Latest news with #Consumers'Research
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Expert reveals how companies are rebranding 'toxic' DEI policies to skirt Trump-era bans: 'New wrapper'
EXCLUSIVE: As the Trump administration and Republicans across the country push to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies across the board, the executive director of a top consumer advocacy group spoke to Fox News Digital about what companies and institutions are doing to skirt those efforts. "Over the last few months, we've sort of seen a phase shift in the ways that they're trying to keep this DEI grift going," Consumers' Research Executive Director Will Hild told Fox News Digital about companies, organizations, hospitals and other entities that are attempting to rebrand DEI and environmental, social and governance in the Trump era. "At first, they just pushed back on, tried to defend DEI itself, but when that became so obvious that what DEI really was was anti-White, anti-Asian, sometimes anti-Jewish discrimination in hiring and promotion, they abandoned that," Hild said. "Now what they're trying to do is simply change the terminology that has become so toxic to their brand. So we're seeing a lot of companies move from having departments of DEI, for example, to 'departments of belonging' or 'departments of inclusivity.'" Several major companies have publicly distanced themselves from DEI in recent months as the new administration signs executive orders eliminating the practice while making the argument that meritocracy should be the focus. Red State Treasurer Reveals Why State Financial Officers Have 'Obligation' To Combat Esg, Dei However, FOX Business exclusively reported in April on Consumers' Research warning that some businesses appear to be rebranding the same efforts rather than eliminating them. Read On The Fox News App "It is the exact same toxic nonsense under a new wrapper, and they're just hoping to extend the grift because a lot of these people, I would say most of the people working in DEI are useless," Hild told Fox News Digital. Key Biden Agency Dropped $60K On Overseas Conference With Dei Workshop: 'Should Never Happen' "They are mediocrities who have managed to get very high-level positions that they're not qualified for by running this DEI grift, and they're desperate," he continued. "They can't just move into running logistics for Amazon because that takes actual competence and intelligence and if you're in a DEI department, you probably don't have either of those things. So they are desperate to keep this grift going so they can justify their own existence. So they're changing it into a new wrapper." Hild, who spoke to Fox News Digital at the State Financial Officers Foundation conference in Orlando, Florida, also explained some of the other issues Consumers' Research is focused on going forward, including fighting "woke" hospitals in three different areas. "One is net zero pledges and activities that raise costs for consumers, patients having to pay more because these hospitals are investing millions, sometimes tens of millions of dollars, into green boondoggle projects that have nothing to do with the treatment of patients and the improvement of their health, but they do raise prices," Hild said. Secondly, Hild said that his group is concerned about DEI quotas at hospitals. Hild explained that the third and "worst" issue is transgender surgeries and procedures being forced onto children. "Pushing of radical left transgender ideology onto kids, and not just pushing it ideologically and rhetorically, but pushing it physically, and what I mean by that is the injection of damaging, lifelong damaging hormones into children to, quote, unquote, change their sex, which is impossible, and even worse, the actual surgical application, removal and mutilation of their genitals, which is a grotesque violation of the Hippocratic Oath," Hild said. Consumers' Research has been actively involved in launching advertising campaigns against hospitals across the United States, including a recent campaign against Henry Ford Health in Michigan, calling out what it says are situations where hospitals are putting "politics over patients."Original article source: Expert reveals how companies are rebranding 'toxic' DEI policies to skirt Trump-era bans: 'New wrapper'
Yahoo
14-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Top US hospital hit with scathing ad campaign over 'extreme woke' agenda: 'Politics over patients'
FIRST ON FOX: Consumers' Research, a leading nonprofit dedicated to consumer information, is launching an advertising campaign against one of the top healthcare systems in the United States, accusing it of prioritizing "woke" politics over patient care. Consumers' Research is targeting Henry Ford Health in Detroit, Michigan, with a campaign called "Ford Health Exposed" that includes a website where the group says it is spotlighting "how Henry Ford is putting politics over patients by weaving discriminatory practices into everything it does, administering harmful transgender treatments on kids, and prioritizing a radical climate agenda." The website points out that the Henry Ford Health website is littered with examples of "woke" ideology being promoted, including DEI, which the hospital has said is "woven into the fabric of everything we do." "Diversity always will be the foundation on which Henry Ford Health stands," the organization's website states. Vanderbilt Med Center 'Hiding' Dei Resources Behind Password-protected Web Pages: Report The website also openly promotes its use of "unconscious bias training" as well as Employee Resource Groups to promote its "diversity" agenda that it says will "enhance the quality of care and comfort for each person that we serve." Read On The Fox News App The healthcare system also promotes what it describes on its website as "supplier diversity," where it prioritizes working with businesses that are at least 51% owned by LGBTQ+ persons or certain minority categories. "Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are simply not enough," Kimberlydawn Wisdom, senior vice president of community health and equity and chief wellness and diversity officer at Henry Ford Health, said in a 2021 newsletter posted on the provider's website. "Diversity, equity, and inclusion alone can only mitigate the damage of the past. To prevent the mistakes of the past from burdening our communities in the future, our ultimate destination must be justice." 'Wokest Hospital In America?': Top Hospital Hit With Blistering Ad Exposing 'Political Agenda' Dr. Maureen Connolly, a pediatrician and LGBTQ+ specialist with HFH, wrote an article promoting transgender treatment on kids, which stated, "Gender-affirming medical therapy and supported social transition in childhood have been shown to correlate with improved psychological functioning for gender-variant children and adolescents." Connolly also promoted "gender exploration" in another article posted on the HFH website that says, "If your daughter says she feels like a boy inside, let her cut her hair, call her by a different name and switch up her wardrobe." In addition to the agenda promoted on the website, Henry Ford Health is facing accusations of providing gender treatment to children. The hospital has engaged in sex change treatment, surgeries and puberty blocker treatment in recent years, according to a database compiled by Stop The Harm. Fox News Digital reached out to Henry Ford Health for comment, but the hospital did not respond to the media inquiry. However, the hospital did delete several DEI sections from its website over the last 24 hours that were archived by Fox News Digital. The ad campaign charges that HFH is "pushing irreversible sex changes on kids." In 2023, the Ruth Ellis Center nominated HFH for the Ludwig Community Benefit Award for "improving the well-being of their community by delivering integrated healthcare and social services to LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning) youth in Detroit." "In 2022, Henry Ford providers at Ruth Ellis facilities cared for more than 700 LGBTQ+ patients, including 429 transgender young adults, over the course of more than 6,800 medical visits," a press release touting the partnership between the two entities stated. "The health and wellness centers have been a source of primary care, gender affirming care, comprehensive sexual health services including HIV prevention and treatment, and behavioral health services for dozens of adolescents and young adults." HFH has also been involved in promoting a liberal climate agenda that included spending millions of dollars last year, according to its own website, to create and promote the Central Energy Hub as part of a push for net zero emissions. HFH also partnered with an energy company in 2021, according to a press release on the website. "Sustainability is an integral part of building strong, healthy communities," Bob Riney, Henry Ford Health System's president of healthcare operations and chief operations officer, said in the release. "At Henry Ford, health equity is at the foundation of everything we do. It's an unfortunate fact that low-income communities and communities of color are disproportionately impacted by poor environmental conditions, which are exacerbated by climate change. By investing in clean, renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure, we aim to address health disparities and the growing impacts of climate change regionwide, especially in our historically marginalized communities." The Consumers' Research campaign will also include mobile billboards outside of hospital locations in Detroit and Macomb, a billboard near the state capitol in Lansing, and chalk stencils around the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. "Henry Ford Health is prioritizing politics over patients," Will Hild, Consumers' Research executive director, told Fox News Digital. "Driven by gender ideology, Henry Ford has continued performing deeply harmful and irreversible sex-change treatments on children and must be stopped," "The hospital's deliberate mutilation of confused children's bodies is being done in direct defiance of President Trump's orders to eliminate the vile practice for good. Henry Ford Health has also committed to embedding DEI into every facet of its operation, elevating a radical ideological agenda above its fundamental duty to provide excellent scientific-based care," Hild continued. "Considering how many resources Henry Ford has squandered on needless, extreme woke programs, the hospital has rendered itself almost indistinguishable from an activist group, not only spewing radical left-wing talking points but actively imposing these ideologies onto patients and staff. Rather than change course, Henry Ford Health has chosen to wear its transgressions with pride, a chilling testament to how far it has strayed from its original purpose. Consumers' Research will continue to put these hospitals on blast for putting a woke agenda over patient care."Original article source: Top US hospital hit with scathing ad campaign over 'extreme woke' agenda: 'Politics over patients'
Fox News
14-04-2025
- Health
- Fox News
Top US hospital hit with scathing ad campaign over 'extreme woke' agenda: 'Politics over patients'
FIRST ON FOX: Consumers' Research, a leading nonprofit dedicated to consumer information, is launching an advertising campaign against one of the top healthcare systems in the United States, accusing it of prioritizing "woke" politics over patient care. Consumers' Research is targeting Henry Ford Health in Detroit, Michigan, with a campaign called "Ford Health Exposed" that includes a website where the group says it is spotlighting "how Henry Ford is putting politics over patients by weaving discriminatory practices into everything it does, administering harmful transgender treatments on kids, and prioritizing a radical climate agenda." The website points out that the Henry Ford Health website is littered with examples of "woke" ideology being promoted, including DEI, which the hospital has said is "woven into the fabric of everything we do." "Diversity always will be the foundation on which Henry Ford Health stands," the organization's website states. The website also openly promotes its use of "unconscious bias training" as well as Employee Resource Groups to promote its "diversity" agenda that it says will "enhance the quality of care and comfort for each person that we serve." The healthcare system also promotes what it describes on its website as "supplier diversity," where it prioritizes working with businesses that are at least 51% owned by LGBTQ+ persons or certain minority categories. "Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are simply not enough," Kimberlydawn Wisdom, senior vice president of community health and equity and chief wellness and diversity officer at Henry Ford Health, said in a 2021 newsletter posted on the provider's website. "Diversity, equity, and inclusion alone can only mitigate the damage of the past. To prevent the mistakes of the past from burdening our communities in the future, our ultimate destination must be justice." Dr. Maureen Connolly, a pediatrician and LGBTQ+ specialist with HFH, wrote an article promoting transgender treatment on kids, which stated, "Gender-affirming medical therapy and supported social transition in childhood have been shown to correlate with improved psychological functioning for gender-variant children and adolescents." Connolly also promoted "gender exploration" in another article posted on the HFH website that says, "If your daughter says she feels like a boy inside, let her cut her hair, call her by a different name and switch up her wardrobe." In addition to the agenda promoted on the website, Henry Ford Health is facing accusations of providing gender treatment to children. The hospital has engaged in sex change treatment, surgeries and puberty blocker treatment in recent years, according to a database compiled by Stop The Harm. Fox News Digital reached out to Henry Ford Health for comment, but the hospital did not respond to the media inquiry. However, the hospital did delete several DEI sections from its website over the last 24 hours that were archived by Fox News Digital. The ad campaign charges that HFH is "pushing irreversible sex changes on kids." In 2023, the Ruth Ellis Center nominated HFH for the Ludwig Community Benefit Award for "improving the well-being of their community by delivering integrated healthcare and social services to LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning) youth in Detroit." "In 2022, Henry Ford providers at Ruth Ellis facilities cared for more than 700 LGBTQ+ patients, including 429 transgender young adults, over the course of more than 6,800 medical visits," a press release touting the partnership between the two entities stated. "The health and wellness centers have been a source of primary care, gender affirming care, comprehensive sexual health services including HIV prevention and treatment, and behavioral health services for dozens of adolescents and young adults." HFH has also been involved in promoting a liberal climate agenda that included spending millions of dollars last year, according to its own website, to create and promote the Central Energy Hub as part of a push for net zero emissions. HFH also partnered with an energy company in 2021, according to a press release on the website. "Sustainability is an integral part of building strong, healthy communities," Bob Riney, Henry Ford Health System's president of healthcare operations and chief operations officer, said in the release. "At Henry Ford, health equity is at the foundation of everything we do. It's an unfortunate fact that low-income communities and communities of color are disproportionately impacted by poor environmental conditions, which are exacerbated by climate change. By investing in clean, renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure, we aim to address health disparities and the growing impacts of climate change regionwide, especially in our historically marginalized communities." The Consumers' Research campaign will also include mobile billboards outside of hospital locations in Detroit and Macomb, a billboard near the state capitol in Lansing, and chalk stencils around the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. "Henry Ford Health is prioritizing politics over patients," Will Hild, Consumers' Research executive director, told Fox News Digital. "Driven by gender ideology, Henry Ford has continued performing deeply harmful and irreversible sex-change treatments on children and must be stopped," "The hospital's deliberate mutilation of confused children's bodies is being done in direct defiance of President Trump's orders to eliminate the vile practice for good. Henry Ford Health has also committed to embedding DEI into every facet of its operation, elevating a radical ideological agenda above its fundamental duty to provide excellent scientific-based care," Hild continued. "Considering how many resources Henry Ford has squandered on needless, extreme woke programs, the hospital has rendered itself almost indistinguishable from an activist group, not only spewing radical left-wing talking points but actively imposing these ideologies onto patients and staff. Rather than change course, Henry Ford Health has chosen to wear its transgressions with pride, a chilling testament to how far it has strayed from its original purpose. Consumers' Research will continue to put these hospitals on blast for putting a woke agenda over patient care."
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump Admin Takes Short Break From Agency Rampage To Defend FCC In Intra-GOP Fight
The new world order has created odd bedfellows. Previously, the momentum of the political right surged behind efforts to get the Supreme Court to bite on nondelegation, the 'doctrine' that Congress can't outsource any of its legislative duties to the executive branch. In practice, this would mean defanged agencies that have to wait on Congress — which moves glacially, if at all — to pass even the most minute regulatory changes before they can act. Then Trump became President again. The methodical effort to push the federal judiciary to the right on agency power can't hope to compete with Elon Musk and DOGE's unilateral, illegal takeovers and shuttering. These cases took years to work up the judicial pipeline; Musk broke the back of USAID in days. This tipping of the chessboard has left old alliances scrambled, as evidenced in Wednesday's Supreme Court oral arguments. Some of the same people behind the death of Chevron deference — a major blow to agency authority last year — were back again, this time to challenge the Federal Communications Commission's program that delivers subsidized internet and phone service to low-income and far-flung Americans. The blandly named Consumers' Research organization had challenged the program under the nondelegation theory, turning a seemingly run-of-the-mill case into one that stood to reshape the balance of power. Defending the FCC was the odd duo of Trump's acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris and Paul Clement, the former Bush administration solicitor general who appeared on Trump's Supreme Court list in 2020. The justices, too, didn't all fall along predictable lines. While Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas took fairly friendly positions to Consumers' Research and the liberals sounded solidly arrayed against it, Justice Samuel Alito made a rare appeal to sympathy for the largely rural Americans who would be cut off without the FCC's program. 'I am quite concerned about the effects of a decision in your favor on grounds that you have been pressing this morning,' Alito told Consumers' Research's Trent McCotter, a former Trump deputy assistant attorney general. 'What would be the effect on people in rural areas if this is held to be unconstitutional and Congress does not act?' It was a telling moment from the justice who once wrote that 'women are not without electoral or political power' when striking down abortion rights. Alito also pointed out that it's harder for Congress to act now than ever before — a concern he has decidedly not voiced in other anti-agency cases. Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh, too, expressed skepticism particularly at McCotter's argument that the FCC's program would be constitutional if Congress attached some arbitrary price cap — say, a trillion dollars — to how much money it could raise to subsidize these services. Instead, the statute has other restrictions written into it, including that the money paid in by telecom companies should be 'sufficient' to fund the universal service. 'We would be saying, I think, if we agree with you, 'sufficient's not good enough but trillion dollar is' and I think a lot of people would say that doesn't make a lot of sense,' Kavanaugh said. The Court hasn't taken the bait on every anti-agency case that hits its docket, but it's been moving decisively in that direction, the death of Chevron deference last term a historic landmark along that march. But the tenor is different now. The Court fight over nondelegation isn't so existential when Trump and his coterie are unlawfully ripping up the executive branch and siphoning all of its power up to the White House. 'I'm just wondering whether it is really democracy enhancing to create a doctrine that, at least in this case, would allow judges to strike down this very popularly enacted law,' Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said. Hours earlier, Trump tasked Musk and DOGE with combing through states' voter rolls in search of the ever-elusive mass fraud, part of an executive order that experts warn could disenfranchise millions of Americans.
Vox
26-03-2025
- Politics
- Vox
Kavanaugh and Barrett appear likely to break with the Supreme Court's MAGA wing
is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he focuses on the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the decline of liberal democracy in the United States. He received a JD from Duke University and is the author of two books on the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court spent Wednesday morning giving very serious consideration to a case that no one should take seriously. FCC v. Consumers' Research asks the justices to revive a long-dead legal doctrine known as 'nondelegation,' which places strict limits on Congress's authority to delegate power to federal agencies, and essentially move that power over to the judiciary. The problem with this legal doctrine, besides the difficulty it would create for agencies trying to carry out their mandates, is that it appears nowhere in the Constitution, and so it is impossible to come up with principled rules to guide when judges should strike down a law empowering an agency. SCOTUS, Explained Get the latest developments on the US Supreme Court from senior correspondent Ian Millhiser. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. The Consumers' Research case is also a strange vehicle to revive the Nondelegation Doctrine because the particular statute at issue in this case clearly should be upheld under the Court's current nondelegation precedents. In fact, even if the Court were to abandon those precedents in favor of an alternative, more restrictive nondelegation framework that was proposed by Justice Neil Gorsuch in a 2019 dissent, the federal program at issue in Consumers' Research should still be upheld. While all six of the Court's Republicans showed sympathy with the broader project of expanding the Court's power to overrule federal agencies, only three of them appeared likely to strike down the law that is actually at issue in Consumers' Research. The Court's opinion in this case could still have considerable long-term implications if it embraces Gorsuch's proposed framework or otherwise expands the judiciary's authority. But the statutory scheme that is before the justices right now seems likely to survive. So what is at issue in this case? Consumers' Research involves a program known as the Universal Service Fund, which provides telephone and internet service to rural areas and other regions that are difficult to wire. In the absence of this program, these services would be prohibitively expensive in many poorer or more sparsely populated regions of the country. Related A new Supreme Court case seeks to revive one of the most dangerous ideas from the Great Depression The Universal Service Fund effectively taxes telephone and internet service providers and uses that money to pay for service in these expensive areas. As a practical matter, that means service providers pass the cost of this tax onto their urban and suburban customers — so people in cities wind up subsidizing communications for people in rural communities. One challenge Congress faced when it created this program is that the amount of money the Fund must raise to achieve universal service varies from year to year. So, rather than setting a precise annual tax rate for service providers, Congress tasked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with determining how much money the fund should collect. The federal statute at issue in Consumers' Research provides extraordinarily detailed instructions regarding how to make this determination. It only permits the FCC to subsidize services that are used by 'a substantial majority of residential customers,' it instructs the FCC to raise enough money so that rural customers pay 'reasonably comparable' rates to other customers, and it lays out numerous other principles which the FCC must follow. Thus, the FCC should look at which communications services the overwhelming majority of Americans already have, and it should raise enough funds to ensure that rural customers pay similar rates to urban customers, without raising so much money that rural rates are significantly cheaper. Under the Court's current precedents, Congress must only provide an agency with an 'intelligible principle' that it must follow when it exercises its authority, and there's no serious argument that this statute fails this test. Gorsuch's dissent in Gundy v. United States (2019), which also concerned nondelegation, proposed a new and much vaguer rule — Congress must put 'forth standards 'sufficiently definite and precise to enable Congress, the courts, and the public to ascertain' whether Congress's guidance has been followed' — but even under Gorsuch's standard it is tough to make an argument that the Universal Service Fund is illegal. Only three of the justices seemed to believe that the Universal Service Fund is illegal Perhaps for this reason, Justice Clarence Thomas suggested a completely novel way to invalidate the Fund. Thomas suggested that the nondelegation doctrine should apply with more force in taxing cases, limiting Congress's power to determine how much a federal agency may raise. One problem with Thomas's approach, however, is that the Court held in Skinner v. Mid-America Pipeline Co. (1989) that the Constitution does not 'require the application of a different and stricter nondelegation doctrine in cases where Congress delegates discretionary authority to the Executive under its taxing power.' So reaching Thomas's preferred result would require the Court to overrule Skinner. Justice Samuel Alito, meanwhile, followed his typical practice of peppering the side that counters Republican orthodoxy with a series of unrelated questions, in the hopes that they would stumble over one of them — and he was joined in this tactic by Justice Gorsuch. Over the course of the argument, Alito and Gorsuch complained that the FCC created a corporation to advise it on how to set rates, that the taxing power can potentially be used to destroy companies, and that the FCC sought input from the same companies that they are taxing. At one point, Gorsuch went off on a strange tangent about how the government's decision to break up 'Ma Bell' in 1982 created other telephone monopolies. None of these arguments are relevant to whether the Universal Service Fund is constitutional, at least under existing law. Meanwhile, the Court's other Republicans asked some skeptical questions of the two lawyers who defended the Fund, but they ultimately seemed to conclude that this particular nondelegation challenge is unworkable. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, for example, did ask acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris how to distinguish between a tax and a 'fee,' a question that suggests that Kavanaugh has some sympathy for Thomas's position, but ultimately seemed satisfied with Harris's response that this distinction is 'unbelievably murky in practice.' Similarly, while Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked Harris to distinguish this law from other hypothetical laws that would raise more serious nondelegation questions, such as a law that merely instructed the IRS to raise enough money to provide 'food for the needy,' she too seemed skeptical that this particular law is unconstitutional. Notably, Barrett threw cold water on Thomas's suggestion that there should be a special rule for taxes. Congress, she noted, could potentially solve the problem by imposing a cap as high as $3 trillion on the Fund's ability to raise money, but that would be an empty requirement that amounts to nothing more than throwing 'out a number for the sake of throwing out a number.' It appears, in other words, that the Republican justices' general desire to expand the nondelegation doctrine — a desire that five of them have expressed openly at one point or another — is likely to run aground in the Consumers' Research case because this case is such a poor vehicle to expand nondelegation. Congress's instructions to the FCC were as detailed as they could possibly be, unless the Supreme Court wants to strip Congress of its ability to, as Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said, 'provide a service, however much it costs.' The Court could still use this case to seize power It's notable that, while even the Trump administration agrees that the Universal Service Fund is legal, the federal government switched its position in this case after Trump took office. The government's initial brief, which was filed in the final two weeks of the Biden administration, argues that the Court should apply existing law and uphold the Fund. By contrast, its reply brief (a brief responding to the other side's arguments) treats Gorsuch's Gundy dissent as if it were the law. The reply brief was filed after Trump took office. Even if the Court upholds the Universal Service Fund, which seems likely, the Republican justices could still use this case to abandon the longstanding 'intelligible principle' framework, which gives Congress a great deal of authority to delegate power to agencies, and replace it with Gorsuch's 'sufficiently definite and precise' framework. Because that later framework is so vague, a decision embracing Gorsuch's approach would give judges far more discretion to strike down federal programs that they do not like. So, even if the Court rejects the exceedingly weak attack on the law at issue in this case, it could still use this case to achieve a significant power grab. Gorsuch's framework would transfer a great deal of power from federal agencies, which are controlled by an elected president, and toward a judiciary dominated by Republicans who serve for life. That would mean that the American people would have far less control over how they are governed.
