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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s opinion classifying pediatric gender-affirming care as child abuse was based off inaccurate medical claims, a team of experts in child and adolescent health said in a new report. “The repeated errors and omissions in the AG Opinion are so consistent and so extensive that it is difficult to believe that the opinion represents a good-faith effort to draw legal conclusions based on the best scientific evidence,” wrote the research team. “It seems apparent that the AG Opinion is, rather, motivated by bias and crafted to achieve a preordained goal: to deny gender-affirming care to transgender youth.” (McGaughy and Wolf, 5/2)

Democratic lawmakers in more than a dozen states are following California’s lead in seeking to offer legal refuge to displaced transgender youth and their families. The coordinated effort being announced Tuesday by the LGBTQ Victory Institute and other advocates comes in response to recent actions taken in conservative states. In Texas, for example, Gov. Gregg Abbott has directed state agencies to consider placing transgender children in foster care, though a judge has temporarily blocked such investigations. And multiple states have approved measures prohibiting gender-affirming health care treatments for transgender youth. (Ramer, 5/3)

The image is seared in Jack McCarthy’s mind: a group of pre-kindergarteners gathered for story time, sitting in a circle on the carpet of a classroom, amid an invisible witches’ brew of chemicals lurking in the dust on the floor. Ever since he heard a talk a couple of years ago about health problems linked to flame retardants, stain repellents, and other potent building chemicals, McCarthy, executive director of the Massachusetts School Building Authority, has been on a mission to slash the number of such substances in the state’s schools. His vision is taking hold in a $305 million construction project for a new Bristol-Plymouth Regional Technical School, the first time the authority has embarked on a project-wide initiative to reduce chemicals linked to cancer, hormone disruption, and other health problems. (Lazar, 5/2)

Over the weekend, federal agriculture officials reported the first highly pathogenic avian flu outbreaks in Alaska and Oklahoma, raising the number of affected states to 32. Also, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued recommendations to help health departments investigate and response to potential human cases, and earlier-affected states, several of them in the Midwest, reported more outbreak in poultry. (Schnirring, 5/2)

More than 10 percent of Rhode Island babies are living in “crowded housing,” which is when homes have “numerous people who live in close quarters,” according to a new report on the well-being of babies in the US, which published Tuesday. According to “The State of Babies Yearbook: 2022,” which is part of the Zero to Three’s Think Babies, there are greater crowded housing disparities among families of color. In Rhode Island, which still ranked high in the report among the rest of the US for how the state was supporting babies and families, reported that about 15 percent of babies in low-income families live in “crowded housing,” compared to 32 percent of Asian babies and more than 34 percent of Black babies. (Gagosz, 5/3)

On a Friday afternoon last March, Sahar Punjwani ran a familiar errand — buying tampons, pads and panty liners. But this time, she was joined by lawyers from a prestigious Houston law firm. “It was weird because we were all crowded into the aisle together, and they were just watching me, waiting for me to hand them my receipt,” Punjwani recalls. That receipt showed that Punjwani had spent $21.56 on menstrual products — and $1.78 on sales tax. Texas is one of 26 states that charges sales tax on menstrual products, something Punjwani and her organization, the Texas Menstrual Equity Coalition, have been fighting for years to change. That visit to the pharmacy, and the $1.78 in sales tax it generated, was the first step in a new challenge that the group says they’re prepared to take all the way to the state Supreme Court. (Klibanoff, 5/3)