Hey, from CNN. I'm a phoma-DK with the five things you need to know for Thursday, December 18th.

We start with the Trump administration's latest health policy changes.

Officials say the federal government will block transgender care to children by targeting hospitals and doctors that provide it.

Under the proposed rules, hospitals that provide care such as puberty blockers and surgeries

for minors will be banned from participating in Medicare and Medicaid, and the government won't cover the treatments.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called many types of transgender care quote, malpractice.

Medical groups say the move intrudes on

the relationship between a patient and physician and jeopardizes care for everyone. Meanwhile,

President Donald Trump signed a new executive order easing restrictions on marijuana. Trump officials

say they're not making weed legal nationally, although several states have legalized recreational marijuana,

but they just want to learn more about its medicinal benefits. Here's CNN's Sanjay Gupta.

So, you know, keep in mind again, there are these schedules of controlled substances, and they're

basically scheduled from one to five based on how much benefit versus harm these substances may have. And cannabis, I think, somewhat inexplicably,

was sort of in the highest schedule for a long time, meaning it had no perceived medicinal benefit

and had a lot of potential harms such as heroin and LSD and ecstasy. And I think, you know,

a lot of people, many of the doctors in the Oval

office there, many of whom I've interviewed over the years, they had been making this point that

it's very hard to collect the data showing the medicinal benefit if you've already classified

as a Schedule 1. So classifying it as a Schedule 3 sort of changes the optics of it, if you will.

More news coming up, including a potential break in the Brown University shooting investigation.

This episode is brought to you by Vanta.

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