was perfect on offense while aggressively defending every time the Mustangs had the ball. When Cal Poly attacked, she came up with steals and completed the play with a field goal, sometimes even adding one more point on a foul.

“I’m just happy we’re figuring it out, starting to finally put the pieces together,” she said. “I know that’s something we’ve been emphasizing in practice, just watching films and putting the pieces together.”

Jones finished the game making 11 out of 16 field goals, and Jazzy Davidson scored 17 points and had nine rebounds.

The Trojans (8-3) looked sluggish in the first half, with Davidson making only three of 11 field goals, and the Mustangs (2-9) grabbing 15 rebounds. But as the game progressed, the USC defense forced Cal Poly to run out the shot clock on multiple occasions and caused 27 turnovers while scoring 39 points off of them.

“We sort of played the way we wanted to, for a majority of the game, and that’s encouraging,” coach Lindsay Gottlieb said.

After losing to Connecticut 79-51 on Saturday, Gottlieb wanted to see her team play with intention while defending, she wanted them to pressure on the ball, and she wanted to see participation from all the players on the court, at once.

Offensively, she wanted her team to do the simple things better. Gottlieb wanted them to create space and have better movement.

“I saw that in practice and I think we saw a lot of it in the game tonight, too,” she said. “But, it’ll continue to be a work in progress.

The Trojans started the third quarter with 10 unanswered points. Cal Poly scored only five points in the quarter, allowing the Trojans to extend their advantage, closing out the third quarter with a 43-point lead, 71-28.

The Trojans finished the game with 15 steals and the bench scoring 45 points. As a whole, the team finished the game with 44 rebounds, with the majority of them coming from the offense.

“I thought our defensive intensity created more open looks for us,” Gottlieb said.

Yakiya Milton was a big part of that with her eight rebounds with four blocks in 10 minutes of play. One of the four blocks came when she stopped a Mustang drive to the basket and protected the rim. Something that Gottlieb preached during practice, she said.

“I try to capitalize on any opportunity I’m given,” Milton said. “I’m trying to play with as much energy and intensity as I can.”

As the Trojans look ahead to a stretch of Big 10 games against Nebraska and UCLA, Gottlieb doesn’t see a starting five. She sees the strengths of her team to be how deep their roster is.

“No one played 30 minutes at all and maybe that’s a little bit atypical, but we do believe that we can play different kinds of lineups, different people who have different skill sets, different looks,” she said.

And with the help of Jones, who has been to the Final Four with UCLA and has played in big conference games, she knows the team will feed off her energy and play with confidence

“I mean, she was wearing the wrong colors or the other colors,” Gottlieb quipped. “But you know, she’s been in situations and that experience is premium.”

“She’s going to bring that confidence and swagger no matter what,” she added.

Dec. 18 (UPI) — The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced new regulations on Thursday that restrict the ability for transgender minors to access gender-affirming healthcare.

The regulations work to “carry out President Trump’s executive order directing HHS to end the practice of sex-rejecting procedures on children that expose young people to irreversible harm,” a press release said.

The new rules will ban hospitals from “performing sex-rejecting procedures on children under age 18 as a condition of participation in Medicare and Medicaid programs.”

“These actions will ensure that the federal government in no way funds directly gender transition procedures on minors and also does not fund facilities that perform these procedures,” a department official told reporters Thursday.

The department said what it calls “sex-rejecting procedures” on children, including puberty blockers, hormones and surgery, “expose them to irreversible damage, including infertility, impaired sexual function, diminished bone density, altered brain development, and other irreversible physiological effects.”

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other department officials will offer details about the moves later Thursday.

Gender-affirming care is a holistic approach to treating gender-dysphoria and is supported by every major medical association as treatment for both adults and children.

It includes a range of therapies, from psychological and behavioral to medical interventions, with surgeries for minors being exceedingly rare.

The medical practice, however, has been a target for conservatives for years amid a larger campaign that civil rights organizations see as a threat to the rights of LGBTQ Americans.

St. Louis pediatrician Dr. Kenneth Haller called HHS’ actions “anti-science” during a Human Rights Campaign press briefing. He pointed out that these efforts still allow the treatments for children with other conditions that affect hormone production.

Haller said that as long as the condition doesn’t change a child’s gender, “these people don’t have a problem with [prescribing hormones]. That same care for kids who are transgender is what they say is wrong. There’s no science behind it.”

HHS said the Food and Drug Administration would send warning letters to manufacturers and sellers of breast binders for minors alleging they are doing illegal marketing, the department official said.

“Illegal marketing of these products for children is alarming, and the FDA will take further enforcement action such as import alerts, seizures, and injunctions if it continues,” FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary said in a statement.

The Human Rights Campaign said these rules infringe on the rights of families.

“Families deserve the freedom to go to the doctor and get the care that they need and to have agency over the health and wellbeing of their children,” said Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, in a statement. “But these proposed actions would put [President] Donald Trump and RFK Jr. in those doctor’s offices, ripping healthcare decisions from the hands of families and putting it in the grips of the anti-LGBTQ+ fringe.”

And Advocates for Trans Equality told UPI in an emailed statement that are a “discriminatory attack” that lacks credible medical or financial basis.

“These sets of rules mark a serious escalation in this administration’s ongoing efforts to dismantle healthcare programs and services for trans youth,” Fiadh McKenna, A4TE senior staff attorney, said in the statement.

“Targeting healthcare for trans people is unlawful and discriminatory; no one should be denied healthcare because of who they are.”

The new CMS rules will be finalized after a 60-day comment period on the Federal Register, the department official said.

Trump has issued several executive orders against transgender people. In May, the Pentagon began removing transgender service members from the military. In March, the Department of Veterans Affairs began phasing out medical treatments for gender dysphoria. In February, Trump signed an executive order banning transgender women from participating in women’s sports. In January, Trump signed an executive order that restricts gender-affirming care for minors.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday unveiled a series of regulatory actions designed to effectively ban gender-affirming care for minors, building on broader Trump administration restrictions on transgender Americans.

The sweeping proposals — the most significant moves this administration has taken so far to restrict the use of puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgical interventions for transgender children — include cutting off federal Medicaid and Medicare funding from hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to children and prohibiting federal Medicaid dollars from being used to fund such procedures.

“This is not medicine, it is malpractice,” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said of gender-affirming procedures on children in a news conference on Thursday. “Sex-rejecting procedures rob children of their futures.”

Kennedy also announced Thursday that the HHS Office of Civil Rights will propose a rule excluding gender dysphoria from the definition of a disability.

In a related move, the Food and Drug Administration issued warning letters to a dozen companies that market chest-binding vests and other equipment used by people with gender dysphoria. Manufacturers include GenderBender LLC of Carson, California and TomboyX of Seattle. The FDA letters state that chest binders can only be legally marketed for FDA-approved medical uses, such as recovery after mastectomy surgery.

Proposed rules would threaten youth gender-affirming care in states where it remains legal

Medicaid programs in slightly less than half of states currently cover gender-affirming care. At least 27 states have adopted laws restricting or banning the care. The Supreme Court’s recent decision upholding Tennessee’s ban means most other state laws are likely to remain in place.

Thursday’s announcements would imperil access in nearly two dozen states where drug treatments and surgical procedures remain legal and funded by Medicaid, which includes federal and state dollars.

The proposals announced by Kennedy and his deputies are not final or legally binding. The federal government must go through a lengthy rulemaking process, including periods of public comment and document rewrites, before the restrictions becoming permanent. They are also likely to face legal challenges.

But the proposed rules will likely further intimidate health care providers from offering gender-affirming care to children and many hospitals have already ceased such care in anticipation of federal action.

Nearly all U.S. hospitals participate in the Medicare and Medicaid programs, the federal government’s largest health plans that cover seniors, the disabled and low-income Americans. Losing access to those payments would imperil most U.S. hospitals and medical providers.

The same funding restrictions would apply to a smaller health program when it comes to care for people under the age of 19, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, according to a federal notice posted Thursday morning.

Moves contradict advice from medical organizations and transgender advocates

Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, on Thursday called transgender treatments “a Band-Aid on a much deeper pathology,” and suggested children with gender dysphoria are “confused, lost and need help.”

Polling shows many Americans agree with the administration’s view of the issue. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey conducted earlier this year found that about half of U.S. adults approved of how Trump was handling transgender issues.

Chloe Cole, a conservative activist known for speaking about her gender-transition reversal, spoke at the news conference to express appreciation. She said cries for help from her and others in her situation, “have finally been heard.”

But the approach contradicts the recommendations of most major U.S. medical organizations, including the American Medical Association, which has urged states not to restrict care for gender dysphoria.

Advocates for transgender children strongly refuted the administration’s claims about gender-affirming care and said Thursday’s moves would put lives at risk.

“In an effort to strongarm hospitals into participating in the administration’s anti-LGBTQ agenda, the Trump Administration is forcing health care systems to choose between providing lifesaving care for LGBTQ+ young people and accepting crucial federal funding,” Dr. Jamila Perritt, a Washington-based OB/GYN and president and CEO of Physicians for Reproductive Health, said in a statement. “This is a lose-lose situation where lives are inevitably on the line. “

Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, senior vice president at The Trevor Project, a nonprofit suicide prevention organization for LBGTQ+ youth, called the changes a “one-size-fits-all mandate from the federal government” on a decision that should be between a doctor and patient.

“The multitude of efforts we are seeing from federal legislators to strip transgender and nonbinary youth of the health care they need is deeply troubling,” he said.

Actions build on a larger effort to restrict transgender rights

The announcements build on a wave of actions President Trump, his administration and Republicans in Congress have taken to target the rights of transgender people nationwide.

On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order that declared the federal government would recognize only two immutable sexes: male and female. He also has signed orders aimed at cutting off federal support for gender transitions for people under age 19 and barring transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports.

On Wednesday, a bill that would open transgender health care providers to prison time if they treat people under the age of 18 passed the U.S. House and heads to the Senate. Another bill under consideration in the House on Thursday aims to ban Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming care for children.

Young people who persistently identify as a gender that differs from their sex assigned at birth are first evaluated by a team of professionals. Some may try a social transition, involving changing a hairstyle or pronouns. Some may later also receive hormone-blocking drugs that delay puberty, followed by testosterone or estrogen to bring about the desired physical changes in patients. Surgery is rare for minors.

Swenson, Perrone and Shastri write for the Associated Press. Shastri reported from Milwaukee. AP writer Geoff Mulvihill contributed to this report.