Post Politics Now Biden’s covid symptoms ‘almost completely resolved,’ doctor says

The White House on Monday moved to restore protections for LGBTQ Americans and other groups seeking health services that were struck down during the Trump era, arguing that a new rule also covers pregnant women and other pregnant individuals seeking health-care services, including abortion.

As Dan Diamond and Rachel Roubein report, the proposed rule issued by the Department of Health and Human Services strengthens a provision of the Affordable Care Act by expanding the provision to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender — meaning health-care providers who accept federal funds can’t excise blanket bans on, for example, gender-affirming care.

Per our colleagues:

Health-care organizations that receive federal funding would also be barred from discriminating against gender transitions and other services that have increasingly become the target of state legislative battles and litigation. Officials also stressed that the new federal anti-discrimination language covers a patient’s sexual orientation and gender identity. …

The proposed rule strengthens a provision, Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, that was crafted during the Obama administration but weakened by his successor and has been the subject of extensive litigation. ...

LGBTQ advocacy organizations cheered the announcement, saying the Biden administration was right to restore and broaden federal language that would protect people seeking gender transitions, people with disabilities and others who face discrimination.

The new rule also clarifies the ACA provision by stating that discrimination on the basis of sex includes decisions regarding “pregnancy termination.” This move comes after HHS pointed to federal civil rights laws — including portions of Obamacare — to caution pharmacists about denying access to medications that can be used for abortions and is part of the Biden administration’s strategy to ensure access to abortion in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

But experts said they were still parsing the proposed rule’s implications in the battle over abortion rights.

“I think people who oppose this rule will try and construe it as a mandate for abortion. That’s just so far from the case,” Katie Keith, director of the Health Policy and the Law Initiative at Georgetown Law’s O’Neill Institute, told our colleagues.

Biden administration officials say they are bracing for legal challenges, amid ongoing litigation that contributed to delays in issuing it.

Read more about this proposed rule here.

A Georgia judge ruled that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her staff can’t question the state’s Republican nominee for lieutenant governor over his role in contesting the 2020 presidential elections because Willis hosted a fundraiser for his Democratic rival, Matthew Brown reports.

Fulton Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, in a ruling Monday, reasoned that Willis’s decision to endorse Charlie Bailey during his runoff in the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor “creates a plain — and actual and untenable — conflict” with her investigation into potential election fraud by state Sen. Burt Jones (R), who is running to be the state’s lieutenant governor.

“This choice — which the District attorney was within her rights as an elected official to make — has consequences,” the judge wrote.

Jones was among the Georgia Republicans who have been accused of leading an effort to create a fake slate of electors from the state for Congress’s certification of the 2020 election. He is one of the 16 Georgia Republicans who received letters earlier this month from Willis and her staff notifying them that they were potential “targets” of criminal investigation over their participation in the scheme.

Jones filed a motion to disqualify Willis and her team from investigating him, citing her fundraiser with Bailey.

McBurney, as Matthew reports, cited Willis’s participation in the fundraiser as “problematic” given that she’s actively investigating Bailey’s rival.

Read more about this investigation here.

President Biden, speaking in a prerecorded address to the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, issued a strong rebuke of former president Donald Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021, as a mob of his supporters broke into the Capitol.

While Biden has long condemned Trump’s actions that day, his rebuke Monday came days after the House committee investigating the insurrection laid out new details on Trump’s failure to ask his supporters to stop their attack, which soon turned deadly and led to multiple casualties among law enforcement officers.

“For three hours, the defeated former president of the U.S. watched it all happen as he sat in the comfort of the private dining room next to the Oval Office,” Biden said in his remarks. “While he was doing that, brave law enforcement officers were subjected to the medieval hell for three hours, dripping in blood, surrounded by carnage, face to face with a crazed mob that he believed [his] lies.”

Trump, Biden added, “lacked the courage to act like the brave women and men in blue all across this nation.”

“You can’t be pro-insurrection and pro-cop,” Biden said. “You can’t be pro-insurrection and pro-democracy.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre doubled down on Biden’s comments later Monday, telling reporters that Biden wanted to “take the time to thank” officers for their actions on Jan. 6.

“The former president had a choice to make. The choice was: Do you stand down on the side of our law enforcement, or do you stand on the side of a mob? And we know his actions speak for themselves,” Jean-Pierre said.

The Biden administration is planning to soon name a national coordinator to lead the U.S. monkeypox response, having concluded that the role is necessary to manage the expanding outbreak, three people who were not authorized to discuss the plan told The Washington Post.

The White House has not yet selected the coordinator, said two of the people. U.S. health officials have been working to address bureaucratic challenges that physicians and patients have said has limited access to testing, treatment and vaccines. The virus, which historically has not been found in the United States, can cause fever, lesions and severe pain, although the outbreak has not been linked to a single confirmed U.S. death.

The increasingly sprawling response has drawn in White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain — who coordinated the U.S. response to Ebola during the Obama administration — as well as White House coronavirus coordinator Ashish Jha, infectious-disease expert Anthony S. Fauci, and dozens of other national security and health officials.

Public health experts have said that they worry that the virus will become entrenched in the United States, and U.S. officials have acknowledged that they lack full visibility into the outbreak.

“We’ve got about some 3,000 cases that have been reported. We suspect there’s much more than that,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said Monday on CNN.

The White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, Ashish Jha, told reporters Monday that the Biden administration is collaborating with governments worldwide to address the spread of monkeypox.

Now that the World Health Organization has declared the disease a public health emergency, governments can “better collaborate” on their response, Jha said.

The United States, he said, is deploying a “robust, comprehensive strategy to combat monkeypox” that can be broken down to four key pillars: vaccine distribution, testing access, treatment expansion and community outreach.

Jha said the administration has distributed more than 300,000 monkeypox vaccine doses to jurisdictions nationwide and procured more doses than any other country.

“Probably more than every other country in the world combined,” he said, adding that the Food and Drug Administration is expected to finalize the approval of nearly 800,000 additional doses. Testing capacity, he said, has increased to 80,000 tests per week.

Jha noted that, to curb the spread of the virus, the “same testing capacity we’re talking about here in the United States, it’s really essential that other countries have that, as well.”

“Different countries have different technical needs,” he said. “So we are right now engaged in a lot of both bilateral and multilateral conversations with nations to figure out what help do they need.”

The White House, he added, has been working with community health partners and members of the LGBTQ community “to ensure that we are getting out good information, that we are addressing concerns that they have.”

“We are listening to their concerns,” Jha said. “We want to make sure that all Americans understand that we … continue to take this virus seriously.”

President Biden, speaking to reporters Monday, said the United States is not heading into a recession — “God willing.”

“I don’t think we’re going to — God willing — I don’t think we’re going to see a recession,” the president said before signing off from a virtual appearance at a meeting on semiconductor chips.

Biden pointed to the unemployment and investing rates as proof that the economy is going strong and will remain strong.

Abha Bhattarai and Lauren Kaori Gurley reported last week about the job market showing early signs of cooling.

This latest reckoning follows two years of torrid jobs growth, marking the fastest labor market recovery in history. Nearly all of the 20 million jobs lost in the early weeks of the pandemic have been recovered. U.S. employers created more than 6 million jobs in the past year alone, and job openings continued to outpace job-seekers by nearly 2 to 1 in May.

“In my view, the employment rate is still one of the lowest we’ve had in history,” Biden said. “We still find ourselves with people investing. My hope is, we go from this rapid growth to a steady growth.”

President Biden, attending a meeting virtually with business and union leaders Monday, said he expects to go back to the office in person by the end of the week. He is in isolation following a coronavirus diagnosis.

The president told reporters that, even if his voice is still raspy and he has a sore throat, he’s “feeling great” and got “two nights of sleep all the way through.” He said his dog Commander woke him because his wife, first lady Jill Biden, was not home to take him out on a walk. The first lady is staying in their Delaware home because of the president’s infection.

Biden said he’s getting a “full-blown series of tests” throughout the day — “everything from temperature to oxygen … to my pulse.”

“So far, everything’s good,” he said. “I’m feeling better every day … I think I’m on my way to total recovery.”

He said he hopes to be back to work in person by the end of this week but will continue keeping a full schedule of virtual meetings in the meantime.

Biden also said he still plans on speaking with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week.

The Biden administration is weighing whether to declare the nation’s monkeypox outbreak a public health emergency and also plans to name a White House coordinator to oversee the response as officials attempt to keep the virus from becoming entrenched in the United States, The Post’s Dan Diamond reports.

According to Dan, White House and health agency leaders deliberated through the weekend about their next steps to fight the virus, after the World Health Organization on Saturday declared monkeypox a public health emergency of international concern, the agency’s highest-level warning. Nearly 2,900 infections have been recorded in the United States.

Per Dan:

While some health officials believe an emergency declaration is necessary to give the government authority to cut through red tape and collect data about the virus’s spread, others argued the move is mostly symbolic and will not address vaccine shortages, treatment barriers and other challenges that have hindered the U.S. response, said three people who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment.

Cases in the United States have been disproportionally identified in the gay and bisexual community, but experts warn the virus is likely to spread to other groups. The first two U.S. cases of monkeypox in children were confirmed Friday, probably the result of sharing a household with an infected adult. But federal health authorities said there was no evidence yet of sustained transmission among broader population groups.

Read more about what this declaration would mean here.