Jon Ebelt

If you recently received a nutrition assistance card from the state health department you didn’t apply for, you may not want to throw it out. The cards come from a delayed program to help feed students during the summer.

Lawmakers in several conservative-led states — including Montana, Wyoming, Missouri, and Mississippi — are expected to consider proposals to provide a year of continuous health coverage to new mothers enrolled in Medicaid.

The state’s only psychiatric hospital for adults has been discharging patients to homeless shelters with no plan for care and sometimes without medications, according to a report from a designated watchdog group.

The Montana health department says it’s developing a new way to apply for the state food assistance program online that doesn’t require an email address.

The state health department says it intends to comply with a court order requiring the agency to reinstate a process that allows transgender Montanans to amend their birth certificates. The state previously defied the order. Judge Michael Moses released a written order Monday calling the state’s reasoning for its previous noncompliance “demonstrably ridiculous.”

A district court judge has ordered the state health department to rescind a rule that bars transgender residents from amending the gender marker their birth certificates. The health department is defying that order.

The new account portal on Montana’s website now requires users to enter and verify an email address in order to access their information. Before, applicants did not need to possess a verifiable email to apply for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

A string of legislative and administrative actions has made Montana one of four states where amending birth certificates is nearly impossible for transgender people.

State health department director Adam Meier is stepping down. He will leave the state Department of Public Health and Human Services on August 12, citing a family health issue.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration greenlighted both Moderna and Pfizer’s shots for young children today and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to follow suit this weekend.