NEW YORK – His appointment now also bears the Senate stamp. Yes, Rachel Levine, a 64-year-old pediatrician, is officially the first transgender person to reach a high office in the federal government. That of Undersecretary of Health. A historic appointment: all the more so after the years in which Donald Trump waged a real war on transgender people: starting with the ban on enlisting and serving in the armed forces. And in fact, the upper house approved it, yes, but by the measure, 48 to 52. She received the vote of all the dem senators along with only two republicans. The most progressive senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. His candidacy was instead strongly opposed by the religious right.
Levine has a solid track record. Born Richard in Wakefield (Massachusetts) in 1957, into an observant Jewish family, she has always said she felt like a woman from an early age. And that he suffered from the closure of his family and religious community on the subject. Also for this reason she had enrolled at Harvard College (and then at the medical school in Tulane) with the aim of caring for children. The specialization in the famous New York hospital Mount Sinai has led her to work with the best minds. And then to find his career in Pennsylvania at the Milton Hershey Medical Center.
However, only in 2011 did she come to the important decision to face the transition process from man to woman. And at the same time her political activism escalated to transform her into one of the most prominent figures in the Equality Pennsylvania organization. At the time he had a wife, Martha Peaslee and two children, David and Dayna. The couple stayed together for two more years, then they divorced in 2013.
In 2015 the then newly elected governor of Pennsylvania Tom Wolf chose her as the “general physician of the state, appointing her, two years later, minister of health. A position to which she was confirmed three times by the local Senate, although controlled by the Republicans: and the her skills proved to be crucial in the year of the pandemic. At the same time, the more her fame grew the more harsh online attacks came to her. “Levine is the best person for that job and that’s why she was chosen.” Joe Biden said of her as early as last January, when her appointment was announced. Certainly it marks a great distance from Trump’s policies. Her attention to food problems and medical marijuana may surprise in other fields as well.
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