The Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it would revoke guidance to the nation’s hospitals that directed them to provide emergency abortions for women when they are necessary to stabilize their medical condition.

That guidance was issued to hospitals in 2022, weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court upended national abortion rights in the U.S. It was an effort by the Biden administration to preserve abortion access for extreme cases in which women were experiencing medical emergencies and needed an abortion to prevent organ loss or severe hemorrhaging, among other serious complications.

The Biden administration had argued that hospitals — including states with near-total bans — needed to provide emergency abortions under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act. That law requires emergency rooms that receive Medicare dollars to provide an exam and stabilizing treatment for all patients. Nearly all emergency rooms in the U.S. rely on Medicare funds.

The Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it would no longer enforce that policy. The move prompted concerns from some doctors and abortion rights advocates that women will not get emergency abortions in states with strict bans.

Uranium enrichment plan offered to Iran

The Trump administration is proposing an arrangement that would allow Iran to continue enriching uranium at low levels while the United States and other countries work out a more detailed plan intended to block Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon but give it access to fuel for new nuclear power plants.

The proposal amounts to a diplomatic bridge, intended to maneuver beyond the current situation, in which Iran is rapidly producing near-bomb-grade uranium, to reach the U.S. goal of Iran enriching no uranium at all on its soil. But it is far from clear that the Iranians will go along.

Under the proposal, the United States would facilitate the building of nuclear power reactors for Iran and negotiate the construction of enrichment facilities managed by a consortium of regional countries. Once Iran began receiving any benefits from those promises, it would have to stop all enrichment in the country.

The outline of the potential deal, which was described on the condition of anonymity by Iranian and European officials, was handed to Iran over the weekend. Officials in Tehran indicated Monday that a response would come in several days.

It is the first concrete indication since President Donald Trump took office that the United States and Iran might be able to find a path to compromise that would head off a potential regional war over Tehran’s ambitions to build a nuclear weapon.

But the details remain vague, the two sides remain far apart on some elements, and the domestic politics for both are complex. The regional consortium might include the United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and others.

U.S. ships may lose civil rights leaders’ names

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the Navy to review the names of vessels honoring prominent civil rights leaders, including Harvey Milk, who was one of the country’s first openly gay elected officials and a Navy veteran.

News of Hegseth’s decision, comes just days into Pride Month, which celebrates the contributions of luminaries in the LGBTQ+ community.

Instead, Hegseth’s order was intended as a rebuke of Pride Month, keeping with the Trump administration’s drive to expunge diversity, equity and inclusion efforts across the federal government, according to a senior defense official.

Milk is one of several trailblazers whose name has been identified for possible removal from naval vessels. According to a senior official familiar with a memo from John Phelan, the secretary of the Navy, they include Thurgood Marshall, the first Black Supreme Court justice; Ruth Bader Ginsburg, another Supreme Court justice, who became a feminist icon; Harriet Tubman, who, after being born into slavery, became an abolitionist instrumental in the Underground Railroad; Lucy Stone, a prominent abolitionist and suffragist; Medgar Evers, a civil rights leader who was assassinated by a member of the Ku Klux Klan; Cesar Chavez, a labor leader; and Dolores Huerta, another labor leader.

Social Security safe from student default

Borrowers who have defaulted on their federal student loans will no longer be at risk of having their Social Security benefits garnished, an Education Department spokesperson said Tuesday.

The government last month restarted collections for the millions of people in default on their loans. An estimated 452,000 people aged 62 and older had student loans in default, according to a January report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The department has not garnished any Social Security benefits since the post-pandemic resumption of collections and has paused “any future Social Security offsets,” department spokesperson Ellen Keast said.

“The Trump Administration is committed to protecting Social Security recipients who oftentimes rely on a fixed income,” Keast said.

— From news services