By “basing their worth”, Severino is implying that “radical actors” are valuing or assessing individuals based on characteristics like race, sex, gender identity, or other personal identities, rather than on individual abilities, actions, or merits.

A look at the way Olympic boxer Imane Khelif was treated by conservatives reveals that this is complete garbage. It was certainly not liberals or “radical actors” who accused Khelif of being transgender and harassed her mercilessly, ignoring her actual abilities, actions, talents, and merits, and making everything about her entirely about a gender identity that they’d completely fabricated in their minds (Khelif is not trans, conservatives simply deemed her “insufficiently female” for their liking.) If Severino were projecting any harder, here, he’d be on the moon.

“Right-wing extremists — including Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, Elon Musk — alongside gender-binary zealots like J.K. Rowling are currently hurling vitriol at a cis woman boxer, Imane Khelif of Algeria, following the athlete’s swift defeat of her Italian opponent in an Olympic match in Paris on Thursday. Khelif is a female athlete who was deemed by the International Olympic Committee to be eligible to compete. She is only the latest woman of color in sports to be deemed insufficiently female by a right-wing commentariat obsessed with forging the strictest gender binaries, contrary to social, biological, and medical realities.” [Source]

Full contextual analysis of Section 3.5: Department of Health and Human Services here.