Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Voters Bar Trans Athletes From Female Sports In Washington, Colorado
AP: Left-Leaning Washington And Colorado Ban Transgender Athletes
Voters in left-leaning Washington state and Colorado have approved measures designed to ban transgender athletes from participating in school-sanctioned sports. Measure 638 in Washington, which had more than 56% of the vote, will prevent students who were assigned male at birth from participating in sports designated for female athletes. The measure also requires athletes wanting to play in female sports to produce a statement from a health care provider verifying their gender. Proposition 134 in Colorado will require educational institutions and athletic associations to assign sports as male, female or coed. The proposal, which was supported by 52% of voters, will also limit athletes to playing in sports in the gender they were assigned at birth. (Graves, 11/6)
The Colorado Sun: Democrats Plan Tweaks To Conservative Measures On Trans Youth
Gov.-elect Phil Weiser and leading Democrats in the Colorado legislature are already discussing how to tweak four conservative ballot measures that appear to have been approved by voters this year, including ones banning transgender youth from gendered school and college sports and preventing kids from getting surgery altering their biological sex characteristics. (Paul and Brown, 11/5)
On the Supreme Court —
AP: Democrats Vow To Stop Any 'Crappy Nominees' Trump Taps For Federal Judiciary
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who is likely to return as majority leader next year, promised in an interview with The Associated Press that Democrats will prevent Trump from installing a “right-winger” on the Supreme Court and that they are “not going to allow any crappy nominees” elsewhere in the federal judiciary or in Trump’s Cabinet. (Kim, Jalonick and Whitehurst, 11/6)
The Washington Post: GOP’s Losses Will Raise Pressure On Conservative Supreme Court Justices To Retire
The GOP’s sweeping losses in the midterm elections Tuesday set up an unsettling possibility for the party: If it doesn’t act now to confirm a new Supreme Court justice, it may not have another chance for years to come. That prospect is likely to ramp up pressure on the court’s two oldest conservatives — Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., 76, and Clarence Thomas, 78 — to retire during the lame-duck period, while Republicans still have the votes to get a nominee confirmed by the Senate. The new Senate, in which Democrats will hold a majority, is seated on Jan. 3. ... The Supreme Court’s conservative 6-3 supermajority has delivered historic opinions on abortion, affirmative action, religious rights and much more that have thrilled Republicans. A younger replacement for Alito or Thomas could lock that advantage in for years to come. (Jouvenal, 11/5)
The New York Times: Justice Dept. Steps Up Criminal Inquiry of Supreme Court Abortion Decision Leak
The Justice Department is pursuing a criminal investigation into who leaked the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning the right to abortion, examining the inner workings of an institution that has long operated in secrecy and resisted oversight from the other branches of government. At issue is who provided the draft decision to Politico two months before it was formally released by the court, a seismic breach of confidentiality that led to intense partisan accusations about the motivations of the leaker. (Kantor and Schmidt, 11/5)
In other election developments —
Politico: ‘What A Waste’: How California’s Billionaire Tax Campaign Fell Apart
As Democrats notch their biggest gains in decades, a landmark tax on California billionaires appears headed for defeat. It is a notable outlier as progressives elsewhere rode populist fervor to victory — and the campaign may have been undone as much by its backers’ own missteps as by opponents spending more than $300 million. Long before the billionaire opposition formed, labor union leaders were deeply divided over the ballot proposal. The measure directed nearly all its revenue to health care, and its sponsor pushed ahead without broad consensus. Those rifts cost the campaign key endorsements, left it without enough moneyto mount a serious response and allowed billionaire opponents to magnify and exploit disagreements among groups that generally support taxing the rich. (White, 11/6)
