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american academy of pediatrics
After Outrage, Trump Admin Backtracks on Requiring Maine Parents to Register Babies at Social Security Office
The Social Security Administration abruptly canceled contracts that allowed new parents in the state to sign up their babies for Social Security numbers at the hospital, but on Friday reinstated those contracts.
Mar 07, 2025
The Social Security Administration briefly required parents in Maine to register their newborns for a Social Security number at a Social Security office, instead of checking a box on a form at the hospital, before reversing course on the directive on Friday.
The initial move was panned as burdensome and potentially dangerous—and some observers speculated that it could have been a form of retaliation against Maine's Democratic governor, who last month had a public confrontation with U.S. President Donald Trump.
"It makes absolutely no sense to me at all to do this," Dr. Joe Anderson, advocacy chair of the Maine chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, told the Portland Press Herald on Thursday. "I see no logical explanation for forcing parents and newborns—with 11,000 babies born in Maine every year—to sit in a crowded waiting room, when we have done this easily, securely and efficiently for decades."
Earlier this week, officials at the Maine Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) said they were told by the Social Security Administration that the Trump administration had abruptly canceled two contracts halting the "Enumeration at Birth" process, which has been effect since the 1980s, that allows new parents to fill out a form at a hospital or health center to secure a Social Security number for their child, according to the Press Herald. The officials said no explanation was given. The directive would have also impacted electronic filing of death records at funeral homes.
But on Friday morning, the Press Herald reported that the Trump administration had backtracked. "The SSA has just notified Maine DHHS that it is rescinding the terminations of the Maine contracts for Enumeration at Birth (EAB) and Electronic Death Records (EDR) effective immediately," said Alisa Morton, spokesperson for the Maine DHHS, according to the outlet.
"I recently directed Social Security employees to end two contracts which affected the good people of the state of Maine," said Lee Dudek, Acting Social Security Commissioner, in a statement on Friday. "In retrospect, I realize that ending these contracts created an undue burden on the people of Maine, which was not the intent. For that, I apologize and have directed that both contracts be immediately reinstated... As a leader, I will admit my mistakes and make them right."
Both HuffPost and the Press Herald reported that the contracts may have been targeted by Elon Musk's "Department of Government Efficiency."
The two outlets identified that DOGE's website lists multiple canceled "Enumeration at Birth" contracts for states and one U.S. territory. Maine, however, is not listed among them.
The initial news that Maine parents would not be able to use the "Enumeration at Birth" process had some observers wondering if the change was a form of retaliation for Maine Gov. Janet Mills' recent public confrontation with Trump.
"There's been zero explanation for this given but it seems exceedingly likely it's pure retaliation for the Maine governor challenging Trump. Really sick," wrote MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes, before the news that it had been reversed. The radio journalist Kai Ryssdal also said that the initial move was because "Gov Mills told [Trump] something he didn't want to hear."
Last month, Trump and Mills tangled at a White House event over Maine's opposition to complying with an executive order that bars transgender student athletes from playing on girls' sports teams consistent with their gender identity. The Maine Principals' Association, which dictates school sports in Maine, announced that it would continue to allow trans girls to play on girls' sports teams and that the organization will follow state law that prohibits discrimination based on gender identity.
During a National Governors Association event at the White house, Trump and Mills had a tense exchange where Trump said that if the state didn't follow the directive then Maine would not get "any federal funding." Mills responded, "We're going to follow the law sir. We'll see you in court."
On Friday, the president of the advocacy group Social Security Works, Nancy Altman, weighed in on the situation: "Cancelling those contracts created waste, abuse, and at least the potential for fraud. There is no policy reason for cancelling them, and many policy reasons against it."
"The only explanation is political revenge against Maine Governor Janet Mills, who has recently defied the Trump Administration," she said.
This piece was updated on Friday afternoon with comments from the president of Social Security Works.
US Pediatricians Ask Blinken to Intervene as Israel Extends Detention of Gaza Doctor
An Israeli court has ordered Kamal Adwan Hospital director Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya—whose distressed mother reportedly died earlier this week—to be held without charge until February 13.
Jan 10, 2025
The largest professional association of U.S. pediatricians is asking the State Department to intervene on behalf of a Gaza hospital director detained by Israel, where a court on Thursday ordered an extension of his imprisonment until mid-February.
The Gaza-based Al Mezan Center for Human Rights said Friday that the Ashkelon Magistrates' Court extended the detention of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, a 51-year-old pediatrician who is the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, without charges until February 13, and without access to legal counsel until January 22.
Israeli troops forcibly detained Abu Safiya on December 28 amid a prolonged siege and assault on Kamal Adwan Hospital, from which he refused to evacuate as long as patients were there. Former detainees recently released from the Sde Teiman torture prison in southern Israel said they met Abu Safiya there. According to testimonies gathered by the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, Abu Safiya was tortured before his arrival at Sde Teiman and inside the notorious lockup.
Al Mezan said that Abu Safiya's attorney believes he is now being jailed at Ofer Prison in the illegally occupied West Bank.
Palestinian media reported earlier this week that Abu Safiya's mother died of a heart attack. MedGlobal, the Ilinois-based nonprofit for which Abu Safiya works as lead Gaza physician, said she died from "severe sadness" over her son's plight.
Dr. Sue Kressley, president of the 67,000-member American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), sent a letter Thursday to Secretary of State Antony Blinken to "seek the assistance of the U.S. government to inquire about the whereabouts and well-being" of Abu Safiya, and to voice concern "for the children who are now without access to pediatric emergency care in northern Gaza," where 15 months of relentless Israeli attacks and siege have obliterated the healthcare system.
As Common Dreams has reported, children in northern Gaza are being killed not only by Israeli bombs and bullets, but also by exposure to cold weather after Israeli troops forcibly expelled their families from homes and other places of shelter while "cleansing" the area.
Kressley's letter asks Blinken to explain what the Biden administration is doing to determine Abu Safiya's whereabouts and why he is being held, what condition he is in, a status report on northern Gaza's hospitals and their capacity for care, and what the U.S. is doing to "improve access to pediatric care in Gaza."
On Friday, the Council on American Islamic-Relations (CAIR) welcomed the AAP letter in a statement asserting that "Secretary Blinken could pick up the phone and demand" that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza—"release Dr. Abu Safiya and all those illegally detained and facing torture and abuse at the hands of Israeli forces."
"The Biden administration's silence on the kidnapping of Dr. Abu Safiya, and on the torture and mistreatment of Palestinian detainees by Israeli forces, sends the message that Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim lives and dignity are of no consequence to U.S. officials," CAIR added.
In the United Kingdom, the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) on Thursday demanded that the U.K. government "take urgent action to protect healthcare workers and patients and ensure the immediate release of all arbitrarily detained medical staff."
"The Israeli military has escalated their systematic targeting of Palestinian healthcare workers, with hundreds currently arbitrarily detained under inhuman conditions," MAP said. "These detentions are part of Israel's systematic dismantling of Gaza's health system, which is making Palestinian survival impossible."
MAP Gaza director Fikr Shalltoot said in a statement: "We at MAP are extremely concerned for the life and safety of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya and all Palestinian healthcare workers detained by Israeli forces. These detentions, alongside systematic assaults on hospitals in North Gaza, have left tens of thousands of people without access to healthcare and forced them to flee southwards."
"Dr. Abu Safiya spent weeks and months sending distress calls about Israeli military attacks on Kamal Adwan Hospital, and the dangers posed to his colleagues and patients," Shalltoot added. "His warnings were met with deafening silence from the international community. It is long overdue for the U.K. and other nations to act decisively to protect Palestinians from ethnic cleansing, ensure the safety of healthcare workers, and hold Israel accountable."
Back in the U.S.—where healthcare professionals staged a nationwide "SickFromGenocide" protest earlier this week—members of medical advocacy groups including Doctors Against Genocide, Jewish Voice for Peace-Health Advisory Council, and Healthcare Workers for Palestine-Chicago who recently returned from volunteering in Gaza held a press conference Friday in Chicago demanding the release of Abu Safiya and the "protection of hospitals and healthcare workers" in the embattled enclave.
Gun Deaths Among US Children Rose 87% in Last Decade, Study Shows
Children in the U.S. are "paying the price for inaction on gun violence with our lives," said Students Demand Action.
Oct 05, 2023
As Republican lawmakers and the gun lobby have fought tooth and nail against proposals to reduce access to firearms in the U.S. and ensure they are kept out of the hands of children over the last decade, the number of child deaths from gun violence has almost doubled, rising 87% between 2011-21.
Two doctors in the Division of Emergency Medicine at Boston Children's Hospital were joined by the teenage daughter of one of the physicians in analyzing nonfatal and fatal injuries over a decade and published the study Thursday in the journal Pediatrics, run by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).
The researchers found that nonfatal injuries from all causes, such as car crashes and household accidents, dropped by more than half between 2011-21, plummeting from 11,592 to 5,359 per 100,000 children. The rate of fatal injuries went up from 14.07 to 17.3 per 100,000.
"Firearms and drug poisonings are both exceptions to this, in that both the nonfatal injuries and the fatal injuries increased," Cordelia Mannix, a high school student in Concord, Massachusetts and the daughter of lead study author Dr. Rebekah Mannix, told The New York Times.
Just over 1,300 children under the age of 18 were killed by firearms in 2011, compared with 2,590 children in 2021.
The study comes a year after data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that guns had overtaken car accidents as the leading killer of U.S. children.
In other wealthy countries, noted the Times on Thursday, gun violence is not even within the top three causes of death among children.
The researchers wrote regarding both firearm injuries and deaths and those resulting from drug poisonings that "public health legislative support has lagged in these critical injury mechanisms."
"This is especially concerning given the high case fatality rate of these injury mechanisms in children," they wrote.
Dr. Mannix attributed reduced injuries and deaths from other causes to "public health interventions," telling ABC News that the U.S. in recent decades has been "improving motor vehicle safety, improving helmet technology, [and] childproofing."
The firearm industry in the last decade has lobbied against red flag laws aimed at keeping guns out of the hands of people at risk of harming themselves or others, universal background checks, and bans on the types of guns that have been increasingly used in mass shootings, such as AR-15s.
Mark Oliva, a spokesperson for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, told the Times that the group also opposes laws requiring manufacturers to make guns childproof and that "the group is not currently doing research on making firearms safer," despite rising deaths among children.
Meanwhile, said Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, Republican lawmakers "somehow maintain that their gun culture makes people safer."
Earlier this week, data from the Gun Violence Archive showed that more than 1,300 children and teenagers have been killed by a firearm so far this year, while the CDC found in April that gun deaths among children rose 50% in just two years, between 2019-21.
Students Demand Action, a youth-led gun control advocacy group, said Tuesday that U.S. children are "paying the price for inaction on gun violence with our lives."
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