A look at key flashpoints in the coming Senate reconciliation debate

WASHINGTON — The Senate this month will navigate a minefield of concerns from across the ideological divide among Republicans as well as lobbyists and stakeholders as it works to tweak and approve the House-passed “big, beautiful” budget bill.

Democrats, meanwhile, are lining up an assault on the filibuster-proof bill using all the procedural tools at their disposal, particularly by subjecting the mammoth package to a thorough scrubbing for compliance with the “Byrd rule” barring extraneous provisions.

Any section found to violate the rule, which among other things requires a budgetary impact that can’t be just “merely incidental” to some other long-sought policy goal, can be stripped from the bill unless backers can get 60 votes to keep it.

The White House and GOP leaders have an ambitious timeline to get the package done by the July Fourth recess, though many see the August recess as a more likely backstop.

—CQ-Roll Call

The Trump administration is pushing therapy for transgender youth. What does that look like?

Since President Donald Trump returned to office in January, federal policy has shifted to promote psychological therapy as the only treatment for transgender youth in distress.

A report issued last month by the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services on care for transgender and nonbinary people analyzed 17 studies out of more than 3,400 looking into gender-affirming care — an umbrella term that can include talk therapy, puberty blockers, hormone treatments and surgeries.

They included only analyses of other studies that didn’t include any patients older than 26. Those that examined mental health generally found improvements from gender-affirming care, though with low certainty, because they didn’t include a large enough group, the effects were small, or other factors.

The report had more sweeping conclusions, however, stating that people under 19 with gender dysphoria should receive only psychological therapy, rather than being able to choose puberty blockers or hormone therapy. Gender dysphoria refers to distress when someone’s gender identity and their sex, or the way others see them, don’t match.

—The Denver Post

From soda to white bread, ultraprocessed foods increase risk of early death

ATLANTA — People eating ultraprocessed foods might be snacking their way to an earlier death. That’s according to the latest research on some of America’s favorite foods.

From white bread to soda, the hallmark features of ultraprocessed foods include added sugar, salt, hydrogenated fats, artificial colors, preservatives and starches.

Ultraprocessed foods make up roughly 58% of American diets, the most out of any country. According to lead study investigator Eduardo Nilson, as far as diets go, it’s a potentially deadly one.

“We first estimated a linear association between the dietary share of UPFs (ultraprocessed foods) and all-cause mortality, so that each 10% increase in the participation of UPFs in the diet increases the risk of death from all causes by 3%,” he said in a news release.

—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Nationalist wins Poland’s presidency in setback for EU ties

A nationalist candidate backed by Donald Trump won Poland’s presidential election, defeating the centrist mayor of Warsaw and complicating efforts to shift the nation back into the European Union mainstream.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk must now navigate an increasingly polarized political landscape after the right-wing Law & Justice party maintained its grip on the presidency.

In the 19 months of his premiership, Tusk’s efforts to restore the independence of the courts and loosen the tightest abortion law in the E.U. have been stalled by the incumbent nationalist president, a deadlock that’s taken a toll on his governing coalition.

The ascent of Karol Nawrocki, a conservative historian and one-time boxer with scant political experience, also registers a rare win for Trump’s MAGA movement. Trump allies have attempted and failed to tip elections in favor of nationalist or far-right forces in countries including Germany, Romania, Canada and Australia.

—Bloomberg News