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Scientists have long been baffled by the complexity of the human brain, trying their best to understand and map the cellular makeup of the organ that powers our bodies. Researchers say they have discovered over 3,000 brain cell types in the human brain, including how these connections make each person unique.
The newest study built off previous research, which had only mapped the brain cell types of certain brain regions, like the cortex. Those studies found over 100 different brain cell types. However, we’ve expanded that knowledge with new studies, which have extended brain mapping to almost 100 different parts of the brain.
For many of these regions, nobody has ever seen the level of complexity on display here, the researchers say, not until now. The researchers say that they’ve discovered that even the older parts of our brain, which were believed to be simple, are highly complex.
This study is a massive part of a catalog that is focused on cataloging the size and complexity of our brains and how the connections between those cells make us unique. The catalog currently encompasses 21 different papers, which have been released in journals like Science, Science Advances, and Science Translational Medicine. One of those other studies also found that the connections between these cells are what make us each unique.
Learning more about that will certainly help scientists better understand the human brain and how it has evolved. Further, the researchers say that “we all share a common blueprint” but that the variation in those building blocks really defines who we are. It’s an exciting development that could help create even more comprehensive catalogs of the human brain.
Further, these discoveries could help us better understand how brain diseases affect the brains of different brains. But we’ve just begun this journey, and there’s a lot more for scientists to discover as they dig deeper into the human brain and the unique connections between our different brain cells and how those brain cells learn. | Disease Research |
Politics aside, did indoor vaccine mandates work?
Those who fail to learn from history, Winston Churchill warned in the aftermath of World War II, are doomed to repeat it. As the pandemic recedes and a sense of normalcy returns to our lives, those words are as relevant as ever. We are all eager to put three years of isolation, loss and hardship behind us. But unless we draw thoughtful lessons from our pandemic response, we leave ourselves just as vulnerable to the next crisis.
Governments at all levels took extraordinary steps to mitigate COVID-19’s impact. Among the most restrictive were rules requiring proof of vaccination to enter indoor venues like restaurants, gyms and event centers. From the summer of 2021 to the spring of 2022, nine major U.S. cities (New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Boston, New Orleans, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.) adopted these mandates, affecting tens of millions of Americans. Vaccines work, but after thorough research, we see no evidence that city mandates did.
The goals of indoor vaccine mandates were simple: to encourage vaccination and curb the spread of COVID-19. In September 2021, officials in King County, Wash., predicted “that the vaccine verification policy at restaurants, bars, and gyms/fitness centers alone could have a significant positive impact, preventing between 17,900 and 75,900 infections, 421 and 1,760 hospitalizations, and 63 and 257 deaths locally over six months with the order in place.” Todd Unger, an executive at the American Medical Association, claimed, “Vaccine mandates increasingly appear to be one of the most effective ways to increase our vaccination rates and make sure that more people are protected. The science is clear…”
In this case, the science wasn’t so clear. To be sure, reams of data showed that COVID vaccines were safe and effective. But the effect of indoor vaccine mandates was uncertain. At the time, there was some evidence that similar rules in Canadian provinces and European countries had boosted vaccination rates, but there was little indication they would be effective in the context of a U.S. city. And no one had examined their effects on COVID-19 morbidity and mortality.
Now, a rigorous analysis of these policies has failed to detect any positive impact.
A new study just released by one of the authors of this op-ed offers the first empirical analysis of the effects of indoor vaccine mandates in the United States, using advanced statistical techniques to analyze health data from hundreds of cities spanning December 2020 to April 2022. Cities that never adopted a vaccine mandate served as a comparison group, helping to determine what would have happened in “treated” cities had they not implemented such a policy.
Across all nine major cities, indoor vaccine mandates had an insignificant effect on COVID-19 cases and COVID-19 deaths. Moreover, the effect of the mandates on vaccination rates was also statistically negligible. In short, these policies did little, if anything, to blunt the pandemic.
It’s less clear why this is the case. Perhaps city-level mandates have an inherent flaw: Residents can avoid the restrictions simply by traveling outside the city limits. When mandates are imposed by a state, province or even an entire country, they’re harder to avoid. An unvaccinated person in France would have had to travel to another country to legally eat at an indoor restaurant, whereas the same unvaccinated person in New York City could simply have traveled to New Jersey.
Another factor behind the results may be that vaccine mandates made people feel protected from infections, leading them to make more frequent visits to crowded venues, or to be less diligent in following social distancing and masking guidelines. This complacency may have offset some (or all) of the benefits of vaccination.
Amid the pandemic, government officials had no choice but to make decisions with incomplete information. But too many cities were willing to impose vaccine restrictions based on speculative evidence and questionable reasoning. The need to do something to control the pandemic may have blinded well-meaning policymakers to the costs of the policy (including further stoking divisions among Americans and threatening the viability of businesses that were forced to turn away non-compliant customers and employees) while failing to keep people safe.
We now know that instituting indoor vaccine mandates was almost certainly counterproductive. May that lesson not be soon forgotten.
Vitor Melo is a postdoctoral fellow with the Open Health Project at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, a fellow with the Initiative on Enabling Choice and Competition in Healthcare at the University of Chicago and author of a new Mercatus Center study on indoor vaccine mandates. Liam Sigaud, a research assistant with the Mercatus Open Health Project, contributed to this commentary.
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | Vaccine Development |
Researchers from the National Institute for Physiological Sciences found that fear conditioning led to learning-specific changes in neuronal-network activity in the dorsal part of the medial prefrontal cortex of mice. This study demonstrates the use of combined methods for detailed visualization of the dynamics of neural networks, and describes techniques that could be used to uncover additional information about the neurological changes associated with learning and memory.
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Researchers from the National Institute for Physiological Sciences found that fear conditioning led to learning-specific changes in neuronal-network activity in the dorsal part of the medial prefrontal cortex of mice. This study demonstrates the use of combined methods for detailed visualization of the dynamics of neural networks, and describes techniques that could be used to uncover additional information about the neurological changes associated with learning and memory.
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Detecting learning-dependent changes in neural networks
to understand how memory is made in the prefrontal region of the brain
Okazaki, Japan – Scientists have long speculated about the physical changes that occur in the brain when a new memory is formed. Now, research from the National Institute for Physiological Sciences (NIPS) has shed light on this intriguing neurological mystery.
In a study recently published in Nature Communications, The research team has succeeded in detecting the brain neuronal networks involved in trauma memory by using a novel method that combines optical and machine-learning-based approaches, capturing the complex changes that occur during memory formation and uncovering the mechanisms by which trauma memories are created.
Animals learn to adapt to changing environments for survival. Associative learning, which includes classical conditioning, is one of the simplest types of learning and has been studied intensively over the past century. During the last two decades, technical developments in molecular, genetic, and optogenetic methods have made it possible to identify brain regions and specific populations of neurons that control the formation and retrieval of new associative memories. For instance, the dorsal part of the medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) is critical for the retrieval of associative fear memory in rodents. However, the way in which the neurons in this region encode and retrieve associative memory is not well understood, which the research team aimed to address.
“The dmPFC shows specific neural activation and synchrony during fear-memory retrieval and evoked fear responses, such as freezing and heart rate deceleration,” explains lead author Masakazu Agetsuma. “Artificial silencing of the dmPFC in mice suppressed fear responses, indicating that this region is required to recall associative fear-memory. Because it is connected with brain systems implicated in learning and associated psychiatric diseases, we wanted to explore how changes in the dmPFC specifically regulate new associative memory information.”
The research team used longitudinal two-photon imaging and various computational neuroscience techniques to determine how neural activity changes in the mouse prefrontal cortex after learning in a fear-conditioning paradigm. Prefrontal neurons behave in a highly complex manner, and each neuron responds to various sensory and motor events. To address this complexity, the research team developed a new analytical method based on the ‘elastic net,’ a machine-learning algorithm, to identify which specific neurons encode fear memory. They further analyzed the spatial arrangement and functional connectivity of the neurons using graphical modeling.
“We successfully detected a neural population that encodes fear memory,” says Agetsuma. “Our analyses showed us that fear conditioning induced the formation of a fear-memory neural network with ‘hub’ neurons that functionally connected the memory neurons.”
Importantly, the researchers uncovered direct evidence that associative memory formation was accompanied by a novel associative connection between originally distinct networks, i.e., the conditioned stimulus (CS, e.g., tone) network and the unconditioned stimulus (US, e.g., fearful experience) network. “We propose that this newly discovered connection might facilitate information processing by triggering a fear response (CR) to a CS (i.e., a neural network for CS-to-CR transformation).”
Memories have long been thought to be formed by the enhancement of neural connections, which are strengthened by the repeated activation of groups of neurons. The findings of the present study, which were based on both real-life observations and model-based analysis, support this. Furthermore, the study demonstrates how combined methods (optics and machine learning) can be used to visualize the dynamics of neural networks in great detail. These techniques could be used to uncover additional information about the neurological changes associated with learning and memory.
Article Information
Activity-dependent organization of prefrontal hub-networks for associative learning and signal transformation.
Masakazu Agetsuma*, Issei Sato, Yasuhiro R Tanaka, Luis Carrillo-Reid, Atsushi Kasai, Atsushi Noritake, Yoshiyuki Arai, Miki Yoshitomo, Takashi Inagaki, Hiroshi Yukawa, Hitoshi Hashimoto, Junichi Nabekura, and Takeharu Nagai.（*corresponding author）
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-41547-5
Nature Communications. | Disease Research |
Four disabled people have given evidence to a parliamentary inquiry to try to fight back against the well-funded campaign that aims to push parliament towards unsafe plans to legalise assisted suicide.
The four campaigners told MPs of their fears that legalisation would lead to some disabled people being coerced into agreeing to an assisted death, and that any restrictions and safeguards that were introduced would gradually be relaxed, as has happened in other countries.
They also raised concerns about the message that legalisation would send out about the value of disabled people’s lives.
They were giving anonymous evidence to the inquiry being carried out by the Commons health and social care committee into the legalisation of assisted suicide.
A significant majority of those asked to take part in 10 round table evidence sessions organised by the committee were supporters of legalisation, many of them relatives of people who have died with terminal illness.
The sessions were held in May but were only uploaded this month onto the committee’s website.
In all, of more than 50 people asked to take part in the anonymous evidence sessions, only about 14 clearly expressed their opposition to legalisation, while more than 30 were clear supporters of assisted suicide.
One of the four disabled opponents – all of whom were associated with disabled-led groups – told the inquiry that no-one had yet come up with a “magic bullet” that would ensure disabled people were protected “from any kind of coercion” or direct or indirect pressure if assisted suicide was legalised.
They also said legalisation would send out a message that said: “You can cost the state £5,000 a week for health and social care support needs, or you cost them £1,500 as a one off and that will solve everybody’s problem.”
They added: “I think that we also need to remember that the number of people who would actually profit from this legislation are relatively small, and that would come at a high price for the rest of us who are left.”
Another of the four said the idea legalisation promotes that disabled people were “better off dead” than relying on support with their personal care “really devalues our lives”.
They said legalisation “would only profit a few people, whereas it could potentially damage many, many people’s lives”.
And they said that domestic violence disproportionately impacts disabled people, so the threat of “controlling and coercive behaviours” pushing someone to opt for an assisted suicide is “a real concern for us”.
The third disabled participant said the “subtle pressure” caused by legalisation, including the guilt that might be felt by disabled people worried about their family spending money to support them when they could opt for an early death “could be really dangerous”.
They also warned that those pushing for legalisation were “much better resourced and much better educated and have much bigger support” than those opposed.
The fourth disabled participant told the inquiry that there was a “massive preconception that people in the situations for whom these laws get written… in the majority do not want to live with the lives they’ve got, and that is not true”.
Instead of pushing for legalised assisted suicide, they said, the campaigning focus should be on “accessible housing, accessible transport, access to palliative care, access to support… the equipment that you need”.
Many of those who favour legalisation spoke in their evidence of relatives not being able to die comfortably or becoming distressed at losing their independence.
Others who were terminally ill themselves or had a progressive condition spoke of wanting to have control over the time and manner of their own deaths, to die a “peaceful, dignified death”, or wanting the law to allow a “safe, comfortable, controlled, legal death”.
Several spoke of being investigated by the police after supporting friends or relatives to go to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland to die, or to take their own life at home.
Some of the most nuanced evidence was given by those working in palliative medicine.
Several healthcare professionals spoke in favour of legalisation, including one retired specialist palliative medicine consultant who said they had concluded that there was a “quite sizable number of people who experience intolerable suffering when they come to the end of their life”.
A retired professor of palliative medicine said they had seen very good evidence that “palliative and good end-of-life care can coexist with assisted dying”, while a hospice chief executive who appeared to be in favour of legalisation said the decision was around “respecting somebody’s choice” and allowing them “dignity around their care and respect [for] their wishes”.
Several palliative care experts spoke of their deep concern at the push for legalisation.
A consultant in palliative medicine at a hospice said there were very few people who asked for an assisted suicide and when they do “it’s in a moment of great distress and fear”.
They added: “And actually when they receive good palliative care, those feelings and those thoughts and those ideas often go away and they’re very grateful for the fact that it didn’t happen in that moment because they’ve been given a chance to have some quality of life and do some of the things they want to do.”
One palliative care consultant pointed to the evidence in Canada of a “growing epidemic” of assisted suicide that was being driven by poverty.
They said that more than four-fifths of those working in palliative care are opposed to legalisation “because we see people when they’re the most vulnerable and when they’re most vulnerable, they’re frightened and they’re looking for a way to just get it done rather than addressing the actual fear itself”.
They also spoke of how the likely course of a terminal illness is “incredibly uncertain”, while people change their mind about wanting to end their lives, and of the risk of “coercion and pressure”.
They said that the question becomes “how many people which we kill wrongly for whatever reason, in assisted suicide, justify the action of having the right to assisted suicide”.
Another palliative medicine consultant said it was “incredibly rare” – one every few years – for “somebody to say to me that they wish that assisted dying was there for them”.
They added: “But what I hear much more frequently is relatives, when they’re looking at a dying patient who is in their last days or hours of life, saying, ‘Oh you wouldn’t put a dog through this. Why can’t you just put him down?’”
One palliative medicine doctor said they believed the campaign for legalisation was being driven by a fear of dying which is “being stoked by the very active and prominent campaigning groups”.
They said the campaign groups “propagate these stories about quite how distressing and awful dying is in order to promulgate the idea that there is a strong societal need [for legalisation]”.
But they said it was “almost always” relatives that were requesting legalisation.
They said: “Relatives looking at a normal peaceful dying process saying, ‘This is awful, they’re suffering dreadfully, you wouldn’t put a dog through this’.
“One aspect of that is not understanding the normal dying process.”
An academic working in palliative care said they agreed. “I think that there is really poor understanding of ordinary dying in society, which makes this debate very, very difficult.
“And I think that perceived need is so largely driven by these very strong and successful campaigns, and actually in clinical practice, we see very, very, very little need.”
They added: “I think we should only legalize assisted dying if we know that changing the law will be associated with less harm on balance for society than as it is now.
“And as an academic who scrutinizes the evidence, that condition isn’t met. It might be met at some point in the future, but… right now it isn’t.”
Picture: Not Dead Yet UK
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Please do not contribute if you cannot afford to do so, and please note that DNS is not a charity. It is run and owned by disabled journalist John Pring and has been from its launch in April 2009.
Thank you for anything you can do to support the work of DNS… | Health Policy |
Australian researchers at WEHI have found that a genetic change that increases the risk of inflammation, through a process described as 'explosive' cell death, is carried by up to 3% of the global population.
The study may explain why some people have an increased chance of developing conditions like inflammatory bowel disease or suffer more severe reactions to infections with bacteria like Salmonella.
At a glance
MLKL is a gene essential to triggering necroptotic cell death -- a natural process that protects our body from infection. In some people this process can go awry and trigger severe tissue damage.
Study finds a genetic variation, known to enhance the ability of MLKL to kill cells, is carried by up to 3% of the global population.
The findings could lead to better personalised treatments for inflammation and other diseases in the future.
Immune power of 'explosive' cell death
Every minute, millions of cells in our bodies die on purpose. Cell death is an essential process that protects our bodies from disease by removing unwanted, damaged or dangerous cells, and preventing the spread of viruses, bacteria, and even cancer.
WEHI's Dr Sarah Garnish is first author on the paper and said that while there are various types of cell death, necroptosis is distinguished by its ferocity -- the cells essentially explode, which sounds an alarm for other cells in the body to respond.
"This is a good thing in the case of a viral infection, where necroptosis not only kills the infected cells but instructs the immune system to respond, clean things up, and start a more specific, long lived immune response," Dr Garnish said.
"But when necroptosis is uncontrolled or excessive, the inflammatory response can actually trigger disease."
Genetic brakes
The gatekeeper of necroptosis is the gene MLKL. When the body needs to trigger a cell death response with plenty of firepower, the cellular brakes that normally keep MLKL in-check are released. However, some of us make a form of MLKL with flimsy brakes.
Dr Garnish and her co-authors have been able to quantify this at a population level for the first time.
"For most of us, MLKL will stop when the body tells it to stop, but 2-3% of people have a form of MLKL that is less responsive to stop signals," Dr Garnish said.
"While 2-3% doesn't seem like much, when you consider the global population, this adds up to many millions of people carrying a copy of this gene variant."
Project leader Dr Joanne Hildebrand said the research proposes that a common genetic change like this can combine with a person's lifestyle, infection history and broader genetic makeup to increase the risk of inflammatory diseases and severe reactions to infections.
This is known as polygenic risk -- the combined influence of multiple genes on developing a certain trait or condition.
"Taking Type 2 diabetes as an example, it's rare that just one gene change determines whether someone will develop the condition," Dr Hildebrand said.
"Instead many different genes play a role, as do environmental factors, like diet and smoking."
Dr Hildebrand said it's not as simple as directly connecting this difference in the MLKL gene with the chance of someone developing a specific condition.
"We haven't tagged this MLKL gene variant to any one particular disease yet, but we see real potential for it to combine with other gene variants, and other environmental cues, to influence the intensity of our inflammatory response."
Towards personalised medicine
Our understanding of MLKL has come a long way since it surfaced by chance in a WEHI lab more than 20 years ago. Today's research opens the door for future tests and screening to determine disease risks.
Genome sequencing is becoming cheaper and more readily accessible. As more genomic data becomes available to researchers, it increases the likelihood that they can link common genetic variants, like the one described for MLKL, with disease.
In the future researchers hope to pinpoint the genetic changes that might mean someone is more likely to have a severe case of COVID-19, or less likely to bounce back after chemotherapy.
"Every piece of information like this helps us make personalised medicine more of a reality," said Dr Garnish.
The WEHI team is also investigating whether uncontrolled necroptosis could be beneficial in some circumstances. For example, could people with the MLKL gene variant have a stronger cellular defensive response to certain viruses?
"Gene changes like this don't usually accumulate in the population over time unless there is a reason for it -- they generally get passed on because they do something good," said Dr Garnish.
"We're looking at the downsides of having this gene change, but we're looking for the upsides as well."
The research was supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Victorian State Government, the Australian Government Research Training Program Stipend Scholarship and the Wendy Dowsett Scholarship.
WEHI authors: Sarah Garnish, Katherine Martin, Maria Kauppi, Victoria Jackson, Shene Chiou, Yanxiang Meng, Daniel Frank, Emma Tovey, Komal Patel, Annette Jacobsen, Georgia Atkin-Smith, Ladina Di Rago, Marcel Doerflinger, Christopher Horne, Cathrine Hall, Samuel Young, Ian Wicks, Ashley Ng, Charlotte Slade, Andre Samson, John Silke, James Murphy and Joanne Hildebrand.
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Introduction
For a pathogen to make us sick, it must overcome a lot. First it has to enter the body, bypassing natural barriers such as skin, mucus, cilia and stomach acid. Then it needs to reproduce; some bacteria and parasites can do this virtually anywhere in the body, while viruses and some other pathogens can only do so from within a cell. And all the while, it must parry attacks from the body’s immune system.
So while we are constantly inundated by microbes, the number of microbes that enter our bodies is usually too low to get past our defenses. (A tiny enough dose may even serve to remind our immune system of a pathogen’s existence, boosting our antibody response to keep us protected against it.)
When enough pathogens do manage to breach our defenses and start to replicate, we get sick. Often this is just a numbers game. The more invaders you’re fighting off, the more likely you are to feel ill.
How many microbes need to enter the body before we start to feel sick?
This varies by pathogen and is known as a microbe’s “infectious dose.” Usually it takes quite a few, but some microbes require an incredibly small number of organisms to start an infection. Take norovirus for example, the stomach bug notorious for spreading whenever people are in close contact and touch the same surfaces, such as on cruise ships. Its infectious dose can be as small as 18 individual viruses, making it incredibly easy to transmit. It is also very hardy even outside the body, so an infected person who’s oozing the virus may leave a large amount of it behind — enough to easily infect others, even several days later.
What about the concept of “viral load”? Is that related?
They’re similar ideas, but while infectious dose refers to how many organisms will lead to an infection, viral load is an active measurement of infection: the number of organisms that are replicating within the host. The terminology was first introduced to the general public as part of our understanding of HIV/AIDS, and it increased in use after the start of the Covid pandemic.
How do researchers figure out a microbe’s infectious dose?
That’s still an inexact science. The gold-standard study, called a human challenge study, involves purposely giving people a dose of the pathogen. Unfortunately, this approach is ethically difficult since it (obviously) carries a risk of serious illness and potential long-term complications.
So instead, researchers expose guinea pigs, rats, mice or ferrets, depending on the pathogen. But it can be difficult to directly extrapolate animal dosage to the human equivalent.
Additionally, the route of infection matters. Something that gets right into your bloodstream will likely require far fewer microbes to take hold than one that comes in through your mouth or lungs, for example, since the bloodstream allows the pathogen to bypass many host defenses. This is why, for example, the risk of HIV infection is much higher when it comes from a blood transfusion or needle stick versus a sexual route.
A third way of trying to figure out infectious dose is to use observational studies, where researchers deduce the number from seeing how long it takes for an exposed person (especially in families or other close-contact settings) to become sick. As you might suspect, this is often messy and inexact compared to the previous two methods.
Why are the infectious doses of some pathogens higher or lower than those of others?
We aren’t sure. It could be due to how an invader operates. Researchers have suggested that pathogens requiring direct contact with host cells tended to be more effective, so their infectious doses were fairly low. But if bacteria attack host cells indirectly (such as by secreting proteins that go on to harm host cells), then a larger dose of bacteria is necessary to infect the host, since the host-modifying secretions could be diluted by time and space. This idea was supported in a 2012 study that looked at viruses, fungi and parasites as well. But we still need additional confirmation for a wider variety of microbes.
What do we know about the infectious dose for the virus that causes Covid?
We’ve learned a lot in the nearly four years since it first appeared, but much of it comes from animal models of infection and human observational studies. Most animal models require a high dose of the virus — 10,000 to 1 million “plaque-forming units” (PFUs), where each unit is enough to infect a cell in tissue culture and kill it. Observational studies in humans, however, suggest that the infectious dose may be around 100 to 400 PFU on average, though again this method offers only a very rough guideline.
These studies suggest that one reason the virus is so easily transmissible is because it has a relatively low infectious dose, similar to other respiratory viruses such as RSV and “common cold” coronaviruses (and lower than the infectious dose of most strains of influenza virus).
And when we compare the infectious dose to the amount of virus exhaled by an infected individual, it’s not surprising that the virus spreads so quickly. A recent preprint shows that infected patients can exhale up to 800 viral RNA copies per minute for about eight days after their symptoms began. Even though we can’t directly translate RNA copies into the amount of live virus particles, if even half of those RNA copies are from a currently infectious virus, it’s theoretically possible to get a dose large enough to start an infection in just a minute of close contact.
Do vaccines raise the infectious dose?
When someone encounters a pathogen for the second time (whether because of a prior illness or vaccination), several host defenses spring into action. Antibodies generated from vaccination or prior infection will bind to the invading microbe. These will interfere with its ability to attach to a host cell, or single out the microbe for ingestion by cells called neutrophils. And if a virus does manage to invade a host cell, it will be targeted for destruction by memory T cells.
Due to this rapid response, fewer of the invading microbes survive compared to a naïve individual encountering the pathogen for the first time, which effectively raises infectious dose.
How can this knowledge help us avoid illnesses?
Exposure is a function of pathogen concentration and contact time, so if you can reduce either of those, you can better avoid infectious diseases.
This is why, from the start of the Covid pandemic, experts have recommended a “Swiss cheese” model of layered protection, with social distancing from other individuals playing a key role. The farther you are from an infectious person, the fewer of their viral particles you will be exposed to. Adding a mask, especially a high-quality respirator such as an N95 with a snug fit, will further reduce the number of viruses you could inhale. Ventilation also dilutes the number of viral particles in the air, hence why being outside or using an air filter indoors lessens your risk of infection.
Vaccination is another way to decrease your risk of Covid infection. Though the vaccines are imperfect, vaccination still reduces your risk of becoming infected in the first place, by increasing the infectious dose necessary to initiate an infection. It also reduces the chances of developing serious illness if you are infected. Several studies also suggest that vaccinated people are less likely to shed as many virus particles and that vaccination reduces viral load.
Masking, increased ventilation and distancing reduces the number of microbes you’re exposed to. Vaccination increases the infectious dose. These are the pillars of protection against infection from pretty much every pathogen. Transmission dynamics are complex, but the interventions we can take to protect ourselves are comparatively simple. | Epidemics & Outbreaks |
A woman in Australia has become the third known person to be infected with a species of bacteria that normally causes deadly "blackleg" disease in cattle and sheep — and she's the only one to survive, according to a new case report.
After gardening without gloves, the 48-year-old woman experienced nausea and vomiting for three days, and she also developed pain in her lower-right abdomen that got progressively worse. She went to the hospital, where blood tests showed that her kidneys and liver were failing and she had a buildup of lactic acid — a substance produced by muscles during high-intensity exercise and an indicator of septic shock — in her bloodstream. She was also experiencing diarrhea.
Five hours later, her abdominal pain grew so severe that the doctors ran another CT scan. This time, it was clear that her large intestine was inflamed, as was the cecum, the area where the small intestine meets the large intestine, so she was admitted to intensive care. Two days later, a blood test revealed the culprit behind the rampant inflammation: a deadly species of bacteria called Clostridium chauvoei.
These bacteria normally live in soil as spores, which, if ingested or inhaled, enter the bloodstream and travel to the muscle tissue. When the oxygen levels in the muscles decrease — for instance, during exercise — the spores germinate and produce toxins, including those that destroy blood cells and enzymes that break down DNA.
In cattle, the normal host of C. chauvoei, this cellular destruction is what leads to the characteristic appearance of "blackleg." In the recent case, the woman was gardening with her bare hands, which were covered in scratches from a pet cat. That's likely how she got infected, the case report authors wrote.
The team prescribed her antibiotics to kill the bacteria, as well as hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) — a procedure in which the patient is put in a high-pressure chamber that contains only oxygen — to stop the bacteria from growing, since the microbes normally live in environments without oxygen, and reduce the related tissue death. With this treatment, her kidneys and liver started working again, and her lactic acid levels fell enough for her to be discharged from hospital.
However, a few days later, her abdominal pain and diarrhea returned. Another CT scan revealed holes in her large intestine, which were later confirmed to be tissue death of the intestines, medically known as necrotizing enterocolitis. Consequently, doctors removed the right side of her large intestine and installed a stoma, which involves redirecting the large intestine through a hole in the abdomen so that feces can still leave the body.
Two-and-a-half weeks later, the woman's health was back on track, and after three months, she was able to have her stoma removed.
Until now, only two other people had ever been infected with C. chauvoei, and both died as a result. One person had a weakened immune system, and the other had a serious soft-tissue infection called gas gangrene that could not be effectively treated.
The case report authors suggested that the woman in Australia survived because she was treated early with antibiotics, had prompt surgery and didn't have any other "significant" health conditions. HBOT may have also helped, although the doctors wrote that they didn't have enough evidence to confirm this.
The case report was published Aug. 16 in The Medical Journal of Australia.
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Emily is a health news writer based in London, United Kingdom. She holds a bachelor's degree in biology from Durham University and a master's degree in clinical and therapeutic neuroscience from Oxford University. She has worked in science communication, medical writing and as a local news reporter while undertaking journalism training. In 2018, she was named one of MHP Communications' 30 journalists to watch under 30. ([email protected]) | Disease Research |
Iran's supreme leader has said whoever is responsible for suspected poisonings at girls' schools should be executed for an "unforgivable crime".
More than 1,000 children have become ill since November in 25 of the country's 31 provinces, according to officials and state media.
"If the poisoning of students is proven, those behind this crime should be sentenced to capital punishment and there will be no amnesty for them," said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - quoted by state news agency IRNA.
Interior minister Ahmad Vahidi said at the weekend that "suspicious samples" had been gathered but urged people to stay calm.
He said at least 52 schools across the country had been affected and claimed unnamed enemies of the republic were trying to incite fear.
At least one boys' school in the western city of Borujerd has also been affected, state media reported.
No details have been given on which chemicals may have been used or exactly who could be responsible, but officials have said test results will be published "as soon as possible".
Pictures of girls wearing oxygen masks and connected to intravenous drips have sparked protests in some cities, including the capital Tehran, with anger also directed at Iran's Revolutionary Guard.
The children affected have reportedly complained of heart palpitations, dizziness, headaches, lethargy and feeling unable to move - but so far no one has died.
Some described smelling tangerines, chlorine or cleaning products.
Schoolgirls were among those who took part in the wave of anti-government demonstrations last year over the death in police custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.
Some were pictured removing their headscarves, tearing up pictures of the Ayatollah and calling for his death.
It has been suggested the apparent poisonings could be a form of revenge for that activism or a more general attack on girls' education.
Read more:
The brave women battling for change in Iran
Teen's bravery offers glimmer of hope as crackdown continues
The UN human rights office in Geneva has called for a transparent investigation into the suspected attacks, with countries including Germany and the US voicing concern.
A similar case of suspected poisonings - involving girls in Afghanistan - was reported between 2009 and 2012 but the World Health Organization (WHO) found no evidence and said it appeared to be "mass psychogenic illnesses".
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Iranian media also reported on Monday that Ali Pourtabatabaei, a journalist based in Qom who had been regularly reporting on the case, had been detained.
It comes after the hardline Kayhan newspaper called for publishers who printed stories critical of Iran's rulers to be arrested. | Epidemics & Outbreaks |
A medical student who was told at the age of 10 she had the liver of an alcoholic has said rowing has delayed her need for a liver transplant.
Megan McGillin, from Northern Ireland, was diagnosed with cirrhosis, or scarring of the liver, 11 years ago which stops her liver working properly.
Liver disease in children is rare.
A liver specialist said keeping fit and healthy plays a "critical role in maintaining the liver in a stable condition".
Cirrhosis cannot be cured or reversed, and many of the liver disorders that cause cirrhosis in children are not preventable.
In Megan's case, doctors do not know how she got it, but have said the damage could eventually become so extensive that her liver stops functioning, causing it to fail.
"[Doctors] told me, initially when I was diagnosed, that at the age of 18 that I would have a transplant, but I kept fit and well," Megan said.
"Then when I was 16 or 17, they told me definitely by 21 that I would need a transplant.
"When I turned 21 in November, I didn't get a transplant for my birthday.
"I just kept on powering through, so they have taken away any timelines now."
Liver disease such as cirrhosis, can also result in portal hypertension and cause an enlarged spleen.
For Megan this meant she had to give up contact sports which she said was a "major thing" for her.
She later got into rowing and rowed on the Irish high-performance squad for a couple of years while at school.
Megan said this kept her very fit and "as much as I struggled, it was a high intensity sport that I think kept me well all these years because I was constantly training and looking after myself on the inside".
She believes keeping fit has kept her liver functioning for so long.
Dr Girish Gupte, a consultant paediatric liver specialist at Birmingham Women's and Children's hospital, does outreach clinics in the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children six times a year.
"Liver disease is extremely rare in children so that's why a majority of the population may not have heard about children having chronic liver problems," he said.
"The incidents of liver disease can vary from one in 10,000 within the UK population, to some of the other liver diseases which can be one in a million."
Dr Gupte said there has been an increase in chronic liver disease cases in recent decades, partly due to advances in testing but he also said he feels that environmental factors and lifestyle play a role in the increased incidents of liver disease in children.
"Not all children with liver disease need a liver transplant," he said.
"Most of these conditions can be managed with good medical treatments and with a good healthy lifestyle," he added.
"However, in some children there is progression of the liver disease to end-stage liver disease and these children do need liver transplantation, either as children or maybe as adults," he said.
"I think keeping fit and healthy, eating a healthy diet, preventing the accumulation of fat in the liver with a healthy diet, play a critical role in maintaining the liver in a stable condition in the long-run and trying to delay or avoid liver transplantation."
The 'liver of an alcoholic'
People often think of cirrhosis as a disease caused by long-term alcohol abuse.
While this is sometimes a factor in adults, cirrhosis in children often stems from a wide variety of liver disorders.
Explaining the severity of Megan's condition, doctors told her she "had the liver of an alcoholic", which at 10 years of age did not make sense.
"I'd obviously never drank any alcohol before, and my mum was gobsmacked at the idea that a doctor would tell me that I had the liver of an alcoholic," she told BBC News NI.
"That just shows the correlation between people having liver disease and this assumption that it's come from alcoholism," she added.
The 21-year-old has never drunk alcohol and does not plan to because of how it affects the liver.
'Opportunity to educate some people'
Megan said she has had mixed reactions when telling people that she does not drink alcohol because she has liver disease.
The one reaction she does not like is "people saying, 'oh goodness what have you done? What were you doing in your younger years? How early did you start drinking or did you have a bad event with alcohol or drugs' that has affected my liver so much?"
The medical student said it does give her an "opportunity to educate some people that having liver disease doesn't necessarily correlate to drinking alcohol or being abusive to alcohol".
'My normal is different'
She said getting the diagnosis was "scary", but she knew she could live with the condition, albeit with limitations, as the condition makes her extremely tired.
"On the outside I look normal, I do normal things," she said.
"Now what I call my normal is different from my peers' normal. I have to have limitations on myself - on certain things I can and can't do.
"It is mostly about managing my energy levels."
While she is positive about the future she said you "can't really have a plan" with liver disease.
"I could wake up tomorrow and be completely yellow, jaundiced skin and I would know my liver was then beginning to fail," she said.
"That would end up eventually with a transplant.
"That could be tomorrow, that could be next week, five years, 10 years, I just don't know," she said.
Megan said if and when that time comes, she would not hesitate as "to be allowed that opportunity to be given an organ from somebody else is just amazing".
She added: "Organ donation really is life-saving, but it can still be a scary decision to make because you don't know what's going to happen.
"You don't know if you'll be poorly, if your body will accept it or if there are any secondary diseases or infections that you get after having that surgery because it is a major surgery.
"My liver as such is working.
"It's not working at full capacity but whatever it's doing it's doing something right.
"You have to wait until it gets to a certain level of liver function, or your condition has affected your lifestyle in such a way that you're extremely poorly, but the longer my biological, the liver I was born with, stays in me it's going to be better."
Sign up for our morning newsletter and get BBC News in your inbox. | Disease Research |
Rutgers researchers have used neuroimaging to demonstrate that cocaine addiction alters the brain’s system for evaluating how rewarding various outcomes associated with our decisions will feel. This dampens an error signal that guides learning and adaptive behavior.
The observed changes likely propagate a mysterious aspect of some addictive behavior—the tendency to keep doing harmful things that sometimes have no immediate benefit. Those changes also make it harder for long-term users of cocaine to correctly estimate how much benefit they’ll derive from other available actions.
Experts have long hypothesized that cocaine and other addictive substances can influence “reward prediction errors,” a computation the brain performs to guide learning about what is valuable in one’s environment. The substances were thought to increase reward prediction errors by interfering with the neurotransmitter dopamine’s activity, but concrete evidence for alterations in this critical brain function in people with chronic cocaine addiction has eluded researchers.
The new study, which appears in Neuron, provides strong evidence and could suggest new strategies for treating addiction in general and cocaine addiction in particular.
“The brain has sophisticated mechanisms for predicting which behaviors will bring us pleasure and pain, for updating predictions that prove incorrect and for learning how rewarding different behaviors actually are,” said lead author Anna Konova, a psychiatry professor who leads a research lab at the Rutgers University Behavioral Health Care and Brain Health Institutes.
“This sort of learning from experience is one of the most important things people do. It’s why you don’t touch a hot stove more than once. This study demonstrates that people with chronic cocaine-use disorders could struggle to learn in this way. It also shows why they struggle, and, hopefully, this understanding of the underlying mechanism will lead to better treatment options,” said Rita Goldstein, Mount Sinai Professor in Neuroimaging of Addiction at the Icahn School of Medicine who is senior co-corresponding author on the study.
The researchers studied the brain’s prediction error mechanism by recruiting people who had been using cocaine for an average of 18 years and asking them to play simple decision-making games (with small monetary rewards that could be received either for sure or by chance) — all while undergoing a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan. The researchers then asked the same of another group of participants who had never used cocaine but resembled the first group in many other ways.
The group of participants that had used cocaine consistently pursued riskier playing strategies. They also had lower neural error signals when an unexpected reward was delivered or omitted as a result of those riskier decisions.
The brain’s response to mistaken predictions, the response needed to encode an error’s occurrence and avoid repeating it, was significantly lower among the cocaine-using group than among the other participants.
Such findings strongly implicate the physiological effects of chronic cocaine use on the observed differences in brain function, but the researchers note that a snapshot of brain function at a single point in time cannot prove causation. Only a study measuring brain structure and function over time, starting before the onset of cocaine use, would be able to test hypotheses about cause and effect.
That said, Konova and Goldstein believe the study results provide strong new evidence about one cause of cocaine addiction and the changes it creates in user behavior. They also hope a greater understanding of the underlying mechanisms may help develop treatment options, which remain limited.
“Although this basic science study does not have any immediate implications for public health or treatment, researchers can build on these findings to explore new treatments and prevention strategies,” Konova said. “Specifically, our findings suggest that interventions that aim to boost the impact of the outcomes of one’s decisions (the perception of received rewards) may be a valuable strategy to normalize prediction error signaling and learning from experience in addiction.” | Disease Research |
In March, two vans filled with doctors and medical supplies crossed the Polish border into Ukraine and made their way to Kyiv as part of a humanitarian mission. Both vans were packed with traditional medical supplies the country is in desperate need of, such as tourniquets, bandages, and suture kits. But one van also carried about 50 units of an entirely new system that makes it possible to perform surgery safely in places without sterile operating rooms.
The systems were designed by SurgiBox, a startup that has worked extensively with MIT D-Lab for more than a decade, and they hold promise for applications far outside of warzones. Most of the world’s population lacks ready access to operating rooms, and in situations like severe weather and other natural disasters, health care operations can be disrupted just when they’re needed most.
The SurgiBox system includes a bubble with armholes facing inward, a module that filters and controls air flow, and a battery. The entire thing fits inside of a backpack and can be set up in minutes.
“We’re trying to get safe surgery to patients that need it,” says SurgiBox founder Debbie Teodorescu, who is also an affiliated researcher at MIT D-Lab. “In this day and age, outside of a very small chunk of the world, it’s very difficult to get surgery safely. You can have the same doctors, the same outstanding skills, but if you’re lacking in the facilities and the equipment, you just can’t offer the same care.”
For the Ukraine donation, SurgiBox’s team flew to Poland, waited in a long queue at the Ukrainian border, and then drove for several hours into Kyiv, where they withstood air raid alarms at all hours while training doctors on how to use the system.
The trip was arduous and gave SurgiBox’s team a newfound appreciation for Ukrainians’ daily hardships. In many ways, it was also the culmination of a far longer journey that started with an idea Teodorescu had back in 2009.
Finding your people
Teodorescu was a student at Harvard University when she first got involved with D-Lab as part of a research project around 2009.
“It was such a friendly and welcoming environment, and at the end of the project they said, ‘If you’re ever working on something or want to bounce ideas around, we’re your people,’” she recalls.
Soon after that experience, she got the idea for SurgiBox while lamenting how difficult it was to conduct surgery safely in so much of the world.
“I thought, ‘We’re able to protect our experiments wherever we need using glove boxes, so why can’t we do the same thing for patients?’” Teodorescu remembers. “That’s how SurgiBox came about — a surgical glovebox. Now, it’s not really a box, and we don’t include gloves, but the same concept holds: You can provide patient protection at the point of need.”
To pursue that vision, Teodorescu immediately returned to D-Lab, where she began working with people including Dan Frey, the faculty research director at the time; Workshop Manager Jack Whipple, and Technical Instructor Dennis Nagle, who passed away in 2020. D-Lab students also tackled early design and business problems for SurgiBox as part of their master’s and undergraduate theses and as team projects in the classes 2.722J (D-Lab: Design) and 2.729 (Design for Scale). Another former D-Lab student, Macauley Kenney SM ’16, is currently SurgiBox's chief operating officer in addition to serving as a lecturer at MIT.
“D-Lab is really an amazing place,” says SurgiBox CEO and co-founder Mike Teodorescu, who met Debbie as a student at Harvard and also worked at D-Lab as a visiting scholar for two years. “I’ve been at four universities as a student and professor, and I have to say D-Lab is really unique. It’s really welcoming, and if you’re working on something to help make lives better for people and if you’re tackling a major humanitarian problem, they welcome you.”
The design SurgiBox’s team eventually settled on is compact and lightweight while also mimicking the environment of an operating room.
“Surgeons don’t want to change their workflow,” Debbie Teodorescu says. “It’s already a huge cognitive burden to do surgery. They don’t want to deal with things that increase that cognitive burden. We’re preserving their workflow by saying, ‘You’re going to treat the patient the way you’d treat them for surgery anyway. You’re going to more or less flip a switch to turn the system on, and then you stick your arms through just like you’re wearing a gown, and begin the surgery.’”
Expanding access to safe surgery
Last month’s Ukraine donation was one of several that SurgiBox has made to the country. After the first, the Ukraine Operation Command South sent back a letter thanking the company for saving 31 lives and asking for more. SurgiBox’s team realized that because of damage to health care infrastructure around the country, Ukraine’s civilian doctors were also using the system for situations like child birth and to treat issues like gallbladder infections and appendicitis.
For the latest donation, Mike Teodorescu travelled to Kyiv with Michael Samotowka, a surgeon with the charitable organization MedGlobal and with HCA Florida Healthcare, and Emanuele Lagazzi, a clinical research fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital, both of whom had previously travelled to Ukraine on aid missions.
“I want to especially thank [Samotowka and Lagazzi] for their ongoing humanitarian work, as well as credit nonprofit organizations like MedGlobal, which provide critically needed assistance to disaster and war-affected regions,” Mike Teodorescu says.
SurgiBox is now ramping up production of its systems ahead of its second medical device certification from the European Union and an official product launch across the 28-country bloc this summer. SurgiBox’s first full production batch will go to Doctors Without Borders.
In the long run, SurgiBox’s team believes the system could be used to conduct surgery at patient bedsides if patients are elderly or especially vulnerable to infection. They also note that in some countries, doctors drive around in ambulances, and SurgiBox could be used to perform mobile surgeries.
More broadly, they also see the system as an inexpensive alternative to operating rooms for many procedures.
“We think SurgiBox could be used to lower health care costs and also give doctors and patients more flexibility,” Mike Teodorescu says. “There’s a whole set of costs associated with cleaning the operating room, getting it ready for patients, and getting the patient prepped for the operating room. Having some of that at a patient’s bedside would be hugely beneficial.” | Medical Innovations |
- In a collaborative study led by the University of California San Diego, scientists have examined over 1 million human brain cells to craft intricate maps of gene regulators specific to different brain cell types.
- This research not only demonstrates the intricate links between distinct cell categories and prevalent neuropsychiatric disorders but also pioneers the use of artificial intelligence to predict the impact of high-risk gene variations within these cells, potentially unlocking insights into disease development.
- This study forms a vital part of the National Institute of Health’s transformative BRAIN Initiative, initiated in 2014, which seeks to revolutionise our understanding of the mammalian brain by advancing innovative neurotechnologies for classifying various neural cell types.
A new study, published in a special edition of Science, highlights the connections between particular cell types and various prevalent neuropsychiatric conditions.
In the human brain, each cell possesses an identical DNA sequence, but various cell types utilise distinct genes in varying quantities.
This diversity results in the creation of numerous brain cell types and adds to the intricacy of neural networks.
Gaining insights into the molecular distinctions among these cell types is crucial for comprehending brain functionality and devising innovative approaches to address neuropsychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, Alzheimer’s disease, and major depression.
The human brain is not uniform in nature. It comprises an incredibly intricate system of neurons and non-neuronal cells, each with distinct roles.
Creating a comprehensive map of these diverse brain cell types and deciphering their collaborative functions will ultimately lead to the identification of novel treatments that can specifically target relevant cell types associated with particular diseases.
Four experts, not involved in this research, spoke to Medical News Today about its findings.
Dr. Ryan S. Sultan is an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. He noted that the current research “explores an important topic in neuroscience and genetics.”
Dr. Sultan explained that “the study is extensive, encompassing an analysis of chromatin accessibility in 1.1 million cells from various brain regions.”
The researchers pinpointed 107 unique subcategories of brain cells and established connections between aspects of their molecular characteristics and various neuropsychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, Alzheimer’s disease, and major depression.
Subsequently, the researchers constructed machine learning models aimed at forecasting how specific DNA sequence variations can impact gene regulation and contribute to the development of diseases.
Although these recent findings provide significant insights into the human brain and its disorders, scientists are still in the process of comprehensively mapping the brain.
Dr. James Giordano, the Pellegrino Center professor of neurology and biochemistry at Georgetown University Medical Center, commented on the Science special issue, published on October 13, 2023, which covers research based on The BRAIN Initiative.
He said that “these studies, published in a series of papers in notable medical journals, present the first comprehensive map of molecular mechanisms inherent to specific cell types in discrete areas of the human brain.”
“Taken together, these studies, afford a ‘molecular atlas’ of nodes of cells that are genotypically correlated to the expression of certain structural and functional phenotypes that may be involved in a number of neuropsychiatric conditions.”
– Dr. James Giordano
Dr. Consuelo Walss-Bass, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and director of the Psychiatric Genetics program at UTHealth Houston, noted that “research of [the] human brain has been historically difficult because of limited ability to obtain human brain samples.”
“However, recently, advances in genomic technologies, coupled with increased availability of postmortem brain tissue, have facilitated the generation of multi-level omics data, including epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, in [the] human brain,” she added.
“This is a seminal example of the advances in technology, describing how it is now possible to identify, at the single cell level, DNA regions that are involved in regulating how genes are expressed (genes being ‘turned on or off’). Up till now, there was a lack of technology that allowed for this level of knowledge to be resolved at the individual cell level.”
– Dr. Consuelo Walss-Bass
However, Dr. Stefan Ivantu, consultant psychiatrist at ADHD Specialist, said that he felt researchers still had a long way to go until compiling a true “brain cell Atlas.”
“[I]n my opinion,” he told us, “analyzing 1 million cells is considered a small sample given the complexity of the human brain. Very few [people] are aware that the human brain has on average 86 billion cells that are interacting with each other constantly.”
“What makes it even more difficult are the interactions between the cells, which are far more complex,” he added. “However, with more powerful imagistic and AI tool, we may be able to understand the patterns related to specific conditions.”
In Dr. Ivantu’s view, “[a] more promising field is quantum computing, which this linked with the recent AI advances may be more effective in understanding the human brain.”
Nevertheless, he noted that “[i]t is extremely encouraging that researchers are using more technology for the next steps in understanding the human brain, and I believe this is the right approach.”
Dr. Walss-Bass pointed out that the researchers “have identified areas of the genome in individual brain cells that determine whether a gene will become expressed, that is, turned into RNA and then protein, to perform specific functions.”
“From this, the authors were then able to correlate genes that had been previously associated with schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders to areas in the DNA where the expression of these genes is being regulated,” she explained.
“Understanding how gene expression is regulated in specific cell types in the brain is a significant advancement that will help to shed light shed light on the neurobiological mechanisms of psychiatric disorders and could lead to development of new therapies to treat these disorders.”
– Dr. Consuelo Walss-Bass
Dr. Sultan explained that this “research has significant implications for patients and the public.”
“It advances our understanding of the genetic foundations of neuropsychiatric disorders, potentially paving the way for more targeted treatments and precision medicine in neuropsychiatry,” Dr. Sultan explained.
Dr. Ivantu pointed out that, “in the short term, the implications for the patients and the public will be limited. It takes years until a test passes the research phase and gathers the evidence to be implemented in the clinical practice.”
“However,” he noted, “long term we may be able to understand the origin of certain neuropsychiatric disorders and possibly beyond!”
“If the technology becomes effective, this will not only play a role in treating the conditions but even more exciting prevention. Lastly, the most important is setting an example with this study and encouraging the researcher’s community to use AI and technology towards their projects,” Dr. Ivantu explained.
Dr. Ivantu agreed, concluding that “the future looks promising.” | Disease Research |
- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first over-the-counter birth control pill, which will allow more women and girls to prevent unintended pregnancies without a prescription.
- The daily pill, called Opill, was first approved by the FDA as a prescription in 1973.
- The pill's manufacturer, Paris-based HRA Pharma, said the contraceptive would most likely be available at stores and online retailers nationwide in early 2024.
- HRA Pharma, a unit of Dublin-based pharmaceutical company Perrigo, said there will be no age restrictions on sales of the daily pill.
The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved the first over-the-counter birth control pill, a landmark decision that will allow more women and girls in the U.S. to prevent unintended pregnancies without a prescription.
The daily pill, called Opill, was first approved by the FDA as a prescription in 1973.
The pill's manufacturer, Paris-based HRA Pharma, said the contraceptive would most likely be available at stores and online retailers in the U.S. in early 2024.
HRA Pharma, a unit of Dublin-based pharmaceutical company Perrigo, said there will be no age restrictions on sales of the pill.
HRA Pharma has not announced the price of the pill, which will determine how affordable it will be to the public. But the company is committed to making the pill "accessible and affordable to women and people of all ages," Frederique Welgryn, Perrigo's global vice president for women's health, said in a statement.
Perrigo's stock price jumped 5% in early trading Thursday following the announcement.
Opill could significantly expand access to contraception, especially for younger women and those in rural and underserved communities who often have trouble getting their birth control.
"Today's approval is a groundbreaking expansion for women's health in the U.S., and a significant milestone towards addressing a key unmet need for contraceptive access," said Welgryn.
Oral contraceptives have long been the most common form of birth control in the U.S., used by tens of millions of women since the 1960s. But until now, all of them required a prescription.
Medical organizations like the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and women's health advocates have pushed for wider access, noting that an estimated 45% of the 6 million annual pregnancies in the U.S. are unintended.
Those pregnancies have been linked to negative outcomes, including the reduced likelihood of receiving early prenatal care and increased risk of preterm delivery, according to the FDA. Those complications are also associated with adverse developmental and child health outcomes, the agency said.
Dr. Patrizia Cavazzoni, director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in a release that daily oral contraception is safe and "expected to be more effective than currently available
nonprescription contraceptive methods in preventing unintended pregnancy."
Other nonprescription methods include condoms and spermicide.
Opill was found to be 93% effective in preventing pregnancy, similar to prescription oral contraceptives. | Drug Discoveries |
A mother who was forced to endure an "excruciating" seven-hour long labour with minimum pain relief and no explanation from hospital staff says the ordeal was so painful it "might have put her off having a baby again".
Emma Djan told Sky News that the days before her baby's birth were extremely stressful and probably resulted in her missing her due date.
"I didn't know what was happening, (I was) just really scared," she said.
"I wasn't told about any alternative pain relief until I got to the hospital, so (I was) just really nervous and scared about it.
"Looking back, it was really bad. I've never experienced that type of pain before.
"Without the pain relief it was really excruciating. And I think if he was my first baby, that would really put me off having another one. I really do."
Emma gave birth to baby Kingston on 18 December after being induced at Ipswich Hospital.
But she only found out on social media a fortnight before her due date that the hospital had suspended the use of gas and air as pain relief for expectant mothers.
"Someone should have phoned us up and said, 'look this has happened at the hospital', not by reading it on Facebook," Emma said.
She says she asked medical staff at the hospital for an explanation but was not given one.
"The staff at the hospital, like midwives and staff like that, they should have let us know and given us the information. That's what upset me as well, the lack of communication."
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Emma's agony was made worse knowing there were full canisters of gas and air in the labour ward near her.
She says at one point her husband asked staff if they could just "give her a puff".
After many hours she was given a 5ml dose of morphine.
Gas and air, also known as Entonox, is a mixture of nitrous oxide and oxygen.
It is one of the most commonly used pain relief medications for labour and other procedures.
But there have been warnings raised over prolonged exposure to the gas for the medical staff who work in unventilated delivery rooms and labour wards.
Dr Giles Thorpe, chief nurse at East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Ipswich Hospital, told Sky News: "We appreciate that this was a very frustrating and anxious time for people who would have liked to have had the option of using gas and air while giving birth at Ipswich Maternity Unit.
"Our decision to remove nitrous oxide followed safety concerns raised in other maternity units about the levels of gas left in the air after it had been used.
"The decision was not taken lightly but we needed to be sure that the delivery areas were safe for our maternity staff to work in.
"We worked as quickly as we could to install new ventilation units in all delivery suites and birthing rooms at the hospital and are very grateful for the support and patience of everyone involved while that work was carried out.
"Gas and air was reinstated early last month."
'We need proper investment in maternity services'
The issue is now affecting maternity services at other Trusts and more hospitals across the country will be affected.
It is a problem made worse by the deteriorating condition of the NHS estate with many buildings no longer fit or appropriate for a modern health service.
Dr Suzanne Taylor from the Royal College of Midwives told Sky News: "Too many of the buildings that house maternity services are simply not fit for purpose.
"This issue has arisen because of poor ventilation in delivery suites and labour wards, but this is just the tip of the iceberg.
"We know of crumbling walls, ceilings being held up by props and even sewage flowing onto wards.
"These aren't cosmetic issues. We need proper investment in maternity services."
Read more:
Giving birth in UK becoming 'unsafe' - as 60% of midwives considering leaving profession
Hundreds of babies left brain-damaged or dead in worst ever NHS maternity scandal
The latest hospitals to suspend gas and air for its maternity services are Peterborough City and Hinchingbrooke in Cambridgeshire.
Jo Bennis, Chief Nurse at North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the hospitals said: "We appreciate that this is a very anxious time for those women who were expecting to be able to use gas and air while giving birth at our maternity units.
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"This was not a decision that we made lightly and was based on expert advice following thorough testing of the atmosphere in our maternity units.
An NHS England spokesperson said: "NHS England has been working with the Trusts where gas and air supplies have been affected due to differing and localised issues, this is not a widespread issue and patients should continue to access services as normal." | Women’s Health |
UK health experts are sharing details of their Covid-style plans against bird flu, including modelling for the unlikely scenario that it could mutate and cause a pandemic in people.
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) says there is no evidence H5N1 virus is an imminent threat or can spread between people, despite some getting sick after contact with infected birds.
But there is no room for complacency.
One expert told the BBC "we must prepare for the worst" just in case.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is urging heightened vigilance from all countries, following the death of an 11-year-old girl in Cambodia from H5N1.
The girl's father has also tested positive, according to Cambodia's health minister.
Investigators are working to establish if infected birds were the cause, rather than a case of human-to-human transmission.
Humans rarely get bird flu, but when they do it is usually from coming into direct contact with infected birds.
Since late 2021, the world has been experiencing one of the worst global avian influenza outbreaks on record, with tens of millions of poultry culled and mass wild bird die-offs.
And there have been a few infections in some mammals, including foxes and otters in the UK.
Dr Meera Chand, from the UKHSA, said all of the latest evidence suggested H5N1 could not currently spread easily to people.
"However, viruses constantly evolve, and we remain vigilant for any evidence of changing risk to the population, as well as working with partners to address gaps in the scientific evidence."
In preparation for a worst-case scenario of human-to-human spread, the UKHSA is modelling:
- How many might become infected and get very sick
- Whether lateral flow tests and blood tests would be helpful
- What genetic mutations might signal an increased risk to human health
When the Covid pandemic hit, there were no suitable vaccines available to fight that virus. But for bird flu, there are already several good candidates that might help.
WHO-affiliated labs already hold two flu virus strains that are closely related to the circulating H5N1 virus, that manufacturers can use to develop new shots if needed, experts said at a meeting on Friday.
Prof Peter Openshaw, from Imperial College London, is a member of Nervtag - the group that advises the British government on new and emerging threats from respiratory viruses.
He told the BBC that the fact that we are still in a Covid pandemic in no way lessened the possibility of another pandemic coming from elsewhere.
"We absolutely need to watch this one," he said.
"The good news at the moment is that there's no evidence of human-to-human spread.
"We need to prepare for the worst but obviously hope for the best, to use the old phrase."
"Not another pandemic" might well be the exasperated response of many to talk of the risks from bird flu.
Covid fatigue is understandable but the H5N1 virus is a real concern to many scientists who monitor global disease threats.
Thankfully, the virus does not spread easily from birds to humans, requiring close contact. That would need to change if the threat of a human pandemic was to be realised, which would require the virus to mutate.
Since 2003 the WHO has recorded 868 cases in humans, of which 457 were fatal, so the mortality rate is more than 50%.
Scientists want to see better surveillance, more investment in vaccines and antivirals - so that should the worst ever happen, the world will be better prepared than it was when Covid emerged. | Epidemics & Outbreaks |
Nov. 20, 2023 â Getting together with friends and family around the holidays can be joyous, awkward, or sometimes both. Itâs largely expected that you will overindulge around Thanksgiving and throughout the holidays. Itâs almost an American pastime to overeat this time of year.Â
But what if youâve been losing excess weight and donât want to give up your hard-won progress? What if youâre the only one with diabetes at a large holiday meal?Â
WebMD asked nutrition and diabetes experts for their tips on navigating these and other challenges. They explain not only best practices to avoid overeating, but how to pass the serving dish without insulting a guest or host or having to explain to everyone why youâre skipping dessert.Â
âMany people find themselves in situations surrounded by food, and it can be overwhelming if people are trying to stay on a weight management plan that practices portion control,â said Beverly Tchang, MD, a medical weight management expert with the Comprehensive Weight Control Center at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City.Â
Stick to your strengths. âMany people do better with the flexibility to indulge on occasion, while others feel they do best to stay on track regardless of special events. People should do what works best for them,â continued Tchang, who is also a spokesperson for the Obesity Society.
A Perfect Storm?
âIndulgent meals, heaping portions, holiday parties ⦠itâs no surprise the festive season presents even more challenges to maintain a healthy lifestyle than throughout the rest of the year,â said Florencia Ziemke, MD, an obesity expert, nutrition, health and wellness advocate, and founder and medical director of Evexia Medical in Jupiter, FL.Â
Itâs not just the overabundance of food. Less sleep and less exercise due to busy schedules and the added stress of holiday planning and commitments can add to the challenges of staying healthy this time of year.Â
âCombined, these factors seem like an inevitable recipe for weight gain,â said Ziemke, who is also a spokesperson for the Obesity Society. The average adult in Western societies gains about 1 to 2 pounds per year, and most of that is gained over the holiday season.
Responding to âFood Pushersâ
A good start is going into holiday gatherings with a game plan, Ziemke said. Avoid showing up hungry, order first and lead by example, eat slowly, and pause between each bite, for example.Â
Another tip is to bring your own healthy dish to share. âThis way, you can guarantee youâll have something to eat that aligns with your weight goals.â It does not have to be steamed broccoli or a fattening dessert you wouldnât have at home. âBring something you would enjoy,â Tchang suggested.Â
Holiday gatherings are social situations, so there can be social pressure to eat indulgent foods and sweets. How can someone focused on managing their weight and/or a guest who just wants to eat healthier politely decline cookies, pie, or cake without insulting the host?
Oftentimes, we refer to them as "food pushers,â Ziemke said. She recommends politely refusing or taking a small portion of an item you are trying to avoid. Another tip is to start a conversation and open up to friends or family about your healthy eating goals. That way, you might gain support and healthy eating allies.
No Obligation to Weigh In
What if the host or another guest sees says, âCâmon, itâs the holidays. Itâs OK to treat yourself.â It might even be someone who can't relate to living with overweight or obesity challenges or is trying to manage their weight.
Tchang said itâs up to each individual how much they want to disclose or share. âObesity is a medical disease. It should be treated as a private matter just like any other health issue,â she said.Â
It can also be treated as an opportunity to educate others.Â
âMy patients have powerful voices, and if they choose to share their stories, I think more people will understand the biological challenge we face when treating obesity," she said.Â
A Sweeter Time of Year, for Some
People with diabetes can face some unique challenges over the holidays.Â
âStick to a routine as best you can,â said Amy Kimberlain, a registered dietitian nutritionist and spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Sticking to a schedule for eating, when possible, can help manage blood sugar levels, she said.
âNo skipping meals or going too long without. Aim to have balanced meals throughout the day â no saving up and having more carbs later on,â she said.
âThe key takeaway point is to plan.â For example, if you know that a holiday dinner isnât until later than your normally scheduled mealtime, that might be when a snack will enter the mix.Â
Just like people without diabetes, managing stress around the holidays remains crucial.Â
âMake sure to include outlets for the stress ⦠as stress can wreak havoc on oneâs blood sugar levels. Meditate, journal, go for a walk, exercise â all ways to help manage the stress, but also might just help manage oneâs blood sugar levels as well,â Kimberlain said.Â
Before you attend a holiday get-together, âcheck to see if you can see whatâs on the menu so you know what all the options are,â she said.Â
After you arrive, âtry not to hang around the food table â itâs human nature to continue grazing if the food is so close by. Rather, serve yourself and eat somewhere else,â she said. Also, stay hydrated with water throughout the day.
While these general tips are good for people with diabetes to keep in mind, Kimberlain said, âit is best if they speak to their health care provider for individual recommendations.â | Nutrition Research |
For the first time in 20 years, five people have picked up malaria on U.S. soil.
On June 26, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a health advisory, announcing that over the last two months four people in Sarasota County, Fla, and one person in Cameron County, Texas, had developed the mosquito-borne illness. The new cases mark the first time since 2003 that U.S. residents have contracted malaria after being bitten by a mosquito close to home. All five people received treatment and are improving.
Malaria, which is caused by Plasmodium parasites and spread to humans by Anopheles mosquitoes, is not unheard of in the United States. The disease was once prevalent before widespread spraying of the insecticide DDT helped to purge the country of any parasite-infected mosquitoes. By 1951, malaria had been eliminated within U.S. borders.
But the disease still circulates in many countries around the world. Globally, there are more than 200 million cases of malaria each year and hundreds of thousands of deaths, most of which happen in Africa, according to the World Health Organization. In October 2021, the agency approved a malaria vaccine for children living in sub-Saharan Africa (SN: 12/22/21).
Before the COVID-19 pandemic stifled travel, about 2,000 cases were diagnosed across the United States each year. Such cases were exclusively in people who traveled abroad to parts of the world where the disease is common and returned home with parasites in tow. But none of the five people in Texas and Florida had traveled, meaning they’d contracted the disease from local mosquitoes.
The risk of local transmission in the United States “remains extremely low,” the CDC noted in the health advisory. But the Anopheles mosquitoes, vectors capable of spreading the parasite from person to person, are found around the country, a grim reminder that malaria can still pose a threat.
People tend to think of malaria as a tropical disease, says Christopher Vitek, a medical entomologist at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in Edinburg. “But the fact of the matter is, historically we’ve had a fair amount of malaria transmission here in the U.S.” And the risk of transmission now is not zero. Officials in Texas and Florida are keeping an eye out for more cases.
Here are four things to know about malaria and the latest cases.
Local transmission in the United States is rare, but not worrisome
At the moment, experts aren’t highly concerned about the five new cases. “We’ve gotten really good at understanding transmission,” says Johanna Daily, a parasitologist and infectious diseases physician at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. “And we’re very good at vector control, which is really going to be the win here.”
Spraying insecticide around homes and areas where mosquitoes breed can help bring the insects’ numbers down. Window screens keep the insects out of homes, and mosquito repellents or clothing treated with the insecticide permethrin can prevent bites. Getting rid of standing water can stop mosquitoes from multiplying. These tactics helped end a 2003 outbreak — when eight people in Palm Beach County, Fla., were infected by local mosquitoes — as well as 62 other outbreaks since 1957.
Because malaria is still a huge problem in many places, outbreaks in the United States, while rare, also aren’t unexpected. For this latest one, “it would be more surprising to me if it was far more cases or spread out across a lot of counties,” says Sadie Ryan, a medical geographer at the University of Florida in Gainesville.
One small plus is that the parasite behind the current outbreak is Plasmodium vivax, which is not the cause of the worst type of malaria. That title belongs to P. falciparum, the most common and deadliest of five species known to infect people. While some P. vivax infections are still fatal, it’s far less deadly, Daily says.
The new cases will likely make health care workers hypervigilant, Daily says. But P. vivax can lie dormant inside the liver for weeks, months or years after the infection. “I do worry that as months go by and we forget about locally acquired malaria” that some people might go undiagnosed and spark new outbreaks.
It may seem odd that cases appeared in two separate states around the same time, but there’s no evidence to suggest that the cases are related, according to the CDC.
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Certain events in other parts of the world — such as a spike in cases in a spot with lots of travel — can make it more likely that malaria might pop up in the United States, Vitek says. Increased travel to places where there are ongoing outbreaks can raise the chances a person or mosquito with malaria will arrive on U.S. soil.
Malaria can be hard to identify by its early symptoms
People with malaria typically develop fever and flulike symptoms including chills, body aches, headache and tiredness. These symptoms are also typical of other diseases like mosquito-borne dengue fever, Daily says, which can make malaria hard to pick up if health care workers aren’t already considering it among the list of possibilities.
“You cannot clinically distinguish dengue from malaria from the flu from other things,” she says.
Treatments are available, but if left untreated, malaria infections can become severe and cause seizures, coma and death.
There are some hallmarks, such as anemia, jaundice and fevers that come and go. Plasmodium parasites infect and reproduce inside red blood cells and liver cells, which burst and release offspring into the blood stream. Some people develop anemia or jaundice as infected cells die. And when the body detects these foreign invaders, it can spark a fever. As young parasites hide inside new cells, the alarm bells quiet and the fever fades. With P. vivax, such cyclic fevers might appear every 48 hours or so.
But sometimes a fever’s timing isn’t textbook, which can throw off health care workers, Daily says. So, it’s important for people involved in patient care to keep malaria in mind when considering the possibilities. “We never think about malaria unless it’s a traveler who comes, has a fever, has nonspecific symptoms and says ‘Well, I just got off a plane.’”
Now, health care workers working in and nearby the affected Florida and Texas counties need to consider malaria as a cause of illness.
Infected travelers and mosquitoes can transport malaria across borders
It remains unclear why the five people got infected without traveling. But there are two ways for malaria to return to places where it has been eliminated, Vitek says. Either infected travelers transport the parasite across borders, or infected mosquitoes do.
In the first scenario, a traveler might return home with malaria and just so happen to get bitten by an Anopheles mosquito. Around nine to 18 days later, after any parasites have multiplied inside the mosquito, the insect can transmit malaria to the next person it bites.
There are many Anopheles species capable of transmitting malaria, such as Anopheles freeborni, the western malaria mosquito, across the United States. Florida, for instance, hosts 14 different species. Two of those, A. quadrimaculatus and A. crucians, are responsible for most past cases. These insects are twilight biters that love to hang out in vegetation around swamps, Ryan says. Fortunately, not many people tend to go to these spots during Florida summers when mosquitoes are rampant.
But if a traveler with malaria happens to venture out and get bitten by A. crucians, that insect could become an unwitting vector of disease.
Infected mosquitoes can also travel by land, air or sea — often by hitching a ride alongside people — and transport Plasmodium from place to place. “Airport malaria,” for example, can happen when the insects travel by plane and infect people who live nearby, Daily says. But Anopheles mosquitoes don’t travel very far, so such cases would typically pop up a mile or so away from airports.
Mapping malaria
While many countries around the world, including the United States, have eliminated malaria and have no known transmission, the disease is still a major problem. Most cases and deaths happen in Africa, where the deadliest and most common malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, is common. Other regions have transmission in only some places.
Malaria transmission around the world
Warming temperatures and travel can help mosquito ranges spread
Climate change is expected to expand the range of many insect-borne diseases, including dengue and malaria (SN: 10/7/19). But whether it’s the reason malaria is circulating in the United States for the first time in decades is unclear.
Independent of warming temperatures, Texas and Florida already “are in a very suitable part of the world for malaria,” Ryan says. While mosquito control pushed the disease out, such places aren’t going to stop being fitting spots for malaria transmission. “The possibility of introduction is always here.”
As the climate warms, however, the mosquitoes’ livable range could extend farther north, both Ryan and Vitek say.
What’s more, an invasive, malaria-spreading mosquito that has an affinity for biting people is also on the move.
Anopheles stephensi thrives not in swamps or rural areas far from people, but in artificial containers in urban areas across India and the Middle East, Ryan says. Now, “it has left its original range, and it’s setting up shop across different countries in Africa.” If the species were to also spread to the United States, its tendency to bite people and live in urban areas could make it a riskier vector than current species to spread malaria among people.
Experts have the tools to deal with these urban mosquitoes because Aedes aegypti, the species that spreads dengue and Zika, also thrives close to people, Ryan says. Still, “it just definitely makes me nervous that we need to be anticipating that and be ready for surveillance.”
For now, it’s unlikely malaria is going to spread all over the United States, Daily says. Even if more than five people develop malaria, she expects the current outbreak will end. “I hate for people to feel anxious going outside or getting mosquito bites. So, we can reassure the public: There’s ways to prevent [malaria], ways to treat it. It’s curable.” | Epidemics & Outbreaks |
The problem with drug price controls
President Biden’s war on drug prices is a prescription for shortages and fewer new and innovative drugs. To make matters worse, he keeps bragging about his populist reforms as if they are going to solve the problems with our healthcare system, the economy, the itch, the stitch, palsy and the gout. But he isn’t very convincing when he delivers the message, because his reasoning for passing bills changes depending on which audience he is talking to. His goal is merely to bask in the limelight of his populist agenda.
But his policies are going to have long-term consequences.
The problem is that populism is good for creating a message that will resonate, but creating public policy from that populism can be dangerous. For instance, drug prices are a target for almost every politician that has a soap box to speak from, but supporting legislation that merely cuts or lazily caps those prices is ill-advised and troubling. Unfortunately, Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act did just that, allowing the government to cap the prices of drugs and charge pharmaceutical companies an onerous tax of 95 percent if they don’t comply with the caps.
Recently, the Biden administration published a list of the first drugs to face this new government hurdle, and it was mainly diabetes and cancer drugs.
The economic and investment outcomes of this policy are easy to identify for entrepreneurs, but Joe Biden isn’t an entrepreneur, and doesn’t seem to have any around him. However, we no longer need business experts to explain just how price controls and increased regulation hurt access to care — we have a real-life example of the effects of this policy. Japan currently lacks access to 143 new drugs that are available in the West.
That is a lot of drugs for a developed country to lack access to, and some of them will never be available.
The problem for Japan is two-fold. It is too expensive to gain approval for the Japanese market and drug companies aren’t allowed to charge enough to make that money back. In fact, the Japanese government forces price reductions every few years, making the prospect of profits even lower. So, pharmaceutical companies are left with a fairly easy choice: enter the Japanese market and lose money, or don’t.
The problems will be bigger in the U.S. Japan can always change their policies and those 143 drugs will quickly be available. However, with the passage of the IRA, some new drugs will never be developed. Most of the research and development for new drugs is done in the United States; if that research never happens, the drugs won’t exist. President Biden — or some future president — won’t just be able to come to his senses and flick a switch that brings lifesaving drugs to market.
New drugs cost around $2 billion to bring to market in the U.S. That is a big investment, given the risks and short lifespan of the patent once the drug actually makes it to market, but because pharmaceutical companies were previously able to recoup this cost and more, the risk was worth it. With a government already setting the prices of some drugs, though, pharmaceutical companies will be less likely to risk their money on long-shot drugs, investors will be less likely to back BIO startups, and with a lower likelihood of licensing their innovations, colleges and universities will be less likely to dedicate the resources they currently do to groundbreaking research.
This doesn’t mean that the president should stop delivering a populist message. Populism sells. But the only way to actually solve the problem is to focus on real solutions. Drug prices are high, but why are they high? How could the U.S. drive even more innovation in drug development? The answers are available, but they require making decisions that might give some on the left heartburn.
Healthcare is full of middlemen, like pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). While PBMs do increase the price of drugs, the reason they have a role in the market at all is that we currently have a system where the patient is almost never the payer. When the patient is the payer, drug prices are often reasonable. Of course, Biden could pursue another populist policy and outlaw PBMs, but the real solution is to let the market decide if they actually provide a service, or if they are just a drag on the system.
Populists want to address the symptom, but addressing the symptom is often like bandaging an infected wound and forgetting about it: it just makes a bigger problem. The real solution is to give patients options. Bring the market back to healthcare and watch the competition bring prices down. It won’t be fast, but it will be better than looking back in 20 years and wishing that some drug that doesn’t exist because of bad public policy.
Charles Sauer (@CharlesSauer) is president of the Market Institute and author of “Profit Motive: What Drives the Things We Do.” He has previously worked on Capitol Hill, for a governor, and for an academic think tank.
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | Drug Discoveries |
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“We want to know what led to this, so we can hopefully try and prevent something similar from happening in the future.”
Those words, from Dr. David Relman, an infectious disease expert and microbiologist at Stanford University, reflected the national conversation around the origins of Covid-19 in 2021.
Did it come from a lab? Was it a zoonotic transfer? Something else? Surely, with time, an answer would become clear.
But now, three years removed from the start of a pandemic that is still disrupting daily life, an assessment from the US Energy Department is only adding to the confusion about what really happened in Wuhan, China, in late 2019.
The department has assessed that the Covid-19 pandemic most likely emerged from a laboratory leak in China, according to a newly updated classified intelligence report first reported by The Wall Street Journal on Sunday.
Yet two sources said that the department assessed in the intelligence report that it had “low confidence” that the coronavirus accidentally escaped from a lab in Wuhan, CNN’s Jeremy Herb and Natasha Bertrand reported.
Intelligence agencies can make assessments with either low, medium or high confidence; and a low confidence assessment generally means that the information obtained is not reliable enough or is too fragmented to make a more definitive analytic judgment or that there is not enough information available to draw a more robust conclusion.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan acknowledged on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that the intelligence community is divided on the matter, while noting that President Joe Biden has put resources into getting to the bottom of the origin question.
- In 2021, the intelligence community declassified a report that showed four agencies in the intelligence community had assessed with low confidence that the virus likely jumped from animals to humans naturally in the wild.
- One assessed with moderate confidence that the pandemic was the result of a laboratory accident.
- Three other intelligence community elements were unable to coalesce around either explanation without additional information, the community’s report said.
Lab leak theory gains traction
For the better part of 2020, advocates of the lab leak theory had to fight against claims they were being xenophobic or racist — in part thanks to anti-Chinese rhetoric from then-President Donald Trump, who embraced the theory.
An inquiry launched by Trump’s State Department, which sought to investigate whether China’s biological weapons program could have had a greater role in the pandemic’s origin in Wuhan, was shut down early on in the Biden administration.
A letter from public health experts published in February 2020 in The Lancet, an influential scientific journal, also set the tone early by declaring the virus to have a natural origin.
But the lab leak theory has gained more traction with time, especially following reports that the intelligence community found evidence that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology fell seriously ill with a mysterious virus in November 2019 – although it’s not clear whether they contracted Covid-19 and no further evidence has emerged to corroborate that report.
By July 2021, senior Biden administration officials overseeing an intelligence review into the origins believed that the lab leak theory was at least as credible as the possibility that the virus emerged naturally in the wild – a dramatic shift from a year earlier, when Democrats publicly downplayed such an idea.
‘Not a definitive answer’
The latest intelligence assessment was provided to Congress as Republicans on Capitol Hill have been pushing for further investigation into the theory, while accusing the Biden administration of playing down its possibility.
House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul said Sunday he was “pleased” the Energy Department “has finally reached the same conclusion that I had already come to.” (The Texas Republican had released a 2021 report that concluded that “the preponderance of the evidence” showed the pandemic originated with a leak from the Wuhan lab.)
“Now is the time for the entire Biden administration to join the Department of Energy, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the majority of Americans by publicly concluding what common sense told us at the start – the COVID-19 pandemic originated from a lab leak in Wuhan, China,” McCaul said in a statement.
Sullivan said Sunday that Biden had directed the national laboratories, which are part of the Department of Energy, to be brought into the assessment.
“Right now, there is not a definitive answer that has emerged from the intelligence community on this question,” Sullivan told CNN’s Dana Bash.
“Some elements of the intelligence community have reached conclusions on one side, some on the other. A number of them have said they just don’t have enough information to be sure.”
So where does that leave us? Not far from where we started.
Past pandemics have emerged from natural transmission through animals, and it often takes months or years to discover the host that the virus passed through as it adapted to infect humans.
In some cases, as in Ebola, the original natural source has never been identified. And it’s been more than 40 years since the first cases of Ebola.
So why does it matter where Covid-19 came from? As Relman, the Stanford microbiologist, previously noted to CNN, finding the answer can help prevent the next pandemic. | Epidemics & Outbreaks |
The cause is a mystery — and the symptoms can be distressing. Bell's palsy comes on without warning, bringing partial paralysis or weakness to a person's face.
The condition affects thousands of people in the U.S. every year. And now Tiffany Chen, the partner of Robert De Niro, is speaking out about her experience with Bell's palsy for the first time.
In anco-host Gayle King, Chen revealed her diagnosis, which began after the in early April.
"When I got home, it was like everything was starting to just fall down on itself. Like, my face was melting on itself," Chen says in the interview, which airs Friday, July 14, on "CBS Mornings." "Then a week after giving birth, that was when it all hit."
After calling her doctor, she tried to eat, but more difficulties set in.
"I went to put just a fork of food in my mouth, and everything came out. I couldn't eat," she said. "And then I was starting to slur. So I said, 'There's something really going on here.' ... I lost all facial function the minute I got into the hospital."
Here's what to know about the condition.
What is Bell's palsy?
The National Institutes of Health defines Bell's palsy as "a neurological disorder that causes paralysis or weakness on one side of the face." This happens when one of the nerves that controls facial muscles becomes injured or stops working properly.
In some cases — including Chen's — it can affect both sides of the face.
Symptoms typically appear suddenly over a 48- to 72-hour period, and can range from mild to severe. Though symptoms generally start to improve after a few weeks, with or without treatment, the recovery time varies from person to person.
"Usually, you will recover some or all facial function within a few weeks to six months. Sometimes the facial weakness may last longer or be permanent," the NIH says on its website.
The condition affects about 40,000 people in the United States every year, the NIH estimates.
"It can affect anyone of any gender and age but seems to be highest in those in people 15 to 45 years old," its NIH states. It says risk factors for Bell's palsy include:
- Pregnancy
- (a high blood pressure condition during pregnancy)
- Obesity
- Hypertension
- Diabetes
- Upper respiratory ailments
Symptoms of Bell's palsy
According to the NIH, signs and symptom of Bell's palsy include:
- Sudden weakness or paralysis on one side of your face
- A drooping eyebrow and mouth
- Drooling from one side of your mouth
- Difficulty closing an eyelid
The Mayo Clinic's list of symptoms also includes:
- Difficulty making facial expressions
- Pain around the jaw or in or behind your ear on the affected side
- Increased sensitivity to sound on the affected side
- Headache
- Loss of taste
- Changes in the amount of tears and saliva you produce
Before Chen noticed differences in her face, she says her tongue felt strange. "It felt like a little tingly, just starting to get a little bit numb," she told King.
Since Bell's palsy symptoms can appear similar to other conditions that cause facial weakness, experts say it's important to seek medical attention immediately to rule out things like a brain tumor or stroke.
What causes Bell's palsy?
Bell's palsy is the most common cause of facial paralysis, but its exact cause is unknown, according to the NIH.
"Viral and immune disorders are frequently suggested as a cause for this disorder," the National Organization for Rare Disorders says on its website. "There may also be an inherited tendency toward developing Bell's palsy."
Is there a treatment for Bell's palsy?
Most people who develop Bell's palsy recover over time without treatment. There are different treatment options for Bell's palsy, including medications to help recover facial nerve function and relieve pain.
Some patients receive physical therapy or facial massage, or may need eye protection if they are unable to close an eye.
In rare cases, the NIH says, "cosmetic or reconstructive surgery may be needed to correct some damage such as an eyelid that will not fully close or a crooked smile."
More of, where she will discuss the impact of tabloid headlines on her facial expressions and how Robert De Niro has provided support throughout her health journey, will air on "CBS Mornings" Friday, July 14.
for more features. | Disease Research |
Oct. 20, 2023 â People who eat more ultra-processed foods â particularly artificial sweeteners and-artificially sweetened drinks â could be at higher risk of depression, according to new research.
The study was published recently in JAMA Network Open.
Ultra-processed foods are energy-dense and ready-to-eat food items including things like processed breakfast meats, packaged snacks, and ice cream as well as artificially sweetened drinks. Artificial sweeteners, also an ultra-processed food, include things like aspartame, sucralose, and saccharine.
âWhat we found is that consuming high amounts of ultra-processed foods could increase your risk of developing depression by up to 50%,â said Raaj Mehta, MD, MPH, one of the studyâs authors and a gastroenterologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
This study adds to growing concerns about these kinds of foods, he said.
Itâs just another piece of evidence that these foods harm our bodies, he said, and not just our physical health.
âThe reason why this is so important is that people arenât always aware of the connection between nutrition and diet and mental health, and so I think what this could do is really encourage physicians to start to have those conversations that what youâre eating does actually affect potentially how youâre feeling,â Mehta said.
He said that because this is an observational study â one that looked at data already gathered â they cannot say highly processed food causes depression. That said, he thinks the data is strong.
âWe were able to adjust for a number of what are called confounding variables in our analysis to suggest that eating more ultra-processed foods really could increase your risk of depression.â
âSometimes what you see when you adjust for these variables is that the models or the results get weaker. And we didnât really see that at all,â he later said.Â
Mehta said he wanted to do the study to examine the âgut-brain axis,â which he described as a âbidirectional highway between your intestines and the brain.â
âWe looked at the literature and saw that there was some data that diet affected risk of depression, but we didnât, at the end of the day, know which specific foods are responsible.âÂ
Ultra-processed foods have been linked to health conditions ranging from diseases of the heart and blood vessels to dementia to cancer, Mehta said, but there really wasnât much evidence about the risk of depression.
Researchers did the analysis using the Nursesâ Health Study II between 2003 and 2017 among 31,712 middle-aged women without depression at the start of the study. They looked at the patientsâ diet every 4 years using food surveys.
In a later analysis, they grouped ultra-processed food into subgroups such as ultra-processed grain foods, ready- to-eat meals, processed dairy products, sweet snacks, drinks and artificial sweeteners, etc.
They took into account other possible risk factors for depression, including smoking, exercise level, body mass index (BMI), alcohol use, total energy intake, other diseases that people in the study had, and more. Authors evaluated the link between changes in ultra-processed consumption updated every 4 years and rates of depression.
Researchers found that the women who ate a lot of ultra-processed food also had a higher BMI; higher smoking rates; higher rates of diabetes and hypertension; and were less likely to exercise regularly.
Over the 15-year period, 2,122 cases of depression were found using a strict definition of depression and 4,840 using a broader definition.
Authors then examined the link between specific categories of ultra-processed food and the risk of depression. The results showed that only artificially sweetened beverages and artificial sweeteners were linked with a higher risk of depression.
âAfter finding that these ultra-processed foods were linked with depression, our question was: What within the large group of foods could explain our results?â Mehta said.Â
He and his team tested different kinds of food for risk of future depression. âAnd thatâs when we found that artificially sweetened beverages and other sweeteners were linked with depression, but not the other groups,â he said.Â
How that link between artificial sweeteners and artificially sweetened drinks could occur is unknown, the authors write, but recent experimental data suggests that artificial sweeteners create specific transmissions in the brain, which may be part of the explanation, the authors write.Â
âThereâs been some really interesting data in mice that show that when you give artificial sweeteners and regular sugar ⦠they have totally different neurotransmission signals in the brain,â Mehta said.
âWhen you look at the overall category of ultra-processed foods, the strength of the effect does seem to be larger than the artificial sweeteners or artificially sweetened beverages, and so the likely scenario is that itâs really the sum of all of them together.â
Researchers also found that those who limited their daily intake of ultra-processed foods by more than three servings per day had a lower overall risk.Â
Future Impact
The study results could help create more opportunities for doctors to talk with their patients about what a healthy diet means and to advise them to consider limiting ultra-processed foods, said another study author, Andrew Chan, MD, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and also a gastroenterologist at Massachusetts General Hospital.
The research may also present a chance for patients who have a mood disorder to consider changing their diet as âanother way they can approach their illness,â he said.
The World Health Organization has also advised avoiding artificial sweeteners.
âI think I would feel pretty comfortable counseling a patient to try to avoid ultra-processed foods, especially in the context that theyâve been linked with a lot of other health conditions,â Mehta said. | Mental Health Treatments |
The health safety watchdog has said that doctors, ambulance dispatchers and other NHS staff in England have faced "significant distress" and harm over the past year as a result of long delays in urgent and emergency care.
The Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB), which monitors safety in the health service in England, said many staff it interviewed for a national investigation "cried or displayed other extreme emotions" when asked about their working environment.
"The bad sides [of my job] give me nightmares, flashbacks and fear, but they can also make me hyperactive, sleepless and sometimes not care about the danger I put myself in," one paramedic told the BBC.
Sarah, not her real name, has worked in the ambulance service for more than a decade, but describes the last 12 months as the most difficult she can remember.
"Over the winter I have witnessed and helped with cardiac arrests in the corridors of hospitals and in the back of ambulances," she said.
"I spent four hours with an end-of-life patient. There was no hospice or district nurse available, so I had to make the choice to give them meds for a peaceful, expected death and prepare the family.
"I felt ashamed that I could not stay till the end, but I had to move on to the next job as I had done all I could."
The HSIB found NHS staff were reporting increased levels of stress, worry and exhaustion because they were not always able to help the sickest patients.
For an interim study, it spoke to doctors, nurses, and other emergency workers, as well as taking evidence from the NHS and other national organisations.
It had to change the way it carried out the investigation after hearing the "emotionally charged feelings" of people working in the system.
In interviews and focus groups, staff working in A&E described making "challenging decisions" about which patients in queuing ambulances to take into the hospital building for treatment.
Staff working on wards talked about the impact of being unable to discharge patients into social or community care "resulting in further medical intervention and an extended stay in hospital".
Emergency call handlers described answering repeated 999 calls from the same sick patients waiting for an ambulance.
Those dispatchers told the investigation that it was common to worry "how many people are we going to kill today?", because they were not always able to send out ambulances quickly enough.
"One call that really stuck with me was a man ringing for his wife who had fallen over 50 hours ago," one 999 call handler told the BBC.
The handler wanted to remain anonymous as he did not have permission from his employer to talk to the media.
"They'd been waiting so long that he had decided to move her around the house by dragging her on a rug, so when she eventually wet herself, she would be on a tile floor instead of the living room floor," he continued.
"I've had people breaking down to me, crying on the phone, begging me to send an ambulance, and I just have to tell them it will most likely be several more hours, at least."
He described the amount of abuse received by his team as "phenomenal" over the winter, including death threats and being "called every name under the sun".
"I've seen colleagues try to calm someone down and apologise for the wait time only to be hit with a wall of abuse. I've seen colleagues cry after finishing these calls," he said.
The HSIB said its investigation found evidence of "strong links" between the wellbeing of NHS staff and patient safety.
It said anxiety, stress and depression, and other forms of psychiatric illness were consistently the most reported reason for staff sickness in the health service.
The latest figures for September 2022 show that category alone accounted for almost 500,000 full-time days lost in a single month and about 25% of all unplanned absence.
"We heard words like 'demoralising', 'powerless', 'hurt', 'relentless' during our interviews with staff," said the HSIB's national investigator Neil Alexander.
"If staff are unwell, they are unable to be at work. That means other staff have to cover for them, which again increases the pressure on the system so teams are not able to function as efficiently and safely as they could do."
Staff also told investigators about how the pressure was affecting them outside work, with many struggling to interact normally with friends and family. Some who lived alone reported feelings of isolation and despair after difficult days.
The watchdog said it heard reports of "significant waiting lists" for employee assistance schemes, occupational health, and other support services.
Dr Salwa Malik, 38, an A&E consultant and vice-president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said: "I would say we give exemplary care and we do keep our patients safe. But there does come a point when the pressures are so bad, that you can't guarantee it, and that's the scary bit.
"If you're on edge for 10 or 12 hours a day then, at the end of the shift, you can kind of crumble... and you can't always switch off," she added.
"I've had nights where you go over the scenarios in your head and it can be very difficult to sleep, then you wake in the middle of the night and look for any distraction to not think about it."
A spokeswoman for NHS England said there was "no doubt" that NHS staff have faced "significant challenges" this winter with record demand for urgent and emergency care.
"The safety of both patients and staff is vital, and the NHS takes staff health and wellbeing incredibly seriously with a range of support including dedicated helplines, wellbeing apps and coaching, as well as the option of flexible working," she said in a statement.
The Department of Health and Social Care said it made an extra £750m available in England to speed up discharges from hospital and free up beds over the winter.
"We've published an urgent and emergency care recovery plan to further reduce pressure on hospitals by scaling up community teams, expanding virtual wards, and getting 800 new ambulances on to the roads, and funding for staffing to go alongside that," said a spokesman.
Additional reporting by Kris Bramwell and Emma Pengelly.
Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also get in touch in the following ways: | Stress and Wellness |
A 45-year-old tech tycoon who spends upwards of $2 million per year to bio-hack his body into aging backwards said he eats dinner at 11 a.m. to achieve an 18-year-old physique.
Bryan Johnson — who also has said he uses a machine to count his nighttime erections and has taken steps to make his rectum perform like a teenager’s — made his fortune in his 30s when he sold his payment processing company Braintree Payment Solutions to EBay for $800 million in cash.
In addition to swapping blood with his teenage son and taking more than 100 supplements a day, Johnson said his daily routine also includes consuming all of his food for the day before the clock strikes noon.
Johnson responded on Twitter to a commenter who quizzed him over his eating schedule.
“Is this a typo? Can you clarify?” tweeted Twitter user Martina Markota, who wondered whether the tech mogul actually ate his dinner before noon.
“My final meal of the day is at 11 am. I eat between ~6-11am,” Johnson tweeted.
Johnson is a practitioner of “time-restricted eating,” also referred to as “intermittent fasting,” which means cramming meals into a window so as to allow for longer periods of digestive rest.
The practice, which has been made popular in recent years by celebrities, has been touted for its purported health benefits, including increased energy, weight loss, and greater mental focus and cognition.
Johnson became a social media sensation earlier this year after a report detailing his extreme daily ritual which is aimed at getting all of his major organs — including his brain, liver, kidneys, teeth, skin, hair, penis and rectum — functioning as they were in his late teens.
In May, it was learned that Johnson enlisted his 17-year-old son, Talmage, to be his personal “blood boy” by providing transfusions in an hours-long process whereby plasma is fed directly into the dad’s veins.
Using plasma as an anti-aging technique caught the attention of wellness junkies when scientists literally stitched young and old mice together so they shared a circulatory system, Bloomberg reported.
The older rodents showed improvements in their cognitive function, metabolism and bone structure, while the younger subjects showed that frequent blood donation could have positive effects.
However, there is little human-based data, leaving many researchers to view plasma-swapping longevity techniques as inconclusive, according to Bloomberg.
Known as Project Blueprint, Johnson adheres to a strict vegan diet totaling 1,977 calories per day, a one-hour-long exercise regimen, high-intensity exercises three times a week, and going to bed at the same time each night.
“What I do may sound extreme, but I’m trying to prove that self-harm and decay are not inevitable,” Johnson told Bloomberg News.
Johnson wakes every morning at 5 am, takes two dozen supplements, works out for an hour, drinks green juice laced with creatine and collagen peptides, and brushes and flosses his teeth while rinsing with tea-tree oil and antioxidant gel.
Before bedtime, Johnson wears glasses that block blue light for two hours. He also constantly monitors his vital signs and undergoes monthly medical procedures to maintain his results, including ultrasounds, MRIs, colonoscopies and blood tests.
While sleeping, Johnson is hooked up to a machine that counts the number of nighttime erections. He also takes daily measurements of his weight, body mass index, body fat, blood glucose levels and heart-rate variations.
Johnson’s part of a trend that has become fashionable among Silicon Valley tech executives who have vowed to crack the code on aging and longevity.
Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder, has invested millions of dollars into a nonprofit that seeks to make “90 the new 50 by 2030.” | Longevity |
BERLIN — Germany's Cabinet is set to approve a plan to liberalize rules on cannabis, setting the scene for the European Union's most populous member to decriminalize possession of limited amounts and allow members of “cannabis clubs” to buy the substance for recreational purposes.
The government's approval, expected on Wednesday, is billed as the first step in a two-part plan and will still need approval by parliament. But it's a stride forward for a prominent reform project of Chancellor Olaf Scholz's socially liberal coalition, though significantly short of the government's original ambitions.
Health Minister Karl Lauterbach is to give details of the finalized legislation on Wednesday. His most recent public proposal foresees legalizing possession of up to 25 grams (nearly 1 ounce) of cannabis for recreational purposes and allowing individuals to grow up to three plants on their own.
German residents who are 18 and older would be allowed to join nonprofit “cannabis clubs” with a maximum of 500 members each. The clubs would be allowed to grow cannabis for members’ personal consumption.
Individuals would be allowed to buy up to 25 grams per day, or up to 50 grams per month — a figure limited to 30 grams for under-21s. Membership in multiple clubs would not be allowed. The clubs’ costs would be covered by membership fees, which would be staggered according to how much cannabis members use.
Officials hope their plan will help push back the black market, protect consumers against contaminated products, and reduce drug-related crime.
“We are not creating a problem,” Lauterbach said earlier this year. “We are trying to solve a problem.”
The center-right opposition disagrees, arguing that the government is pressing ahead with legalizing a risky drug despite European legal obstacles and expert opinion. An organization representing German judges says the plan is likely to increase rather than decrease the burden on the judicial system and could even increase demand for black-market cannabis.
Some advocates of legalization aren't happy either.
“What we're getting from the health minister is overregulation, a continued stigmatization of cannabis users, and a much too tight regulatory corset, which simply makes it impossible for many, many (cannabis clubs) to work,” said Oliver Waack-Jürgensen, who heads the Berlin-based High Ground “cannabis social club” founded last year. He is also on the board of a national association representing such clubs.
The government has said it plans to follow the new legislation by mapping out a second step — five-year tests of regulated commercial supply chains in select regions, which would then be scientifically evaluated.
That's far short of its original plan last year, which foresaw allowing the sale of cannabis to adults across the country at licensed outlets. It was scaled back following talks with the EU's executive commission.
Lauterbach has said Germany doesn’t want to emulate the model of the neighboring Netherlands, which combines decriminalization with little market regulation. He has said Germany hopes to set an example for Europe.
Dutch authorities tolerate the sale and consumption of small amounts of the substance at so-called coffeeshops but producing and selling large amounts of it, necessary to keep the coffeeshops supplied, remains illegal. Amsterdam, long a magnet for tourists wanting to smoke weed, has been cracking down on coffee shops.
The Dutch government, meanwhile, has launched an experiment it says aims to “determine whether and how controlled cannabis can be legally supplied to coffeeshops and what the effects of this would be.”
Approaches elsewhere in Europe vary. In Switzerland, authorities last year cleared the way for a pilot project allowing a few hundred people in Basel to buy cannabis from pharmacies for recreational purposes. The Czech government has been working on a plan similar to Germany's to allow sale and recreational use of cannabis, which isn't finalized.
Denmark's capital, Copenhagen, has proposed legalizing weed but has been turned down by parliament. France has no plans to liberalize its strict cannabis rules.
—Associated Press writers Pietro De Cristofaro in Berlin; Mike Corder in The Hague; Karel Janicek in Prague; Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen and Sylvie Corbet in Paris contributed to this report.
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This is the moment two devoted mums battling to save their sons from the same life-threatening condition met for the first time.
Marie Siddans’ 15-year-old son Harry punches the air with glee as his delighted mother looks on, while Charlotte Caldwell cuddles her boy Billy – grateful her crusade to make medical cannabis free for children with severe epilepsy has helped one more family.
“I just wanted to say just how thankful we are to you for helping us with Harry,” Marie told Charlotte. “It’s so special and means the world to us. It feels amazing to finally meet you in person.”
For two years, Charlotte has been on a one-woman mission to stop parents of children with the condition having to pay thousands of pounds for treatment.
Her 17-year-old son made history when he was given the first NHS-funded prescription for medicinal cannabis in the UK in November 2020.
And that was only after desperate Charlotte broke the law, making headlines in 2018 when she openly smuggled the banned drug here from Canada.
The medication was seized by customs officials – but returned to Charlotte the next day after then-Home Secretary Sajid Javid stepped in as Billy’s condition became life-threatening. He granted an emergency licence allowing doctors to treat him.
Mr Javid also called for an urgent review of cannabis based medicinal products.
And Charlotte’s determination to fight for her son led to a law change allowing specialist doctors to prescribe them when licensed products would not work.
There is now no limit to the type of conditions that can be considered for treatment, but progress to help more children is painfully slow.
Since the legal change only a handful more children have been given the drug free on the NHS – leaving around 90 families with severely epileptic youngsters forking out up to £2,000 a month on private prescriptions, with fees on top.
Medical cannabis is still not routinely available on the NHS because of a lack of clinical trials by the manufacturers.
So Charlotte, 51, has been lobbying pharmaceutical companies, pleading with them to give free cannabis medication to children with lifethreatening epilepsy. And one of the first two youngsters to benefit is Harry, from Dunmow, Essex.
His mum Marie, 48, got in touch with Charlotte on social media after learning how she had persuaded four global firms to gift medical cannabis to severely epileptic children awaiting NHS funding.
So far, Harry and one other child are benefiting from Charlotte’s campaigning.
Charlotte said: “I feel humbled I’ve been able to help Marie, Harry and her husband. It’s heartbreaking for a family to have to pay out up to £1,500 a month for medicines.
“It shouldn’t be happening. £1,500 worth lasts four weeks, and on top of that you have to pay for the private prescription and a mandatory video call with the consultant.”
Harry has severe refractory epilepsy that cannot be controlled by licensed anti-epileptic medication.
He was having up to a dozen seizures a day, some life-threatening. The family started using cannabis oil – CBD – two-and-a-half years ago and it cut seizures to one or two a week.
Before that he was unable to walk or go to school. But the treatment came with a monthly bill of £995 for Marie and her landscape gardener husband William, 44.
The couple spent more than £30,000 over two-and-a-half years, borrowing from family to cover the cost.
“When it’s your child, you’ll do anything,” said Marie.
“Before the CBD Harry was in a vegetative state on the floor, we had to drag him from room to room on a duvet.
“When he had seizures at night he’d end up face down and at risk of suffocation. We had to have a camera linked to our phones as an alarm.
“His seizures left him exhausted so he’d miss 30% to 40% of school.”
The family applied for medical cannabis on the NHS six months ago. Harry is still awaiting an appointment.
Charlotte’s son Billy had 300 seizures a day at the family home in Castlederg, County Tyrone, until he started taking cannabis oils.
She said: “You can’t get these drugs routinely on the NHS even though they are legal.
“Families must apply for NHS funding via the Refractory Epilepsy Specialist Clinical Advisory Service.
“It can take eight months and isn’t always successful.
“Oil makers need to do trials to improve the case for cannabis. The NHS wants to work with them but none have come forward so far.
“Meanwhile we want more manufacturers to provide free treatment and not take thousands from vulnerable parents so they can keep their child alive.”
Charlotte De Lima, of charity Young Epilepsy, said: “No parent should have to pay for their child’s prescribed epilepsy treatment if an NHS epilepsy specialist clinician believes it to be in the child’s best interests.”
Charlotte has told how a doctor once advised giving Billy a fatal shot of morphine at four months old to end his “short and painful” life. That only spurred her on to be a crusader.
She said: “I’ll never stop supporting parents who need medical cannabis for their child but can’t afford to pay.”
The Department of Health said: “We take an evidence based approach to ensure unlicensed cannabis-based treatments are proved safe and effective before they can be considered for rollout on the NHS more widely.” | Drug Discoveries |
At a health-screening event in Sarasota, Florida, people gathered in a parking lot and waited their turn for blood pressure or diabetes checks. The event was held in Sarasota's Newtown neighborhood, a historically Black community. Local Tracy Green, 54, joined the line outside a pink-and-white bus that offered free mammograms.
"It's a blessing because some people, like me, are not fortunate, and so this is what I needed," she said.
Green wanted the exam because cancer runs in her family. And she shared another health worry: Her large breasts cause her severe back pain. A doctor once recommended she get reduction surgery, but she's uninsured and said she can't afford the procedure.
In a 2022 Gallup Poll, 38% of American adults surveyed said they had put off medical treatment within the previous year due to cost, up from 26% in 2021. The new figure is the highest since Gallup started tracking the issue in 2001. In a survey by KFF released last summer, 43% of respondents said they or a family member delayed or put off health care because of costs. It found people were most likely to delay dental care, followed by vision services and doctor's office visits. Many didn't take medications as prescribed.
The Newtown screening event — organized by the nonprofit Multicultural Health Institute in partnership with a local hospital and other health care providers — is part of an effort to fill the coverage gap for low-income people.
Green explained that her teeth are in bad shape but dental care will also have to wait. She lacks health insurance and a stable job. When she can, she finds occasional work as a day laborer through a local temp office.
"I only make like $60 or $70-something a day. You know that ain't making no money," said Green. "And some days you go in and they don't have work."
If she lived in another state, Green might be able to enroll in Medicaid. But Florida is one of 10 states that haven't expanded the federal-state health insurance program to cover more working-age adults. With rent and other bills to pay, Green said, her health is taking a back seat.
"I don't have money to go to the dentist, nothing," she said. "It's so expensive. Now, to get one extraction, one tooth pulled, it's like $200-$300 that you don't have. So I don't know what to do. It's like fighting a losing battle right now."
In the KFF poll, 85% of uninsured adults under age 65 said they found it difficult to pay for health care. Nearly half of their insured counterparts said they struggled with affordability as well.
The U.S. inflation rate hit a four-decade peak last year, and parts of Florida, including the Tampa metro area, often fared even worse.
"We see an increasing desperation," said Dr. Lisa Merritt, executive director of the Multicultural Health Institute.
The nonprofit, which helps people access low-cost care, is based in Newtown, where, inland from Sarasota's lavish beach communities, many residents live below the poverty line, lack insurance, and face other barriers to consistent and affordable care.
"It's very difficult for people to be concerned about abstract things like getting screenings, getting regular health maintenance, when they're contending with the challenges of basic survival: food, shelter, transportation often," Merritt said.
Merritt and her team of volunteers work to build trust with residents who may not be aware that support is available. They help people apply for low-cost insurance coverage, free medication programs, and other resources that can reduce treatment costs. Volunteer Bonnie Hardy said the people she serves have many financial worries, but one thing tops the list.
"Right now? A place to stay," said Hardy. "Housing is horrible."
High housing costs have started to ease in recent months, but data shows rent in Sarasota has risen nearly 47% since the pandemic began in 2020. Hardy helps people find housing and connects them with programs that cover costs like utilities and security deposits. The goal is to stabilize their lives, and she said that can improve health.
"Because they're more comfortable now," she said. "They feel like, hey, the rent is paid, I can let my guard down, maybe I can go get the medical attention I need."
Research shows putting off health care can lead to bigger problems. The Gallup Poll found 27% of respondents delayed treatment due to costs even for "very or somewhat serious" conditions.
Some people may be holding off on treating medical issues because of health care debt. An investigation from NPR and KHN found about 100 million people in America had medical debt. About 1 in 8 of them owe more than $10,000, according to a KFF poll.
Treating cancer or chronic conditions like diabetes early can save lives and be less expensive than treating advanced-stage illnesses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Doctors at the health screening event in Newtown said it's critical to help residents obtain preventive care. At the health fair, substitute teacher Crystal Clyburn, 51, got a mammogram on the mammography bus and had her blood pressure checked.
Clyburn doesn't have health insurance and said she relies on free events to stay on top of her health.
"I just try to take advantage of whatever that's out there, whatever that's free," she said. "You have to take care of yourself because you can look healthy and not even know you're sick."
After the cuff came off, a doctor told Clyburn her blood pressure was a little high but not high enough that she needed to take medication. Clyburn smiled, thanked him, and left relieved to know that the cost of prescription drugs was one expense she wouldn't have to worry about.
KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.
for more features. | Health Policy |
Another new Omicron variant has got scientists talking.
Although the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the end of COVID-19 as a global health emergency in May, the virus is still widespread - and mutating.
While the EG.5 and EG.5.1 now makes up one in seven cases in the UK, a new heavily-mutated version of Omicron could be another cause for concern.
So far the latest BA.2 "sub-lineage" (coined BA.6 or 'Pi') has only been sequenced a handful of times in Denmark and Israel - but the early differences showing up could mean it has the potential to cause a fresh wave of infections.
Here's what we know so far.
Where has it been found - and when did it emerge?
The new variant is a mutation of the first sub-variant of Omicron known as BA.2 that emerged in November 2021.
It has only been sequenced three times, twice in Denmark and once in Israel, having first been identified in Denmark on 24 July.
This doesn't mean there aren't more cases, but it has only appeared on a small number of occasions when scientists have screened virus samples for their genetic make-up.
Some are predicting it may already be in the UK and the US.
At such an early stage, it hasn't been given an official name - although some are referring to it as BA.6 or the 'Pi' variant.
How is it different?
Compared to the original BA.2, the new variant has 33 mutations of the spike protein - the membranes on the outside of the virus that allow it to enter and infect human cells.
These are the things that change as the virus grows and evolves - and can help it spread faster or evade immunity provided by either natural infection or vaccines.
Professor Andrew Easton, a virologist at the University of Warwick, explains: "Some mutations are damaging to the virus, some are neutral so don't have any impact at all, and others may benefit the virus.
"Those benefits could give it an advantage in growing more effectively or rapidly - or allowing it to evade the immunity that already exists in the community."
Because of the large number of mutations, it's being referred to as a 'saltation' - a large mutational change from one generation of virus to the next, which was used to describe Omicron when it first emerged.
Should we be worried?
With only three cases sequenced, it is "way too early to say what impact this new variant will have", according to Ryan Hisner, an online COVID genomic sequencing tracker on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Professor Christina Pagel, an expert in operational research at UCL, adds that although it is "very, very early days" it has "a lot of new mutations that make it very different to previous Omicron strains".
She says this could mean it is "potentially more able to cause a big wave" because it could outstrip the immunity we already have.
But Professor Easton says although there are a considerable number of mutations - you need far more cases to see if a pattern of rapid spread, immune escape or more severe disease emerges.
"In order to assess all these things it's a numbers game," he tells Sky News.
"It's not something we can easily predict - but what we can say is that these mutations may affect the virus's ability to escape immunity - or spread faster."
For example a variant labelled BS.1.1 appeared with significant mutations in 2022 but "had little impact globally".
The most important thing for now, Professor Easton stresses, is surveillance.
"The earlier you're able to pick up a variant of concern the earlier you can intervene in terms of alerting people to the risks - or altering vaccines.
"Because the faster you react the lesser the impact on people." | Epidemics & Outbreaks |
A weight-loss jab has been rejected for NHS use by England’s drugs watchdog.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), which provides recommendations and guidance to health practitioners, said more evidence was needed on the clinical and cost-effectiveness of tirzepatide, which is sold under the brand name Mounjaro, before it could be recommended for NHS use.
The weekly injection, developed by the US pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, works alongside diet and exercise to treat adults with type 2 diabetes.
The move comes after Nice approved a similar drug for NHS use, Wegovy or semaglutide, for adults with at least one obesity-related health problem, which can include type 2 diabetes. Stocks are not yet available, but the prime minister has said GPs in England may soon start offering it to some patients, as well as specialist weight management clinics.
Evidence given to the Nice committee from clinical trials showed tirzepatide at any dose resulted in better glucose control and weight loss compared with semaglutide or insulin therapy. Weight loss was more pronounced with a higher dose of the drug, although the impact on glucose levels was less dose dependent.
Nice said its independent committee “recognised the importance of new treatment options” but “more evidence is needed on the clinical and cost-effectiveness of the drug before it is recommended for NHS use”.
It has requested more data from Eli Lilly to address uncertainties in the evidence, which it said should be provided alongside further clarifications on the company’s economic model.
Nice said it was “unclear how accurately the model predicts the long-term health benefits – for example avoiding complications of diabetes – with tirzepatide compared with [alternatives], so it is yet to be established if tirzepatide represents good value for money”.
Helen Knight, the director of medicines evaluation at Nice, added: “Type 2 diabetes is becoming more prevalent in society, so new treatment options are needed to help people with it to control their blood-glucose levels. Our committee can see the promise in tirzepatide but it requires more evidence to be able to evaluate both its clinical and cost effectiveness.”
A consultation on the Nice guidance has started and will run until 18 July.
Data published by Eli Lilly in April revealed tirzepatide helped people with type 2 diabetes who were overweight or obese lose up to 16% of their body weight, or more than 34lb (15.4kg) over nearly 17 months.
The trial evaluated 938 adults with obesity or who were overweight and had type 2 diabetes. Researchers compared the drug with a placebo as an add-on to a reduced-calorie diet and increased physical activity for those taking part. | Drug Discoveries |
What began in early 2022 has turned into a persistent, and increasingly troubling, avian influenza outbreak. The threat is currently limited to poultry -- affecting at least 58 million birds and sending . The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention maintains that the public health threat remains low, meaning people who don't work or spend time with birds aren't at risk. Those who do work around birds, including poultry workers and hunters, should take precautions, including wearing gloves and protective equipment.
Now, amid fears the virus will start spreading among people and the fact that it continues to devastate farms across the country, US government officials are considering vaccinating poultry, according to a report by The New York Times. A mass bird flu vaccination campaign targeting poultry would be a first in the US, the Times reports, but some tests on potential poultry vaccines are underway.
"There are a range of options the United States regularly considers when there is any outbreak that could affect the security and safety of the United States' food supply," a spokesperson for the National Security Council told CNET. "Right now, we are focused on promoting and enhancing high-impact biosafety practices and procedures."
As long as animals and humans live, work and gather around each other, there will be a risk of viruses mutating enough to make the jump from species to species. Fortunately, bird flu in humans so far has been rare, in part because the virus doesn't spread that easily from animals to humans, or between humans. Recently, two family members contracted bird flu in Cambodia, and one of them died. The CDC said in an early March memo that both of these cases likely resulted from bird-to-human contact near the shared household, and that there's no evidence of human-to-human spread right now. There's also been in the US, in someone who had direct contact with birds. (This US case also might be result of the virus contaminating the nasal passages, rather than causing an actual infection.)
Still, some "sporadic" human cases of bird flu in the US "would not be surprising," given the number of birds that are sick as well as infections in people in other countries who've had exposure to avian influenza, the CDC said in a November statement. But the fact that bird flu continues to spread widely and expose more species to the virus keeps the door cracked for the virus to adapt to spread human to human. If, or when, bird flu starts spreading person to person will spell trouble, according to Dr. Meg Schaeffer, an epidemiologist and the national public health adviser for SAS Institute, a data analytics firm.
"The concerning factors are that it continues to spread -- so that's one issue, because the more activity you have, the more likelihood there is for the virus to spread from animals to people," said Schaeffer, who works with public health data modernization, including some work with the CDC and the US Department of Agriculture. Even more troublesome, she said, is that scientists might not be able to quickly catch it if it's spread outside where avian influenza is currently monitored, in people who respond to sick poultry, meaning:
"It is likely that that would start to occur before we would know it."
Here's what to know about bird flu, or avian influenza.
What is bird flu?
Bird flu, aka avian influenza, is a disease caused by infection with influenza type A viruses. These viruses can circulate among birds around the world and have infected humans in rare cases, mostly those who work directly with infected birds. If the viruses mutate enough, the public health fear is that they might make the jump to spread among humans. Bird flu was first detected and controlled in 1997, but it reemerged in 2003 and started spreading widely among birds.
The predominant bird flu virus in the world is H5N1, according to the CDC. Since 2003, more than 880 human cases of earlier strains of H5N1 have been reported in humans.
Influenza viruses that cause the bird flu are either "low pathogenic" or "highly pathogenic." Highly pathogenic bird flu can cause severe disease or death in poultry, and it's those cases that the USDA is reporting. Both low and highly pathogenic viruses have caused mild to severe disease in infected humans.
The World Health Organization reports four types of influenza viruses: A, B, C and D. Type A viruses, which occur in both humans and different kinds of animals, are the biggest threat to public health and can cause pandemics, the WHO says. The "swine flu" of 2009's pandemic was caused by a type A virus. Seasonal flu viruses in humans are caused by type A and type B viruses.
Is it deadly?
Though human cases remain rare, about half of previous H5N1 human infections have resulted in death, the CDC said. But as the agency noted in its April statement on the human case of bird flu, the current H5N1 appears different than earlier strains.
But because of the potential for a serious health threat, the WHO, CDC and USDA are closely monitoring outbreaks in the US and in other countries. The CDC has said it has "produced a candidate vaccine virus," if it's needed, in response to a potential public health threat.
Where is it in the US? How is it being monitored?
The first case was in a wild bird in South Carolina. Other cases were reported in some backyard flocks as well as some poultry farms, where animals are raised commercially for food. Any birds of the flocks that have cases of avian flu will not enter the food system, the USDA said.
Can people catch bird flu? Here are the precautions to take
Birds can shed avian influenza virus in their saliva, feces and mucus, according to the CDC. Humans can get sick by breathing in the virus, or by touching their eyes, nose or mouth. Most human bird flu cases have been reported in people who work directly with birds.
To avoid getting sick, avoid contact with wild birds, don't touch dead or sick birds you see, and avoid visiting bird markets or farms if you're traveling to another country, according to the CDC.
Extra precautions or monitoring may be taken if you work directly with birds, if you hunt birds or if you're a health care worker. If you have contact with an infected bird, contact your local or state health department. Here's a directory of local health departments in the US.
To avoid contamination from poultry of any kind, make sure to properly handle your poultry and eggs, and thoroughly cook them to 165 degrees Fahrenheit, the USDA says, to kill bacteria and viruses.
You can also report a dead bird to your local health department or wildlife agency, which will help public health officials track not only the bird flu but also viruses such as West Nile virus. Reporting dead birds might be especially important if you see more than one of them.
The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives. | Epidemics & Outbreaks |
Munchies before bedtime aren't anything new -- we're all prone to snacking before we get some shut-eye. But there are so many rules, like avoiding caffeine, not eating sweets, and staying away from acidic or spicy foods. And it makes sense, as choosing the wrong snacks before we go to bed can significantly impact our overall sleep quality and well-being.
When it comes to snacking at night, it's all about giving our bodies the right nutrients -- as well as enough time -- to ensure a restful night's sleep. You don't have to cut back on all food right before bed. According to Sleep Foundation, it helps to stop eating around two to four hours before trying to fall asleep. If anything, doing this will help prevent indigestion.
Finding the best snacks to eat before bed means finding a delicate balance between satisfying your cravings and ingesting sleep-friendly ingredients. Here, we'll delve into what kind of snacks offer both comfort and health benefits, ultimately helping you to drift off into sleep.
Sweet Potatoes
Sweet potatoes are a great source of nutrition. They even contain nutrients that could help you sleep better. Sweet potatoes contain vitamin B6, vitamin C, and complex carbohydrates, according to Healthline. While carbs sometimes get a bad rap, research has shown that carbohydrates can help increase serotonin levels in the brain. This is particularly helpful for a pre-bed snack because serotonin is a neurotransmitter that plays a crucial role in regulating mood and sleep.
As far as the vitamins, studies have found that B vitamins, in particular, can potentially help with sleep. When taken as a supplement, vitamin B6 can promote better sleep. If consumed through foods like sweet potatoes, your body has just as good of a chance of getting that vitamin. Furthermore, vitamin C, which is known for boosting your immune system, can help you get to sleep. Some research has shown that vitamin C can help you sleep longer and even hinder the effects of sleep apnea.
It's also been proven in studies that magnesium combats insomnia. As the United States Department of Agriculture explains, just one average sweet potato has around 32 milligrams of magnesium. For a snack, we recommend eating some homemade sweet potato chips before bed.
Walnuts
Incorporating a small handful of walnuts into your evening snack routine -- or adding them to meals such as salad or oatmeal -- can be a tasty way to support better sleep. Studies have found that walnuts actually contain some melatonin, the hormone that regulates the sleep-wake cycle, which your body absorbs when eating the nuts. Plus, walnuts contain omega-3 fatty acids, which help produce DHA, which in turn increases serotonin in your brain, reports Healthline.
In addition to fatty acids, walnuts also contain an abundance of magnesium and fiber -- a cup of halved nuts has 6.7 grams of dietary fiber and a whopping 158 milligrams of magnesium, according to the USDA. Magnesium is known to help with muscle relaxation, leading to better sleep. Fiber can help keep you feeling full and prevent overeating before bed, as well as maintain stable blood sugar levels throughout the night, explains the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There's even a chance that walnuts could steer you away from junk food by combating cravings because your body is more satiated from the dietary fiber in the nuts.
Edamame
To start, a cup of edamame has about 416 milligrams of tryptophan, reports My Food Data. Tryptophan is an amino acid that can help with sleep disorders by aiding in the brain's production of both serotonin and melatonin. In addition to tryptophan, edamame's nutrient content can indirectly promote better sleep. These nutrients can benefit overall health and reduce factors that could disrupt sleep, such as hunger, muscle discomfort, or inflammation.
According to Healthline, edamame contains a balanced combination of carbohydrates, protein, and fiber, all of which can curb hunger and stabilize blood sugar. It also contains magnesium, which can reduce the likelihood of muscle cramps and restless leg syndrome. Finally, edamame is rich in antioxidants, particularly isoflavones. Some studies have found that isoflavones have anti-inflammatory properties. Since inflammation can interrupt sleep, consuming edamame, even a few hours before you go to bed, is a good way to combat this issue.
Bananas
Bananas are also packed with pectin, as Healthline reports, which is known to satiate hunger and keep you feeling full, which could help you sleep longer. They're also rich in several essential vitamins and nutrients, a few of which can help your body relax, rejuvenate, and coast off to sleep. The fruit is a great source of magnesium, vitamin B6, vitamin C, tryptophan, and water.
Having ample vitamin B6 in your body is necessary for converting tryptophan into serotonin, explains Healthline. There's nearly 0.5 milligrams of vitamin B6 in a banana, according to the USDA. What's more, one banana has about 34 milligrams of magnesium, 11 milligrams of vitamin C, and 94 grams of water. Magnesium and vitamin C can help your body relax and recuperate by easing your muscles and supporting your immune system, respectively. Additionally, the fact that bananas contain water is beneficial, as hydration is essential for maintaining bodily functions, including those involved in sleep. Suffice it to say snacking on a banana before bed can help promote better sleep just by taking care of your body.
Hard-Boiled Eggs
Easy to make, hard-boiled eggs are a perfect snack to help you get to sleep. Eggs can help you get a better night's rest because they have a small amount of tryptophan, but also because they naturally have melatonin. A larger-sized egg has about 77 milligrams of tryptophan, explains My Food Data. That might not be as much as other foods, but it still can make a difference in sleep patterns. Eggs are also a good source of calcium. There are about 25 milligrams in one egg, according to the USDA, which can help manage melatonin in your body. Sauder Eggs reports that the melatonin and calcium in eggs can create stability in your sleep.
Studies have also proven that eggs are an excellent source of high-quality protein, and incorporating protein-rich snacks into your evening diet can reduce late-night hunger and prevent sleep disruptions. Additionally, eggs provide vitamins D and B12, and minerals like iron and zinc, all of which are essential for overall health and energy production, indirectly supporting sleep.
Turkey And Spinach Wraps
While eating a full turkey dinner before bed is not advised, in smaller doses, turkey is a great food to help you get some sleep. Turkey is high in protein and tryptophan, and these nutrients can help your body get some solid rest, according to Healthline. That makes turkey a good option to include in a bedtime snack, such as a turkey wrap with spinach.
Spinach is a superfood, which means that it's high in various essential nutrients. Spinach contains a rather high amount of potassium and vitamin A, explains the USDA. Moreover, spinach also contains omega-3 fatty acids, magnesium, dietary fiber, as well as several B vitamins, all of which can improve your health, making you more likely to sleep better. This leafy green also contains folate. As some studies report, folate (also known as vitamin B9) has been linked to the reduction of insomnia. Having enough folate can enable serotonin production, helping to aid in your sleep.
Spinach and turkey each contain nutrients that can improve your overall health and help you sleep. Wrap both up in a whole grain tortilla, which boasts of its own dietary fiber and complex carbs, and you've got a healthful snack that can also warrant a better night's rest.
Pistachios
In addition to being a nut that is overall good for your health, pistachios are an ideal snack to indulge in before sleeping. Pistachios contain melatonin, according to Healthline, which helps your body rest for longer. The nuts also have antioxidants, unsaturated fatty acids, and a whole lot of potassium, which all contribute to their anti-inflammatory properties, explains WebMD. By preventing or reducing the symptoms of inflammation, especially if you have chronic inflammation, you're more likely to get proper sleep.
Moreover, as the USDA reports, a cup of unsalted pistachios is an excellent source of protein (24.8 grams) to keep you fuller at bedtime, magnesium (149 milligrams) to relax your body, and calcium (129 milligrams), which helps your body make tryptophan, according to Medical News Today.
Plus, pistachios are often sold in their shells, so they take time to de-shell and eat. This can prevent you from eating too many of them before bed -- like we're prone to do with salty junk food -- keeping you satiated but not overstuffed.
Goji Berries
If you aren't familiar with the goji berries, they're an oblong berry that somewhat resembles a grape tomato, and their tart flavor has been compared to that of sour cranberries. You can eat them fresh or dried or mix them in smoothies.
Despite being part of the nightshade family, goji berries are not only safe to eat, but they're rather healthy. They are packed with vitamin A, which supports both your organs and immune system. Additionally, these berries also contain melatonin in higher amounts than other berries, which, of course, aids with sleep.
In addition to combating oxidative stress, Medical News Today explains how they can also improve your mood and help you feel more calm, therefore promoting better sleep. Plus, goji berries are often used in traditional Chinese medicine, where the berries are seen as an adaptogen, which means they may help the body adapt to stress and maintain balance.
Yogurt
Yogurt has plenty of nutrients that can contribute to better rest, from important probiotics to vitamins and minerals, such as calcium and vitamin D. This pre-bedtime snack contains live probiotic cultures that are known to support gut health, according to Healthline. A healthy gut microbiome has been linked to various aspects of health, including mood regulation. By managing stress and anxiety, a balanced gut can incidentally encourage sleep. Additionally, this study has linked together the support of the gut microbiota with the metabolism of tryptophan, solidifying why snacks like yogurt can help you get some shut-eye.
Plain yogurt has plenty of calcium. It's been proven in studies that calcium has a direct effect on brain function and sleep, especially when eating it. Vitamin D, also found in yogurt, contributes to better sleep cycles. This study shows that a lack of the vitamin has been connected to sleep disturbances. Besides how yogurt can ease you into sleep, it's also an easy snack to prepare, as it's ready to eat and can be enjoyed by itself.
Kiwis
Kiwis are a deliciously juicy and hydrating bedtime snack. They're also rich in nutrients, and many of these vitamins and minerals can lead to better sleep. Just one kiwi has a rather astounding amount of potassium (215 milligrams) as well as a good amount of vitamin C (64 milligrams), magnesium (11.7 milligrams), and calcium (23.5 milligrams), all of which can keep the immune system healthy and help with muscle relaxation, explains Medical News Today. Kiwis also contain folate, which helps with mood stabilization, thereby helping you rest with less stress or mood-related disturbances during the night or before bedtime.
Studies have discussed how the fruit also naturally contains both melatonin and serotonin, so consuming kiwis -- especially in the evening -- may help signal to your body that it's time to sleep. Then, when you consider the antioxidants kiwis have, it's clear the fruit is truly a powerhouse, as other studies have shown that eating antioxidant-rich fruits can improve sleep. Eating kiwi by itself or adding a few to a yogurt bowl or smoothie to enjoy before bed is a great way to encourage rest.
Oats
Eating oats provides your body with various nutrients. While they might not be appealing when eaten plain, a bowl of oatmeal makes a great pre-bed snack. Whatever way you enjoy them, oats can give your body the nutrients and the rest it needs. First, they're an excellent source of fiber and protein. Both can help to curb hunger, keeping you asleep throughout the night.
Additionally, oats also have about 13% of the daily value needed for magnesium, plus a little bit of folate, potassium, calcium, and vitamin B6, according to Healthline. Even in smaller doses, these vitamins and minerals can support your body and help you get to sleep.
Registered dietitian Lauren Manaker explains to Well+Good that oats are a great source of melatonin. Though the amount is dependent on how the oats were grown, eating it can ensure your body gets at least a little melatonin. If you're not too big on the soft texture of oatmeal, you can get the same benefits from oats through granola, and there are plenty of ways to elevate store-bought granola.
Pumpkin Seeds
Antioxidant-rich pumpkin seeds, called pepitas when shell-less, are equally tasty and nutritious. Pumpkin seeds are one of the best plant-based sources of magnesium (they provide about 40% of the recommended daily intake), which can reduce muscle cramps that can keep you awake at night, explains Healthline.
Plus, the dietary fiber and healthy fats in these seeds can prevent digestive discomfort and keep you satiated. Eating snacks that have healthy fats and fiber can prevent overeating, which can lead to an upset stomach. Just a handful or so of pumpkin seeds will do the trick, and you won't feel as inclined to keep snacking on other foods before trying to fall asleep.
Pumpkin seeds also have tryptophan, which your body can't produce on its own, and will make you feel more relaxed. While a good handful of this snack can satiate your hunger, you'll need more than that to get a good dose of tryptophan. The average handful equates to around 1 ounce, and according to Healthline, you'll need closer to 6 ounces to get an adequate amount of tryptophan.
Almonds
Like most nuts, almonds are rich in protein, healthy fats, and fiber, all of which can contribute to good sleep by keeping you satiated. But almonds also contain high amounts of melatonin, according to Medical News Today, as well as tryptophan and magnesium, which can directly affect sleep by helping your body relax.
Moreover, almonds are one of the best dietary sources of vitamin E, an antioxidant that helps reduce oxidative stress and inflammation in the body, explains Web MD. Lowering inflammation may improve sleep by minimizing discomfort and pain.
Additionally, almonds have a low glycemic index, meaning they release sugar into the bloodstream slowly. This helps prevent rapid spikes and crashes in blood sugar levels, reducing the likelihood of waking up in the middle of the night due to hunger or discomfort. Combined with their high fiber content, the tree nuts are more than filling enough to snack on before bed.
Cherries
Cherries, particularly tart cherries, have various health benefits, and their role in promoting better sleep is well-documented. They are a natural source of tryptophan and melatonin, meaning that consuming cherries or cherry juice can help you get better sleep, reports Cleveland Health. Furthermore, cherries are packed with antioxidants, such as anthocyanins and quercetin, which possess anti-inflammatory properties.
In addition, cherries are a rich source of potassium, a mineral known to help regulate blood pressure, which can prevent nighttime spikes. They also have fiber, which aids in preventing nighttime indigestion that can keep you awake, as well as magnesium, which helps relax your muscles to ease you into sleep. Moreover, they contain vitamins A and C, which support your immune system, and a healthy body warrants healthier sleep.
Plus, cherries are naturally sweet, making them a soothing and delicious snack whether eating them by hand or drinking a glass of cherry juice. It's important to remember, however, that finding fresh cherry juice with little to no added sugar is essential when enjoying the snack before bed. Even with their sleep-supportive nutrients, high sugar content could combat those efforts, as it could keep you awake for longer or worsen your sleep.
Read the original article on Daily Meal. | Nutrition Research |
The deep slumber of a hospital pathogen: Why infections with Acinetobacter baumannii can flare up again and again
The bacterium Acinetobacter baumannii is an extremely dangerous pathogen that is found, among other places, in hospitals. Many of the bacterial strains are resistant to different classes of antibiotics. Infections with Acinetobacter baumannii were first observed on a greater scale during the Iraq War and have increased worldwide at a rapid pace ever since.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has ranked Acinetobacter baumannii top of the list of bacteria for which new drugs are urgently needed. However, the dangerous spread of Acinetobacter baumannii is not only due to antibiotic resistance but also to its enormous adaptability: It flourishes even under harsh conditions, such as desiccation and high salinity, and is therefore able to colonize different ecosystems in the human body such as the bladder, the surface of the skin and the lungs.
Research Unit (FOR) 2251 of the German Research Foundation, for which Professor Volker Müller of Goethe University Frankfurt is the spokesperson, has been studying the molecular basis of these adaptation strategies since 2017.
The research team led by Professor Beate Averhoff and Professor Volker Müller, the two FOR 2251 subproject leaders, has now discovered an adaptation mechanism previously unknown in Acinetobacter. When living conditions become inhospitable, many bacteria enter a dormant state that is almost death-like: They develop permanent forms with no metabolic activity. These are known as spores.
However, as the research team discovered, Acinetobacter baumannii can form special cells as an alternative, which are in a kind of deep sleep. Although these cells still show signs of life and breathe, it is no longer possible to cultivate them on culture media in Petri dishes. "We know this state from cholera bacteria, for example; it is referred to as the viable but non-culturable (VBNC) state," explains Müller.
Patricia König, the first author of the study, which was published recently in the journal mBio, reports that the bacteria can survive for a long time in this state. "We have kept the bacteria in VBNC deep sleep for eleven months now and check regularly whether we can still wake them up. The study is still ongoing and there is no end in sight."
The researchers were able to trigger the VBNC state in the Acinetobacter bacteria by raising the salt content of the culture medium, but also—with a time delay—through refrigerator (4 °C) and fever temperatures (42 °C), desiccation and by removing oxygen. In all cases, it was possible to "wake the bacteria up again" after two days of "rehab" in the shaker with an optimum supply of nutrients and oxygen.
The problem is that detecting bacteria by cultivating them on culture media is still the gold standard both in medicine as well as food control.
Beate Averhoff explains, "Imagine the following: A patient with an Acinetobacter baumannii infection is treated with antibiotics, and after seven days no more Acinetobacter bacteria grow on the Petri dishes. Doctor and patient assume that the bacterium has disappeared, but it is in fact just asleep in the nooks and crannies of the body, waiting to wake up again at the next, better opportunity, multiply and trigger symptoms in the patient again. This is extremely dangerous, particularly in the case of multidrug-resistant bacteria."
Patricia König says, "We hope that this will help us to contribute to developing more effective treatment concepts against Acinetobacter baumannii. Above all, we need to use more sensitive methods—in addition to Petri dishes—to detect it, such as PCR, which can also be used to spot VBNC cells."
In terms of therapy, the proteins that appear to play an important role in the transition to the slumber state might constitute new entry points. The research team has already identified several such proteins. König says, "We must learn to understand the role of these proteins. This will form the basis for developing inhibitors against them, which can be administered together with antibiotics to prevent the bacteria falling into a dangerous slumber."
The findings are published in the journal mBio.
More information: Patricia König et al, The VBNC state: a fundamental survival strategy of Acinetobacter baumannii, mBio (2023). DOI: 10.1128/mbio.02139-23
Journal information: mBio
Provided by Goethe University Frankfurt am Main | Disease Research |
May 9, 2023 â The federal public health emergency for COVID-19, in place in the United States for more than 3 years, ends on Thursday. The secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services first issued the emergency declaration under the Public Health Services Act, and it was renewed repeatedly â until now.
This is the latest in a line of recent pandemic declarations and announcements:
- This past Thursday, the World Health Organization declared an end to the COVID global health emergency, saying that COVID is now âan established and ongoing health issue which no longer constitutes a public health emergency of international concern.â
- President Joe Biden signed a bill ending the COVID national emergency (distinct from the public emergency) in April.
- CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, MD, said she will step down at the end of June.
- Many nongovernment sites have shuttered their pandemic tracking sites.Â
The end of the public health emergency, though, may be the most significant change for many Americans.Â
Throughout the pandemic, the emergency declaration, along with administrative actions and laws, gave the federal government flexibility in waiving certain rules affecting health care, including Medicare, Medicaid, and private health insurance. It also provided immunity to providers in areas such as Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliance. And, of course, it gave free access to COVID-19 vaccines, testing, and treatments.
As the declaration ends, what â and who â will be affected? While some of the changes are fixed, others are in flux, or subject to change, depending on insurance status and other things.
Among the bigger changes:
- Free, at-home COVID tests donât have to be covered by private insurers or Medicare.
- Private insurers will no longer be required to cover vaccines for free.
- Medicare will still cover vaccines, but Medicaid no longer has to cover vaccines, tests, or treatments for uninsured people.
- Private insurers and Medicare Advantage plans may have cost-sharing for COVID lab tests ordered by a provider and for testing visits.
- Federal employees, federal contractors, and international air travelers donât have to be vaccinated.
- State and local health departments no longer have to report COVID data to the CDC (ending community-level tracking).
- Telehealth flexibilities put in place during the pandemic to allow prescription of controlled medications will be extended.
- Title 42 â a rule that was instituted to stem the spread of COVID across the southern border by expelling some migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. â will be lifted. A humanitarian (and political) crisis is expected.
Over, but Not Done
Not everyone is happy with the transition plan, including Anne N. Sosin, a policy fellow at the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth College, who co-authored an opinion piece in the journal BMJ in late April. She said that âwith the end of the public health emergency on May 11, COVID-19 has simply joined the ordinary emergency that is American health.â Sosin said she fears health inequities will grow.
Less frequent reporting means less data, and that will make tracking more difficult, said Rajendram Rajnarayanan, PhD, an assistant dean of research and associate professor at the New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro.Â
Much is yet to be worked out, and that is causing confusion, said William Schaffner, MD, an infectious disease specialist and professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.Â
Over and over, experts echoed the fear that a reduction in services will disproportionately affect the uninsured, underinsured, and some ethnic groups.
And the virus has not gone away, experts emphasized. âI think itâs important to recognize that, even though we are certainly at a low point right now with cases and hospitalizations and deaths, that COVID is certainly not done with us yet,â said Meagan Fitzpatrick, PhD, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. âWe still have about 1,000 Americans dying every week from COVID-19. We still have [thousands of] Americans hospitalized right now with COVID-19. So, these numbers are not zero, and theyâre certainly not negligible.â
In fact, The Washington Post reported this past Friday that infectious disease experts have warned the White House that there is about a 20% chance of another major COVID outbreak within the next 2 years.Â
Here is a more in-depth look at the changes coming when the public health emergency ends.Â
COVID-19 Reporting
The CDC will stop tracking and reporting COVID cases at the community level. During the pandemic, it has been possible for people to enter a location in a search tool on the CDC website to find out, with a color-coded indication, whether the virus level is low, medium, or high in the location chosen.Â
Each category included information about how to stay safe. After May 11, the CDC will lose authorization to collect "certain public health data" and moving forward will track COVID in much the same way as the flu and other respiratory illnesses.
The agency will rely heavily on hospitalization data as its "primary surveillance indicators,â the CDC said, but that information lags, with the data usually coming in well after someone got infected.
Also going away is the COVID Data Tracker Weekly Review of the community data.Â
During the emergency period, the CDC had the authority to require data reporting from states. After it expires, the CDC can request but not require this data. And thatâs a mistake, said Philip Huang, MD, director of the Dallas (Texas) County Department of Health and Human Services, one of the speakers at a recent media briefing hosted by the Big Cities Health Coalition, an organization of 35 member cities serving 1 in 5 Americans.
âCongress should grant CDC this authority,â he said, because not having this information is like âflying blind.â
Tests and Vaccines
Private insurers and Medicare will no longer be required to provide eight free at-home COVID-19 tests a month.Â
Private insurers no longer have to cover vaccines. (But many experts predict that most people with private insurance will continue to pay nothing out of pocket for COVID vaccines and boosters.)
The Medicaid option to cover the uninsured for COVID-19 vaccines, tests, and treatments also ends. Those enrolled in Medicaid will still get at-home tests, provider-ordered tests and treatments until Sept. 30, 2024.
For those with private insurance and Medicare Advantage, the requirement of no cost-sharing for PCR/provider-ordered tests and the testing visits end.Â
The requirement that private plans and insurance cover vaccines without cost-sharing at out-of-network locations ends.
Medicare will continue to cover COVID vaccines without cost-sharing; COVID diagnostic tests may require some cost-sharing.Â
But at the Big Cities briefing, speakers said the COVID vaccines and testing will still be available in various settings, often at no charge, through public health departments and local clinics, as vaccines remain in the federal stockpile.Â
And the Inflation Reduction Act requires Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to cover recommended vaccines.Â
âWe have a stock,â agreed Rajnarayanan. âVaccines and therapeutics may still be available. Itâs almost like a store closing, like âeverything has to go.â â Whatâs not known is what will happen when the stock is depleted and the vaccine costs too much for the under-insured, he said.
The emergency use authorizations for vaccines and other COVID products are not going away, since they were granted under a separate emergency declaration. As more vaccines and treatments gain full FDA approval, the point will be moot, experts at the Big Cities briefing said.Â
While the COVID vaccine requirement for federal employees, federal contractors, and international air travelers will end, âon the private side, there will be individual employers that could continue to require the vaccine,â Schaffner said.Â
For instance, he said, âhere at Vanderbilt, we are obliged to be COVID vaccinated, just as we are obliged to get the influenza vaccine. And I would anticipate that would continue.âÂ
Telehealth
Telehealth boomed during the pandemic, during lockdowns and after. Many of the telehealth flexibilities for Medicare and Medicaid, allowing people to do online visits, will not change. Congress has allowed these flexibilities to stay in place until at least the end of end of 2024.
This flexibility was not intended to continue to apply to controlled substances prescribed via telehealth after May 11, at first. A proposed Drug Enforcement Administration rule would have stopped health care providers from prescribing medication for opioid use disorder without the patient being seen in person..Â
After a public outcry, the DEA reversed course. On May 9, DEA Administrator Anne Milgram announced a 6-month extension to the pandemic flexibilities, through Nov. 11, while the agency considers comments from the public.Â
For provider-patient relationships that have been or will be established by Nov. 11, the prescribing flexibilities will be extended for another year.
The DEA rule covers a range of medicines, from ADHD drugs to buprenorphine, an opioid use disorder medication.Â
Health care providers will still need to transition again to a HIPAA-compliant telehealth platform when the emergency expires. During the pandemic, when the emergency was in effect, the Office for Civil Rights did not impose penalties if a practice provided telehealth services in a non-public-facing platform (such as Facetime).Â
After May 11, the platforms, including audio-only ones, will need to be HIPAA-compliant. Providers have a 90-day transition period to do that, with that deadline set for 11:59 p.m. Aug. 9.
Medicaid
Emergency waivers that allowed expanded access to care under Medicaid will end at the federal levels. Speakers at the Big Cities briefing said that means millions will lose health coverage unless their states choose to continue these waivers.
âPriorityâ Instead of Emergency
Rajnarayanan is not as concerned about the community-level reporting going away as some other measures. The community-level reporting, he said, provided a guide for institutions and businesses to decide on masking and other precautions. âMost of those [measures] have gone away anyway.â
The disparities will continue, Schaffner said, the same that have existed for years in what he calls a ânon-systemâ of medicine. âIt is way past time that the U.S. acknowledge that medical care is a right, and we provide it to everyone in our population. We are the last developed country in the world not to do that.â
Rajnarayanan understands that much of the country has long ago moved on from COVID, even though âCOVID is still not through.âÂ
He acknowledges that the emergency canât continue indefinitely. âWe need to step away from calling it an emergency, but calling it a priority (which HHS is claiming to do) would continue a level of seriousness, as a bridge.â
But we're not out of the woods yet, Sosin said. âA lot of people think âendemicâ means end,â but it actually means that itâs transitioned to become a permanent threat, she explained. While the public health emergency allowed the U.S. to bring forth many resources to fight COVID, ânow we are seeing just a sense of resignation.â | Epidemics & Outbreaks |
It is believed Isla, 6, may have gone into cardiac arrest or suffered a seizure after dad David tucked her into bed in their Manchester home but noticed she "wouldn't settle down"David Hutton and his daughter Isla before her tragic death in October 2022A heartbroken dad says he 'knew something was wrong' as he put his daughter to bed - and just hours later she was dead. The sound of Isla's laughter had earlier filled the air as they walked up and down an escalator, which the little girl loved to do. The six-year-old was exhausted when they got home as dad David Hutton tucked her up in bed, but he knew something was wrong. Manchester Evening News reports the 38-year-old said: “She climbed into bed but wouldn’t settle down. “It was just desperation because I knew something wasn’t right.” Isla was taken to a nearby hospital but died on October 8 last year. The cause of her death is not yet clear, but it’s believed she may have gone into cardiac arrest or suffered a seizure due to a pre-existing condition. When Isla was born in 2015, she was diagnosed with long QT syndrome, or LQTS, a heart signalling disorder that can cause fast, chaotic heartbeats (arrhythmias) and affects one in every 2,000 people. When Isla was born she was diagnosed with LQTS and arrhythmia, which affects one in every 2,000 people (
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David Hutton) It is believed Isla may have gone into cardiac arrest or suffered a seizure due to a pre-existing condition (
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David Hutton) The condition meant Isla’s heart muscle took longer than normal to recharge between beats and she was at constant risk of sudden fainting. She could also have up to 20 seizures a day and young people with LQTS syndrome have an increased risk of sudden death. Doctors discovered something was wrong with Isla's heart in the days after her birth. At just two days old, she was quickly transferred to Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool and fitted with a pacemaker. She spent almost one year in hospital until she was finally allowed home just before her first birthday. Following her discharge, she was treated with a drug called mexiletine, however, the dosage required was so high it often caused seizures. David friom Ainsworth, Greater Manchester, gave up his job as a primary school teacher to become her full-time carer. He said: “Life just feels so different. Six-year-old Isla helped secure more than £12m for drug research in the US (
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David Hutton) “It feels like yesterday that she would come and climb on my knee, yet it feels like a lifetime ago. I can see the impact she had on other people and it’s been comforting. “I was by her side in hospital the whole time. Time seem to flash by but it was like slow motion. "I wouldn’t have wanted her to be suffering. If she came back around, I wanted her to still be the happy little girl she was. She was the happiest little girl you could have ever met.” During her life, Isla became the mascot for Thryv Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company developing inhibitors to treat various conditions, including long QT syndrome. The tot helped the company secure more than £12m ($15m) for drug research in the US, with the team using her as the driving force behind their work. David also went on to co-found charity Team 1C, an organisation which provides a network of support for children with cardiac conditions and their families. David believes Isla will go on to save 'countless' lives after she died (
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David Hutton) What started out as a way to say thank you to Alder Hey surgeon Dr Ram Dhannapuneni turned into funding four 'Healing Little Hearts' surgery camps in India, through a fundraising ball. The Team 1C charity is now focused on providing support for cardiac families around the region and creating lasting legacies for children with cardiac conditions. Projects underway to honour Isla’s life include a cardiac camp in India, funding an EPIC centre with the charity Love The One, a fun day for Team 1C families and a festival in the summer for children and families staying at Alder Hey. David said: “While bittersweet, it is a huge comfort to me knowing that Isla’s story has inspired a potential cure for Long QT and is helping in the battle against cancer. “She may go on to save countless lives.” David has now pledged to raise cash for the hospital that helped treat Isla throughout her life to honour her memory. So far, he has managed to raise £4,200 for Great Ormond Street Hospital and Children’s Charity by taking part in JanuRun, where donations can be made as David runs 31 miles throughout this month. Read More Read More Read More Read More | Disease Research |
People often feel a "knot" in their stomach when they're nervous, whether they're stepping on stage to deliver a speech or onto the field for a championship game. Stress and anxiousness can also lead to nausea, painful bloating, constipation and diarrhea.
This phenomenon is often referred to as "nervous stomach" — but what causes it, exactly?
Nervous stomach happens because of the close connection between the nervous system and digestive system, Melissa Hunt, a clinical psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, told Live Science in an email.
"From the earliest stages of embryonic development, the brain, spinal cord and digestive tract are all tightly wired to each other," she said. "Millions of neurons send information from the gut back to the brain, and just as many neurons send signals back to the gut." This link is often referred to as the gut-brain axis.
The neurons, or nerve cells, that line the gastrointestinal tract make up the enteric nervous system. They are part of the "autonomic" nervous system, which regulates involuntary bodily functions, such as breathing, heartbeat and digestion. When food enters the gut, for example, enteric neurons prompt muscle cells to contract and push the food through the intestines, according to Harvard Health.
The autonomic nervous system is divided into two branches: the parasympathetic and sympathetic. These systems, respectively nicknamed the "rest and digest" and "fight or flight" systems, balance each other out. In general, the parasympathetic nervous system relaxes the body, while the sympathetic nervous system bolsters its response to danger.
"Digestion is controlled by the parasympathetic branch," Hunt said. "When we're stressed, the sympathetic branch is activated and suppresses the functions of the parasympathetic system." In this state, the body releases stress-related hormones, such as cortisol, that suppress digestion in the stomach and small intestine; meanwhile, other hormones actually stimulate the large intestine.
"So instead of engaging in a mellow state associated with resting and digesting, the stomach and intestines might spasm or contract suddenly as the person prepares to fight or flee," Hunt said.
Just as stress can trigger a nervous stomach, frequent gastrointestinal (GI) problems can also cause stress, Harvard Health notes.
What's more, stress can increase the frequency or severity of symptoms in "disorders of gut-brain interaction," or DGBIs. These include conditions like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), in which a variety of symptoms, such as abdominal pain, diarrhea or constipation, occur without clear cause, or functional dyspepsia, stomach aches that occur during or after eating without known cause.
DGBIs are thought to be characterized by ongoing disturbances in communication between the gut and the brain. Over time, people can become anxious and hypervigilant about their GI symptoms, Hunt noted.
"This leads to visceral hypersensitivity, which becomes a vicious feedback loop of anxious arousal, scanning the body for uncomfortable sensations, catastrophizing, amplification of those sensations, which increases anxiety and then leads to increased GI discomfort and distress," she said.
That's why behavioral therapy is sometimes incorporated into patients' treatment plans for DGBIs, according to Harvard Health.
This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.
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Anna Gora is a health writer at Live Science, having previously worked across Coach, Fit&Well, T3, TechRadar and Tom's Guide. She is a certified personal trainer, nutritionist and health coach with nearly 10 years of professional experience. Anna holds a Bachelor's degree in Nutrition from the Warsaw University of Life Sciences, a Master’s degree in Nutrition, Physical Activity & Public Health from the University of Bristol, as well as various health coaching certificates. She is passionate about empowering people to live a healthy lifestyle and promoting the benefits of a plant-based diet. | Stress and Wellness |
Chrissy Teigen has given birth to her and John Legend's third child, according to PEOPLE.Legend, 44, confirmed the baby news while performing at a private concert on Friday night, telling the crowd that he and his wife welcomed 'the little baby this morning.''What a blessed day,' the singer said, adding that although he 'didn't get a lot of sleep' he felt 'energized' after being by spending 'a lot of time' by Chrissy's side at the hospital. Baby love! Chrissy Teigen has given birth to her and John Legend's third child, according to PEOPLEA person who attended the concert tweeted on Friday evening: '@johnlegend just told us he had a baby this morning #congratulations.'Chrissy announced she was expecting her third child back in August on Instagram, posting photos of her blossoming baby bump. The happy news came nearly two years after she and John lost their son Jack 20 weeks into her pregnancy. The model, who has been married to John since 2013, shares daughter Luna, six, and son Miles, four, with the hit-maker. In her pregnancy announcement, Chrissy described the last few years as a 'blur of emotions' following the loss of Jack and subsequent battle to conceive via IVF. Now, her home has been filled with 'joy' once again. Another Legend has joined the family! The Ordinary People singer reportedly announced his wife had given birth on Friday Oh baby! A fan who attended the concert tweeted about John's announcement on Friday 'The last few years have been a blur of emotions to say the least, but joy has filled our home and hearts again,' she began in the post. '1 billion shots later (in the leg lately, as u can see!) we have another on the way.'Every appointment I've said to myself, 'ok if it's healthy today I'll announce' but then I breathe a sigh of relief to hear a heartbeat and decide I'm just too nervous still. 'I don't think I'll ever walk out of an appointment with more excitement than nerves but so far, everything is perfect and beautiful and I'm feeling hopeful and amazing. Ok phew it's been very hard keeping this in for so long!' Proud father: Legend, pictured at El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles in September 2022, announced the baby news while performing at a private concert on Friday night Proud parents: Legend and Teigen pictured at the Emmy Awards in September In February 2022, Chrissy - who hit one year of sobriety in July of that year - confirmed to her 37 million followers that she was going through the IVF process in the hope of conceiving again.'I humbly beg you to stop asking if I'm pregnant because I am the opposite of pregnant!' she wrote on Instagram at the time.She continued: 'I posted about it in my stories, but I wanted to let you guys know I'm balls deep in another IVF cycle to save as many eggos as I possibly can and hopefully make some strong, healthy embryos.'Chrissy went on to express her frustration with the procedure as she noted: 'I honestly don't mind the shots…they make me feel like a doctor/chemist… but the bloating is a b**ch. 'Joy has filled our home and hearts again': Chrissy announced she was expecting her third child back in August on Instagram, posting photos of her blossoming baby bump'I humbly beg you to stop asking if I'm pregnant because while I know it's said with excited, good intentions, it just kind of sucks to hear because I am the opposite of pregnant! But also like please stop asking people, anyone, if they're pregnant.'I said this in the comments and got yelled at because the internet is wild but I'd rather be the one to tell you and not some poor woman who will look you in the eyes through tears and that's how you finally learn.'In September 2020, Chrissy and John tragically lost their third child, a baby boy named Jack, 20 weeks into her pregnancy.Chrissy shared the heartbreaking news with her Instagram followers shortly after the horrific experience, and posted photos of herself in the hospital mourning the loss of her child. Heartbreak: The happy pregnancy news came nearly two years after she and John lost their son Jack 20 weeks into her pregnancyNot long afterwards, she revealed she would be unable to carry a child again.'I love being pregnant, so so much, and I'm sad I never will be again,' she posted on Instagram.Despite the loss, Chrissy expressed gratitude for her other two children, both of whom were both conceived via IVF.'I'm so lucky for that,' she told People in 2021. 'I just think of it in terms of how blessed I am already, and also there are so many ways to have a child nowadays ... whether it's surrogacy or adoption. Expanding family! The couple already share two children together - daughter Luna and son Miles'Coming to terms with not being able to carry again is still really difficult for me because I feel so healthy. I'm like, why?'But then I think about it as my uterus is just not cooperating with me - and it's not a failure.'In keeping with Thai tradition, the hands-on parents planted a tree in their house to honor Jack. Glammed up: The mom-to-be looked stunning in a hot pink dress as she posed beside her dapper husband 'It's important for us in Thai tradition that we always embrace the ones we've lost, and they're never, ever gone.'This tree being planted inside the home, the whole reason why I wanted it was so Jack's ashes could be in that soil and he could be with us all the time and grow through the beautiful leaves in this tree,' she said.'The way Miles and Luna talk about him is so beautiful and reminds me of when I was little talking to my grandpa who was just sitting bedside next to my mom in a little urn,' she said.'It's all beautiful, and I love that tradition carries down.' Bumping along! Teigen has been sharing snaps documenting her latest pregnancy on Instagram ever since announcing she was expecting her third child John said in an interview with The Guardian after the couple's tragic loss: 'It was a tragedy.'But I think it strengthened our resolve and our resilience because we were there for each other. We came out even more sure of who we were as a couple and as a family.'It was raw, sharing our experience. I was worried but our instinct was to do it because people knew we were pregnant and Chrissy felt like she needed to tell the story completely about what happened. Doting mom: Teigen pictured with her two youngsters in November 2022'Also, we found out how many other families have gone through this. It was a powerful and brave thing that Chrissy did to share that because it made so many people feel like they were seen and that they weren't alone.''The last few years have been a blur of emotions to say the least, but joy has filled our home and hearts again.'1 billion shots later (in the leg lately, as u can see!) we have another on the way.'Every appointment I've said to myself, 'ok if it's healthy today I'll announce' but then I breathe a sigh of relief to hear a heartbeat and decide I'm just too nervous still. I don't think I'll ever walk out of an appointment with more excitement than nerves but so far, everything is perfect and beautiful and I'm feeling hopeful and amazing. Ok phew it's been very hard keeping this in for so long!' | Women’s Health |
Princess Diana's former butler Paul Burrell, 64, shared his heartbreak over his prostate cancer diagnosis and tearfully admitted he fears he won't live until next ChristmasVideo LoadingVideo UnavailablePaul Burrell discusses his prostate cancer diagnosisPaul Burrell broke down in tears as he shared that he has been diagnosed with prostate cancer - and fears that he may not live until next Christmas. Princess Diana's former butler, 64, also opened up about the moment he told his sons Alexander and Nicholas and the emotional moment between them. Introducing him on the ITV show today, host Lorraine Kelly shared that Princess Diana's former butler would be speaking about the "lifechanging" news that he had been diagnosed with cancer. "Paul Burrell will be here with lifechanging news," she said. "He'll be sharing his cancer news for the first time in the hope that he'll help others." Appearing on the show, Paul said that he was "so tired" and explained that he had been diagnosed last summer. "I'm on hormone therapy at the moment and it's robbing me of my testosterone," he told Lorraine. "So my beard isn't growing as it should and I'm tired and I'm emotional and I get hot flushes." Paul Burrell was emotional as he revealed that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer on Lorraine "Oh jesus, it's like a male menopause, Paul," Lorraine pointed out. "It's kind of like that with thre treatment you're getting and the side effects." Explaining how he had discovered his diagnosis, Paul said that he had needed to go for a medical last year and that, as part of their duty of care he had a "full MOT". However, following a PSA test - a blood test that helps detect prostate cancer - his GP suggested that his levels were "fairly unusual". He then underwent an MRI scan which showed a shadow on his prostate. "I'm on an emotional educational rollercoaster - ups and downs - and not knowing where I'm going to be the next minute," he said. "Having the biopsy itself and finding the cancer..." Becoming emotional, Paul began to tear up as he continued: "Wrapping Christmas presents up this year and thinking, 'Am I going to do this next year? Am I going to be here? I need to tell my boys." "Well, that's the hardest thing of all, isn't it," Lorraine said. "How are they? Are they alright?" "I went to America over Christmas and told them," he replied. "They sat with me and held me and said, 'Dad, we need to spend more time with you.' And that's what it's about." He candidly opened up on Lorraine today "At the same time you realise that there are thousands of men out there like me who have no symptoms and don't know they have it," he continued as he said that he wanted to raise awareness. "I was really lucky they caught it early," Paul continued. "I don't think men are particularly good about going to the doctors - they need nudging." Dr Hilary Jones later stepped in to explain that there aren't always symptoms when men are diagnosed with prostate cancer. He shared his fear that he wouldn't live until next Christmas "Every man over 50 should think of having a PSA test," he said, though suggested that they are "not as reliable as having a mammogram" as they can provide a false negative result. Paul first joined Charles and Diana's household at Highrove House, Gloucestershire, in 1987 as the butler to the princess until her death in 1997. At the time, he suggested that Diana had said he was "the only man she ever trusted". Since his royal career ended, Burrell famously appeared on 2004's I'm A Celebrity and went on to star in a number of reality and TV shows - Australian Princess, Stars In Their Eyes and In Therapy. Read More Read More Read More Read More Read More | Disease Research |
Shreveport, La. — The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has allowed one of the nation's largest wholesale drug distributors to keep shipping highly addictive painkillers for nearly four years after a judge recommended it be stripped of its license for its "cavalier disregard" of thousands of suspicious orders fueling.
The DEA did not respond to repeated questions from The Associated Press about its handling of the case against Morris & Dickson Co. or the involvement of a high-profile consultant the company had hired to stave off punishment and who is now DEA Administrator Anne Milgram's top deputy.
But the delay has raised concerns about how the revolving door between government and industry may be impacting the DEA's mission to police drug companies blamed for tens of thousands of American overdose deaths.
"If the DEA had issued its order in a timely manner, one could then credibly believe that its second-in-command was not involved despite an obvious conflict of interest," said Craig Holman, an ethics expert at the watchdog group Public Citizen in Washington. "The mere fact that its action has been delayed four years just raises red flags. It casts the entire process under grave suspicion."
Last week, after the AP reached out to the DEA for comment, the agency broke its silence on the issue and abruptly notified Morris & Dickson that it has decided to revoke its registration to distribute controlled substances, according to two people familiar with the development who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the exchange. However, no final order has yet been published. The company has described revocation as a "virtual death sentence" and is almost certain to challenge the decision in federal court.
Louis Milione, who was named DEA's principal deputy administrator in 2021, did not respond to requests for comment. He retired from the DEA in 2017 after a storied 21-year career that included two years leading the division that controls the sale of highly addictive narcotics. Like dozens of colleagues in the DEA's powerful-but-little-known Office of Diversion Control, he quickly went to work as a consultant for some of the same companies he had been tasked with regulating, including Morris & Dickson.
Milione was brought in by Morris & Dickson as part of a $3 million contract to save its registration to supply painkillers after the DEA accused the company in 2018 of failing to flag thousands of suspicious, high-volume orders.
Testifying in 2019 before federal Administrative Law Judge Charles W. Dorman, Milione argued that Morris & Dickson "spared no expense" to overhaul its compliance systems, cancel suspicious orders and send daily emails to the DEA spelling out its actions.
But those efforts were too little, too late, the judge wrote in a 159-page recommendation which has not been previously reported and was recently obtained by the AP. Anything less than the most severe punishment, he said, "would communicate to DEA registrants that despite their transgressions, no matter how egregious, they will get a mere slap on the wrist and a second chance so long as they acknowledge their sins and vow to sin no more."
"Acceptance of responsibility and evidence of remediation are not get-out-of-jail-free cards that erase the harm caused by years of cavalier disregard," Dorman wrote. "Allowing the respondent to keep its registration would tell distributors that it is acceptable to take a relaxed approach to DEA regulations until they are caught, at which point they only need to throw millions of dollars at the problem to make the DEA go away."
Shreveport, Louisiana-based Morris & Dickson, the nation's fourth-largest wholesale drug distributor with $4 billion a year in revenue and nearly 600 employees, did not respond to requests for comment. But the company repeatedly said in court filings that losing its license would effectively shut it down and have a "catastrophic" effect on patients in 29 states.
Neither Milgram nor two DEA administrators who preceded her have taken any enforcement action since Dorman's 2019 recommendation, allowing Morris & Dickson to continue operating even as it pursued a potential settlement. Former DEA officials told AP a nearly four-year wait in such a case is highly unusual, noting it rarely takes the agency more than two years to issue a final order.
Milgram's management of DEA has been called into question on another front. AP reported last month that a federal watchdog is investigating whether the agency improperly awarded millions of dollars in no-bid contracts to hire Milgram's past associates.
As for Milione, federal ethics rules bar government employees from taking part in decisions that could benefit companies where they previously worked, but DEA did not respond to questions about whether Milione recused himself from the matter. He would have also faced restrictions on his interactions with the DEA when he left government as a senior official - an issue the agency's own lawyers raised in an attempt to disqualify his testimony in support of Morris & Dickson.
Milione, a lawyer and former bit Hollywood actor, impressed fellow DEA agents for his risk taking and toughness. Among his achievements was running the overseas sting that in 2008 nabbed, aka "The Merchant of Death."
But after taking over as the head of Diversion Control in 2015, he ended his predecessor's refusal to meet with drug manufacturers and distributors and opened the DEA's doors to the industry it was charged with regulating.
Among those Milione met with on at least two occasions was Paul Dickson Sr. - then-president of Morris & Dickson. That included a 2016 visit to the Louisiana headquarters with DEA investigators to discuss the company's compliance program.
John Gray, the head of the Healthcare Distributors Alliance, a lobbying group that includes Morris & Dickson, recounted in a 2015 email how Milione, under orders from then-incoming DEA Administrator Chuck Rosenberg, wanted to "reset" relations with the drug industry. And Milione even delivered the keynote speech at the group's annual meeting.
"Overall, he was engaging, exceedingly pleasant and seemed genuinely concerned that we had lost touch with each other," Gray wrote. "It is a very different tone and approach than we have all seen in the past 8-10 years."
Morris & Dickson had been punished for its mishandling of addictive drugs before. In 2019, before Dorman issued his recommendation, the company agreed to pay $22 million in civil penalties to resolve federal prosecutors' claims that it violated the Controlled Substances Act by failing to report suspicious orders of hydrocodone and oxycodone. The company also agreed to multimillion-dollar upgrades of its compliance program to ensure it reports suspicious orders moving forward.
The case drew far less attention than the enforcement actions DEA took in recent years against Morris & Dickson's larger competitors, a trio of pharmaceutical distributors who have agreed to pay the federal government more than $1 billion in fines and penalties for similar violations. Cardinal Health, AmerisourceBergen and McKesson also agreed to pay $21 billion over 18 years to resolve claims as part of a nationwide settlement.
Among the more than 12,000 suspicious orders that Dorman said Morris & Dickson should have reported to the DEA were 51 unusually large orders of opioids made by Wilkinson Family Pharmacy in suburban New Orleans.
Wilkinson purchased more than 4.5 million pills of oxycodone and hydrocodone from Morris & Dickson between 2014 and 2017, and federal prosecutors say during that time owner Keith Wilkinson laundered more than $345,000 from illegal sales made with forged prescriptions or written by "pill mill" doctors.
In one month, as many as 42% of all prescriptions filled by Wilkinson were for painkillers and 38% of those were paid for in cash. The DEA considers a pharmacy's sales of controlled substances suspicious whenever they surpass 15% or cash transactions exceed 9%.
Yet Morris & Dickson never suspended any shipments to the pharmacy. Over three years, it filed just three suspicious order reports to the DEA - none of which resulted in shipments being suspended.
"Anybody with half a brain could've seen something wasn't right," said Dan Schneider, a retired pharmacist near New Orleans whose fight to hold drug companies accountable for the opioid epidemic was featured in a Netflix documentary series. "They were way out of line."
for more features. | Drug Discoveries |
The Impact of Oat Consumption on the Gut Microbiota
The relationship between oat consumption, modulation of gut microbiota, and short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) synthesis
Summary
This article focuses on the relationship between oat consumption, modulation of gut microbiota, and short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) synthesis. The gut microbiota plays a crucial role in digestion and disease prevention, and a healthy gut microbiota is essential for overall well-being. Consuming fibre-rich foods like oats can positively impact the gut microbiota.
Oats are considered a functional food with prebiotic potential due to their high fibre content, including soluble and insoluble fibre. Prebiotics are substances that promote the growth and activity of beneficial bacteria in the gut. Oats contain other beneficial compounds like plant proteins, unsaturated fats, and antioxidants.
Several studies have found associations between oat consumption and the abundance of specific beneficial microorganisms in the gut, including Akkermansia muciniphila, Roseburia, Lactobacillus, Bifidobacterium, and Faecalibacterium prausnitzii. These microorganisms play essential roles in maintaining gut health.
One of the key findings highlighted in the article is the production of SCFAs, particularly butyrate, through the fermentation of oat fibre by the gut microbiota. SCFAs have various health benefits, including promoting gut health, reducing inflammation, and supporting a healthy weight. Oats can increase the production of these beneficial SCFAs in the gut, improving overall health.
While the article emphasizes the potential health benefits of oat consumption for gut health, it also acknowledges that further research is needed to fully understand the specific mechanisms and effects of oat consumption on the gut microbiota. Nevertheless, the existing studies suggest that oats can be beneficial in modulating the gut microbiota and promoting overall well-being.
Findings
🌾🔬🧪 The study examined the relationship between oat consumption and gut health by focusing on gut microbiota and short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) synthesis. Here are the main findings of the study:
🥣 Oats are considered a functional food with prebiotic potential due to their high fibre content, including soluble and insoluble fibre.
🌿 Oats contain beneficial compounds like plant proteins, unsaturated fats, and antioxidants.
🦠 Oat consumption can beneficially modulate the gut microbiota, increasing the abundance of specific beneficial microorganisms such as Akkermansia muciniphila, Roseburia, Lactobacillus, Bifidobacterium, and Faecalibacterium prausnitzii.
💪 Oat fibre fermentation by the gut microbiota leads to the production of SCFAs, particularly butyrate, which has multiple health benefits.
🌱 Oat products have been shown to attenuate obesity, reduce cholesterol and triglycerides, lower inflammation levels, increase antioxidant status, and increase the production of SCFAs in animal and human studies.
🔬 Further research is needed to better understand oat consumption's specific mechanisms and effects on the gut microbiota.
Key Terms
Gut microbiota modulation: The article discusses the relationship between oat consumption and the modulation of gut microbiota. Gut microbiota refers to the diverse community of microorganisms in the gastrointestinal tract, which play a crucial role in digestion and overall health. Modulating or influencing the gut microbiota refers to making beneficial changes to the composition and activity of these microorganisms.
Short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs): SCFAs are organic fatty acids with a short carbon chain length produced by gut microbiota fermentation of dietary fibre. The article emphasizes the synthesis of SCFAs, particularly butyrate, which has various health benefits, including promoting gut health and preventing disease.
Prebiotic potential: Oats are considered a functional food with prebiotic potential. Prebiotics are dietary compounds that selectively stimulate the growth and activity of beneficial microorganisms in the gut, such as probiotics. With their high fibre content, oats can serve as a prebiotic and promote the growth of beneficial gut bacteria.
Akkermansia muciniphila, Roseburia, Lactobacillus, Bifidobacterium, and Faecalibacterium prausnitzii: These are specific beneficial microorganisms that have been observed to have increased abundance in the gut after oat consumption. The article highlights their association with oat consumption and suggests their potential role in promoting gut health and overall well-being.
Functional food: Oats are described as functional food due to their nutritional composition and potential health benefits. Functional foods are those that provide additional health benefits beyond basic nutrition. Oats contain beneficial compounds like fibre, plant proteins, unsaturated fats, and antioxidants, making them valuable to a healthy diet.
Methodology
The article utilized an integrative review methodology, following the guidelines provided by Kutcher and LeBaron. The inclusion criteria for the review were original articles (clinical trials, in vitro, and in vivo trials) published between 2012 and 2023. Relevant papers on the modulation of the gut microbiota with oat products or supplements were selected from Scopus and PubMed databases. The search terms used included "oat," "microbiota," and "short-chain fatty acids" (SCFA).
In total, 58 studies were identified through the advanced search, and after screening and removing duplicates, 31 publications were selected for a full-text review. Further exclusion criteria were applied during the full-text review, resulting in the inclusion of 16 publications for the final review.
Limitations
One of the limitations mentioned in the article is the limited number of studies available for review. Although 31 publications were included in the full-text review, only 16 met the final review's inclusion criteria. This reflects the relatively small number of studies investigating the relationship between oat consumption and gut microbiota modulation.
Another limitation is the need for further research to better understand the mechanisms and effects of oat consumption on the gut microbiota. While the existing studies suggest a positive association between oat consumption and beneficial gut microorganisms, more research is required to establish how oats modulate the gut microbiota and affect overall health.
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MIAMI — In 2018, Mike Ferraro was living on the street and sharing needles with other people who injected drugs when he found out he was HIV-positive.
“I thought it was a death sentence, where you have sores and you deteriorate,” he said.
Ferraro learned of his HIV status through a University of Miami Miller School of Medicine initiative called IDEA Exchange, which sent doctors and medical students to the corner where he panhandled. He got tested and enrolled in the program, which also provides clean syringes, overdose reversal medications, and HIV prevention and treatment drugs.
Under normal circumstances, it could have taken months for Ferraro to get on viral suppression medication, if he got on it at all. But the same day he learned his status, an IDEA Exchange doctor started Ferraro on a drug regimen.
His HIV is now in check, and he is recovering from drug use. “They save lives,” said Ferraro, now 55, adding that he was treated with kindness and respect and didn’t feel stigmatized, which encouraged him to enter treatment.
Launched in 2016, IDEA Exchange practices a new approach to treating and preventing HIV infections that combines telehealth with direct outreach, aided by more than $400,000 in grants from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other federal agencies. The funding is part of a national effort launched by the White House in 2019, under former President Donald Trump, called Ending the HIV Epidemic in the U.S.
The federal initiative aims to cut the number of new HIV infections nationwide by 75% by 2025 and 90% by 2030. Officials hope to achieve those milestones by funding new, community-specific strategies to deliver care to hard-to-reach groups, such as people who inject drugs, and others who are living with or at risk of contracting HIV.
Federal health agencies have sent hundreds of millions of dollars to cities, states, and territories hit hardest by the epidemic — many in the South. Georgia, Louisiana, and Florida were among the states with the highest rates of new HIV diagnoses in 2020, according to the CDC.
But people living with HIV, doctors, infectious disease experts, community groups, and some of the nation’s top HIV officials say the initiative could miss its main 2030 goal.
“Do I think the whole country is going to make it there? I don’t think so,” said Harold Phillips, head of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy.
The covid-19 pandemic, workforce shortages, and bureaucratic red tape have slowed HIV response efforts. And local programs have been hobbled in places where stigma and discrimination are fanned by anti-LGBTQ+ messaging from elected officials, especially in states where legislators have proposed restrictions on health care, education, and drag shows.
“We all were not at the same starting point,” Phillips said.
Because of pandemic disruptions, federal officials haven’t had solid estimates of new infections or the number of people living with HIV since the end of 2019, Phillips said. The available data suggests the goal of dramatically reducing new infections is a long way off. HIV testing and uptake of preventive drugs, such as preexposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, and viral suppression medications are also falling short.
The White House hopes to have more accurate data this year that will allow officials to adjust HIV response efforts to make up lost ground, Phillips said.
Since 2019, Congress has incrementally increased spending on the program’s efforts to prevent HIV — it’s $573 million for the current fiscal year — but has repeatedly provided less than what Trump or, later, President Joe Biden requested. Now, with Republicans angling for steep budget cuts, Biden’s current request for $850 million stands on shaky ground.
But even as the administration seeks more money, state and local public health officials have been unable to spend all the hundreds of millions they’ve been granted.
KFF Health News contacted several counties and states in February to ask how they spent money from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services meant for ending the HIV epidemic. Kentucky, South Carolina, and Arkansas had spent less than half of their allocations. And county officials in DeKalb County, Georgia; Harris County, Texas; and Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, said they had also yet to spend all their Ending the HIV Epidemic funding.
Those dollars have to be spent within county lines, which reduces their impact in outlying parts of the metro area, said Matt Jenkins, director of the HIV/STD division of Mecklenburg County Public Health in Charlotte.
And requirements that contracts over $100,000 go through a “labor-intensive” bidding process and that final spending decisions receive state approval also act as roadblocks, Jenkins said.
Such administrative processes can make it harder for federal money to reach local HIV service providers that target previously unreached communities. Instead, Jenkins said, funding tends to flow to well-established groups that may crowd a community with the same type of service, like more locations for testing.
“Is that new and innovative? No,” he said.
While officials like Jenkins navigate bureaucratic and logistical problems, some HIV programs also face decades-old political and ideological obstacles.
This is the case in Tarrant County, Texas, said Hope Adams, manager for the local Ending the HIV Epidemic program. Leaders there hesitate to acknowledge that HIV disproportionately affects marginalized groups such as gay and bisexual Black and Hispanic men, Black heterosexual women, and transgender people.
“If you deny that systemic discrimination exists, then you’re not going to want to fund programs that say, ‘Hey, we need to focus on disadvantaged populations,’” she said.
That mindset also limits how her agency can reach people, Adams said. She’d like to promote services on dating apps like Grindr and Tinder but said she’s allowed to use only “the safe ones”: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
“Our messaging has to be conservative. It has to be very delicately phrased. You can’t have an image of a condom, for example,” she said. “It affects us in terms of getting our message out in a way that connects with people and to the right audience.”
Acknowledging structural problems can get officials labeled as “woke,” injecting politics into public health and undermining progress — despite the scientific advances made in treating and preventing HIV.
Like the covid pandemic, the HIV epidemic has highlighted long-standing social and economic inequities, which reduce access to care.
Though most people with private insurance do not pay out-of-pocket for PrEP and related doctor visits and lab tests, that may change, pending the final outcome of a legal challenge to an Affordable Care Act mandate that most private insurance plans cover recommended preventive care services. Overturning the requirement could make preventive HIV care unaffordable for many people.
Mitchell Warren, executive director of AVAC, a global HIV advocacy group, pointed also to other social challenges, such as lawmakers across the U.S. targeting gender-affirming care, drag shows, and diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Politics — and pressure from conservative activists — recently led the state of Tennessee to turn down more than $8 million in federal funding to fight HIV.
“We often think HIV is about condoms and antiretroviral therapy and PrEP,” Warren said. “It is. But those products only help people if they can go into a facility where they are treated with respect, with high-quality care, where they’re not worried that the clinic is going to get bombed or closed down in controversy.”
The White House’s Phillips, an openly gay man living with HIV, acknowledged the current “tough environment” and said he remembered “the days when HIV had bipartisan support.”
He hoped that elected officials could find that common ground again, recognize the value of HIV prevention, and continue to invest in it — even beyond the 2030 deadline.
Ending the epidemic will require sustained funding and political will, which can be threatened regardless of whether a program misses its mark or shows signs of success, said Bernard Davis, president of RAO Community Health, a clinic in Charlotte.
“When you begin to see the outcomes looking better than they did before, you then remove those dollars,” he said. “Well, the community goes back to where it was from the beginning, because those resources are no longer there.” | Epidemics & Outbreaks |
Walker campaign crisis in Georgia over abortion row turns heat up further in furious midterms battle for SenateHerschel Walker, the controversial Republican candidate in Georgia for a vital US Senate seat, is attempting to weather the latest tempest that has tossed his midterm election campaign from turbulent into full-blown crisis.The news broke last night that the former NFL football player turned political candidate, who is campaigning on a hard anti-abortion line, had paid for an abortion for a former girlfriend in 2009, according to a report by the Daily Beast.As the Beast puts it in the strap below the headline to its report: “The woman has receipts – and a ‘get well’ card she says the football star, now a Senate candidate, sent her.”Walker blasted out a top-line denial via Twitter, calling the story overall a flat-out lie, also calling it a “Democrat attack”, while the Beast insists its article is backed up to the hilt. Walker says he’ll sue the Beast today.He also appeared on Fox News to blame politics, saying: “Now everyone knows how important this seat is and they [Democrats] will do anything to win this seat. They wanted to make it about anything except inflation, crime and the border being wide open.”But Walker’s son, 23-year-old Christian Walker, then responded on Twitter. Yikes.I know my mom and I would really appreciate if my father Herschel Walker stopped lying and making a mockery of us. You’re not a “family man” when you left us to bang a bunch of women, threatened to kill us, and had us move over 6 times in 6 months running from your violence.— Christian Walker (@ChristianWalk1r) October 4, 2022
And:I don’t care about someone who has a bad past and takes accountability. But how DARE YOU LIE and act as though you’re some “moral, Christian, upright man.” You’ve lived a life of DESTROYING other peoples lives. How dare you.— Christian Walker (@ChristianWalk1r) October 4, 2022
The sitting Senator from Georgia whom Herschel Walker is challenging, Democrat Raphael Warnock, is striving to stay above the fray – maybe hoping the former running back will be hoisted by his own petard?Key events35m agoWalker campaign crisis in Georgia over abortion row turns heat up further in furious midterms battle for Senate54m agoGeorgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker's campaign in crisis over abortion storyShow key events onlyPlease turn on JavaScript to use this featureGeorgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker's campaign in crisis over abortion storyGood morning, US politics blog readers, it’s a lively start to the day as midterm election candidates for the US Senate are making news, so is Joe Biden, the CDC on Covid and pro-abortion politicians on the rights of women 100 days after the US Supreme Court ripped up Roe v Wade.Here’s what’s already cooking in Washington and midterm campaigns: Herschel Walker, the Republican challenging Democratic sitting Senator Raphael Warnock in the crucial state of Georgia this election, has pledged to sue the Daily Beast today over a story last night that, despite campaigning as an anti-abortion hardliner, he paid for an abortion for a former girlfriend in 2009. Walker says the story’s a lie. His son then called his father a liar; this thing is boiling over and scalding his Senate chances – fatally? Joe Biden has apologized to the family of the late Indiana Republican Jackie Walorski, admitting to a gaffe last week when he spoke at an event and was looking around for her, calling publicly “where’s Jackie?”, when the congresswoman had been killed in a horrific car crash in August. The US president invited her parents to the Oval Office to talk late last week, the New York Post reported. Biden and the vice-president, Kamala Harris, this afternoon will speak at the second meeting of the administration’s special task force on reproductive healthcare access, at the White House. Cabinet members will attend, including the health secretary, Xavier Becerra, and the education secretary, Miguel Cardona. That’s expected at 3.30pm ET, and the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, is scheduled to hold the daily press briefing at 1pm. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last night announced the CDC it will discontinue a country-by-country list of advisories that inform travelers of risk and restrictions in each relating to Covid-19. The federal agency will post a notice if there is a concerning variant emerging in a country or a significant change in travel recommendations. | US Federal Elections |
- The Education Department released its final version of the gainful employment rule.
- It would prevent borrowers from enrolling in program that leaves them with too much debt compared to earnings.
- The rule will go into effect in July 2024.
President Joe Biden's Education Department has released its final rule to keep student debt from spiraling after a borrower graduates.
On Wednesday, the Education Department announced its final version of the gainful employment rule. The rule, first established in 2014 under then-President Barack Obama, cut off federal aid for schools that offered programs that left students with too much debt when compared to their likely postgraduation income.
Former President Donald Trump repealed the rule in 2019, and now Biden's administration is reinstating it — and the new provisions will be implemented in July 2024.
According to the department's fact sheet, the rule will protect about 700,000 students a year from career training programs that leave graduates earnings with "no better than what someone with a high school diploma" would earn. It also includes financial transparency requirements so students who enroll at the program will have information at the outset on how much debt they might take on from the program.
"Students overwhelmingly say that they're going to college to find a good job and build financial security, but too often their programs leave them no better off financially than those with no postsecondary education at all," Under Secretary of Education James Kvaal said in a statement. "These rules will stop taxpayer dollars from going to schools that continually saddle students with unaffordable debt. Separately, we're ensuring all students have increased information to make good choices."
The Education Department will assess whether career programs meet the gainful employment requirements using two separate metrics:
- The debt-to-earnings rate, which ensures a graduate's student debt payments are no more than 8% of annual earnings or 20% of discretionary earnings
- An earnings premium test that measures whether a typical graduate from a program that received federal aid is earning as least as much as a typical high school graduate in their state between the ages of 25 and 34.
Programs that fail those metrics will be required to warn students that they risk losing federal student aid, and programs that fail the same metric in two of three consecutive years will lose federal aid.
The department projected that about 1,700 programs that enroll 700,000 students will fail at least one of the metrics, and nearly 90% of students in failing programs go to for-profit schools.
Along with the new metrics, the department also announced a new financial transparency framework that would provide students with information on what they are likely to pay out-of-pocket for certain programs, how much debt they can expect to take on, and how much they're likely to earn after graduating. It also ensures students are aware of risks of enrolling in a certain certificate or graduate programs that could leave them with unaffordable student debt.
The accountability metrics will go into effect July 2024, and the first official metrics will be published in early 2025.
Jason Altmire, president and CEO of Career Education Colleges and Universities — an organization that represents for-profit schools — said in a statement that the new rule unfairly targets for-profit institutions.
"The Department has rushed the process, overlooking critical issues, to hastily implement and weaponize a final Gainful Employment rule against for-profit institutions," Altmire said. "The Department continues to put its thumb on the scale to circumvent established procedures and advance a partisan rule that fails to protect the vast majority of students."
However, advocates and Democratic lawmakers have previously pushed for a strengthened gainful employment rule to protect borrowers. Aaron Ament, president of advocacy group Student Defense, said in a statement that the finalized rule "is a major step towards enacting more front-end protections to ensure students aren't being taken advantage of by predatory schools and programs."
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona emphasized that point to reporters on a Wednesday press call.
"These rules will raise the bar for accountability and transparency in higher education. This includes the most effective gainful employment rule in history," Cardona said. "We're going to protect students from programs that leave graduates with low wages for career prospects and debt they can't afford." | US Federal Policies |
Democrats and progressive advocacy groups are homing in on Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) past support for steep cuts to entitlements, as the new Speaker embraces a deficit commission that could spotlight the issue in the run-up to the 2024 election.
President Biden called out congressional Republicans during his State of the Union address for wanting to cut the program. While budget experts say Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are unsustainable in their current form, most Republicans acknowledge the political risks of wanting to shrink benefits — but are also opposed to tax increases to bolster the programs.
Johnson’s fervent support for trillions of dollars in cuts during his time as chairman of the Republican Study Committee (RSC) could be a blueprint for GOP budgets if the party wins control of the government.
“The greatest threat to our national security is our nation’s debt,” Johnson said during his first speech in the House chamber after he was elected Speaker. “We know this is not going to be an easy task and tough decisions will have to be made, but the consequences if we don’t act now are unbearable.”
Johnson promised to establish a bipartisan debt commission “immediately,” and indicated at a press conference this past week that he was close to naming members.
The idea for a 16-member debt commission that would examine Social Security and Medicare solvency was initially floated by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as part of debt limit negotiations.
Entitlements have long been a political third rail, but some in the GOP wanted to use the debt ceiling negotiations to extract promises to reduce entitlement spending.
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid currently make up nearly half of the entire federal budget, with a total annual price tag of $2.7 trillion.
The commission’s recommendations would receive priority consideration by Congress. But they would be scheduled for a final vote during the lame-duck session immediately after the 2024 election, putting maximum distance between representatives and voters.
McCarthy’s proposal was slammed by the White House, though it was eventually included in a stopgap government funding bill introduced in September. The bill would have reduced discretionary spending for most domestic programs by nearly 30 percent.
“On top of breaking their promise to the country about keeping the government open, the House GOP is now threatening to single-handedly shut the American government down unless they can jam a death panel for Medicare and Social Security down the country’s throat,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a post at the time on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
But that bill failed to advance amid House GOP infighting, and the commission was not included in the legislation that ultimately passed both chambers to keep the government funded through mid-November.
Still, Johnson is pushing ahead.
“I believe we’re going to have very thoughtful people on both sides of the aisle in both chambers come together and have some very productive discussions about that,” Johnson told reporters. “When I said I want to do it immediately, I meant that, and it’s a top priority right now.”
While Johnson said he doesn’t believe he should dictate objectives or benchmarks, Democrats and left-wing advocacy groups have said his record speaks for itself.
“Mike Johnson was one of the chief architects of trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Mike Johnson also wants to end Social Security and Medicare as we know it,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said during a CNN interview after Johnson was elected.
“The kind of commission Johnson announced is designed to give Congress political cover for cutting Americans’ earned benefits,” Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, said in a statement Oct. 25 after Johnson was elected.
“It is unfortunate and disappointing that one of the Speaker’s first priorities is creating a mechanism intended to slash programs that American workers pay for in every paycheck, fully expecting the benefits to be there when they need them,” Richtman said.
Alex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works, said he thinks President Biden learned important lessons from former President Obama trying to negotiate the debt limit with Republicans after they took control of the House in 2011 and forced a series of deep spending cuts.
“The fiscal cliff, the supercommittee, sequestration, all of those things were a disaster for President Obama’s ability to push his agenda,” Lawson said. “And I think you’ve seen that President Biden learned those lessons really well and understands that this is just a political trap by the Republicans to try to get Democrats to take the blame for Republicans’ long-standing policy of cutting and or destroying Social Security.”
As RSC chair in 2020, Johnson authored a budget that called for raising the Medicare and Social Security eligibility ages. It called for $2 trillion in cuts to Medicare and $750 billion in cuts to Social Security.
It also called for turning Medicare into a premium support program, where private plans compete alongside traditional Medicare. Instead of a guaranteed benefit, beneficiaries would use a voucher to buy coverage on either a private or Medicare plan.
Johnson’s past support for cutting spending on Medicare and Social Security is in line with longtime Republican dogma. GOP leaders in the past have hammered Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as socialist initiatives — inefficient and anti-American — that threaten individual freedoms.
Earlier this year, the RSC — now chaired by Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.) — issued a budget proposal that called for gradually raising the Social Security retirement age to 69.
The RSC is the largest conservative bloc in the House, and it currently includes nearly 80 percent of all Republicans. But at least some members argue the group’s plans shouldn’t be taken seriously.
“RSC budgets have always been a joke. Period,” said Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.). “They’ve never been implemented.”
Aris Foley contributed reporting | US Federal Policies |
Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s latest indictment of Donald Trump, for his role in fomenting the attempted coup of January 6, 2021, marks a dramatic new turn in the effort to hold the authoritarian ex-president accountable for his actions. Citing four federal counts, including the abridgement of voters’ civil rights under the Enforcement Act of 1879, enacted to punish Klan-led racial terror in the South, Smith laid out a detailed account of the many lies, intimidation ploys, and conspiratorial plots Trump launched to illegally reverse the outcome of a presidential election he knew he’d lost.
Smith also carried out his investigation and drafted Trump’s indictment at a remarkably swift pace—Attorney General Merrick Garland only appointed him last November—even as he was also overseeing the probe into Trump’s mishandling of sensitive federal documents at his Mar-a-Lago compound. So while it is indeed a relief to ponder the prospect that Trump may face actual consequences for his subversion of the Constitution and his governing oath, it’s also vital to ask ourselves just why and how a case this important for the rescue of whatever remains of our democracy, and founded on a great deal of already available public information, aroused such belated and half-hearted interest from the justice system.
The indictment’s chronicle of the events surrounding Trump’s coup scheme is painful to revisit, largely because it exposes how jury-rigged and vulnerable to abuse our patchwork system of election oversight is. With the instincts of a true Mob chieftain, Trump sought out all those weaknesses, cajoling election officials and state attorneys general, and demanding that his Justice Department investigate already discredited campfire tales of voting corpses, vote tabulation outnumbering actual populations, and mysterious truckloads of pre-completed ballots transported across state lines. All the while, Trump made a point of broadcasting his lies far and wide on social media, all the while summoning his movement’s wrath against anyone standing his way, from election workers conducting ballot counts to his own vice president.
Alas, the same basic profile of a sclerotic and unresponsive status quo holds for the federal enforcement of election law, as the institutional background behind Smith’s January 6 probe makes all too clear. From the outset of his tenure atop the Justice Department, Attorney General Merrick Garland evinced little interest in mounting any such investigation, fearing the GOP’s permanently aggrieved MAGA base would view it as a weaponized, partisan effort to hound Trump into political irrelevance. As a blockbuster report by the Washington Post’s Carol D. Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis revealed this June, for a full year after the insurrection, Garland’s team looking into January 6 “consisted of just four prosecutors working with agents with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the National Archives and Records Administration.” Garland also shunned any wider probe into Trump’s coterie of political shills and hack-legal advisers building the case for him to gin up a bogus roster of alternate electors from swing states to throw Congress’s January 6 certification of results into chaos. Those sycophants and grifters are now unnamed co-conspirators in Smith’s indictment, and will be subject to future legal proceedings. In the end, Garland didn’t mount an investigation into the electors’ scheme until 15 months after the failed coup attempt.
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Garland’s extreme solicitude to avoid courting the impression of promoting partisanship or other unlovely kinds of divisiveness in the pursuit of accountability on high is clearly a personal shortcoming—but it’s also a more widespread malady afflicting the culture of legal oversight in Washington. Leonnig and Davise reported that Garland and senior DOJ officials even hesitated in authorizing sedition charges against members of the Oath Keepers militia group, who committed some of the worst (and most coordinated) acts of violence outside the Capitol. Things got so bad in the Justice Department and the FBI alike that one Justice official complained that “you can’t use the T word” in deliberations over ultimate responsibility for the Jan. 6 attacks—a state of affairs not unlike a forensic inquiry into the sinking of the Titanic that makes no mention of an iceberg. Other legal figures in the federal justice system were also taking anxious notice of the Justice Department’s dilatory approach to January 6. James O. Carter, a federal judge presiding over a civil suit involving the crackpot proposals of John Eastman to seize the presidency under the clouds of confusion kicked up by the fake electors’ slates, bluntly pronounced the effort a “coup in search of a legal theory,” adding that “the illegality of the plan was obvious.”
“More than a year after the attack on our Capitol, the public is still searching for accountability,” Carter went on to observe. “… If the country does not commit to investigating and pursuing accountability for those responsible, the Court fears January 6 will repeat itself.”
Even so, Garland and his adjutants continued to drag their feet, until finally shamed into action by the work of the House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol—and by the news last November that Donald Trump was going to seek another term. In other words, Justice officials only relinquished Garland’s staid, politics-last M.O. thanks to, well, politics.
All this was particularly baffling coming from Garland, who first came to widespread public attention when Mitch McConnell blockaded his nomination by Barack Obama to the US Supreme Court, on the totally fabricated grounds that the pending confirmation hearing would come too close to the 2016 election. If anyone should have understood that the forces of politics can’t simply be quarantined out of Justice Department inquiries, it should have been Merrick Garland.
But of course Garland also exemplifies a mythic, meritocratic vision of government operations that’s endemic among the higher echelons of Democratic party officialdom. The deranged character of the insurrection at the Capitol—stoked by Trump’s delusive refusal to imagine a world where he might be a loser—is a first-order refutation of that theory of power. And as Carter noted, the longer federal officials put off reckoning with that basic truth, the more they court a replay—together with a frontal assault on all the household gods of democratic liberal governance that would be far worse. What’s more, of course, Garland has permitted the usual cohort of Trump enablers in GOP leadership—who were briefly scandalized and appalled by January 6—to settle into election denialism as officially sanctioned party dogma.
Smith’s indictment may well undo some of that prospective damage, if it yields convictions for Trump before a DC jury. Certainly, the fact that Trump himself is the only named defendant in the document represents a sea change from Garland’s own manifest allergy to “the T word” in Justice’s internal confabs.
But the broader fog of self-administered meritocratic make-believe still dogs the setting of priorities in Biden’s Justice Department. The thing that Merrick Garland feared most in his agons over the specter of a Trump indictment—MAGA world’s politically driven castigation of the Justice Department’s impartiality—was always going to be a given, as any sentient observer of American politics over the past seven years well knows. (Not that additional proof is required, but see the House Judiciary Committee’s recent demented inquisition of Garland’s law-enforcement peer, FBI Director Christopher Wray, as an all-too-representative case in point.)
As for holding off on robust January 6 inquiries until Trump had announced his own re-election candidacy, that’s a still more puzzling call. The delayed reaction appears to be steeped in the fanciful notion that Trump only presented a clear-and-present danger to American democracy when he again took up the mantle of a presidential run—and needed to be treated as such when a nomination might be in hand. That is, of course, a baldly political calculation, but more to the point a mistaken one, as Trump continues to fundraise and demagogue around his serial criminal and civil indictments to open up an enormous lead in the scrum for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. And regardless of Garland’s own prim and meritocratic strategic reckonings, he’s now assured that Smith’s twin federal prosecutions of Trump in the Mar-a-Lago and January 6 cases will be driving political debate for months to come. The simple truth is that ever since the Trump-led GOP began its multifront offensive against the rule of law and the basic functioning of our government, the preservation of our democracy is a political cause. For federal legal authorities to pretend otherwise is to forsake the basic principle of public accountability for the powerful when it’s most urgently needed. So as we celebrate the historic achievement of Jack Smith, let us also pray that we have absorbed, once and for all, the crucial lessons of the no-less historic folly of Merrick Garland. | US Political Corruption |
Ron Johnson/AP
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Former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event Monday, March 13, 2023, in Davenport, Iowa.
Ron Johnson/AP
Former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event Monday, March 13, 2023, in Davenport, Iowa.
Ron Johnson/AP
The two politicians seen as the top Republicans in the race for their party's 2024 presidential nomination have made their opening pitches to Iowa voters. Former President Donald Trump made his first trip to the state since announcing his third presidential bid on Monday where he took shots at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who made his Iowa debut on Friday.
"Ron [DeSantis] was a disciple of Paul Ryan, who was a RINO loser who is currently destroying Fox," Trump said from the stage of the Adler Theater. RINO stands for Republican In Name Only.
Trump's visit came following last week's news that the former president has been invited to testify in front of a New York grand jury, a move that's widely understood to mean he could soon face criminal charges. Trump, who came in second in the 2016 Iowa Republican caucuses and won Iowa in the general election that year and again in 2020, told the audience they were much better off with him in the White House than President Joe Biden or DeSantis, his chief rival. DeSantis has not yet announced an official bid for the White House.
Clay Masters/Iowa Public Radio
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis talks with Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds during a trip to Davenport, Iowa, on March 10, 2023, while he mulls a run for president in 2024.
Clay Masters/Iowa Public Radio
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis talks with Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds during a trip to Davenport, Iowa, on March 10, 2023, while he mulls a run for president in 2024.
Clay Masters/Iowa Public Radio
A new Des Moines Register Iowa poll showed while Trump is still viewed favorably by Iowa Republicans, his support is eroding. The percentage of Iowa Republicans who say they would "definitely" vote for him if he were the nominee in 2024 has plummeted by more than 20 percentage points since June 2021.
"I don't disagree with a lot of Trump's policies but I think he's just too abrasive," said Ron Schorg, who is retired from the life insurance industry. "He's got too much baggage right now to get anything done. And if good, you get elected, and I don't think he can get elected."
Schorg was one of the hundreds who came to see Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speak in both Davenport and Des Moines.
DeSantis avoided taking aim at the former president who endorsed him in both of his gubernatorial elections. Instead, he was in Iowa to promote a new book and talk about what he sees as his accomplishments as Florida's governor — from banning mask mandates and vaccines to passing a law critics dubbed "Don't Say Gay" — all while being combative toward the press.
"All I can tell you is I got elected by 32,000 votes," DeSantis said to a crowd of hundreds in Des Moines on Friday night. "I spent four years of them attacking me and me fighting back and I won by 1.5 million, so I'm fine with that."
Clay Masters/Iowa Public Radio
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Former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley speaks to a crowd at a farm in Nevada, Iowa, on March 9, 2023, during her second trip to Iowa as a Republican presidential candidate.
Clay Masters/Iowa Public Radio
Former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley speaks to a crowd at a farm in Nevada, Iowa, on March 9, 2023, during her second trip to Iowa as a Republican presidential candidate.
Clay Masters/Iowa Public Radio
DeSantis shared the stage with Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds who has enacted a lot of similar policies in Iowa.
"I'm definitely ready to see a change in leadership and the Republican Party," said Holly Ayen who came to the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines to hear him speak. "I'm kind of leaning towards [DeSantis] at this point."
Other Iowa voters expressed concerns that the former president has already served one term in office.
"Can you get anything done in four years?" wondered Sherrie Pleis, a veterinarian who came to see Nikki Haley, Trump's former U.N. ambassador, speak at a farm in central Iowa. She said she wants someone to be able to hold two consecutive terms to "get some policies moved through to undo a lot of the bad democratic policies."
Clay Masters/Iowa Public Radio
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Trump supporters lineup outside the Adler Theater in downtown Davenport, Iowa, on March 13, 2023, to see the former president speak at his first Iowa event since announcing his third presidential bid.
Clay Masters/Iowa Public Radio
Trump supporters lineup outside the Adler Theater in downtown Davenport, Iowa, on March 13, 2023, to see the former president speak at his first Iowa event since announcing his third presidential bid.
Clay Masters/Iowa Public Radio
But there was no question who many of the Trump backers who came to see him on Monday were supporting. Like Laura Oldfather who says much of the news implicating Trump for wrongdoing is not worth paying attention to.
"It's noise," Oldfather said. "The things they accuse him of ... it seems like the Democrats do it tenfold and nothing ever happens to them."
It's that kind of loyalty that Trump is counting on in Iowa and beyond. But the kind of retail politics that Iowa is known for ahead of the caucuses is not the former president's style.
Trump is running his campaign like he's already the nominee so shaking hands and kissing babies in the traditional style of campaigning is not something you will see a lot of from him.
Still, anything can happen in Iowa. That's why Republican presidential hopefuls — those who have declared bids and those who still might - are testing the waters in the Hawkeye State. Even Trump will have to make an effort here. Because Iowa is the first in the nation and could make or break someone's presidential ambitions. | US Federal Elections |
As the Israel-Hamas war raged on this week and Israel expanded its ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, the territory's compromised internet infrastructure and access to connectivity went fully dark on Friday, leaving Palestinians without access to ground or mobile data connections. Meanwhile, researchers are bracing for the fallout if Hamas makes good on its threats to distribute hostage execution videos online. And TikTokkers are using a niche livestreaming feature and exploiting the Israeli-Hamas conflict to collect virtual gifts from viewers, a portion of which goes to the social media company as a fee.As the worst mass shooting in Maine's history unfolded this week and the gunman remained at large, disinformation about the situation and the suspect flooded social media, adding to the already chaotic and horrific situation. Elon Musk, the owner of X (formerly Twitter) posted remarks earlier this month mocking Ukrainian president Vlodymr Zelensky that were met with a flood of support and enthusiasm from Russian trolls and accounts distributing pro-Russia propaganda.The US federal foreign intelligence collection tool—a frequently abused surveillance authority—known as Section 702 is facing its demise at the end of the year despite being viewed as the “crown jewel” of US surveillance powers. So far, no members of Congress have introduced a bill to prevent its January 1 sunset. And the identity-management platform Okta suffered a breach that had implications for nearly 200 of its corporate clients and brought up memories of a similar hack the company suffered last year that also had knock-on effects for customers.An EU government body has been pushing a controversial proposal with far-reaching privacy implications in an attempt to combat child sexual abuse material, but its most outspoken advocates recently added to the drama significantly by essentially launching an influence campaign to support its passage. The long-foreseen nightmare of using generative AI to create digital child abuse materials has arrived with a flood of images, some of which are completely fabricated while others depict real victims generated from old datasets.We also went deep this week on a situation in which hackers say they can crack a locked USB drive that contains a massive 7,002 bitcoins, worth about $235 million—but the drive's owner hasn't let them try.And there's more. Each week, we round up the security and privacy news we didn’t cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories, and stay safe out there.A cryptominer that never seemed to generate very much cryptocurrency for its creators is part of a larger digital espionage campaign, according to researchers from security firm Kaspersky Lab. The platform, which they call StripedFly, has infected more than 1 million Windows and Linux targets globally since 2017. StripedFly is modular and has multiple components for compromising targets' devices and collecting different types of data, indicating that it was likely created as part of a well-funded state espionage program, not a cybercriminal enterprise. It also includes an update mechanism so attackers can distribute improvements and new functionality to the malware.StripedFly can, among other things, steal access credentials from compromised devices; take screenshots; grab databases, sensitive files, videos, or other information of interest; and record live audio by compromising a target's microphone. Notably, StripedFly uses an innovative, custom Tor client to mask communication and exfiltration between the malware and its command-and-control servers. It also has a ransomware component that attackers have occasionally deployed. It infects targets initially using a customized version of the notorious EternalBlue exploit leaked from the US National Security Agency.Documents reviewed by 404 Media shed new light on US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s scanning and database tool for identifying “derogatory” online speech about the US. Dubbed Giant Oak Search Technology (GOST), it assists ICE agents in scanning social media posts. According to the documents, they then use the findings in immigration enforcement actions.One of the documents shows a GOST catchphrase, “We see the people behind the data,” and a user guide from the documents says GOST is “capable of providing behavioral-based internet search capabilities.” ICE agents can search the system for specific names, addresses, email addresses, and countries of citizenship. The documents say that “potentially derogatory social media can be reviewed within the interface.”The world’s telephony networks have often been built on legacy infrastructure and with a convoluted maze of interconnections. The system enables mobile data access across much of the world, but its complexity and the collision of new and archaic technologies can lead to vulnerabilities. This week, University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab published extensive research on the degree to which roaming arrangements between mobile providers contain security issues that can be exploited to track devices, and by extension the people who own them. The flaw comes from a lack of protection on the communications between cell towers as you, for instance, travel on a train, ride a motorcycle, or walk around town. The concern is that governments, criminals, or other snoops can manipulate the weaknesses in these handoff communications to track device locations. “These vulnerabilities are most often tied to the signaling messages that are sent between telecommunications networks which expose the phones to different modes of location disclosure,” Citizen Lab researchers wrote. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
In July, a federal judge issued an order limiting the Biden administration's social media contacts over Republicans' concerns that officials illegally suppressed speech. That order was mostly overturned last week, and now, US Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar has rushed to ask the Supreme Court to reevaluate one of the order's remaining restrictions.
In a court filing yesterday, Prelogar requested that the Supreme Court extend the stay of a preliminary injunction banning officials from "coercing" or "significantly encouraging" social media content removals. The injunction would've taken effect Monday, but the Biden administration wants the stay extended while the Supreme Court reviews the lower court's decision. If the stay isn't extended, Prelogar argued that the allegedly overly broad injunction "would impose grave and irreparable harms on the government and the public" by preventing officials from quickly responding during emergencies and generally advocating and defending policies that advance the public interest.
The "sweeping preliminary injunction" governs "thousands of federal officials’ and employees’ speech concerning any content posted on any social-media platform by anyone," Prelogar said. "The implications of the Fifth Circuit’s holdings are startling. The court imposed unprecedented limits on the ability of the President’s closest aides to use the bully pulpit to address matters of public concern, on the FBI’s ability to address threats to the Nation’s security, and on the CDC’s ability to relay public health information at platforms’ request."
Prelogar alleged that the "unprecedented injunction" improperly installed the Fifth Circuit "as the superintendent of the Executive Branch’s communications with and about social-media platforms." She also argued the lower court adopted "a novel and disruptive conception of the state-action doctrine" that allegedly runs afoul of the First Amendment, "trenches on the separation of powers, and conflicts with the decisions of other courts of appeals."
The Solicitor General emphasized the urgency of the request, confirming that the federal government would officially petition the Supreme Court to review the case by October 12, ensuring that the Supreme Court has a chance to possibly reverse the lower court's decision this term. Urging even faster action, Prelogar requested that yesterday's court filing be taken as the government's official request for the Supreme Court review, requiring no further briefings or filings to expedite the process.
Prelogar said that the injunction should be fully blocked until the Supreme Court decides whether it would review the case. "At minimum," Prelogar argued that the injunction should at least be restricted to preventing the Biden administration from discussing with platforms "any content posted by the individual respondents themselves," rather than restricting officials from contacting platforms about any content hosted on any platform.
"The injunction sweeps far beyond what is necessary to address any cognizable harm to respondents: Although the district court declined to certify a class, the injunction covers the government’s communications with all social-media platforms (not just those used by respondents) regarding all posts by any person (not just respondents) on all topics," Prelogar wrote.
That's far from the standard that an injunction "be no more burdensome to the defendant than necessary to provide complete relief to the plaintiffs,” Prelogar argued.
"Any injunctive relief must be limited to government actions targeting respondents’ social-media accounts and posts," Prelogar said. That "would largely or entirely eliminate any harm that respondents might face without burdening a vast universe of government actions lacking any connection to respondents," Prelogar said. | SCOTUS |
Tommy Tuberville and the future of the single senator veto
Since February, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) has blocked votes on every personnel recommendation of the U.S. military requiring Senate confirmation. By the end of the year, the impact will be felt by about 90 percent of the nation’s most senior military commanders.
According to a legion of critics across the political spectrum, Tuberville’s action poses a threat to national security, reduces military readiness and undermines morale. In a joint letter, seven former secretaries of defense declared, “We can think of few things as irresponsible and uncaring.” Along with several other Republican senators, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell opposes his “blanket hold.”
Tuberville, who has never served in the military, claims the U.S. Armed Services has “too many officers.” And he has maintained that he will not relent until the “woke” Pentagon — which he alleges, without evidence, may be facilitating “after birth abortions” — stops granting leave and travel expenses for military personnel who cannot get abortions in the state where they are stationed.
Having accomplished nothing in nine months, Tuberville told his Republican colleagues on Nov. 29 that he would get them out of “this mess,” but did not say when or how. The next day, he acknowledged that “these people need to be promoted,” promised to allow promotions “in the very near future,” but “I don’t know how many at one time.”
Tuberville’s single senator veto depends on an arcane procedural rule. In the House of Representatives, the Rules Committee sets guidelines for debates, amendments and votes on legislation. By contrast, the Senate requires “unanimous consent” for most nominations and bills to reach the floor. The Senate, McConnell once quipped, needs unanimous consent “to turn the lights on before noon.”
Because bringing up the Pentagon’s nominations one by one would tie the chamber down for months, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer requested unanimous consent to consider them in batches, and Tuberville’s objection kept them off the calendar. A resolution to suspend unanimous consent is subject to a filibuster, and so far not enough Republicans seem willing to invoke “cloture” and proceed to a vote on the nominations.
As Tuberville’s parliamentary maneuver demonstrates, unanimous consent, holds and filibusters thwart the will of the majority, increase partisan polarization, decrease the ability of the Senate to do its work and prevent senators from debating the merits of legislation. It’s time to end these harmful practices.
It’s important to note that none of these (nor a provision for unlimited debate in the Senate) originate in the Constitution. In fact, in Federalist 22, Alexander Hamilton writes that “if a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority,” national proceedings will be “kept in a state of inaction.” And a weak government, “sometimes bordering on anarchy,” will be incapable of conducting “the public business.”
“Universal consent” was introduced into the Senate in the 1840s by Sen. William Allen, who defined the term as “a conversational understanding that an end would be put to a protracted debate after a particular time.” In 1914, what had been a “gentleman’s agreement” became formalized as a mechanism for placing bills directly on the Senate calendar. Over the ensuing decades, universal consent was used “pro forma,” to expedite consideration of routine matters almost certain to command a large bipartisan majority.
Ironically, universal consent has now become a weapon, backed up by an implied filibuster threat, allowing hostage-takers to delay such consideration to extract concessions for their own priorities that do not command a majority.
A hold is a fraternal twin to universal consent, which since the 1980s has taken the form of a demand by an individual senator that the majority leader not bring up a bill or confirmation of a nominee. In 2023, in a protest against indictments against former President Trump, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) put a hold on appointments to the Justice Department. To pressure the Biden administration to propose a plan to reduce prescription drug prices, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) put a hold on nominees for health-related positions.
The filibuster is, of course, the elephant in the Senate chamber. The Senate’s first formal limit on debate came in 1917, with a cloture rule permitting a two-thirds majority move to a vote. In 1975, the threshold was reduced to three-fifths. In recent years, the Senate has permitted “silent” filibusters, conducted without senators having to hold the floor.
The result has been a huge increase in filibusters, applied to most of the Senate’s business. In the 60 years between 1947 and 2006, 960 cloture motions were filed; in the decade between 2010 and 2020, 959. And the Senate is the only legislative body in the world that requires a supermajority to pass “ordinary” bills.
Designed to slow down legislation proposed in the heat of the moment and ensure careful deliberation, the filibuster has become a means of stopping it — all too often, it seems, by politicians who prefer partisanship and paralysis to governing.
What, then, can be done? Universal consent and holds should be abolished and the Senate Rules Committee given the authority to work with the majority leader to set the calendar, guidelines for amendments and time limits for debate. Few Americans realize that the filibuster has been revised 161 times since 1969. The closing of military bases, arms sales, fast-tracked trade agreements, the budget reconciliation process and the confirmation of federal judges are no longer subject to filibusters.
And so there’s ample precedent for the Senate to add additional legislation, including voting rights, to that list. Senators should set the threshold for cloture at 55 votes, or reduce the current number needed by three after each cloture vote, until a bill can pass with 51 votes.
Americans take pride, and justifiably so, in a political system that pairs majority rule with minority rights. But since eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, it seems like the right time to adjust the balance between them by taking a hard look at unanimous consent, holds and the filibuster.
Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. He is the co-author (with Stuart Blumin) of “Rude Republic: Americans and Their Politics in the Nineteenth Century.”
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | US Congress |
These 19 Senate Republicans voted against advancing short-term funding bill
The Senate voted Tuesday to advance a short-term funding measure needed to avert a government shutdown at the end of the week, though not every lawmaker in the upper chamber was in support.
The vote was 77 to 19, with all 19 in opposition part of the Republican Party.
The Senate Republicans who voted no include Sens. Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.), Mike Braun (Ind.), Katie Britt (Ala.), Ted Budd (N.C.) Ted Cruz (Texas), Steve Daines (Mont.), Deb Fischer (Neb.), Bill Hagerty (Tenn.), Josh Hawley (Mo.), Ron Johnson (Wis.), Mike Lee (Utah), Cynthia Lummis (Wyo.), Roger Marshall (Kan.), Rand Paul (Ky.) Pete Ricketts (Neb.), Eric Schmitt (Mo.), Rick Scott (Fla.), Tommy Tuberville (Ala.), and J.D. Vance (Ohio.)
Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Jim Risch (R-Idaho), Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Tina Smith (D-Minn.), all did not vote on Tuesday.
Smith announced earlier Tuesday she tested positive for COVID-19.
The vote sets the Senate up to pass a continuing resolution (CR) later this week, which it could then send to the House to avoid a shutdown on Oct. 1. If the Senate can pass a CR later this week, it could put pressure on the House to bring it to the floor as the lower chamber struggles to make progress on its own.
The Senate’s CR would fund the federal government until Nov. 17, while providing around $6.15 billion in funding for Ukraine and $5.99 billion in disaster assistance.
The Senate’s vote indicates Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) are mostly on the same page in looking to avert a government shutdown, which would suspend numerous government services and furlough thousands of government workers.
Schumer called the bill a “bridge” to allow negotiators more time to debate a longer-term deal on government.
“Senate Democrats and Republicans, together, worked in good faith to reach an agreement on a continuing resolution that will keep the government open beyond Sept. 30,” Schumer said on the floor Tuesday.
Meanwhile, infighting within the House GOP has prevented the chamber from agreeing to a short-term funding measure, as a handful of hard-line Republicans have vowed to oppose a CR in an already narrow GOP majority.
In a concession to conservative House members, House Republicans advanced four of the 12 full-year spending bills in a 216-212 vote Tuesday night. Conservative firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) was the only GOP “no vote.”
The vote handed McCarthy a small win after being met with conservative opposition to advance full-year spending measures. While the advancement of the four bills themselves does nothing to avert a shutdown, McCarthy and allies hope to build enough goodwill with conservatives to change their minds on voting for a short-term funding bill.
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | US Congress |
Sen. John Fetterman said that he feels hopeful “for the first time” after discharging from a hospital where he spent six weeks receiving treatment for his depression.
The Pennsylvania Democrat checked himself into Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Feb. 15 for inpatient treatment for clinical depression, after what his neuropsychiatrist described as “low energy and motivation, minimal speech, poor sleep, slowed thinking, slowed movement, feelings of guilt and worthlessness, but no suicidal ideation.”
On Friday, Fetterman’s office said his depression is “in remission,” and that he is partly treating his illness with medication. The senator, 53, is expected to return to Capitol Hill when the chamber resumes session later this month.
In an interview released Sunday, Fetterman spoke to Jane Pauley on “CBS Sunday Morning” about his recovery journey for the depression he’s battled throughout his life.
“I will be going home,” he said, adding that it will “be the first time ever to be in remission with my depression. … And I can’t wait to [see] what it really feels like, to take it all in, and to start making up any lost time.”
Fetterman entering recovery comes nearly a year after the then-candidate experienced a stroke, putting his health at the forefront of Pennsylvania’s Senate race. The stroke left Fetterman with an auditory processing disorder that his team now says he uses hearing aids and closed captioning for.
The senator won the election in November, but told Pauley that his depression began growing in the time between the campaign and his swearing in. Fetterman recalled not being able to get out of bed, not eating, losing weight and no longer engaging in things that he loves.
“The whole thing about depression is that objectively, you may have won, but depression can absolutely convince you that you actually lost,” he said. “And that’s exactly what happened. And that was the start of a downward spiral.”
A third of stroke patients experience clinical depression, which doctors say can be treated with a combination of medication and psychotherapy. Fetterman said that he made the decision to enter treatment on his son’s 14th birthday, something the senator expressed guilt about.
“It makes me sad,” he said while tearing up. “You know, the day that I go in was my son’s birthday. And I hope that for the rest of his life, his birthday will be joyous, and you don’t have to remember that your father was admitted.”
Pauley responded with a reframe: “This is where your renewal began. His birthday is a day for both of you to celebrate.”
“Well, that’s a good way to look at it. I’m looking forward to doing that,” Fetterman said, adding that he feels hopeful “for the first time” and that it’s a “strange feeling for me to have.”
The senator’s transparency around his depression and post-stroke accommodations has helped normalize and destigmatize discussions about disability and mental health.
“My message right now isn’t political,” he said. “I’m just somebody that’s suffering from depression.” | US Congress |
Janet Yellen Had Better Have a Secret Plan for the Debt Limit
It's happened before: In 1985, Treasury Secretary James Baker had more than one such plan, and his use of them prevented economic disaster.
Dear readers,
In the fall of 1985, there was a debt limit crisis not too dissimilar from the one we’re going through right now. Not only did we run up close to breaching the borrowing cap, the negotiation over raising the borrowing cap was tied to a negotiation over a multi-year agreement for deficit reduction. All the while, the Reagan administration was issuing warnings about what would happen if the Treasury Department ran out of room to borrow, which it expected to happen at any moment.
I am kind of obsessed with the 1985 crisis because I think the way it played out contains a number of lessons that are important today. The main lesson I want to focus on today is: Actually failing to make debt payments is unlikely ever to be the best option available to the Treasury Department. This is why Reagan’s Treasury repeatedly threatened to miss payments, but never actually did so. Whenever a default deadline would hit, they always found a way to keep the funds flowing.
Check out how the warnings changed over time. Here’s The New York Times on October 8, 1985:
The Treasury Department, trying to put pressure on Congress to raise the Government's debt ceiling and pass a companion bill calling for a balanced budget by 1991, said today that as early as [today] the Government would order banks not to honor its own checks…
[Treasury Department spokesman Arthur Siddon] acknowledged that the Treasury had changed its approach from Sunday, when Mr. Siddon said the Government would not issue checks if it it did not have the funds. Today Mr. Siddon said the position was changed because the Treasury found it could not determine at what point to stop issuing checks.
He said when the cash is exhausted, the Treasury would tell the Federal Reserve Board ''to notify the banking system not to honor any Goverment checks or electronic funds transfers.''
He went on to say that there was no way to distinguish among checks and payments, so that all of them, including Social Security checks, payments to military contractors and interest on Government securities would not be honored.
But three days later, Treasury had discovered its checks could still be honored, because of One Weird Trick:
The Treasury Department insisted today that a novel financing technique it used Wednesday to borrow $5 billion did not lift the federal debt above the statutory ceiling…
''I think they're going to have a big credibility problem when they send their next daily 'tremble' letter up here,'' [Senate Majority Leader Bob] Dole said, referring to a series of default warnings by Secretary James A. Baker 3d and Deputy Secretary Richard G. Darman.
A Treasury spokesman said the department had no response to Mr. Dole's criticism.
One of the pieces of conflicting information involved the timing of a novel securities swap the Treasury was forced to make — redemption of Treasury securities held by the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund and the substitution of new securities issued by the Federal Financing Bank. The obligations of the bank, a bookkeeping affiliate of the Treasury, are not subject to the debt ceiling…
Treasury considered the retirement fund a public offering and thus left the Federal Financing Bank able to issue only $10 billion more, which would provide operating cash for the government for about two weeks.
Then, when that $10 billion of borrowing capacity had been used up, Reagan’s Treasury found another way to keep borrowing. The Times reported on November 2:
The Treasury on Friday night canceled $13 billion of Government securities held by the Social Security trust funds to prevent the Federal debt from exceeding the statutory limit.
The action became necessary at midnight because Congress could not agree on legislation to raise the debt ceiling above its current level of $1.848 trillion.
The maneuver will enable the Government to cover Federal benefit checks that went out on Friday and others that will go out on Monday, and, according to Treasury officials, will leave the Government with sufficient cash to meet expenses until Nov. 15.
Canceling the bonds issued to the Social Security trust funds allowed the Government to borrow an equivalent amount in private markets while staying below the debt ceiling. The extra borrowing was needed to provide the cash necessary to meet Government obligations.
Later in November 1985, Congress passed and the president signed an interim increase in the debt limit, and in December they made a longer-term deal that included significant and binding targets for deficit reduction.The accounting gimmicks didn’t obviate the need to raise the debt limit eventually, or the need to enact substantial policy changes along with the increase, but they did ensure that we didn’t have an economic calamity on the way to making the deal.
I wrote last week about the four different outcomes that can arise when the debt limit is reached. Repeatedly, Reagan’s Treasury threatened some form of what I call Option 1 — an indiscriminate failure to honor payments due, potentially including interest payments on government bonds. And yet, when push came to shove, they repeatedly chose what I labeled Option 3: using accounting techniques to continue borrowing without technically violating the debt limit law. Say what you will about these technicalities — as the Times described at the time, a lot of members of Congress were none too pleased about the moves — they were obviously preferable to allowing checks from the Treasury to be dishonored.
Now let’s look at what Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is saying about what would happen if the debt limit is not raised before the “X-date” — the day, expected to be in early June, when the federal government would run out of the spending capacity it has under the current debt limit with the current set of “extraordinary measures” the Treasury uses to manage its cash.
At a Wall Street Journal conference this morning, Yellen declared: “If Congress doesn’t act to raise the debt ceiling, and if we hit the so-called ‘X-date’ without that occurring, there will be some obligations that we will be unable to pay.” If Yellen is not bluffing, then her statement would foreclose Option 3 (gimmicks) and Option 4 (overt defiance of the debt limit law), since these are both strategies to pay every bill that comes due. She also declared that Option 2 (strategic prioritization of certain payments over others) is technologically infeasible. So her threat is equivalent to the threat the Reagan Treasury was making in early October 1985: if we don’t raise the debt limit, we will fail to pay, and that failure will be indiscriminate.
Yellen went on to note that this would be really bad, saying, “We will default on some obligation, and that's really not an acceptable state of affairs. It threatens the strong recovery that we have in the US economy; it threatens financial markets.”
This last part is obviously true: An indiscriminate payment default would have terrible economic consequences. I would additionally note that it would break the law. Just as there is a law limiting the total face value of government bonds outstanding, there are also a variety of laws (and some constitutional provisions) requiring the Treasury to disburse certain funds. If the Treasury Department fails to pay interest on government bonds, it will be breaking the law. If it fails to disburse funds Congress has instructed it to disburse, like Social Security checks, it will be breaking the law. I understand the government sometimes does things that are illegal — I think the president’s student debt forgiveness plan is illegal — but surely we should expect the Treasury to exhaust its legal options before choosing an illegal one, especially when the illegal option would also be really bad for the economy and the president’s political position.
And this makes me wonder: When Janet Yellen says “there will be some obligations that we will be unable to pay” absent a debt limit increase before the X-date, is she for real? As you can see in the news articles quoted above, when Reagan administration officials made similar claims in October 1985, they were not for real, and Bob Dole got quite grumpy about their dissembling, though that didn’t stop him from being one of the parties to a deal to resolve the debt limit crisis just a few weeks later.
Another thing Janet Yellen said this morning, when pressed on exactly how a default on payments would play out, was: “I'm not going to get into what exactly is possible and what is not possible.” Again, here is a parallel with the Reagan team in 1985: President Biden wants a deal, and if the Treasury Secretary was out there saying she has a plan to keep the markets calm and orderly if a deal isn’t reached, that would reduce the odds that members of Congress (in either party) would actually reach one. And who knows? Maybe the contingency plan she has isn’t very good, and won’t keep the markets in good working order or prevent a severe economic crisis. But if the plan is pretty good, I understand why she wouldn’t tell.
It does seem to me, though, that like in 1985, Treasury ought to have gotten itself into a position where it can push this thing out for a few more weeks without indiscriminate payment default or economic calamity.
I am not making an argument for invoking the 14th Amendment to issue debt in violation of the debt ceiling. Even if you take the 14th Amendment to mean that bonds issued in violation of the debt limit law would necessarily be honored, that interpretation alone does not vitiate the debt limit law. It would still be the case that if Treasury can simultaneously honor the debt limit and comply with its various statutory and constitutional obligations to disburse funds, it must do so.
What I’m arguing for is gimmicks. There is a Washington Post report that Treasury is seeking to have government agencies manage cash, including by delaying certain payments, in a way that could push the X-date past June 15 — because estimated tax payments are due on June 15, getting that far would likely push the X-date well into July. If that doesn’t work, there are several strategies available — including premium bonds, consols, and the platinum coin — that comply with all relevant laws, including the debt limit, while allowing Treasury to make all the payments it owes. While these options are not without political or economic costs — they should not be Plan A — they are significantly less economically and legally troublesome than just failing to pay our bills.
The path of threats from the Reagan team in 1985 reflected a set of conflicting priorities: They wanted the threat of economic disaster to help push Congress toward a deal, but they didn’t actually want to allow an economic disaster. In early October, they claimed the government would stop sending out checks it owed. Then they claimed the government would imminently tell banks to dishonor its checks. Maybe that’s because they hadn’t yet thought up the accounting gimmicks they later decided to use, but I think it’s because they wanted to use the threat of default — and the economic calamities it would entail — to push Congress toward a deal. When that didn’t work, they reached into the drawer of gimmicks they’d previously claimed wasn’t available.
And I sure hope that’s what’s happening today.
If Biden and his economic team really do not believe they have a unilateral strategy to buy additional time on the debt limit, then their overall strategy around the debt limit has been idiotic. If that’s the case, they are backed into a corner: Republicans have little reason to moderate their demands for spending cuts and other policy changes, because they are willing to allow a payment default that would damage the economy in a way that would harm President Biden politically. This would make it nearly impossible for Biden to walk away from a Republican offer. If that’s the case, they should have shoved a debt limit increase through Congress using the budget reconciliation process last fall, even though it would have had significant political costs, taken up lots of floor time in the Senate, and interfered with other legislative priorities like the appropriations laws that are funding the government right now.
But if — like Ronald Reagan and James Baker nearly 40 years ago — the Biden team is bluffing about payment default, then what they are doing makes quite a lot of sense.
Because government spending needs to be reauthorized next year, there needs to be a spending deal with Republicans, and that need would exist even if there were not debt limit law. That spending deal will have to entail spending cuts; this is the consequence of losing an election. So long as Republicans do not really have a gun to the president’s head — if Biden knows he can get through the next few weeks, if necessary, with no debt limit increase law — then the inclusion of the debt limit in the negotiations does not put him or Democrats at any particular disadvantage compared to a more normal budget negotiation. Quite plausibly, Democrats would be in a worse negotiating position right now if they’d used reconciliation to raise the debt limit last year, because moving a debt limit increase through a partisan and time-consuming reconciliation process during last year’s lame duck session might well have interfered with the thing they used that time for instead: a successful bipartisan negotiation of Fiscal Year 2023 spending bills that entailed a substantial spending increase and set the high baseline from which Biden is now negotiating over next year’s spending.
And if you know you have tools available to stave off a payment default through June, that doesn’t necessarily mean you should disclose them in advance. Doing so could undermine a sense of urgency toward a deal that the White House wants to be felt on both sides of the aisle. If a deal isn’t reached promptly, that could force Treasury to use tools that, while better than defaulting on payments, would still cause significant turmoil in financial markets — suddenly dropping a lot of oddly structured bonds into the Treasury markets would be an action with real and negative economic consequences. Such moves would also uncomfortably politicize the Federal Reserve and the Treasury in ways that may not prove necessary if we can push everyone toward a deal this week. And even though Democrats loathe the idea of “negotiating over the debt ceiling,” I can see why they would feel pretty good about resolving the entire fight over spending levels for the rest of Biden's first term within the next few weeks, which is what rolling this negotiation into the debt limit fight may yet allow them to do.
I don’t know exactly what’s going on inside Janet Yellen’s head or her Treasury Department. But allowing yourself to get backed up into a situation where you have mere days to talk Republicans into a debt limit increase or else you’re going to break the financial markets by defaulting on government bonds would be so stupid that I find it very hard to believe that is what has happened. I have to believe that, like James Baker before her, she has some tricks up her sleeve, and that’s why the administration’s moves on debt and spending make any political sense at all.
A statistic I keep hearing — and repeating — as this crisis unfolds, is that the debt limit has been raised 103 times since it was first established in law, and every single time it was raised in time to avoid payment default. Sometimes, as was the case in 1985, this was achieved despite warnings that we might be mere hours away from payment default. And there’s something I’m not sure about. Have we gone 103 for 103 because Congress, despite its dysfunctions, has always gotten its shit together and acted just in the nick of time? Or have we gone 103 for 103 because the deadlines are fundamentally fake — squidgy enough that the Treasury can consistently find a way to move them back when the alternative is a payment default? I think the answer is the latter — but if it’s the former, I guess we’re about to find out.
Very seriously,
Josh
Very Serious is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. | US Federal Policies |
Eric Gay/AP
toggle caption
U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, is shown talking to a member of the media during a campaign event in San Antonio, May 4, 2022.
Eric Gay/AP
U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, is shown talking to a member of the media during a campaign event in San Antonio, May 4, 2022.
Eric Gay/AP
WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, was carjacked Monday night by three armed attackers, his office said.
Cuellar's chief of staff Jacob Hochberg released a statement saying: "As Congressman Cuellar was parking his car this evening, 3 armed assailants approached the Congressman and stole his vehicle. Luckily, he was not harmed and is working with local law enforcement."
Hochberg said police recovered Cuellar's vehicle.
The Washington Post reported that the robbery happened at 9:30 p.m. at New Jersey Avenue and K Street SE in Washington's Navy Yard area, about a mile from the U.S. Capitol.
Monday's incident was the second assault on a member of Congress in the District of Columbia this year. In February, Democratic Rep. Angie Craig of Minnesota was assaulted in her Washington apartment building, suffering bruises while escaping serious injury. Her chief of staff said the attack did not appear to be politically motivated.
In June, Kendrid Khalil Hamlin, 26, pleaded guilty in that case to charges of assaulting a member of Congress and assaulting law enforcement officers. Hamlin was also accused of assaulting two officers as they attempted to arrest him on the same day of Craig's attack. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
A Utah mom who wrote a children's book about grieving after her husband died and then charged with fatally poisoning him was denied getting released on bail on Monday before her murder trial.
A judge said Kouri Richins, 33, posed "a substantial danger to the community" if she was allowed to post bail during a detention hearing, KTVX-TV reported.
Richins is accused of killing her husband of nine years Eric Richins by allegedly slipping him five times the lethal dosage of fentanyl into a Moscow Mule she mixed for him in March 2022. Richins was arrested in Park City, Utah, last month.
About a year to the day after her husband died, Richins published an illustrated children’s book, "Are You With Me?" about navigating through grief after losing a loved one.
Prosecutors say Richins, the widowed mom of three kids from Kamas, Utah, faces charges of criminal homicide, first-degree aggravated murder and three counts of possessing a controlled substance with intent to distribute. Richins has yet to enter a plea. She is due back in court for a pretrial hearing on June 22.
Utah mom accused of killing her husband A woman wrote a children's book about grief after her husband died. Now she is charged with his murder.
Prosecutors say Kouri Richins planned for her husband's death
Richins allegedly bought four life insurance policies on her husband's life totaling $2 million without his knowledge years before the alleged murder, prosecutors say.
Richins also took out a $250,000 home equity line of credit, spent it and stole about $134,000 from her husband's business, withdrew $100,000 from his bank accounts and spent more than $30,000 with his credit cards, prosecutors claim.
During Monday's hearing, Amy Richins, Eric Richins' sister, during a victim's impact statement, called her sister-in-law "desperate, greedy and extremely manipulative," according to the Associated Press.
"I never knew evil like this existed," said Amy Richins, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.
Amy Richins also accused Kouri Richins of intentionally poisoning Eric Richins and said it was painful for her family to watch Kouri Richins promote a book and describe herself as an amazing mother, the AP reported.
“How can anyone value human life so cheaply?" Amy Richins said. "I cannot comprehend it."
Also during Monday's four-hour hearing, a detective, a private investigator and a forensic accountant testified, describing Richins as someone who calculatingly plotted to kill her husband.
'Doomsday mom' guilty of killing kids 'Doomsday mom' Lori Vallow Daybell found guilty of killing her kids
Kouri Richins' attorneys claim 'no substantial evidence' against her
Prior to Monday's hearing, Richins' defense team filed a motion calling for her release. Richins' defense attorneys argued in court papers on Friday that “there is no substantial evidence to support the charges"
Her attorneys claim the evidence against Richins is circumstantial because authorities never seized fentanyl from the family home. CNN reported that Richins' defense team is also questioning the credibility of key witnesses expected to back prosecutors’ wishes that Richins remain in custody.
Her attorneys said that prosecutors simply accepted a narrative from Eric Richins’ family that his wife had poisoned him “and worked backward in an effort to support it” by spending about 14 months investigating and finding no evidence to support their theory the Associated Press said.
In a court filing containing a letter on Monday, Kouri Richins' attorneys claim detectives detained and questioned her unlawfully while executing a search warrant on the family home about a month after her husband’s death, the AP reported.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Kouri Richin, accused of killing husband, denied bail before trial | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
Beware the ides of August.
I have written that line since the late "aughts" here on Capitol Hill.
Shakespeare penned the line, "Beware the ides of March," in his play "Julius Caesar."
A soothsayer had warned the Roman leader to not let up his guard around the middle of the month. And as it turns out, that’s when Caesar was assassinated on the "ides of March" — March 15.
What an omen.
Foreboding. Cursed. Ominous.
In fact, the entire month of March can sometimes appear that way meteorologically.
We use a different metric in politics and specifically on Capitol Hill. August shouldn’t be such a terrifying month. After all, it’s summer. But without a doubt, some of the most utterly strange and consequential political events form in August.
This is ironic in Washington. That’s because the House and Senate are usually out of session for most of August.
But periodically, the vacuum of Congress being away from Washington actually generates its own news. That’s because some major issue may erupt, pressing Congress into meeting in August when it's not supposed to do so. Occasionally an event is so significant that lawmakers are summoned back to Washington to tackle a catastrophic issue.
Congress is long gone from Washington this August. Both the House and Senate abandoned the nation’s capital in late July. The House even cut town a day early after Republicans couldn’t reach consensus on approving an agriculture appropriations bill. So it would take a lot to siphon lawmakers back to town this August.
But real world events have a way of doing that.
Congress remained in session into early August in 2011 to wrestle with the debt ceiling. That coincided with the day that former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., miraculously returned to Congress just months after being shot in the head. And a few days later, Standard & Poor’s downgraded the credit worthiness of the federal government due to the debt ceiling drama.
Lawmakers returned in late August 2013 for intelligence briefings on Syria. Former President Obama was trying to engineer support for potential military action in and around Syria. But the votes on Capitol Hill never materialized.
The Democratically-controlled House famously failed to approve a crime bill in August 1994, when crime spiked around the nation. Democrats viewed adoption of the crime bill as key to their electoral success heading into the midterm elections. A few weeks later, Democrats successfully marshaled the votes, and recalled the House in late August to approve the crime bill.
As it turned out, Republicans tethered the bill to the Democrats and won the House that fall for the first time in 40 years.
All because of what unfolded in August.
Something similar unfolded in August 2009. And, to a lesser degree, in August of 2010.
Congress was out for the month in 2009. But congressional Democrats were trying to pass Obamacare. Republicans met this effort with vitriolic town halls. The tea party was on the rise, opponents of the then-president and Republican loyalists showed up at town meetings to heckle and taunt Democrats. These raucous August sessions helped energize Republicans — especially after Congress approved the health care bill in March of 2010. Moreover, they captured a lot of news oxygen and dominated the headlines that August. That set the table for Republicans to win back the House in the 2010 midterms, capturing a staggering 63 seats.
All because of August.
In fact, Republicans began to hone this "August strategy" in the summer of 2008.
The House voted to leave for more than a month. Being a presidential election year, both Democrats and Republicans were holding their presidential conventions in August and early September.
But that didn’t stop Republicans from commandeering the House chamber on a daily basis to hold rump sessions and rail against the Democratic majority. House GOPers rotated a set of members on a daily basis — even dragging some members of the Capitol press corps into the chamber to observe the action. The GOPers would also bring in tourists. Republicans made sure they focused on their target: then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
Republicans even claimed that Pelosi adjourned the House by herself and locked them out of the chamber. Never mind that roll call vote I mentioned earlier to adjourn for the conventions. And the speaker certainly didn’t lock anyone out. After all, the Republicans wouldn’t have made it into the chamber each day if the doors were locked.
But the rhubarb made a good show for Republicans in August 2008.
Sometimes non-political forces force Washington, D.C., into action in August. Congress returned to session in August 2006 after Hurricane Katrina pulverized the Gulf Coast.
Still, these episodes surrounding Congress in August pale to other major political news stories that emerged in August.
The late President Truman dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington in August 1963.
President Nixon resigned in August 1974 as President Ford took over.
It was still August 31, 1983, in Washington (barely) when the Soviets shot down a Korean Air Lines flight, killing all 269 people on board. Among the dead: late Rep. Larry McDonald, R-Ga.
Late Rep. Mickey Leland. R-Texas and congressional aides died in a plane crash in August 1989.
Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, teeing up the first Gulf War in 1991.
Princess Diana died in Paris in August 1997.
Russia invaded Georgia in August 2008 — a partial prelude to today’s war in Ukraine.
Late Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, died in a plane crash in August 2010.
A 5.8 magnitude earthquake centered in Virginia rocked Washington, D.C., damaging the Capitol complex in August 2011.
The white supremacist "Unite the Right" rally unfolded in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017.
And so far, this August has been far from inconsequential.
Special Counsel Jack Smith indicted former President Trump on charges of trying to overturn the election and linking him to the Capitol riot on Aug. 1. Trump appeared in federal court in the shadow of the Capitol on Aug. 3.
Sandwiched between that was a wild scene on the Senate side of the Capitol on Aug. 2. U.S. Capitol Police searched the Senate office buildings, in pursuit of a potential active shooter. The episode frightened hundreds of congressional aides, workers, reporters and tourists, all in the Senate office buildings.
This all unfolds as there is chatter about another indictment looming for the former president in Georgia. And congressional Republicans are sure talking about trying to impeach President Biden when lawmakers return in September. There will be lot of talk about impeachment this August, even if it doesn’t result in impeachment for the president.
Discussion about impeachment for then-President Trump really accelerated in August 2019 — resulting in his first impeachment later that year. It wouldn’t have happened but for the events of that August.
And, much like S&P in 2011, credit rater Fitch downgraded the federal government’s credit ratings this August due to the debt ceiling drama of the spring. That sparked a market selloff.
So August is seminal in politics.
We’re now approaching the middle of August. If history is our guide, beware the ides of August.
Even if the ides of March get most of the attention. | US Congress |
A shooting at a Massachusetts intersection on Wednesday critically injured a pregnant bystander on a bus, whose infant subsequently died, officials said.
The shooting was reported shortly before 1 p.m. in Holyoke, just outside of Springfield, according to Holyoke police.
Three male suspects were involved in an altercation that led to the shooting, according to the Hampden District Attorney's Office.
"It is believed one of the rounds from that altercation struck a public transportation bus and an uninvolved female occupant, who was seated in the bus," the office said in a statement.
The victim, who was pregnant, was transported to a local hospital in critical condition, according to the Hampden District Attorney's Office. Her infant, in need of life-saving medical care, was delivered but died, the office said. Officials did not say how far along in the pregnancy the woman was.
The three suspects were transported to nearby hospitals and are in custody, according to the Hampden District Attorney's Office.
The Massachusetts State Police Detective Unit assigned to the Hampden District Attorney's Office and the Holyoke Police Department are investigating the incident. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
The House Ethics Committee voted against opening an investigation into Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., for pulling a fire alarm in a House of Representatives building ahead of a critical vote in September to avert a government shutdown.
The committee's decision comes just a few weeks after Bowman pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge in Washington, D.C.
Since a majority of the House did not vote to launch an ethics investigation, lawmakers "did not agree to establish an ISC or report to the House regarding Representative Bowman's conduct," according to a statement from the Ethics Committee.
House ethics rules require that when a member is indicted or formally charged with a criminal offense to either launch an investigative subcommittee (ISC) or report its reasons for not launching one within 30 days.
Bowman was charged with one misdemeanor on Oct. 26.
An arrest warrant filed by U.S. Capitol Police Supervisory Special Agent Joseph McAtee stated that police were notified on Sept. 30 at 12:05 p.m. that a fire alarm had been pulled on the second floor of the Cannon House Office Building.
When Bowman was interviewed by Capitol Police agents, he told them he responded "yes" when asked if he knew anything about the fire alarm. The Democrat representative said he was in a rush because votes were being called, adding that the door is usually open.
Bowman, according to the arrest warrant, told the agents he saw the nearby doors with a sign that said, "Emergency exit only push to open," so "he pushed on the door and pulled the lever next to it, which must have been the alarm."
"[Bowman] advised that usually when votes are called, all doors are open, and that door is usually open (the second-floor door leading to Independence Ave)," the warrant states. "The defendant further stated that this door was a usual door he uses. The defendant advised that he then went to a Dem (Democratic) meeting and a vote at the Capitol, then the House Sergeant at Arms contacted him."
Bowman told Fox News after being charged that he was "happy for the quick resolution," adding that he has a plea agreement with prosecutors.
According to Bowman, the plea agreement requires him to pay a $1,000 fine and "stay out of trouble for three months."
"It was a lapse of judgment, if you will. … Wasn't a conscious decision to do something wrong," he said.
Fox News' Adam Sabes and Kelly Phares contributed to this report. | US Political Corruption |
Rep. Dean Phillips Calls for Ceasefire, Criticizes Netanyahu
Phillips accused Netanyahu of exacerbating 'policies of oppression and illegal settlement on Palestinian land'
"Upon the safe release of hostages, an immediate and mutual ceasefire of large-scale military operations and indiscriminate terror must be initiated and upheld by both parties," Phillips said in a statement.
Among the steps he lists that he believes must be taken "immediately" is the release of over 200 hostages, including nine American citizens, by Hamas. Phillips also calls for new elections in Israel.
"Israelis must call for elections and demand from their government a commitment to a future of mutual security, peace, and prosperity for both peoples," said the statement.
The Democrat was also critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, mentioning "policies of oppression and illegal settlement on Palestinian lands that have only been exacerbated by" Netanyahu's government.
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The Senate Ethics Committee dismissed allegations Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., misused taxpayer dollars, but a watchdog group says there are lingering questions about the spending.
"Based on all available information, the Committee found no evidence that your actions violated federal law, Senate Rules, or standards of conduct," chief counsel for the ethics committee, Shannon Koplin, wrote to Baldwin on Friday. "Accordingly, the Committee has dismissed the complaint. As always, the Committee retains the authority to revisit this matter should additional facts become known to the Committee."
Baldwin faced accusations from the watchdog group, Americans for Public Trust, in a complaint filed Sept. 6 for allegedly "expending taxpayer dollars for exclusively personal travel to New York."
It’s unclear what information the ethics committee used to dismiss the complaint. The committee has not issued any disciplinary sanctions upon a member in more than 15 years. Fox News Digital has reached out to the committee for comment.
Koplin also sent a letter to Americans for Public Trust and said the committee "carefully evaluated the allegations in the complaint" and determined "Baldwin's actions did not violate federal law, Senate Rules, and other standards of conduct."
"If Senator Baldwin did nothing wrong, then why is she declining to make public the information she provided to the Ethics Committee?" Caitlin Sutherland, executive director for Americans for Public Trust, told Fox News Digital in a statement Wednesday.
She added: "After getting caught misusing taxpayer dollars, the American people deserve transparency from the committee and the senator about the basis for refusing to investigate it further."
According to the complaint filed on Sept. 6, Baldwin allegedly reimbursed the federal government $630 for a trip she took from Madison to New York City on Nov. 5-9, 2020, to visit her partner, private wealth adviser Maria Brisbane. But the reimbursement came "only after facing media inquiries" in August from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
Baldwin staffers told the outlet at the time the trip was mistakenly "mislabeled" as official travel.
"Federal law and the Select Committee on Ethics make it clear that the expenditure of public funds must occur only for appropriated purposes," the complaint states. "Here, public reporting indicates that Senator Baldwin has run afoul of these prohibitions by expending taxpayer dollars for exclusively personal travel to New York – a geographic location well outside of Wisconsin, and far from the constituency that she represents."
The complaint, signed by Sutherland, argues Baldwin’s repayment for one trip does not explain several other trips the senator took since 2018 to the Big Apple using taxpayer dollars. Baldwin reportedly racked up $3,631 for nine flights between Wisconsin or Washington, D.C., and New York City since that time.
"It remains unknown if these trips were also made for personal reasons, and as such, also require investigation," according to the complaint. | US Political Corruption |
President Biden has long believed that college should be a ticket to the middle class, not a burden that weighs on families. That’s why from day one, his Administration has taken unprecedented steps to fix the broken student loan system, make college more affordable, and bring the promise of higher education in reach for more Americans.
Marking a key step forward in that effort, President Biden is announcing that an additional 125,000 Americans have been approved for $9 billion in debt relief through fixes his Administration has made to income-driven repayment (IDR) and Public Service Loan Forgiveness, and by cancelling debt for borrowers with total and permanent disabilities. Today’s announcement brings the total approved debt cancellation by the Biden-Harris Administration to $127 billion for nearly 3.6 million Americans.
The Biden-Harris Administration is announcing it has approved:
- $5.2 billion in additional debt relief for 53,000 borrowers under Public Service Loan Forgiveness programs.
- Nearly $2.8 billion in new debt relief for nearly 51,000 borrowers through fixes to income-driven repayment. These are borrowers who made 20 years or more of payments but never got the relief they were entitled to.
- $1.2 billion for nearly 22,000 borrowers who have a total or permanent disability who have been identified and approved for discharge through a data match with the Social Security Administration.
The Department of Education is also releasing state-by-state totals of debt relief approved under the Biden-Harris Administration through fixes to IDR and Public Service Loan Forgiveness. Visit this link to see the state-by-state breakdown.
Today’s announcement builds on all that the Biden-Harris Administration has done to make college more affordable and ensure that student loans aren’t a barrier to opportunity for students and families. The Biden-Harris Administration earlier this year launched the most affordable student loan repayment plan – SAVE – which makes many borrowers’ monthly payments as low as $0 and prevents balances from growing because of unpaid interest. The Administration secured the largest increase to Pell Grants in a decade, and finalized new rules to protect borrowers from career programs that leave graduates with unaffordable debts or insufficient earnings. And, in the wake of the Supreme Court decision on the Administration’s original student debt relief plan, President Biden announced his Administration was pursuing an alternative path to debt relief through negotiated rulemaking under the Higher Education Act.
The Administration took an important step forward in the negotiated rulemaking process last week as the Department of Education announced individuals who will serve on the negotiating committee and released an issue paper to guide the first negotiating session. The paper asks the committee to consider how the Administration can help borrowers, including borrowers whose balances are greater than what they originally borrowed, those who would be eligible for relief under existing repayment plans but have not applied, and borrowers who have experienced financial hardship on their loans that the current loan system doesn’t address.
To date, the Biden-Harris Administration has approved $127 billion in debt cancellation for nearly 3.6 million borrowers, including:
- Nearly $42 billion for almost 855,000 borrowers who are eligible for forgiveness through income-driven repayment by fixing historical inaccuracies in the count of payments that qualify toward forgiveness;
- Almost $51 billion for 715,000 public servants through Public Service Loan Forgiveness programs;
- $11.7 billion for almost 513,000 borrowers with a total and permanent disability; and
- $22.5 billion for more than 1.3 million borrowers who were cheated by their schools, saw their institutions precipitously close, or are covered by related court settlements.
### | US Federal Policies |
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) suggested on Monday that President Biden may have to take unilateral action to prevent a crisis over the debt ceiling. “I think we’re going to have a rocky time,” Khanna told Bloomberg News. “It’s not great for the political system, but at the end of the day I don’t think the United States is going to default.” “The question is whether it’s going to come to unilateral action by the executive branch,” he said, adding, “I hope it doesn’t.” The U.S. hit its debt ceiling on Thursday, prompting the Treasury Department to implement “extraordinary measures” to prevent the government from defaulting on its debt. These measures should give Congress until early June to address the debt ceiling, according to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. However, House Republicans have sought to tie a debt ceiling increase to spending cuts — a nonstarter for congressional Democrats and the White House, who have called for a clean increase of the debt limit. This potential showdown has led to growing concerns that the U.S. could default on its debt and trigger a global economic crisis. In response, Khanna suggested several ways that the Biden administration could unilaterally take action on the issue. One method that the California Democrat proposed, minting the $1 trillion coin, has already been largely dismissed by Yellen. “It truly is not by any means to be taken as a given that the [Federal Reserve] would do it, and I think especially with something that’s a gimmick,” Yellen told the Wall Street Journal on Sunday. “The Fed is not required to accept it, there’s no requirement on the part of the Fed. It’s up to them what to do.” Khanna also floated the possibility that the Treasury could issue bonds with higher interest rates, essentially using an accounting trick to allow the U.S. to continue to pay its debts. However, this method could decrease confidence in the market, Bloomberg News noted. Biden could also argue that the U.S. government ignore the debt ceiling in favor of respecting the spending that Congress has already approved, Khanna said. A pair of law professors from Cornell University and the University of Florida have previously argued for this as the “least unconstitutional option,” claiming that Congress has given the president several mandates — to abide by its authorized spending, taxing and debt limit — that cannot all be complied with at once if the debt ceiling is reached, according to Vox. Khanna also criticized House Republicans’ stance on the debt ceiling in his interview with Bloomberg News, pointing to the debt accrued under GOP leadership. “We’re looking at paying the debt largely accrued by Republicans and Republicans are saying ‘we don’t want to pay up the debt we incurred,’” Khanna added. “I say let’s not negotiate whether we pay our debts. Of course we pay our debts.” | US Federal Policies |
At least nine Hinds County polling places ran out of ballots over the course of Election Day as voters headed to the polls to elect a governor and to vote for other statewide, legislative, regional and local offices. Hinds County includes Jackson, the nearly 83%-Black capital city.
WLBT reported Tuesday afternoon that Hinds County District 5 Election Commissioner Shirley Varando cited “unexpectedly large turnout as the problem.”
“We’re running ballots as we speak because we’re trying to make sure every voter gets a chance to come out and cast their ballot for the people of their choice,” WLBT quoted the commissioner saying.
Voters told the Mississippi Free Press earlier today that the McLeod Elementary polling place ran out of ballots as early as 8:30 a.m.; voting began at 7 a.m. and lasts until 7 p.m.
WLBT and WAPT have reported other ballot shortages at other Hinds County polling places, including the Pinehaven precinct; the Raymond Methodist Church polling place; the Wildwood Baptist Church polling place; and the Chastain Middle School polling place.
While local election officials have printed up new ballots for the polling places that ran out, reports indicate some voters waited as long as two hours before they were able to resume voting.
In a post on social media this afternoon, Hinds County Democratic Executive Committee member Jason McCarty said it was “unacceptable” and called on Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson’s office and local officials to ensure enough ballots are available for voters.
“We were not prepared for this amazing turnout,” he said.
Mississippi House Rep. Kent McCarty, a Lamar County Republican, criticized Hinds County officials for the snafu.
“What an incredible failure on the part of Hinds County to take care of its voters. We provide a whole twelve hours to vote on Election Day, being without ballots for two minutes, much less two hours, is absolutely inexcusable,” he tweeted.
Watson’s office released a statement this afternoon.
“Our office has received questions regarding the printing of ballots. Mississippi law provides that counties should print 60% of the active voter count and county officials decide how to distribute ballots among precincts,” the secretary of state said.
Polls are set to close at 7 p.m., but voters who get in line by that time can still vote as long as they stay in line.
WLBT reported that some Democrats and Republicans have suggested they may ask a judge to intervene and keep the polls open later to give people more opportunities to vote. | US Local Elections |
Washington — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from conservative attorneythat involved his efforts to shield his emails from investigators with the House select committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol.
Notable in the unsigned order turning away Eastman's case was a note that Justice Clarence Thomas "took no part in the consideration or decision of this petition." The justice did not provide an explanation for his recusal. Eastman clerked for Thomas on the Supreme Court, and emailsshowed that Ginni Thomas, the justice's wife, corresponded with the conservative lawyer.
Eastman, a former law professor at Chapman University, helped craft the legal strategy in which he claimed former Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to unilaterally reject state electoral votes cast for Joe Biden or delay the certification of Electoral College votes during the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6.
In August, Eastman, former President Donald Trump and 17 others were charged in abrought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Eastman faces nine counts related to an alleged plan to send a slate of fake presidential electors in Georgia to Congress in order to change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. He pleaded not guilty.
The case before the Supreme Court stemmed from an effort by Eastman to keep his emails from the House select committee examining the Capitol attack. Eastman argued the subpoena for his records sought attorney-client privileged communications and attorney work product.
A federal district courtto turn over a tranche of emails to the panel, 10 of which the judge said were "closely tied" to the committee's investigation and subject to the crime-fraud exception, which applies to documents and communications that were in furtherance of illegal or fraudulent conduct.
U.S. District Judge David Carter hadthat Trump and Eastman "likely committed obstruction of an official proceeding" when they allegedly attempted to disrupt the joint session of Congress convened on Jan. 6.
Eastman sought review of the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, but provided the select committee with eight of the disputed documents in order to comply with the district court's order. After the emails were disclosed to the public, the 9th Circuit dismissed the case as moot and declined to wipe away the district court's finding that some of the messages were subject to the crime-fraud exception..
In urging the Supreme Court to take up his case, Eastman said the district court's conclusion"has cast aspersions not just on Dr. Eastman but also on his former client, the former President of the United States who is a candidate for the office of President in 2024."
"The ramifications, both political and legal, of such a holding are significant, and petitioner, both on his own behalf and for his former client's benefit, should not have to be subjected to those ramifications on an ongoing basis when he was deprived of his right to appeal by the unilateral actions of the government — the party that prevailed in the District Court — that mooted the appeal," he wrote in a filing.
for more features. | SCOTUS |
Sanders slams Senate hearing feud as ‘pathetic’
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Tuesday slammed the near-brawl between GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin (Okla.) and International Brotherhood of Teamsters President Sean O’Brien, calling the encounter “pathetic.”
Asked by CNN anchor Jake Tapper if he has seen a time like this before, Sanders said, “Well, it’s pretty pathetic. I mean we have a United States senator challenging….a member of the panel who is the head of one of the larger unions in America, which has just negotiated a very good contract for their workers.”
Sanders’s comments come hours after he stepped in during a fierce back-and-forth between Mullin, a former mixed martial arts fighter, and O’Brien in a committee hearing, after the Oklahoma Republican challenged the Teamsters official to a fight on the spot.
During a hearing held by the Democratic-led Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee on Tuesday, Mullin read aloud O’Brien’s posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, where he called the congressman a “clown” and a “fraud.”
“Sir, this is a time, this is a place. You want to run your mouth, we can be two consenting adults, we can finish it here,” Mullin said during the hearing.
“OK, that’s fine. Perfect,” O’Brien shot back.
“You want to do it now?” Mullin asked. “Stand your butt up then.”
“You stand your butt up,” O’Brien responded, prompting Mullin to stand up from his chair.
Sanders, who chairs the HELP Committee, then stepped in, telling Mullin, “Hold it. No, no, no, sit down. Sit down! You’re a United States senator, sit down.”
Cross-talk continued before Mullin tried to challenge O’Brien to a real cage match with proceeds going to charity, prompting Sanders to grab the mic and try to redirect the conversation.
“And that’s why, you know, the American people are getting sick and tired of what goes on here in Congress,” Sanders told Tapper. “What that hearing was about as a matter of fact — by the way might be nice for the media to pay attention to really what the hearing was about — is that workers all over this country are standing up and fighting back against corporate greed.”
“That’s what the hearing was about, not you know, a senator getting into a fight with a union leader,” Sanders said.
O’Brien, along with United Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain and Sara Nelson, the international president of the Association of Flight Attendants-Communication Workers of America, were featured speakers for the HELP Committee’s hearing on how unions are improving the lives of working families.
O’Brien helped lead the Teamsters to a tentative agreement with the United Parcel Service (UPS) last summer, just days before their contracts were set to expire.
Calling it “a good contract,” Sanders argued rebuilding the “disappearing middle class” means workers should be joining unions and “taking on” large corporations.
Mullin later said he was trying to expose O’Brien as a “thug” after the Teamsters leader called Mullin a “greedy CEO,” following a previous HELP Committee meeting in March, to which Mullin told him to “shut his mouth.”
The Oklahoma senator did not apologize when later asked about the incident, claiming he was responding to the union leader calling him out on social media.
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Former Obama adviser pleads not guilty to hate crime, stalking charges
Former Obama administration official Stuart Seldowitz pleaded not guilty to hate crime and stalking charges on Thursday, court records show, after he was accused of harassing the operator of a New York City food cart with racist and Islamophobic language.
Seldowitz previously worked in the State Department and was a national security adviser under former President Obama. He was arrested Wednesday on two counts of stalking as a hate crime and an additional count of aggravated harassment.
Videos circulated on social media earlier this week showing Seldowitz yelling at a food cart worker using Islamophobic language and references to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Some videos appear to be taken on different days.
“You support killing little children,” Seldowitz says to the vendor in one video. The vendor retorts, “You kill children, not me.”
Seldowitz replies, “If we killed 4,000 Palestinian children, you know what? It wasn’t enough.”
In another video, he appears to threaten the vendor with a reference to Egypt’s intelligence agency, the Mukhabarat, before making derogatory comments about Islam and the Prophet Mohammad.
“Mukhabarat in Egypt will get your parents,” Seldowitz said. “Does your father like his fingernails? They’ll take them out one by one.”
Seldowitz was released after the not guilty plea, according to court records.
The Hill has reached out to his attorney for comment.
Seldowitz later apologized for his actions in an interview with City & State on Tuesday.
“I regret the whole thing happened and I’m sorry,” he said. “But you know, in the heat of the moment, I said things that probably I shouldn’t have said.”
Rates of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim violence and harassment have dramatically increased since the start of the war in Gaza early last month.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said the organization has received 1,283 reports of harassment and violence as of this month, an “unprecedented” 216 percent increase over last year.
“The Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian rhetoric that have been used to both justify violence against Palestinians in Gaza and silence supporters of Palestinian human rights here in America has contributed to this unprecedented surge in bigotry,” CAIR Research and Advocacy Director Corey Saylor said in a statement.
Attacks and harassment against Jewish people have also increased since the Hamas militant group’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel. New York Police Department data released this month found a 214 percent increase in antisemitic attacks in October over the month prior.
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | US Political Corruption |
In 2021, as President Joe Biden settled into the White House, its most recent occupant, Donald Trump, opened the doors of Mar-a-Lago, where a long line of journalists were headed to interview him. Reporters like the New York Times’ Jeremy Peters and Maggie Haberman and the Washington Post’s Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig had landed sit-downs for their forthcoming books about the 45th president. The following months saw a flurry of such titles, written by the likes of Bob Woodward and Robert Costa; ABC’s Jonathan Karl; the New Yorker’s Susan Glasser and Times’ Peter Baker; Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns, then at the Times, now at Politico; Michael Bender, then at The Wall Street Journal and now at the Times. The frenzy was seen then as a sort of last squeeze of the Trump book bubble.
But as the 2024 election takes shape, and Trump is again dominating the news cycle, from his four criminal indictments to Republican front-runner status, journalists with marquee bylines are knocking out book proposals. A trio of Washington Post reporters—Josh Dawsey, Isaac Arnsdorf, and Tyler Pager—are teaming up for a book on the 2024 election as well as Trump’s ongoing legal troubles, while their colleagues at the paper, Carol Leonnig and Aaron Davis, are also working on a book about the Department of Justice’s investigations into the former president, according to Confider and confirmed by my sources. There’s also Politico’s Alex Isenstadt, who, as I reported in March, is working on a 2024 book, and Meridith McGraw, whom Confider reports and a source confirms is writing a book for Random House “that will examine Trump’s life from the time he left the White House through his 2022 exile to Mar-a-Lago.” Karl's latest book on Trump is out in November.
Here’s one more for the burgeoning 2024 canon: I’ve learned that New York’s Olivia Nuzzi and Politico’s Ryan Lizza, who were initially set to write a book on the 2020 race, are writing a book about the upcoming presidential election for Avid Reader Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.
It’s unclear at this moment whether anyone from the Times is doing a Trump book, but the paper has a stable of reporters who’ve already done so and would presumably be well-positioned to do another. Another name popping up in my conversations with sources is Woodward, the preeminent chronicler of American presidents who has written three books on Trump, most recently with Costa. Woodward could not be reached for comments.
While there’s clearly still a market for Trump books, it’s a different moment; you’re likely not selling a Trump book today by promising a few exclusive interviews with the former president, multiple authors I spoke to noted. “Going down to Mar-a-Lago to have extensive interviews about how he won in 2020 has likely limited value,” said a veteran political journalist who has had discussions with several book agents. Of more value is new, and revelatory, information. “The level of reader interest in a Trump book right now is going to depend heavily on whether the author can find scoopy nuggets or a broader take that is new. Those are high bars,” said an author who has written about campaigns. Someone who is expected to clear it: Marty Baron, whose highly anticipated book Collision of Power—in which he speaks for the first time extensively about leading The Washington Post through Trump’s war on the press—is coming out in October.
Others will have to get more creative as they reckon with the evolving story of a former president facing 91 criminal charges—legal peril that has seemingly only helped him cruise toward the GOP nomination. “There is a new wave of Trump books, but the pressure is on to come up with something that’s a little bit more substantive,” said one literary agent who has been involved with several Trump books. “The books that are really going to work are the ones talking about larger questions—about the moment we’re in, why this is happening. I think there’s just less of an appetite for zany Trump moments,” they added. “So many of these books are not so much about Trump, but about the crisis in democracy that Trump and his movement have created. There is skepticism about doing a so-called Trump book in the traditional way…so people are figuring out: What’s the market for political books in a nontraditional time?” said the veteran political reporter. Meanwhile, books about Biden are still bombing, as Politico recently reported. Some authors are looking beyond the president: Joshua Green, who wrote the best-selling Devil’s Bargain about Steve Bannon and Trump in 2017, has now turned his eye to the populist left with The Rebels, which focuses on the uprising inside the Democratic Party led by Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Along with all the scoops from Trump-focused books has come a great deal of scrutiny, as authors have taken heat for withholding newsworthy information until pub day. One reason a reporter may not reveal what they know in real-time is that the information was provided under embargo for the book, part of the challenge of juggling daily reporting responsibilities with gathering material for publication further down the line. Plus, having a book waiting in the wings could impact source relationships in the near and long term.
“Reporters can use these books as leverage, and they become sort of self-sustaining,” as one political reporter put it. “The reality is you’ve got a dozen or so presidential primary campaigns right now on the Republican side, almost all universally staffed by Washington insiders and New York insiders. And this is a job for them—they don’t have as much loyalty to the candidate as their quotes, while employed, might indicate, and they start thinking about self-preservation when things start going bad. And now there are all these vehicles for them to carry their story, become more important, and help control the media to some degree.”
Whatever the competing interests at play, the less cynical hope is that these books serve a greater, historical purpose. “There’s obviously phenomenal interest, and it’s not an academic exercise. There’s a very real need to understand him and the phenomenon he represents, and the consequences of another term,” Baker, the veteran Times journalist and prolific author, told me. “When we wrote our book, in a way we thought it was a book of history, not a book of prologue. But now, who knows?”
Baker notes that it was the publisher’s idea to add the dates 2017 to 2021 to the title, to define the book clearly as the four years Trump was in the White House, rather than a biography. “Now it looks to be possibly the first of a series,” he told me. Baker isn’t currently working on a Trump book—though he is at work with Glasser, his wife, on another book—but he did wonder: “If he does go back into the White House, would we have to do, someday down the road, another book?” He wouldn’t want to, though, “until there’s some resolution, and until we understand a little bit more about how the story ends. If you want a book that will be useful 10 to 20 years from now, it’s harder if you don’t know where it leads.” | US Federal Elections |
66 progressive lawmakers urge Biden to use 14th Amendment in debt ceiling fight
Dozens of progressives have signed onto a letter urging President Biden to invoke the 14th Amendment and bypass Republicans to prevent the nation from defaulting on its debt.
Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) leaders Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Greg Casar (D-Texas) led more than 60 progressives in penning the letter to Biden on Friday, as the president attends the Group of Seven (G-7) summit abroad this week.
“If the options are either agreeing to major cuts to domestic priorities under the Republican threat of destroying the economy and moving forward to honor America’s debts, we join prominent legal scholars, economists, former budget officials, and a former president in advocating for invoking the 14th Amendment of the Constitution,” they wrote.
“Not only does the debt ceiling run counter to the Constitution’s mandate that the validity of America’s public debt shall not be questioned, it contradicts the appropriations law that requires the Treasury to issue debt for the funding you are obligated to administer at Congress’s direction,” the group added.
The letter comes as Republican negotiators indicated that bipartisan talks to resolve the nation’s debt limit fight had hit a roadblock on Friday — and blamed the White House.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said the negotiations were on pause, claiming the other side failed to make adequate concessions on spending cuts.
“We’ve got to get movement by the White House, and we don’t have any movement yet. So, yeah, we’ve gotta pause,” McCarthy said.
“Yesterday I really felt we were at the location where I could see the path. The White House is just — look, we can’t be spending more money next year. We have to spend less than we spent the year before. It’s pretty easy.”
It also came a day after the House Freedom Caucus pushed the Senate to pass the GOP conference’s partisan debt limit package, with the group calling for “no further discussion” until it makes it out of Congress.
The statement from the hardline conservative caucus was thought to pose a threat to the GOP conference’s unity amid bipartisan debt limit negotiations between the White House and Republican leaders.
But House Freedom Caucus Chairman Scott Perry (R-Pa.) seemed to try to dial back some of the heat later on Thursday, telling CBS: “We’re not saying you can’t continue to talk, but until they’re willing to tell us what they’re willing to do, it’s hard to come to an agreement.”
Liberals and conservatives alike have been raising concerns over how far leaders on both sides will go to strike a bipartisan deal to prevent a federal default.
In their letter to Biden on Friday, progressives accused Republicans of “economic ransom,” while pressing the president against concessions that could lead to “devastating budget cuts, additional work requirements for essential food and economic support, and fast-tracking fossil fuel projects that undermine our shared climate achievements is antithetical to our shared Democratic values.”
They went on to argue that Biden should invoke the 14th Amendment, which says “the validity of the public debt of the United States … shall not be questioned,” to try to continue to issue debt to make federal payments.
But there are serious questions about the legality of such a move. And the stakes are high, as experts warn the nation’s economy could face catastrophic consequences if lawmakers fail to act quickly on the debt limit.
Meanwhile, conservatives are stepping up pressure for both sides to produce a deal that would enact new limits on annual government funding, permitting reform and changes to work requirements or federal assistance programs, among other proposals.
Less than two weeks stands between Congress and the June 1 deadline forecasted by the Treasury Department as the earliest the nation risks federal default.
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A hacking group deployed a surprising tactic after infiltrating a financial software company’s network. They reported the breach to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
DataBreaches.net initially reported on the incident, which was conducted by ALPHV / BlackCat, a group known for breaching entities as diverse as MGM Resorts and Reddit. The hackers reportedly breached the servers of fintech company MeridianLink on November 7, stealing company data without encrypting it. However, when the business neglected to negotiate directly, the hackers increased the pressure by filing a report with the SEC.
They did so citing a new rule the SEC passed this summer, which requires companies falling victim to “material cybersecurity incidents” to report them to the agency within four business days.
However, the four-day requirement may not have taken effect yet. At least one official form claims the rule kicked in 90 days after the date of publication in the Federal Register (they appear to have been published on August 4, making that alleged effective date November 2) or December 18. But the Federal Register document says, “With respect to compliance with the incident disclosure requirements in Item 1.05 of Form 8–K and in Form 6–K [the part referring to the four-day requirement], all registrants other than smaller reporting companies must begin complying on December 18, 2023.” Adding to the confusion, Reuters reported in October that the rule takes effect on December 15.
Engadget reached out to the SEC to clarify whether the rule is active yet. We’ll update this article if we hear back.
MeridianLink told BleepingComputer that it quickly worked to contain the threat. “Based on our investigation to date, we have identified no evidence of unauthorized access to our production platforms, and the incident has caused minimal business interruption,” the company wrote. The company says it’s still trying to determine if any consumer personal information was breached, promising to notify affected parties if it was.
Whether the SEC has any teeth (or desire) to do anything about MeridianLink’s failure to report the incident in four business days, the rule could, ironically, serve as a new tool for cyber attackers. Rather than contacting customers or making calls to tighten the grip and pressure companies to comply with their demands, perhaps they can now simply rat them out to Uncle Sam. | US Federal Policies |
HENRYETTA, Okla. -- Relatives of four teenage girls who were among seven people shot to death on a rural Oklahoma property are questioning how a sex offender among the dead — a rapist accused of soliciting nude images from another teen while behind bars — was ever allowed to go free.
Law enforcement authorities have released no details about how they died or who killed them since the bodies were found on Monday. But a series of ominous text messages — sent by Jesse McFadden, 39, to his young accuser hours before his trial was to begin on felony charges of soliciting and possessing images of child sex abuse — suggest that he blamed the woman for ending his “great life” and that he was determined not to return to prison.
According to screen grabs of the messages, forwarded to KOKI in Tulsa by the now 23-year-old woman McFadden allegedly groomed from prison, he said he was having success at a marketing job and “making great money.”
“Now it's all gone,” he texted. “I told you I wouldn't go back.”
“This is all on you for continuing this,” he finished.
A solicitation conviction can mean a 10 year sentence; the pornography charge could mean 20 years behind bars.
Muskogee County District Attorney Larry Edwards said the young woman shared the text messages with him as well. "They are tragic. Let’s just say that. He more or less blames her for what he did and that’s the part I really have the problem with, because she didn’t do anything wrong,” Edwards told Tulsa-based KOTV.
Authorities began a search after McFadden failed to appear at his long-delayed jury trial on Monday in Muskogee County. His body was later discovered along with his wife, her son and daughters, and two other teens who were visiting the family over the weekend.
Now family members of the victims are asking why McFadden, sentenced to 20 years in 2003 for first-degree rape, was freed three years early, in part for good behavior, despite facing new charges that he used a contraband cell phone in 2016 to trade nude photos with the woman, then 16. He was released in 2020 after 16 years and nine months, even though the charges could send him back to prison for many years if convicted.
“And they rushed him out of prison. How?" asked Janette Mayo. She said she was told that her daughter, Holly Guess, 35, and her grandchildren, Rylee Elizabeth Allen, 17; Michael James Mayo, 15; and Tiffany Dore Guess, 13, were all shot to death.
“Oklahoma failed to protect families. And because of that my children -- my daughter and my grandchildren -- are all gone,” Mayo told The Associated Press. "I’ve lost my daughter and my grandchildren and I’m never going to get to see ’em, never going to get to hold them, and it’s killing me.”
Justin Webster, who said he allowed his 14-year-old Ivy Webster to join a sleepover at the McFadden home not knowing anything about the man's past, raised similar concerns about McFadden's release.
“To get to save some other children, to make a change is what I want to do," Webster told The AP during a tearful interview Tuesday in Henryetta, expressing a determination to “tell Ivy’s story and our story and get our government officials and everybody to start speaking up loud and keeping those pedophiles in jail.”
"There needs to be repercussions and somebody needs to be held accountable. They let a monster out. They did this,” Webster said.
A spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Department of Corrections did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday on why McFadden was released despite facing new felony charges.
Court records show McFadden was charged with the new crimes in 2017 after the young woman's relative alerted authorities. Set free in October 2020, he was arrested the next month and then released on $25,000 bond pending the trial, which was repeatedly delayed, in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
McFadden married Holly Guess in May 2022; what she knew of his record isn't clear. Mayo said the family didn’t learn about her son-in-law's criminal history until a few months ago.
“He lied to my daughter, and he convinced her it was all just a huge mistake,” said Mayo, of Westville. “He was very standoffish, generally very quiet, but he kept my daughter and the kids basically under lock and key. He had to know where they were at all times, which sent red flags up.”
According to Okmulgee County Sheriff Eddy Rice, the seven bodies were found on the property where McFadden lived near Henryetta, a town of about 6,000 about 90 miles (145 kilometers) east of Oklahoma City. The dead bodies included the two teens who had been reported as missing and in danger — Webster, 14, and Brittany Brewer, 16.
Brittany Brewer’s father confirmed that his daughter was among the dead. At a vigil Monday night, Nathan Brewer said “It’s just a parent’s worst nightmare, and I’m living it.”
The grim discovery could push the number of people slain in mass killings past 100 for the year, according to a database maintained by The AP and USA Today in a partnership with Northeastern University.
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Associated Press data journalist Larry Fenn and researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
A woman is in custody Fridy after authorties said she opened fire in a police department lobby in Connecticut, spurring an exchange of gunfire with an officer.
The woman, who has been identified as 51-year-old Suzanne Laprise, entered the lobby of the Bristol Police Department at around 10:35 p.m. on Thursday night and "fired multiple rounds" into the window of the front lobby desk, police said. The desk was unoccupied at the time, and the bullets did not penetrate the bullet-resistant glass, police said.
Officers responded to the gunfire and attempted to negotiate. However, Laprise continued to fire the gun, directing the bullets at officers. An officer returned fire, but "the rounds were again stopped by bullet-resistant glass."
Laprise set down the firearm, which allowed officers to deploy a Taser and take her into custody, police said. The woman was taken "without serious injury" to an area hospital for evaluation. Police said on Friday that Laprise was released from the hospital and taken into police custody.
There were no reports of officers being injured.
Laprise has been charged with multiple counts, including criminal attempt/murder with special circumstance, illegal discharge of a firearm, criminal use of a weapon, illegal carry of firearms under the influence of drugs/alcohol, violation of pistol permit requirements, illegal possession of a large-capacity magazine, criminal mischief, reckless endangerment and breach of peace.
Laprise is currently being held on a $3 million bond. Police said she will be arraigned at New Britain Superior Court later Friday.
The police department said on Facebook that its lobby would be closed for walk-in complaints on Friday so that repairs and maintenance could be conducted.
for more features. | US Police Misconduct |
Father of Palestinian American boy slain outside Chicago files wrongful death lawsuit
The father of a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy fatally stabbed in an alleged hate crime has filed a wrongful death lawsuit
CHICAGO -- The father of a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy fatally stabbed in what authorities allege was a hate crime has filed a wrongful death lawsuit.
Oday Al-Fayoume filed the lawsuit last month against the suburban Chicago landlord charged in the attack that left his child dead and the boy's mother seriously wounded. The attack — which has renewed fears of anti-Islamic discrimination in the Chicago area’s large Palestinian community — has drawn condemnation from the White House.
Authorities allege Joseph Czuba, 71, targeted Wadea Al-Fayoume and his mother Hanaan Shahin, on Oct. 14 because of their Muslim faith and as a response to the war between Israel and Hamas. Czuba pleaded not guilty in October to hate crime and murder charges.
The wrongful death lawsuit filed Nov. 21 in Will County names Czuba, his wife, Mary Czuba, both of Plainfield, and their property management company, Discerning Property Management.
Joseph Czuba allegedly told his wife to inform Shahin he wanted the family gone from the apartment where they'd lived for two years. He also allegedly said he was afraid Shahin's "Palestinian friends were going to harm them,” according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit claims Mary Czuba and the management company “were indifferent and failed to recognize a threat and prevent serious bodily harm” to their tenants. A hearing is set for March 11.
“Justice comes in many forms … and there is, obviously, unbelievable loss in Wadea, but his mother also was injured seriously, and we believe that there are avenues to recover compensation for what the family’s been through,” said Ben Crane, Oday Al-Fayoume's lawyer.
The Czubas do not yet have an attorney in the wrongful death case and Mary Czuba has filed paperwork to divorce Joseph Czuba, according to court records.
Czuba remains detained in Will County as he awaits a January hearing in the criminal case. His attorney, George Lenard, has said he won't comment on the case outside court. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
SAN FRANCISCO -- San Francisco police said they shot and killed a driver on Monday who crashed into the Chinese consulate.
Police said in a short news conference that a vehicle drove into the lobby of the Chinese consulate on Monday afternoon. Officers entered, made contact with the suspect and an officer involved shooting occurred involving the driver, police said.
Despite life-saving efforts, the suspect was pronounced deceased at the hospital, police said.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
A vehicle crashed into the Chinese consulate in San Francisco on Monday, prompting a massive response from police and fire personnel.
The San Francisco Police Department also said in a statement that an officer or officers had fired their guns at the site of the crash but provided no other immediate details.
A heavy police presence descended on the area and the department urged the public to avoid the area. Television cameras showed a vehicle that had crashed into the building.
A Honda sedan was seen crashed into the visa office and the area in front of the building was cordoned off.
The Consulate General of the People’s Republic of China is on a major street across from the city’s Japantown neighborhood. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
NEW YORK (TND) — The Niagara Falls Rainbow Bridge has been shut down after a car explosion, authorities said Wednesday.
The FBI Buffalo Field Office is investigating a vehicle explosion at the Rainbow Bridge, a border crossing between the U.S. and Canada in Niagara Falls," FBI Buffalo noted on X, which is the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
The FBI is coordinating with our local, state and federal law enforcement partners in this investigation. As this situation is very fluid, that's all we can say at this time," according to the post.
FOX News reported a source said the explosion was an attempted terror attack. The media outlet also said a source confirmed with them two people have died.
The Buffalo International Airport said the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority is increasing security system-wide.
"Cars coming into the Buffalo Airport will undergo security checks and travelers can expect additional screenings," according to a statement from the airport. "The Buffalo and Niagra Falls Airports are fully operational. We advise travelers to give themselves extra precautions in addition to holiday travel."
Authorities didn't say if anyone was hurt, but FOX reported at least one person was injured.
People in the area shared video from the scene. Footage shows heavy smoke rising in the air.
Other images showed a security booth that had been charred by flames.
Gov. Kathy Hochul said she "has been briefed on the incident on the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls and we are closely monitoring the situation. State agencies are on site and ready to assist."
The governor also said New York police are working with the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force to monitor all points of entry to New York.
"I am traveling to Buffalo to meet with law enforcement & emergency responders & will update New Yorkers when more information becomes available," she noted on X.
The Rainbow Bridge is one of four border crossings connecting Ontario to western New York.
The others are Lewiston, Whirlpool and Peace Bridge. The Niagara Falls Bridge Commission reports all four crossings are closed.
Wednesday marked a busy travel day, as people are on the road to visit loved one for Thanksgiving.
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EDITOR'S NOTE: The Associated Press contributed to this report. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
President Biden is facing pushback from fact-checkers over a recent speech he delivered in Virginia regarding the economic progress his administration has made during his tenure in the White House.Speaking at the Steamfitters Local 602 in Springfield on Thursday, Biden made multiple claims about the current state of the economy that have fact-checkers — from both CNN and the House Ways and Means Committee — sounding the alarm.Following his remarks, CNN reporter Daniel Dale, who works to fact-check political claims for the outlet, accused Biden of making "false and misleading claims.""Some of Biden’s claims in the speech were false, misleading or lacking critical context, though others were correct," Dale wrote in a piece examining Biden's remarks.FORMER HOME DEPOT CEO BLASTS BIDEN'S ROSY OUTLOOK ON ECONOMY: 'FACT-CHECKERS TOOK A HOLIDAY' President Biden speaks at Steamfitters Local 602 United Association Mechanical Trades School in Springfield, Virginia, on Thursday, Jan. 26, 2023. (Oliver Contreras/Sipa/Bloomberg via Getty Images)Topping the list of fact-checks from Dale was Biden's claim that his administration has "funded 700,000 major construction projects – 700,000 all across America," which the White House has admitted is not the case."Biden’s ‘700,000’ figure is wildly inaccurate; it adds an extra two zeros to the correct figure Biden used in a speech last week and the White House has also used before: 7,000 projects," Dale wrote, noting that the White House altered Biden's transcript from the speech to reflect the accurate number.Dale also took aim at Biden for his claim that "only 3.5 million people had been — even had their first vaccination" when former President Donald Trump left office in January 2021.The actual number people who had received their first shot against COVID-19 when Trump left office in January 2021 was about 19 million, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. The 3.5 million figure refers to those who had received two rounds of the shot.Biden also faced scrutiny from CNN over his claim that billionaires "pay virtually only 3% of their income now – 3%, they pay," a comment that was later walked back by the White House."Biden’s ‘3%’ claim is incorrect. For the second time in less than a week, Biden inaccurately described a 2021 finding from economists in his administration that the wealthiest 400 billionaire families paid an average of 8.2% of their income in federal individual income taxes between 2010 and 2018," Dale wrote. "After CNN inquired about Biden’s '3%' claim on Thursday, the White House published a corrected official transcript that uses '8%' instead." Biden faced scrutiny from CNN over his claim that billionaires "pay virtually only 3% of their income now – 3%, they pay," a comment that was later walked back by the White House. (Nathan Howard/Bloomberg via Getty Images)Pointing to comments made by Biden about federal debt under Trump and that his administration "cut the deficit by $1.7 trillion, the largest reduction in debt in American history," Dale insisted that it's "highly questionable" how much of the credit Biden deserves.MCCARTHY SETS UP VOTES TO DISMANTLE BIDEN'S COVID EMERGENCY: 'THE PANDEMIC IS OVER'"Biden’s boast leaves out important context. It is true that the federal deficit fell by a total of $1.7 trillion under Biden in the 2021 and 2022 fiscal years, including a record $1.4 trillion drop in 2022 — but it is highly questionable how much credit Biden deserves for this reduction," Dale wrote. "Biden did not mention that the primary reason the deficit fell so substantially was that it had skyrocketed to a record high under Trump in 2020 because of bipartisan emergency pandemic relief spending, then fell as expected as the spending expired as planned. Independent analysts say Biden’s own actions, including his laws and executive orders, have had the overall effect of adding to current and projected future deficits, not reducing those deficits."In addition to CNN, Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee targeted Biden's remarks from Thursday with a fact-check, claiming that the president "did not let the facts get in the way of his speech in Springfield.""While Biden claimed the economy is growing strong, the latest report on economic growth reveals that the economy under his Administration’s policies has fallen short of expectations on seven out of the last eight economic growth reports," the committee wrote. "In fact, the entirety of 2022 was worse for economic growth than expected. And even more trouble lies ahead, according to the latest Leading Economic Index report."Listing five recent "misleading" claims from the president that the committee found fault with, the Republicans wrote: "President Biden has been making inaccurate accusations about Republicans and fearmongering to scare seniors when Republicans have been clear we are not going to touch their retirement security. Biden has also been making Medicare and Social Security worse off — not protecting them. Medicare premiums have risen for seniors since 2020, while Biden’s ongoing inflation crisis has pushed Social Security further towards insolvency." President Biden speaks to members of the United States Conference of Mayors in the East Room of the White House on January 20, 2023. (Nathan Posner/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)Biden recently faced criticism from FactCheck.org over claims he had made regarding unemployment during his speech at the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ winter meeting last week.During the speech, according to FactCheck.org, Biden "botched a statistic on the number of people receiving unemployment benefits, misidentifying them simply as the number of people ‘out of work.’"CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP"His comment leaves the false impression that unemployment declined by more than 16 million people on his watch, when the decline was actually under 5 million," the nonprofit website concluded. "And a big reason for the large decline in unemployment benefits is the expiration of pandemic-related expansions of such benefits.""Two years ago this week, 18 million people were out of work — two years ago this week," Biden said at the conference. "Now the — that number is under 1.6 million, near the lowest level in decades.""The White House transcript notes that the line drew applause," FactCheck.org stated. "But it’s not accurate. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of people ‘out of work’ — or officially unemployed — in the U.S. in January 2021 was about 10.2 million, and the number in December 2022 was 5.7 million." | US Federal Policies |
Biden Administration Officially Launches New Income-Based Student Loan Repayment Plan
The program is central to the president's efforts to provide student debt relief after the Supreme Court struck down his forgiveness plan
President Joe Biden’s administration on Tuesday officially launched a new income-based student loan repayment program, a move that comes as payments are set to resume in October.
The program, which the White House first announced in August of last year, is central to Biden’s efforts to provide student debt relief now that the Supreme Court has struck down his plan to cancel up to $20,000 from loan balances. The Education Department has been beta testing online enrollment for weeks but now the program is officially open for enrollment at StudentAid.gov/SAVE.
“It’s the most affordable student loan plan ever,” Biden said in a video announcing the launch. “As long as I'm president, my administration will never stop fighting to deliver relief to borrowers and bring the promise of college to more Americans, and that's a commitment.”
Under the Saving on A Valuable Education (SAVE) plan, borrowers’ monthly payments can be reduced from 10% of their discretionary income to 5%. Additionally, any accrued interest not covered by the monthly payment will be waived.
And since payments in the plan are based on discretionary income – defined under the plan as the difference between an individual’s annual income and 225% of the poverty guidelines – some borrowers’ payments will be even further reduced. For example, a borrower who earns roughly $15 an hour would not be required to make any monthly payments under the plan, according to the White House.
“This plan is a game changer for millions of Americans, many of whom are putting off having children, buying their first home or even starting a business because they can't get out from under their student loans,” White House Domestic Policy Advisor Neera Tanden said in a press call Monday. “Student loans will be manageable.”
- Biden has another student loan forgiveness plan
- Biden Administration Forgives $39 Billion in Student Loans for Over 800,000 Borrowers
- How the Biden administration debt relief plan really works: Will you get your student loans forgiven?
- Biden To Unveil New Measures To Protect Student Loan Borrowers Following SCOTUS Ruling
- Biden is expected to make an announcement about student loans soon. Nobody’s going to be happy.
- Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos Blasts Biden for Latest Student Loan Plan
The SAVE program is expected to cost more than if the Biden administration was allowed to go through its original student loan forgiveness plan. The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in July put the price tag of the new income-driven repayment plan at $475 billion over the next 10 years. By comparison, the Congressional Budget Office projected Biden’s cancellation plan would have cost $315 billion over the same time frame.
The Department of Education is also partnering with several grassroots organizations for an outreach campaign to promote the SAVE plan. The department will be working with Civic Nation, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the National Urban League (NUL), Rise, the Student Debt Crisis Center, UnidosUS, and Young Invincibles.
The Education Department will also directly contact nearly 30 million borrowers to invite them to apply for the SAVE plan.
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said the new partnership will “maximize our own communication and outreach and help enroll as many borrowers as possible.”
“With the SAVE plan, we're making a promise to every student … and every student who borrowed a federal loan to pay for college: Your payments will be affordable. You're not going to be buried under a mountain of interest. And you won't be saddled with a lifetime of debt,” Cardona said in a press call.
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A day after one Republican nominee to be Speaker of the House of Representatives withdrew, another with equally long odds is making a fresh bid for the gavel.
Jim Jordan, a leader of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, has confirmed he is running again for Speaker after Steve Scalise stepped aside on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Austin Scott, a Georgia congressman, announced after a closed-door meeting on Friday morning that he would also go for the job.
But he has little name recognition and is even more of a longshot.
Candidates can make their case during a party forum at 13:00 local time (17:00 GMT).
So far, only Mr Jordan has declared his intention to run, but it is unclear if he has the majority support needed in the full House.
He could not even win over enough fellow Republicans to his candidacy this week in an internal party ballot, which Mr Scalise won.
Ten days have now passed since the Speaker's chair was vacated after an unprecedented vote to oust Kevin McCarthy from the job.
The vacuum at the very top of the US government has left the lower chamber of Congress unable to carry out its most basic functions.
What happens now?
The exit routes
1. Jordan - or another Republican - gets 217 votes
As frustration over the stalemate grows, some lawmakers see a path for Mr Jordan to become the new nominee.
As he announced his bid on Friday, the Ohio congressman said he feels "real good" about his prospects.
Whether he can gain enough votes from fellow Republicans, however, is unclear. In the secret ballot that saw Mr Scalise become the nominee, Mr Jordan earned 99 votes to Mr Scalise's 113.
Florida congressman Mario DÃaz-Balart voiced doubts to reporters on Friday about Mr Jordan's ability to win the gavel and, if even he does become Speaker, function effectively.
He pointed to Mr Jordan's failure after losing the internal ballot on Wednesday to convince his own supporters to switch their support to Mr Scalise.
Mr DÃaz-Balart said: "If you can't get your closest friends [to follow you], it begs the question: can you do anything? Can you get anybody to follow you on really difficult questions?"
One of Mr Jordan's backers, Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, said she hoped party members can coalesce around a Speaker and bring it to a vote on the House floor "immediately".
She criticised those who have said they would never vote for Mr Jordan. "Saying 'never' anything is just not the way to go", said Ms Greene on Friday.
Some moderate lawmakers have expressed reluctance to vote for Mr Jordan, a conservative hardliner backed by former President Donald Trump.
Others have argued that Mr Jordan is not adept at fundraising - Speakers are expected to get donors to open their chequebooks for the party.
If the House Judiciary Committee chairman's nomination fails, more names are likely to be floated in the coming days.
They include Tom Emmer, the third-highest ranking House Republican, and Kevin Hern, chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee.
In the meantime, some representatives have said they are at a loss.
"I have no earthly idea," Missouri's Mark Alford told NBC. "We're a ship that doesn't have a rudder right now."
2. A temporary speaker
Another proposal would see the House's acting Speaker, Patrick McHenry, be granted extra powers temporarily.
This would allow the House to function - and avoid a government shutdown in a month's time - while a longer-term solution is found. This would require some co-operation from Democrats to work out the details.
"It's important that we get back to the business of running this country," Ohio congressman James Joyce said of that option, according to the Washington Post.
But some lawmakers don't want a short-term fix.
"Members want this resolved," Florida's Byron Donalds told reporters. "I think a... caretaker is not what members are interested in, and frankly I agree."
He said he believes a temporary speaker would not be effective amid ongoing negotiations over the budget and other issues.
3. Democrats to the rescue
A third option would be for Republicans to agree with Democrats on a consensus Republican candidate.
This option, however, would entail concessions to the minority party. Democrats want to eliminate a new rule introduced in January that gives any member the power to bring a vote to the floor to overthrow the Speaker.
"We are ready, willing and able to find bipartisan common ground," Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said on Thursday. But that would require Republican partners, he added.
Some lawmakers, including Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have suggested that five Republicans could switch sides and vote for Mr Jeffries to become Speaker.
But that looks very unlikely.
Why Scalise failed
Mr Scalise's bid was plagued by the same issues that vexed former Speaker Kevin McCarthy before he was overthrown last week.
The Republicans control the House, but with a narrow majority.
To successfully secure the votes needed to win a floor vote, Mr Scalise needed 217 of 221 Republican representatives (House members) to vote for him. Only five rebels were needed to torpedo his leadership ambitions.
Despite his victory in the internal party ballot on Wednesday, momentum quickly swung against him.
The holdouts gave a variety of reasons, ranging from disagreements over policy to a simple desire not to uphold what some termed "the status quo".
Why all this is a problem
The vacancy in one of the most important roles in US government comes at a bad time.
Without a Speaker, the chamber is unable to pass any bills or approve White House requests for emergency aid. That includes potential help for Israel amid its ongoing fight with Hamas.
A leaderless House also means that Congress is unable to pass any spending bills - even short-term measures - that would allow the government to avoid a potential shutdown in mid-November.
Several members of the House have suggested a solution is unlikely until early next week.
What exactly that looks like remains an open question. | US Congress |
House to vote on Johnson's plan to avert shutdown -- but he'll need Democratic support
Republican hard-liners accused the new speaker of surrendering.
The House is set to vote Tuesday afternoon on Speaker Mike Johnson's plan to avert a government shutdown just days ahead of a Friday deadline.
But because of opposition from hard-line Republicans, he will have to rely on dozens of Democratic votes to pass his unconventional idea with the needed two-thirds majority.
Johnson huddled with Republicans behind closed doors Tuesday morning, giving one final pitch for his two-step proposal before he puts it on the floor for a vote later in the day.
But several left the meeting unmoved. Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee called Johnson's plan a "surrender." Texas Rep. Chip Roy called it a "mistake."
At a later news conference, ABC News Senior Congressional Correspondent Rachel Scott asked Johnson about those Republicans outraged about his going forward.
"We're not surrendering, we're fighting but you have to be wise about choosing the fights. ...You got to fight fights that you can win, and we're going to and you're going to see this House majority stand together on our principle," he said.
"Look, it took decades to get into this mess, right, I've been at the job less than three weeks, right? ...I can't turn an aircraft carrier overnight. But this was a very important first step to get us to the next stage so that we can change how Washington works," he added.
Meanwhile, some Democrats are calling this a victory.
After their meeting Tuesday morning, House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and other Democrats were still evaluating Johnson's continuing resolution.
"We have not taken a family position on the bill," Aguilar said.
"And I think the concern is Speaker Johnson -- this is very similar to the position we had been before. He is bleeding votes within his conference," he said. "There is no prospect of him delivering the votes to achieve this success to achieve the continuing resolution."
"Our caucus still has questions about what that path ahead is," he said.
The irony is that Johnson is pushing forward with the same type of stopgap plan that led to Kevin McCarthy being ousted as speaker.
Still, some Republicans are signaling they're willing to give Johnson a break.
"Speaker Johnson came in kind of like the backup quarterback, you can't blame him for the score of the game when he enters the game," Rep. Dan Meuser or Pennsylvania said.
Other Republicans acknowledge the realities of a divided government and a deeply divided party.
"In the Republican conference, you couldn't get 217 of us to agree that today's Tuesday," Rep. Troy Nehls said.
"Mike is having to reach out to the Democrats, because you can't get the Republicans to agree on anything," he added.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday morning he was "very heartened" by Johnson's government funding proposal, and said that he and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell would work to move the stopgap bill to the floor expeditiously if the House passes it Tuesday.
"We'll see over the course of how the House moves today whether it comes forward, when it comes here, if the House should pass it and I hope they do," Schumer said. "Leader McConnell and I will figure out the best way to get this done quickly. Neither McConnell nor I want a shut down."
Schumer has embraced the House proposal because it does not include any spending cuts.
"The proposal before the House does two things Democrats pushed for," Schumer said. "One: not making the hard-right cuts that the MAGA wing demands and second, making sure that if they are going to do this sort of goofy ladder that defense is in the second part of the ladder -- not the first."
Schumer was asked about his break from the White House, which originally dismissed the GOP proposal as "unserious."
"I think that we all want to avoid a shutdown, I've talked to the White House and both of us agree, the White House and myself, that if this can avoid a shutdown, it would be a good thing." | US Congress |
Does the public have a right to see gruesome photos of animal test subjects taken by a public university?That question underpins an ongoing court battle between UC Davis and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, an animal welfare group, which is fighting for the release of photos of dead monkeys used in tests of Elon Musk–owned Neuralink’s brain-chip implants. A WIRED investigation this week revealed the extent to which Neuralink and UC Davis have gone to keep images of the tests secret.Also this week, an investigation by the Markup, copublished with WIRED, analyzed crime predictions by Geolitica (formerly PredPol) in Plainfield, New Jersey, and found that they accurately predicted crime less than 1 percent of the time. As WIRED previously reported, Geolitica is shutting down at the end of this year and being sold for parts to SoundThinking, maker of the gunshot-detection system ShotSpotter.Earlier this year, the data-extortion gang Clop exploited a vulnerability in the widely used file-transfer service MOVEit, racking up victims around the globe including major corporations and US government agencies. The full number of victim organizations continues to climb into the thousands, with more than 3.4 million people’s data potentially stolen, making it the biggest hack of 2023.If you own an inexpensive Android TV streaming box, you may want to toss it into the sea—or recycle it responsibly. New research found that at least eight cheap streaming boxes contained a backdoor that connects the devices with servers in China and is used to commit fraud and other cybercrime. Researchers also found dozens of Android, iOS, and TV box apps that were used for fraudulent behavior. While at least some of the apps have been removed from the app stores, more than 120,000 Android devices and 150,000 iOS devices were impacted.Speaking of phone security, we detailed how to know when your device will stop getting security updates and how to keep Google from using your data in its generative AI tool, Bard. Finally, we profiled the team at a UK-based nonprofit that’s helping women fight back against digital domestic violence.That’s not all. Each week we round up the security and privacy news that we didn’t cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.When WIRED first reported that Apple had sent a letter responding to demands from an anti-child-exploitation group called Heat Initiative, we had one big question: What the hell is Heat Initiative? An investigation by the Intercept now provides some clues.According to the Intercept, the group is funded by “dark-money donors” linked to billionaire Democrats. Sarah Gardner, who leads the group, refused to comment on Heat Initiative’s funding and said she disagrees with Apple’s “privacy-absolutist” approach. The group, which had virtually no online presence when Apple sent that letter, is now waging a high-profile campaign to force the company to do more to scan for child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on users’ devices and iCloud storage, which would likely mean weakening encryption.After Apple scrapped plans to scan images on users’ devices for CSAM amid widespread backlash, the company focused instead on tools known as Community Safety features for reporting CSAM. It also rolled out encrypted iCloud options. The company says it cannot meet Heat Initiative demands without compromising user privacy and security.Sony Interactive Entertainment confirmed this week that it is the latest victim of the aforementioned MOVEit breach. The company says it has informed some 6,800 people, including past and current employees, about the breach, which may have exposed Social Security numbers and personal information. Data-extortion gang Clop has claimed responsibility for the breach, which Sony says it detected on June 2. Sony says it is working with cybersecurity experts and law enforcement as part of its investigation into the intrusion.Agents working for the US Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the US Secret Service broke the law by purchasing commercially available phone location data, according to a new report from the US Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general. Privacy and civil liberty advocates have long argued that the purchase of such data, known in the US government as commercial telemetry data (CTD), circumvents Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures because agents don’t need to obtain a warrant to buy the information. But the inspector general report says the data was illegally accessed because agents failed to conduct a mandated privacy impact assessment before buying CTD.The US Department of Justice this week unsealed indictments against eight Chinese firms and 12 of their employees, accusing them of producing and distributing chemicals needed for the production of fentanyl, a deadly opioid, in the United States. The employees and companies were also sanctioned by the US Treasury Department, cutting them off from US financial institutions. According to the DOJ, the companies “tend to use cryptocurrency transactions to conceal their identities and the location and movement of their funds.”“We have identified and blocked over a dozen virtual currency wallets associated with these actors,” Treasury deputy secretary Wally Adeyemo said during a press conference on October 3. “The blocked wallets, which received millions of USD funds over hundreds of deposits, illustrate the scope and scale of the operation targeted today.” | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
This time three years ago, as difficult as it may be to remember, a hot topic of political discussion was “going back to brunch.”
It was a callback to a few years prior, when a rash of signs at anti-Trump protests had proclaimed that If Hillary Had Won, We’d Be at Brunch Right Now. “Brunch” became a shorthand for the attitude of liberals whose political complacency had been shattered by the rise of Donald Trump — and who now wanted their complacency back.
As 2020 drew to a close, Trump finally seemed to be out of the picture. He’d decisively lost the election — with Biden beating him in the crucial swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia and racking up almost seven million more votes than Trump overall. So the debate between leftists and “brunch” liberals was about whether to keep pushing for a more just and equal society or to call a return to the Obama-era status quo good enough.
As 2023 draws to a close, Trump is beating Joe Biden in Michigan. And Pennsylvania. And Nevada. And Arizona. And Georgia. (Biden is leading by two whole points in Wisconsin if you want to take comfort in that.) A lot could change in the next year, of course, but as of this moment a second Trump administration looks not only possible but disturbingly likely.
Some liberals are reacting by expressing anger or incredulity at voters to Biden’s left who aren’t satisfied with what the president has offered them so far. They find the idea that some of these voters may stay home or vote for an independent candidate like Cornel West outrageous. Biden hasn’t been perfect, but the job numbers are good and he did some good things and if he hasn’t done more, that’s not really his fault — he’s trying! — and anyway Trump would be worse.
it should not be difficult to find it within your soul to say "whatever biden does, trump poses a mortal threat to us democracy and many residents and must be opposed at all costs." but instead a lot of people just have complicated excuses for why we shouldn't have to say that
— Will Stancil (@whstancil) November 26, 2023
This reaction misses the point. It’s the job of politicians to appeal to voters. If Biden isn’t winning them over with what he’s currently offering, that’s his fault, not theirs.
The solution isn’t to chide the populace to be more satisfied. It’s to offer them something better — or get out of the way so another candidate can do so.
Biden, Trump, and the Great Brunch Debate
Much of what the liberals who once wrote that playful slogan about brunch on their protest signs found horrifying about Trump really was horrifying. I don’t want him to come back any more than they do. In 2016, Trump said he wanted a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims from any country traveling to the United States, even as refugees. When he became president, he issued various executive orders to try to come as close as the courts would let him to doing exactly that.
Later, his “family separation” policy at the Mexican border added a new layer of inhumanity to an already cruel system of immigration enforcement. Whatever they got wrong, the brunch crowd got both of these issues right. They were also right about the disturbing contempt for a democratic election he’d already started to show in late November 2020, as he furiously denied having lost the election and tried to find someone — anyone — to overturn the results.
Perturbed by the back-to-brunch ethos, leftists insisted that the deep injustices built into the American status quo considerably predated Trump, and that a corporate-friendly centrist like Biden couldn’t be counted on to enact the kind of sweeping reforms that could move American society in a meaningfully better direction. That was true too. “Brunch” liberals were wrong not to care more about that bigger picture.
What many people missed at the time, though, was that something much better than a return to business-as-usual was going to be necessary not only to achieve loftier goals of social progress — but also, it turns out, just to keep Trump from coming back.
Why Voters Are Unhappy
Rapper Cardi B was speaking for millions of people when she expressed disgust about Biden saying, “We could fund two wars” — in Ukraine and Gaza — while the infrastructure is crumbling in many American cities. It’s broadly insulting that there’s always money for war while meeting the material needs of ordinary Americans is considered “too expensive.” Additionally, right now many younger Democratic-leaning voters in particular are morally disgusted with Biden’s financial and diplomatic support for Israel’s horrific assault on the civilian population of Gaza.
It’s all very well to lecture these voters that Trump might have been even worse in this moment — supporting Israel’s war without even the half-hearted humanitarian reservations Biden will occasionally mumble. That’s probably true. But to win elections you don’t just need to have a rational case that the other guy will be even worse than you on some issue of concern to voters. You need to get those voters excited about coming out to vote for you. “The war crimes going on right now aren’t quite as bad as they would be if the other guy was in power” is unlikely to get that done.
Perhaps Biden is confident that this won’t be a problem for him. Maybe he’s made the cold calculation that everyone will have forgotten about the slaughter in Gaza by this time next year, or that Arab American voters in Michigan who can’t imagine voting to reelect Biden will be balanced out by some other group of swing state voters who approve of his actions. Similarly, what little polling we have on this specific question shows that a large plurality of voters think Biden should be doing more to pursue a diplomatic resolution of the war in Ukraine — but he might be confident that this preference won’t change many votes.
Fine. But if he’s not going to give us peace abroad, what is Biden offering at home?
So far, his instinct has been to play up good economic indicators and talk about “Bidenomics.” The instinct to emphasize economics is right, as far as it goes: appealing to people on the basis of improving their material well-being can unite a far larger coalition than just about any other set of issues. And some indicators really have been good under Biden, such as the employment rate. The problem is that ordinary Americans keep telling pollsters they don’t see much to brag about in Biden’s economy. And what they feel is what matters on election day.
Exasperated liberal pundits keep expressing incredulity about this. Many of them seem to think voters have somehow been tricked into not giving Biden credit for a “good economy.” The pundits are getting this wrong on two levels. First, as Matt Bruenig points out, you don’t have to sift through the numbers for long before you get to some much worse indicators:
I used the CPS ASEC to determine whether an individual’s family-size-adjusted, inflation-adjusted disposable income (SPM Income) increased or decreased from the year before. Then I determined what percentage of individuals saw their income increase from the prior year and what percent saw their income decrease.
In a typical year, over 45 percent of people see their income decline from the year before for one reason or another. Since Biden got into office, that number has actually gone up 15 percentage points. This probably reflects the unwinding of the COVID welfare state and inflation, which were one-off events, but nevertheless not great experiences for many.
Second, in a democracy voters should the ones who get to decide what kind of economy counts as “good.” If tens of millions of Americans aren’t satisfied with their material conditions, the question for politicians who want to be reelected should be how to better meet those expectations, not how to convince the voters to expect less.
Biden’s Terrible Message
Biden came to office promising reforms like a “public option” for health insurance and a federal minimum wage of $15 an hour. None of those promises have been fulfilled, and in some cases he never even tried. The idea of a public option, for example, seems to have been all but completely erased from mainstream political discourse.
In the cases where Biden did try, he’s mostly been defeated either by forces outside his control or by the half-hearted nature of his own efforts. At best, he’s implemented scattered bits and pieces of what he originally talked about — like his executive order mandating a $15 minimum wage for federal contractors.
I’ve made the case over the course of the last few years that some of Biden’s excuses for accepting defeat on these issues have been extremely dubious. Let’s assume for the sake of argument, though, that I’m wrong about all that and Biden really is trying his best.
In that case, shouldn’t his message be all about playing up what he’s trying to do? “Vote for me so I can keep pushing.”
Sometimes, to be fair, that’s pretty much what he does say. But all too often — as with the administration’s catastrophically misguided “Bidenomics” rhetoric — the message is, “You should be satisfied with what I’ve already done. It doesn’t matter how little you like the wars I’m involving us in abroad or the declining real spending power so many of you have experienced at home. Just focus on the economic indicators that I want you to focus on and be happy.”
And frankly that message always reminds me of the satirical conclusion of Berthold Brecht’s poem “Die Lösung” (“The Solution”). It was written after the defeat of a 1953 general strike and uprising in East Berlin. The ruling party, Brecht wrote, had put up posters around the city saying that “the people had squandered the confidence of the government” through their disloyalty.
“Would it not be simpler,” Brecht asked, “for the government to dissolve the people, and elect another?” | US Federal Elections |
Washington — A pair of Republican lawmakers are renewing an effort to punish Rep. Rashida Tlaib just days after she wasover her controversial comments on Israel.
Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Rich McCormick, who both represent Georgia, introduced separate resolutions on Monday seeking to censure Tlaib for what they called her "antisemitic" remarks. Greene and McCormick introduced the resolutions as "privileged," a procedural maneuver that forces a vote on the matter within two legislative days.
A similar push led by Greene failed last week when the House voted against moving forward on censuring the Michigan Democrat, with 23 Republicans joining all Democrats in voting the table the measure.
The second attempt to punish Tlaib, the House's only Palestinian American, comes after her defense of a slogan that is seen by Jewish people as arguing for the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state.
Tlaib posted a video on X on Friday that included footage of protesters in Michigan chanting "from the river to the sea." The Anti-Defamation League says the full slogan — "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" — is an "antisemitic slogan commonly featured in anti-Israel campaigns and chanted at demonstrations."
"It is fundamentally a call for a Palestinian state extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, territory that includes the State of Israel, which would mean the dismantling of the Jewish state," the Anti-Defamation League says. "It is an antisemitic charge denying the Jewish right to self-determination, including through the removal of Jews from their ancestral homeland."
But Tlaib said the phrase is "an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate." Her video also accused President Biden of supporting "the genocide of the Palestinian people" through his backing of Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza.
McCormick said on the House floor on Monday that the behavior was "entirely unbecoming" of a member of the House.
for more features. | US Congress |
The U.S. has approved more than $42 billion in federal student loan debt forgiveness for more than 615,000 borrowers in the past 18 months as part of a program aimed at getting more people to work in public service jobs, the U.S. Department of Education said this week.
The Public Service Loan Forgiveness program is open to teachers, librarians, nurses, public interest lawyers, military members and other public workers. It cancels a borrower's remaining student debt after 10 years of public interest work, or 120 monthly payments.
The program is separate from President Joe Biden’s student debt relief plan, which would wipe away or reduce loans for millions of borrowers regardless of what field they work in. The U.S. Supreme Court is currently considering whether that plan can go ahead.
The Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, known as PSLF, was launched in 2007, but stringent rules meant that more than 90% of applicants were rejected, the Department of Education said in 2019.
In October 2021, the government temporarily relaxed the requirements, making it easier for people to apply and be approved. Those relaxed requirements ended in October 2022. However, borrowers who want to increase their payment count have another opportunity to do so. They can apply for the one-time account adjustment until the end of the year.
Through the one-time account adjustment, borrowers with direct loans through the William D. Ford program will have similar benefits to those that were available under the limited PSLF waiver. Borrowers who do not have direct loans can consolidate and receive PSLF credit for prior payments as part of this adjustment, as long as they submit a consolidation application by the end of 2023.
One of the people who benefited from the PSLF waiver was Beth Bourdon, an assistant public defender in Orlando, Florida.
Bourdon had about $57,000 of student loans forgiven in February 2022. Previously, because her loans had been acquired through the Family Federal Education Loan Program, Bourdon didn’t qualify for relief. But when the waiver took effect in October 2021, she successfully applied.
“I kept checking and re-checking the site, and one day I went and the balance was zero,” Bourdon said. “Two days later I got the official letter.”
With the exception of one two-year period, Bourdon has worked in public interest law since 2005. She said she made payments of about $417 every month from June 2008 to October 2021, when she consolidated her loans and applied for PSLF.
“Public defenders, we don’t get paid a lot,” she said. “When people’s student loans hit, they’re faced with a really hard decision. Can I remain doing this job I love or will I have to go to a civil firm to try to make money? The PSLF helps try to retain talented people who would otherwise go somewhere else.”
Bourdon said the cancellation gives her “breathing room.”
She added that she personally talked about 10 people she knows through the process of applying for forgiveness via the waiver, and that several have already received cancellation.
“It’s so great — knowing how relieved I was, for my friends to have that kind of relief too,” she said.
Starting July 1 of this year, the Education Department will implement changes designed to make the PSLF application process easier. Some of the changes were previously included in the waiver.
Here’s what you need to know if you want to apply:
WHO QUALIFIES?
If you are or were previously employed at least 30 hours per week with the following types of organizations, you qualify:
— Government organizations at any level (U.S. federal, state, local, or tribal). This includes the U.S. military, all work in public education, and full-time volunteer work with AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps.
— Any not-for-profit organization that is tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
— If you work for a not-for-profit organization that is not tax-exempt, you may still qualify for PSLF if the organization provides certain types of qualifying public services such as emergency management, legal aid and legal services, early childhood education, service to individuals with disabilities or the elderly, public health, including nurses and nurse practitioners, public library and school library services, and public safety such as crime prevention and law enforcement.
To demonstrate that your job in public service qualifies you for forgiveness, you’ll file an employer certification form with your servicer, listing jobs you’ve held.
You must have direct loans or consolidate other federal student loans into a direct loan. You must also make 120 qualifying payments or 10 years of payments.
WHICH STUDENT LOANS ARE ELIGIBLE?
Any federal student loan received under the William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan program is eligible.
If you have either a Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) or a Federal Perkins Loan, you’ll need to consolidate those into direct loans with your servicer. Payments made on these loans before you consolidated them do not count as qualifying PSLF payments.
Private student loans are not eligible.
HOW CAN I APPLY?
You can apply to the program using the PSLF help tool. If you want to do it manually, you can print and mail a PSLF form.
HOW CAN I CONSOLIDATE MY DEBT INTO A DIRECT LOAN?
First, visit studentaid.gov to see if you have loans made under the Federal Family Education Loan or Perkins Loan Program. Those are the loans you’ll consolidate.
Next, apply online or by mail. The process is free and takes about six weeks to complete, but you can submit the Public Service Loan Forgiveness form after consolidation is complete.
WHAT COUNTS AS A QUALIFYING PAYMENT?
A qualifying monthly payment is a payment that you made after Oct. 1, 2007, while you were employed by a qualifying employer.
The 120 qualifying monthly payments don’t need to be consecutive. For example, if you have a period of employment with a non-qualifying employer, you will not lose credit for prior qualifying payments.
WHAT ABOUT THE PAYMENT PAUSE?
Student loan payments are currently paused because of the COVID pandemic.
Payments are set to resume, along with the accrual of interest, 60 days after the current Supreme Court case about student loan forgiveness is resolved. If the case hasn’t been resolved by June 30, payments will start 60 days after that.
Borrowers will get credit toward PSLF for payments they would have made during the pause as long as they meet all other qualifications for the program, according to the Education Department.
For the qualifying payments to show in your account, you must submit a PSLF form that certifies your employment during the pause.
HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE CURRENTLY IN THE PROGRAM?
As of mid-April of this year, more than 615,000 borrowers have qualified for forgiveness under the limited PSLF waiver, which ended in October. Some borrowers who submitted their applications prior to the end date may continue to have their applications processed from the waiver period.
WHO CAN I CONTACT IF I HAVE QUESTIONS?
If you have a specific question about your application, it’s best to call or email a representative.
For general questions about student loans, the Federal Student Aid Information Center (FSAIC) hosts a contact center that allows borrowers to live chat, call or email.
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The Associated Press receives support from Charles Schwab Foundation for educational and explanatory reporting to improve financial literacy. The independent foundation is separate from Charles Schwab and Co. Inc. The AP is solely responsible for its journalism. | US Federal Policies |
There is growing speculation that Matt Gaetz's move to oust Kevin McCarthy from the speaker's office could backfire amid reports that a bipartisan group of around 10 Democratic and Republican representatives is holding discussions to break the deadlock.
McCarthy became the first speaker in U.S. history to be removed by a "motion to vacate," filed by Gaetz, on October 3 when eight GOP hardliners voted with the Democratic caucus to bring him down. The move has thrown the House into chaos, leaving it unable to pass legislation with just weeks to go before a partial government shutdown unless more funding is approved by Congress.
On Thursday, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise dropped out of the race to succeed McCarthy, despite receiving the most backing from GOP lawmakers the day before. He said: "Our conference still has to come together and it's not there."
Donald Trump ally Jim Jordan, founding chair of the conservative Freedom Caucus, was selected as the new Republican nominee for the speaker's office on Friday, despite having initially lost out to Scalise. However, it is far from clear that he has the requisite 217 votes to win. Due to the GOP's wafer-thin House majority, just four of its members can block any Republican candidate for speaker, if they vote alongside a united Democratic caucus.
A group of about 10 representatives from both parties have held very serious discussions about a bipartisan deal to break the deadlock, per Axios news website. This could see Democrats back a moderate Republican as speaker in return for legislative or procedural concessions.
Fox News host Laura Ingraham shared the article on X, formerly Twitter, adding: "Exactly what I warned about on the [Ingraham] Angle the night of the McCarthy ouster. This is Matt Gaetz's legacy. Congratulations!"
In response, Gaetz posted: "Breathe, Laura. This isn't going to happen... Democrats won't be empowered. The Speaker will be more conservative than McCarthy. And you will thank me when it's over." Newsweek has approached Rep. Matt Gaetz for comment by email.
Republican Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon, who has a history of bipartisan working, said: "At this point, there are enough Republican and Democrats saying we've got to get this fixed."
A similar sentiment was expressed by Maria Salazar, a Florida Republican representative generally considered to be on the party's moderate wing. She said: "We're open to anything that's reasonable. Bipartisanship is not a sin."
Mike Rogers, the Republican chair of the armed services committee, has called on the Democratic leadership to put forward its terms for a deal.
Blasting the minority party, along with the GOP rebels, for removing McCarthy, Rogers said: "They put us in this ditch along with eight traitors.
"We're still the majority party, we're willing to work with them, but they gotta tell us what they need."
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has called for a bipartisan deal: "The House of Representatives has been broken by chaos, dysfunction and extremism. The only way out is to enter into an enlightened bipartisan coalition of the willing in order to get things back on track."
Politico reporter Olivia Beavers said that one House Republican told her the dispute could see Jeffries elected to the speaker's office, if a number of frustrated GOP representatives don't turn up to vote against him. Beavers quoted them as saying: "What happens when Jordan forces us to the floor to try to pressure us and all of a sudden we don't show up and Hakeem Jeffries is speaker cause he wanted to be a bully?"
There is reportedly also discussion about extending the powers of acting Speaker Patrick McHenry, so the House can pass a new assistance package for Israel, following the devastating Hamas attack of October 7.
Speaking to Bloomberg Television, Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul, a Republican, commented: "I don't think we're gonna have any other option." | US Congress |
James Woods was considering colleges and had narrowed his choices to three.
The senior from Streetsboro, Ohio, hoped to break records in the upcoming track season in his new gold-bottomed spikes.
James and his friends had a trip planned in July to Dream Con, a comic book convention in Texas.
The 17-year-old had hopes and dreams that ended on Nov. 19 when he died by suicide.
James’ death was shocking for his family and friends, who never saw signs he was depressed or upset. They soon learned, though, that James had been the silent victim of a growing cybercrime known as sextortion.
These schemes typically use social media to target young people. The victims are persuaded to share a naked photo or explicit video of themselves that is then used to extort them for money or more images.
Tamia Woods, James’ mother, had never heard of sextortion before her only child’s death. But she and her husband, Tim, have now made it their mission to educate others about the crime.
“People need to be made aware of this evil,” Tamia Woods said in an interview at the family’s Streetsboro home. “My husband and I did everything we could. How can you regret something you didn’t know anything about?”
In the five months since James’ death, the Woods started the Do It for James Foundation and created tip cards with information on what young people can do if they fall prey to sextortion. They have spoken to numerous groups and Northeast Ohio schools and will be the featured speakers at a Mental Health and Safety Forum on May 10 at Streetsboro High School.
The parents also are supporting state legislation that would require parental consent for children 16 and younger to use social media.
This is, after all, a problem that extends way beyond Streetsboro.
The FBI issued public safety alerts about sextortion in December and again in mid-January, saying law enforcement agencies had received more than 7,000 reports in the past year about the online extortion of at least 3,000 young people, most of them with boys. The FBI said more than a dozen sextortion victims have died by suicide.
Since James’ death, three other Streetsboro students have reported being victims of sextortion. One of the victims told a school official he knew what happened to James.
Tamia, 39, a clinical specialty representative for the Mayo Clinic, is pleased the word is spreading. Asked why she and her husband have been so open about their son’s death, Tamia said simply: “Because of fear. My child took his life. I never want another mom to feel the hurt I feel."
James Woods was known for his great smile and running prowess
Tamia described her son as a “humble young man” who wasn’t the typical teen. He loved comic books, anime and Dragon Ball Z and enjoyed playing chess with his father. In recent years, James found a passion for running and joined Streetsboro’s cross country and track teams. He was ranked 12th in Ohio last year for the 110-meter hurdles in Division II.
“That was one of my joys – I loved to watch him run,” said Tamia, who tried not to miss any of James’ meets.
The family enjoyed traveling and helped organize trips once a year for James and his closest friends. They already had tickets for Dream Con, the comic book festival in July in Austin, Texas.
Streetsboro Superintendent Mike Daulbaugh said James was a great kid and a stellar athlete who was known for his infectious smile.
“He could light up a room,” said Daulbaugh, who has led the school district since 2013. “He was friends with everybody. Everybody loved James.”
James, who was nearly halfway through his senior year by November, hoped to run in college and had in mind a career in law or law enforcement.
On the morning of Saturday, Nov. 19, Tamia went with James to a college fair. She said James laughed and danced with his friends, though she did notice he appeared to be on his phone a lot. She asked him to put it away.
James went off to learn about the 20 colleges at the fair, and Tamia headed to brunch with her aunt and cousin.
About 1:30 p.m., James called Tamia and said he had talked to three colleges he now considered at the top of his list – Central State University, Fisk University and Howard University.
“Baby, I’m so proud of you,” Tamia told him. “We’ll talk more about this when you get home.”
That conversation never happened.
'I have to tell you, our son is gone. He's gone'
Tim arrived home about 6:45 that evening and found James dead.
He dropped to his knees, screamed and crawled to his son’s body.
Tim then made the hardest call of his life − to his wife, who was running errands. He didn’t want her to hear what happened from a neighbor.
“I have to tell you, our son is gone,” he told her. “He’s gone. He killed himself.”
Tamia, who teared up as she remembered that call, couldn’t comprehend what she was hearing.
“We told him we loved him every day,” she said. “Our son was our life – our everything.”
The Woods, through phone records and with help from police, quickly learned James had been targeted in a sextortion scheme. He was contacted on Instagram by an attractive young woman.
Their conversation turned sexual and the woman asked James if he wanted to see her naked in a video chat. After the chat, the woman said it was James’ turn, and he reciprocated.
The woman or people she was working with captured a naked image of James from the video chat and used the image to begin threatening him. The initial demand was $6,000, but it dropped to $300.
James gave his tormentors $100 in iTunes gift cards, but the threats continued.
James received 200 messages in less than 20 hours.
They said James would be labeled a pedophile. His parents wouldn’t love him. He wouldn’t be able to get into college or get a job. They would hurt or kill his parents.
“You might as well end it now,” they told James at one point.
When James was on his phone at the college fair, Tamia now believes he probably was responding to the barrage of messages.
“I didn’t realize they were terrorizing my child,” she said.
James’ exploiters made good on one of their threats and sent a naked photo of him to many of his friends and family members. Tamia learned about it from one of James’ friends after his death.
Tamia wishes James had told her and Tim what was happening.
“We would have cussed him out and said, ‘How dare you?’ and then gone to police,” Tamia said. “He made a mistake. He’s the victim.”
'This is an attack on our youth'
Once Tamia and Tim realized what had happened, they wasted no time.
Two days later, Tamia addressed the track team at his high school, explaining what had happened to James and urging the students to make better choices. If they get into trouble, get help, she implored.
“There’s never anything you can do that you can’t tell your parents,” Tamia said. “Just like that, things can change in a heartbeat, and someone be gone.”
Daulbaugh was shocked by Tamia’s candor but said it helped him and Streetsboro Police Chief Tricia Wain, who wanted to get the word out about what happened to James while respecting the family’s privacy. With that concern removed, he said, he and Wain were free to share information.
“We wanted the public to hear this is not going away,” Daulbaugh said. “This is an attack on our youth. As adults, we need to do something about it. We can’t be quiet.”
The Woods created cards with suggestions for what young people can do if they become victims of sextortion. The small, laminated cards can fit in a wallet or pocket and include contact information for the FBI and the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
The parents spoke at a sheriffs' conference in Columbus, Ohio, and a Portage County Police Chiefs Association meeting. They also shared their story at a news conference in March to announce the proposed Social Media Parental Notification Act, which would require social media companies like Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok to get parental consent before permitting those under 16 to join their platforms.
The Woods also would like to see Ohio law strengthened to make sextortion a serious criminal offense, with heightened penalties for those who target juveniles. Right now, people accused of sextortion face other criminal charges, such as extortion.
James Woods' parents spread their message as sextortion investigation continues
On a recent afternoon, Tamia and Tim Woods spoke to high school students in Amherst, Ohio, about James and what led to his death. Tamia gave the students the foundation’s tip cards and encouraged them to hold on to them. She said James’ last Google search was: “How to get an Instagram page taken down.”
“He did not know what to do,” she said.
Wain, the Streetsboro police chief, called what happened to James a “targeted attack.”
“They were targeting his friends and family to expose him for what he was,” Wain said. “What he was was a kid who made a mistake. They made him out to be a sex offender or pedophile.”
He said the investigation into James’ case is continuing with help from federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security.
Wain said James’ tormentors were from the Ivory Coast in Africa, an area that generally isn’t cooperative with the United States. She said it is “difficult with overseas offenders.”
“We are looking at people who look at this as a job,” she said. “Everybody has jobs. Their job happens to be tormenting children.”
Investigators from Homeland Security didn’t return messages conveyed through Streetsboro police and email seeking comment on James’ case.
Since James' death, three other Streetsboro students have reported being victims of sextortion.
One student sent his tormentors money but then told his mother what had happened when the threats continued. His mother took a screenshot of the man making the threats, which was forwarded to federal investigators and has been shared publicly by police.
“I’m glad kids are coming forward,” Wain said. “Without the reports and documentation and evidence we’re getting, we would not be able to do anything about it in the big picture.”
No arrests have been made in Streetsboro’s sextortion cases.
While the investigations continue, the Woods are grieving the loss of their son during what would have been his final weeks in high school. Tamia said one of the toughest things for her are trips to the grocery store because she no longer needs to buy James the Pop-Tarts and barbecue chips he loved.
Tamia and Tim have plans to participate in 20 events through May and are organizing a 5K walk and run in August to try to raise $10,000 in scholarships. Tamia says her son is the force behind their efforts.
“James is still here,” she said. “He’s helping save lives.”
Stephanie Warsmith can be reached at [email protected], or on Twitter @swarsmithabj. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
Doomsday Mom Lori Vallow Daybell told potential recruits they would need to “be separated” from their kids in order to join her cult-like group, a former friend testified this week.
Vallow Daybell is standing trial in an Idaho court on charges she killed two of her kids — 16-year-old Tylee Ryan and 7-year-old JJ Vallow — with her newest husband, Chad Daybell. They are botth also accused in the the death of Daybell’s wife, Tammy.
The jury heard Wednesday from Vallow Daybell’s ex pal, April Raymond, whom she met through her church in Hawaii in 2016, according to an Insider report. The pair kept in touch and reunited in 2019, but Vallow Daybell had changed drastically, she testified.
Gone were the typical religious beliefs Raymond said she and Vallow Daybell shared – instead, the now-accused killer touted beliefs about how she was a “Goddess” and her rivals were “zombies,” according to the report from inside the courtroom.
Vallow Daybell visited Raymond in February 2019 tried to recruit her to join her new interpretation of the Christian religion, she recalled.
“She had come to gather me,” Raymond told the court. “She said I had fulfilled my role in their lives and I had a greater mission to fulfill with her.”
But the “mission” came with a radical caveat, she said.
“I would need to be separated from my children,” Raymond testified.
Prosecutors allege Lori and Chad Daybell espoused beliefs about zombies and said they were called upon by God to shepherd the 144,000 followers into the end of the world and the second coming of Christ. Vallow Daybell allegedly believed people either represented light or dark – the latter of which were those who had signed contracts with the devil.
According to her alleged beliefs, the only way for some people to lose their “dark” spiritual attachments was through spiritual castings, or their deaths.
Tylee and JJ’s remains were discovered in shallow graves in the backyard of Daybell’s Rexburg, Idaho, home. JJ’s body was found buried under a tree, while Tylee’s charred remains were located in an area that the family called a “pet cemetery.”
Vallow Daybell is being tried separately from her now-husband, Daybell, who is accused of similar charges.
In addition to Tylee’s and JJ’s murders, prosecutors have linked the couple to the October 2019 death of Daybell’s former wife, Tammy Daybell, 49. The couple then collected social security benefits and life insurance money related to the three deaths, prosecutors said.
Earlier this week, the panel of 10 male and eight female jurors heard testimony from several law enforcement officials and emotional details from Vallow Daybell’s adult son, Colby Ryan.
They were shown police body-camera footage from November 26, 2019, when police in Rexburg were investigating JJ’s whereabouts. Police were asking around about the 7-year-old’s whereabouts after his grandmother, Kay Woodcock, requested a welfare check.
Vallow Daybell can be heard in the footage complaining about threats from her brother and her late husband, Charles Vallow. She tells police her son is with her friend, Melanie Gibb, in Arizona, and refers to Chad Daybell only as her brother’s “friend.”
She then gripes about Woodcock and how she feels “like I’m being tracked all the time.”
Vallow-Daybell is charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy and grand theft. She has also been indicted in the Arizona death of her estranged husband, Charles Vallow.
Defense attorneys have appeared to try to pin the blame for Charles’ death on Daybell or Vallow Daybell’s brother, Alex Cox, who has since died.
Vallow Daybell was arrested in May 2021 and later spent nine months in a mental health hospital before she was deemed fit for trial in April 2022.
The trial, is currently in its second week, is expected to last several more. Daybell will be tried separately at a later date. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
Commentary: Universal Basic Income May Sound Attractive But, If It Occurred, Would Likelier Increase Poverty Than Reduce It
Conservative support for UBI rests on an approach that would increase poverty, rather than reduce it.At first blush, universal basic income (UBI) seems a very attractive idea, especially to a progressive. Yet it suffers from two serious problems. First, the odds are very high that an effort to secure UBI would prove quixotic. Second, and more disconcerting, any possibility of overcoming the formidable obstacles to UBI will almost certainly require a left-right coalition that has significant conservative support — and conservative support for UBI rests on an approach that would increase poverty, rather than reduce it.
The key issues related to UBI include what it would cost, how it would be paid for, and the risks it poses. Let’s take these one at a time.
The Cost
There are over 300 million Americans today. Suppose UBI provided everyone with $10,000 a year. That would cost more than $3 trillion a year — and $30 trillion to $40 trillion over ten years.
This single-year figure equals more than three-fourths of the entire yearly federal budget — and double the entire budget outside Social Security, Medicare, defense, and interest payments. It’s also equal to close to 100 percent of all tax revenue the federal government collects.
Or, consider UBI that gives everyone $5,000 a year. That would provide income equal to about two-fifths of the poverty line for an individual (which is a projected $12,700 in 2016) and less than the poverty line for a family of four ($24,800). But it would cost as much as the entire federal budget outside Social Security, Medicare, defense, and interest payments.
Some UBI proponents respond that policymakers could make the UBI payments taxable. But the savings from doing so would be relatively modest, because the vast bulk of Americans either owe no federal income tax or are in the 10% or 15% tax brackets. For example, if you gave all 328 million Americans a $10,000 UBI and the cost was $3.28 trillion a year (about $33 trillion over ten years) before taxes, then making the UBI payments taxable would reduce that cost only to something like $2.5 trillion or $2.75 trillion (or $25 trillion to $27.5 trillion over ten years).
Paying For It
Where would the money to finance such a large expenditure come from? That it would come mainly or entirely from new taxes isn’t plausible. We’ll already need substantial new revenues in the coming decades to help keep Social Security and Medicare solvent and avoid large benefit cuts in them. We’ll need further tax increases to help repair a crumbling infrastructure that will otherwise impede economic growth. And if we want to create more opportunity and reduce racial and other barriers and inequities, we’ll also need to raise new revenues to invest more in areas like pre-school education, child care, college affordability, and revitalizing segregated inner-city communities.
A UBI that’s financed primarily by tax increases would require the American people to accept a level of taxation that vastly exceeds anything in U.S. history. It’s hard to imagine that such a UBI would advance very far, especially given the tax increases we’ll already need for Social Security, Medicare, infrastructure, and other needs.
The Risk
UBI’s daunting financing challenges raise fundamental questions about its political feasibility, both now and in coming decades. Proponents often speak of an emerging left-right coalition to support it. But consider what UBI’s supporters on the right advocate. They generally propose UBI as a replacement for the current “welfare state.” That is, they would finance UBI by eliminating all or most programs for people with low or modest incomes.
Consider what that would mean. If you take the dollars targeted on people in the bottom fifth or two-fifths of the population and convert them to universal payments to people all the way up the income scale, you’re redistributing income upward. That would increase poverty and inequality rather than reduce them.
Yet that’s the platform on which the (limited) support for UBI on the right largely rests. It entails abolishing programs from SNAP (food stamps) — which largely eliminated the severe child malnutrition found in parts of the Southern “black belt” and Appalachia in the late 1960s — to the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), Section 8 rental vouchers, Medicaid, Head Start, child care assistance, and many others. These programs lift tens of millions of people, including millions of children, out of poverty each year and make tens of millions more less poor.
Some UBI proponents may argue that by ending current programs, we’d reap large administrative savings that we could convert into UBI payments. But that’s mistaken. For the major means-tested programs — SNAP, Medicaid, the EITC, housing vouchers, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and school meals — administrative costs consume only 1 to 9 percent of program resources, as a CBPP analysis explains.[1] Their funding goes overwhelmingly to boost the incomes and purchasing power of low-income families.
Moreover, as the Roosevelt Institute’s Mike Konczal has noted, eliminating Medicaid, SNAP, the EITC, housing vouchers, and the like would still leave you far short of what’s needed to finance a meaningful UBI.[2] Would we also end Pell Grants that help low-income students afford college? Would we terminate support for children in foster care, for mental health services, and for job training?
Ed Dolan, who favors UBI, has calculated that we could finance it by using the proceeds from eliminating all means-tested programs outside health care — including Pell Grants, job training, Head Start, free school lunches, and the like, as well as refundable tax credits, SNAP, SSI, low-income housing programs, etc. The result, Dolan found, would be an annual UBI of $1,582 per person, well below the level of support most low-income families (especially working-poor families with children) now receive. The increase in poverty and hardship would be very large.[3]
That’s why the risk is high that under any UBI that could conceivably gain traction politically, tens of millions of poor people would likely end up worse off.
To further understand the risks, consider how working-age adults who aren’t working would fare. In our political culture, there are formidable political obstacles to providing cash to working-age people who aren’t employed, and it’s unlikely that UBI could surmount them. The nation’s social insurance programs — Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance — all go only to people with significant work records. It’s highly unlikely that policymakers would agree to make UBI cash payments of several thousand dollars to people who aren’t elderly or disabled and aren’t working. (By contrast, there is political support for providing poor families that have no earnings with non-cash assistance such as SNAP, Medicaid, rental vouchers, Head Start, and the WIC nutrition program.)
Universal vs. Means-Tested Programs
Some UBI supporters stress that it would be universal. One often hears that means-tested programs eventually get crushed politically while universal programs do well. But the evidence doesn’t support that belief. While cash aid for poor people who aren’t working has fared poorly politically, means-tested programs as a whole have done well. Recent decades have witnessed large expansions of SNAP, Medicaid, the EITC, and other programs.
If anything, means-tested programs have fared somewhat better than universal programs in the last several decades. Since 1980, policymakers in Washington and in a number of states have cut unemployment insurance, contributing to a substantial decline in the share of jobless Americans — now below 30 percent — who receive unemployment benefits. In addition, the 1983 Social Security deal raised the program’s retirement age from 65 to 67, ultimately generating a 14 percent benefit cut for all beneficiaries, regardless of the age at which someone begins drawing benefits. Meanwhile, means-tested benefits overall have substantially expanded despite periodic attacks from the right. The most recent expansion occurred in December of 2015 when policymakers made permanent significant expansions of the EITC and the low-income part of the Child Tax Credit that were due to expire after 2017.
In recent decades, conservatives generally have been more willing to accept expansions of means-tested programs than universal ones, largely due to the substantially lower costs they carry (which means they put less pressure on total government spending and taxes).
The record of recent decades thus points to an alternative course — pushing for steady incremental gains through available mechanisms, including means-tested programs, to provide as much of a floor as possible for Americans of lesser means. In 1967, the safety net lifted out of poverty only 5 percent of Americans who would otherwise be poor. Fifty years later, in 2017, it lifted 44 percent of such people out of poverty, with programs like SNAP and the EITC playing crucial roles alongside Social Security. A multi-pronged strategy — making the Child Tax Credit fully refundable so that children benefit from it fully regardless of how low their families’ income and earnings are, substantially raising the minimum wage and strengthening the Earned Income Tax Credit, extending affordable child care and rental assistance to millions more families, enlarging SNAP benefits (as a Hamilton Project paper proposes), and strengthening Social Security benefits for low-income workers — would substantially strengthen the income floors. It would do so in ways that are far likelier than UBI to succeed politically and much less fraught with danger to the very people we most want to help.
Will the politics change radically?
While some UBI proponents argue that continued pressure on the middle class will make UBI politically feasible, I’m skeptical. Economic pressure on the middle class will not alter UBI’s daunting financing challenges. In fact, more such pressure will likelier increase middle-class resistance to the massive tax increases required to secure UBI without increasing poverty. And we shouldn’t think that we can just get the resources solely or primarily by hitting people at the top. Will we really tax the top 1 percent or top several percent enough to finance most or all of UBI — on top of the higher taxes we’ll want the same group to pay to shoulder a substantial share of the burden of restoring Social Security solvency, repairing the infrastructure, and meeting other critical needs? Increased pressure on the middle class is more likely to put UBI farther out of reach, unless it’s financed heavily — as UBI supporters on the right favor — by shifting income and resources away from the poor.
To be sure, there is a possible exception: a carbon tax that returns its proceeds to the public via a universal payment. For a carbon tax to have any chance of enactment in the not-too-distant future, however, it almost certainly will have to allocate a substantial part of its proceeds to uses that are necessary to get the votes to enact it in the first place, such as relief for coal-producing states or regions. There’s also a powerful case for using some of the proceeds to greatly expand and accelerate research into alternative energy technologies; a carbon tax likely won’t be sufficient by itself to arrest global warming.
Thus, the proceeds available from a carbon tax to finance universal payments would likely be significantly constrained. If a carbon tax could pass, we might need to focus the proceeds available for these payments on low- and moderate-income families — so the payments would be adequate to offset the higher energy costs these families would face as a result of the tax — rather than extending the payments all the way up the income scale in universal fashion.
Conclusion
I greatly admire the commitment of UBI supporters who see it as a way to end poverty in America. But for UBI to do that, it would have to: (1) be large enough to raise people to the poverty line without ending Medicaid, child care assistance, assistance in meeting high rental costs, and the like (otherwise, out-of-pocket health, child care, and housing costs would push many people back into poverty); and (2) include among its recipients people who aren’t currently working (and lack much of an earnings record), something no U.S. universal program does. It also would have to be financed mainly by raising taxes layered on top of the large tax increases we’ll already need — and will probably have to fight tough political battles to achieve — to avert large benefit cuts in Social Security and Medicare and meet other needs.
The chances that all this will come to pass — whether now or 10 to 20 years from now, a time when the baby-boomers will nearly all be retired and Social Security and Medicare costs will be much higher, placing greater pressure on the rest of the budget and on taxes — are extremely low. Were we starting from scratch — and were our political culture more like Western Europe’s — UBI might be a real possibility. But that’s not the world we live in.
End Notes
[1] Robert Greenstein and CBPP staff, “Romney’s Charge That Most Federal Low-Income Spending Goes for ‘Overhead’ and ‘Bureaucrats’ Is False,” updated January 23, 2012, https://www.cbpp.org/research/romneys-charge-that-most-federal-low-income-spending-goes-for-overhead-and-bureaucrats-is?fa=view&id=3655.
[2] Mike Konczal, “The Pragmatic Libertarian Case for a Basic Income Doesn’t Add Up,” Roosevelt Institute, August 8, 2014, http://rooseveltinstitute.org/pragmatic-libertarian-case-basic-income-doesnt-add/.
[3] Dolan notes that the UBI could be raised to $3,591 per person if policymakers also entirely eliminated an array of what he calls “middle class tax expenditures” — include the mortgage interest deduction, all tax benefits for 401(k)s, IRAs, and other retirement saving, the deduction for charitable contributions, other individual tax expenditures, and the personal exemption — without lowering tax rates. The chances of policymakers doing that are essentially zero. http://www.economonitor.com/dolanecon/2014/01/13/could-we-afford-a-universal-basic-income/ | US Federal Policies |
As student loan repayment requirements, some borrowers are experiencing customer service issues with their loan servicers. The resulting chaos has prompted 19 state attorneys general to argue that consumers facing servicer difficulties shouldn't have to repay their debt until the problems are resolved.
In a Friday letter to the Department of Education, 19 state attorneys general wrote that they were alarmed by "serious and widespread loan servicing problems" with the resumption of repayments this month. One advocacy group, the Student Borrower Protection Center, said some borrowers are experiencing a "nightmare" situation of long wait times and dropped calls, making it difficult to get answers to questions about their loans.
The issues are arising as student loan repayments are restarting in October after a hiatus of more than three years. During the pandemic, some loan servicers opted to get out of the business, which means some borrowers are dealing with new servicers. Borrowers are reporting problems like wait times as long as 400 minutes and customer service reps who are unable to provide accurate information, the AGs wrote in their letter.
- '
"The borrowers who reach out to us are having trouble getting through to customer service representatives to find out about their repayment options," Persis Yu, the deputy executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center, told CBS MoneyWatch. "Many are waiting several hours on hold and many never reach a real human at all. Those who do get through are getting confusing, and often incorrect information."
New loan servicers "have little to no experience with such volumes and do not appear to be sufficiently staffed to respond to them," the AGs wrote in their letter.
The Department of Education didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Interest-free forbearance?
Because of the problems that borrowers are encountering, people who are impacted by servicer issues should have their debt placed in "non-interest-bearing administrative forbearances," meaning that their loans wouldn't accrue interest, until the problems are resolved, the attorneys general wrote.
The attorneys general who signed the letter are from Arizona, California,Connecticut, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin, as well as Washington, D.C.
"Even our offices and state student loan ombudspersons are having trouble obtaining timely responses from some servicers through government complaint escalation channels," the AGs wrote. "And when borrowers do reach servicers, many report dissatisfying interactions, including representatives being unable to explain how payments were calculated, unable to resolve problems, or providing inconsistent information."
The pause on student loan payments began in March 2020 as part of a series of pandemic-related economic relief measures. The pause was extended several times after that, but Congress earlier this year.
for more features. | US Federal Policies |
The GOP’s presidential front-runner had himself a bit of an unhinged social media binge over the last couple of days, using Truth Social to air his scattered grievances, attack the wife of the judge overseeing his New York bank fraud trial, and take a wild left turn by claiming sudden allyship with the broader Black Lives Matter movement.
Kicking off the rapid-fire onslaught of posts late Tuesday, Trump called MSNBC’s coverage of the Republican Party “illegal activity,” adding that the “so-called ‘government’ should come down hard” on the news outlet and “make them pay.”
Then the former president revived an old gripe that “Obamacare sucks”—thus reopening the possibility that his campaign will renew the call to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act that has dogged the GOP since that law’s inception. Less than 20 minutes later, he redirected his attention to the sexual assault allegations made against him by columnist E. Jean Carroll, spewing comments eerily similar to the ones that have already lost him two defamation cases brought by the writer, in which he claimed that the allegations were a “made up fairytale” that was “funded by political operatives” to interfere with the 2020 presidential election results.
Over the ensuing hours, Trump also warned that the indictments against him had opened up “pandora’s box,” which he followed by snubbing his Koch-backed GOP opponent Nikki Haley as “a very weak and ineffective Birdbrain.”
In yet another post, Trump said he had done “more for Black people than any other President,” including Lincoln. He also confused the support of Mark Fisher, the founder of Black Lives Matter Incorporated, for that of the larger, national movement, despite statements front and center on BLM INC.’s web page that they’re not affiliated with “any other Black Lives Matter Movement.”
But the pièce de résistance of Trump’s 48-hour digital diatribe was a string of attacks on the wife of the judge overseeing his business fraud trial, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, whose gag order on Trump had been repealed. In five separate posts, Trump uplifted a conspiracy theory that Dawn Engoron and her husband were inherently biased in his case and that Mrs. Engoron had attacked Trump and other “white male politicians” online.
“Judge Engoron’s Trump Hating wife, together with his very disturbed and angry law clerk, have taken over control of the New York State Witch Hunt Trial aimed at me, my family, and the Republican Party,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
In a statement to Newsweek, Engoron denied ownership of the account and any of its content.
“I do not have a Twitter account. This is not me. I have not posted any anti-Trump messages,” she told the outlet.
That may have been enough to convince a New York appeals court that Trump wasn’t capable of playing nice without his recently stayed gag order, which the four-judge panel dutifully reinstated on Thursday, in an attempt to halt the verbal onslaught against the judge, his court staff and, apparently, his family. | US Political Corruption |
Trump Hit With $10,000 Fine for Gag Order Violation After Judge Puts Ex-President on Witness Stand and Finds Him ‘Not Credible’
The former president claimed under oath that he had been referring to his former fixer Michael Cohen, who was on the witness stand throughout the day and the focal point of Trump's civil fraud trial on Wednesday
A Manhattan judge hit Donald Trump with a $10,000 fine on Wednesday after putting the former president on the witness stand to testify about a violation of a gag order — and finding him "not credible."
Earlier on Wednesday, Trump told reporters: "If we had a jury it would have been fair, at least — even if it was a somewhat negative jury — because no negative jury would vote against me," Trump said. "But this judge will. Because this judge is a very partisan judge, with a person who's very partisan sitting alongside of him, perhaps even much more partisan than he is."
The Associated Press quoted part of the statement, which found its way to Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron. The judge previously imposed a gag order forbidding Trump from attacking his law clerk Allison Greenfield, who sits directly next to the judge.
Trump's attorney Christopher Kise had claimed that his client had been referring to his former fixer Michael Cohen, who had been on the witness stand throughout the day and is the current focal point of Trump's civil fraud trial.
After the lunch recess on Wednesday, Engoron convened a makeshift hearing and put Trump under oath. Trump also claimed his remark had referred to Cohen, but Engoron did not believe him.
"As a trier of fact, I find that the witness is not credible," Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron said from the bench, issuing the monetary sanction against Trump.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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ATLANTA (AP) — After years of criticizing mail voting and so-called ballot harvesting as ripe for fraud, Republicans at the top of the party want to change course.
They are poised to launch aggressive get-out-the-vote campaigns for 2024 that employ just those strategies, attempting to match the emphasis on early voting Democrats have used for years to lock in many of their supporters well ahead of Election Day. The goal is to to persuade voters who support GOP candidates that early voting techniques are secure and to make sure they are able to return their ballots in time to be counted, thus putting less pressure on Election Day turnout efforts.
READ MORE: Some Democratic-led states seek to strengthen protections for voting rights
It marks a notable shift from the party’s rhetoric since 2020, when then-President Donald Trump was routinely sowing doubt about mail voting and encouraging his voters to wait and vote in-person on Election Day. As recently as last year, Republican activists peddling the stolen election narrative were telling GOP voters who received mail ballots to hold onto them and turn them in at their polling place on Election Day rather than use mail or drop boxes.
Now Trump is asking donors to chip in for his “ballot harvesting fund” – saying in a fundraising email, “Either we ballot harvest where we can, or you can say goodbye to America!”
Republicans say the shift is needed to ensure GOP victories up and down the 2024 ballot, arguing they cannot afford to give Democrats any advantage. At the same time, they acknowledge skepticism from many of their own voters conditioned by false claims of widespread voter fraud from Trump and others.
Across the country, Republican-controlled legislatures have acted against early voting — shortening windows for returning mail ballots, banning or limiting the use of drop boxes and criminalizing third-party ballot collection.
In announcing a “Bank Your Vote” initiative for 2024, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said the party “has never said ‘don’t vote early,’” but acknowledged the GOP will have to work to shift voters’ perceptions.
“That certainly is a challenge if you have people in your ecosystem saying, ‘Don’t vote early or don’t vote by mail,’ and those cross messages do have an impact,” McDaniel told reporters Wednesday. “I don’t think you’re seeing that heading into 2024. I think you’re seeing all of us singing from the same songbook.”
The nationwide GOP plan emphasizes “in-person early voting, absentee voting, and ballot harvesting where legal,” while also pledging “to fight against bad ballot harvesting laws.” Republicans use the term to describe when someone else returns a mailed ballot on behalf of another voter, especially third parties that gather multiple ballots.
READ MORE: AI-generated disinformation poses threat of misleading voters in 2024 election
McDaniel emphasized she remains opposed to ballot collection, and she said the party would deploy an army of poll watchers and election monitors to reassure Republican voters that their ballots will be protected.
“Do I think it’s the most secure way of voting? No,” McDaniel said. “But if it’s the law, we’re going to have to do it just like the Democrats are.”
The challenge will be providing a consistent message that reassures GOP voters.
The same day McDaniel announced her initiative, Republicans in Congress were holding a hearing considering legislation that, among other things, would ban ballot collection in the District of Columbia. GOP state lawmakers around the country have chipped away at advanced voting opportunities since 2020. Some state and local election Republicans have gone further, advocating for just a single day of voting.
After the 2020 presidential election, the movie “2000 Mules” was a popular video that made various debunked claims about mail ballots, drop boxes and ballot collection. Even the co-chair of the new GOP strategy, U. S. Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., has been a critic. In November, he issued a call on social media to “End ballot harvesting.”
Nonetheless, McDaniel noted that Republican presidential candidates, including Trump, have been talking about the importance of advance voting and ballot collection.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a high-profile GOP contender, recently told a voter he planned to launch his own “ballot harvesting” effort, according to video posted online by a Washington Post reporter. DeSantis said he wasn’t going to “fight with one hand tied behind my back.”
The Trump and DeSantis campaigns did not respond to messages seeking details about ballot collection plans. Florida is among the mostly Republican-led states that have sought to ban or limit the practice in recent years, despite the GOP’s reliance there on older, more conservative voters who prefer voting methods other than casting Election Day ballots.
Since the 2020 election, lawmakers in 31 states have introduced 124 bills that would restrict third-party ballot returns, according to data collected by the Voting Rights Lab, which tracks voting-related legislation in the states. Of those, 14 bills in 11 states have been enacted. That includes one DeSantis himself signed that makes it a felony for an individual to collect more than two mail ballots other than the person’s own or one belonging to an immediate family member.
While some states are silent on the issue, 31 states allow someone other than the voter to return a ballot on behalf of another voter. Nine limit how many ballots one person can return, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Many states limit ballot handling to a family member, household member or caregiver.
In California, efforts to lock in the early vote could be decisive next year in a string of U.S. House districts, most of them in the southern California suburbs, that are expected to play a pivotal role in determining control of the chamber. California is a Democratic stronghold, but Republicans retain pockets of strength across rural and small-town areas and the Central Valley farm belt, while the state’s suburban congressional districts have yielded many tights races in recent election cycles.
As many as nine congressional seats are considered competitive, and several races will play out in districts won by President Joe Biden but where the seat is held by a Republican. Each of California’s 22 million registered voters is mailed a ballot one month before Election Day.
“In any close election, the ability to capture absentee votes becomes extremely important, especially in a state like ours, where every single voter has a ballot in their home,” conservative activist Jon Fleishman said.
Democrats were critical of the new GOP effort after years of messaging by Republicans against mail voting.
“Donald Trump and extremist Republicans have spent years telling lies about elections to justify their losses. That includes demonizing mail ballots and ballot collection,” said Jena Griswold, Colorado’s secretary of state and head of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State. “These hypocritical extremists are only interested in spreading chaos and trying to gain power at any cost.”
Top Republicans remain determined to make the case within their own ranks, said Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C.
“We’ve got to have a change of culture among Republican voters,” said Hudson, who chairs the House GOP’s national campaign committee. “And it’s going to require us all on the same page.”
Associated Press writers Michael R. Blood in Los Angeles and Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report.
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An international group of law enforcement agencies have disrupted the notorious RagnarLocker ransomware operation.
TechCrunch reported Thursday that an international law enforcement operation involving agencies from the U.S., European Union, and Japan had seized the RagnarLocker group’s dark web portal. The portal, which the gang used to extort its victims by publishing their stolen data, now reads: “This service has been seized by a part of a coordinated international law enforcement action against the RagnarLocker group.”
Announcing the takedown on Friday, Europol confirmed it took coordinated action against RagnarLocker, which it says was responsible for “numerous high-profile attacks.” The European police agency also confirmed the arrest of a 35 year-old man in Paris on October 16, who the authorities accuse of being the “main perpetrator” of the operation. Authorities searched the alleged RagnarLocker developer’s home in the Czech Republic. Alleged associates of the developer were also interviewed in Spain and Latvia.
RagnarLocker’s infrastructure was also seized in the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden. According to Eurojust, the EU agency that coordinates criminal justice cooperation across the bloc, a total of nine servers were seized: five in the Netherlands; two in Germany, and two in Sweden. Eurojust also reports that it seized various cryptocurrencies, though their value is currently unknown.
Ukrainian authorities, who were part of the 11-country operation, said in a separate announcement on Friday that its officers searched the premises of another RagnarLocker suspect near Kiev, and recovered laptops, mobile phones and other electronic media.
RagnarLocker is both the name of a ransomware strain and the criminal group that develops and operates it. The gang, which some security experts have linked to Russia, has been observed targeting victims since 2020, and has predominantly attacked organizations in the critical infrastructure sectors.
In an alert published last year, the FBI warned that it had identified at least 52 U.S. entities across 10 critical infrastructure sectors, including manufacturing, energy and government, that had been affected by RagnarLocker ransomware. At the same time, the FBI released indicators of compromise associated with RagnarLocker, including Bitcoin addresses used to collect ransom demands, and email addresses used by the gang’s operators.
In its announcement on Friday, Ukraine’s police said that since 2020 the RagnarLocker group had attacked and exfiltrated data from 168 international companies in Europe and the United States. The group demanded between $5 and $70 million dollars in cryptocurrency from its victims.
If a victim refused to pay or notified law enforcement of the intrusion, the hackers would publish the victim’s data on the group’s since-seized dark web site.
“Ragnar Locker explicitly warned their victims against contacting law enforcement, threatening to publish all the stolen data of victimised organisations seeking help on its dark web ‘Wall of Shame’ leak site,” Europol said on Friday. “Little did they know that law enforcement was closing in on them.”
Although the gang has been under the watchful eye of law enforcement for some time, RagnarLocker has been targeting victims as recently as this month, according to ransomware tracker Ransomwatch. In September, the gang claimed responsibility for an attack on Israel’s Mayanei Hayeshua hospital and threatened to leak more than a terabyte of data allegedly stolen during the incident.
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai contributed reporting. This article was first published on October 19, and updated with new details and comment from Europol. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
With the election of new House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), Republicans have fully become Donald Trump’s party. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who led the campaign to overthrow former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calf.), hailed the new speaker as “MAGA Mike.” Donald Trump, the founding father of the MAGA movement, congratulated Johnson and wrote, “He will be a GREAT SPEAKER. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
There was some resistance to the idea of turning over the House Republican Party to Donald Trump, particularly from Republicans in competitive districts. That may be why House Republicans had so much trouble rallying behind a party leader. Their earlier choice for speaker, Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), the majority whip, called Trump to try to get his support.
Emmer was the most mainstream Republican contender, having voted in favor of same sex marriage and aid to Ukraine. Even worse from Trump’s point of view, Emmer had voted against rejecting the 2020 election results in eight battleground states. Trump called Emmer a “globalist RINO [Republican in name only],” leading Emmer to drop out of the race. Trump’s response to Emmer’s withdrawal? “He’s done. It’s over. I killed him.”
Johnson, the eventual winner, was first elected to Congress in 2016, the same year Trump was elected president. He is the least experienced member to be elected Speaker in 140 years, with just four terms in the House, no senior leadership roles, and no committee chairmanships. “Apparently, experience isn’t necessary for the speaker job,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said.
What Johnson had was Trump’s support, and that’s what mattered.
What we have now is a new Republican Party. It’s no longer an establishment conservative party, the party of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and the Bushes, the party of the country club and the board room. That’s the old Republican Party, which Trump and Johnson were never part of.
Trump redefined the Republican Party as a populist conservative party, the party of cultural conservatives, isolationists, evangelical Christians and angry white men. Johnson is a deeply religious evangelical Christian who has opposed abortion rights, a new gun law, gay rights, same-sex marriage and the Violence Against Women Act.
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Trump’s Republican Party has been losing support in wealthy suburbs and gaining support from working class white men. Two of the most important indicators of partisanship today are the “diploma divide” (whether a person has a college degree) and religiosity (not religious affiliation but how religious a person is).
In last year’s midterm election, according to the network exit poll, two thirds of voters who said they went to church every week voted Republican for Congress. Two thirds of voters who said they never attend religious services voted Democratic. Occasional churchgoers were split. The Republican Party has become the party of evangelical Protestants, observant Catholics, and orthodox Jews.
White voters with a college degree voted 47% Republican. White non-college voters voted 66% Republican. Donald Trump is not a regular churchgoer, and he has a college degree; nevertheless, Trump gets his strongest support from regular churchgoers and from non-college voters. Their votes are driven by what they call their “conservative values.”
There are two lessons to be learned from the speakership battle, which many Republicans themselves described as “embarrassing” because Congress could not function for 21 days, while there were two foreign wars going on (in Ukraine and Israel) and a looming U.S. government shutdown.
One lesson is that not all Republicans want to position themselves as populist conservatives. Many are not comfortable with an anti-establishment posture, and they do not want to be linked in any way to the protest mob that stormed Congress on January 6, 2021.
The other lesson is that Donald Trump’s power over the GOP can be a problem. Trump runs the GOP like a mob boss: He judges everyone by their loyalty to him. Cross him, and you can get whacked, as Emmer discovered in the speakership contest.
While Trump is wildly popular with rank-and-file Republicans, outside the party, he is a highly controversial figure. Only 40% of Americans have a favorable opinion of Trump. The good news for Trump is that only 40% approve of the job Joe Biden is doing as president. Voters consider Biden a weak president, too old for the job, and incapable of controlling inflation or crime or the flood of illegal immigrants.
If next year’s presidential election is Trump versus Biden again, it will most likely be an unpopularity contest. May the least-disliked man win.
Bill Schneider is an emeritus professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University and author of “Standoff: How America Became Ungovernable.”
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The long-awaited federal indictment of Donald Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election may be necessary to contain the threat to American democracy that he has unleashed. But it’s unlikely to be sufficient.
The germ of election denialism that Trump injected into the American political system has spread so far throughout the Republican Party that it is virtually certain to survive whatever legal accountability the former president faces.
With polls showing that most Republican voters still believe the election was stolen from Trump, that the January 6 riot was legitimate protest, and that Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 results did not violate the law or threaten the constitutional system, the United States faces a stark and unprecedented situation. For the first time in the nation’s modern history, the dominant faction in one of our two major parties has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to accept antidemocratic means to advance its interests.
The most telling measure of that dynamic inside the GOP is that Trump remains the party’s central figure. Each time GOP voters and leaders have had the opportunity to move away from him—whether in the shock immediately after January 6, or the widespread disappointment over the poor performance of his handpicked candidates during the 2022 election—the party has sped past the off-ramp.
Polls now show Trump leading in the 2024 GOP presidential race by one of the biggest margins ever recorded for a primary candidate in either party. The Republican majority in the House of Representatives has been exploring ways to expunge his two impeachments and/or block the investigations he faces. Even the other candidates ostensibly running against him for the 2024 GOP nomination have almost uniformly condemned the indictments against him, rather than his underlying behavior. Prominent conservatives have argued that Trump cannot receive a fair trial in any Democratic-leaning jurisdiction.
All of these actions measure how much of the GOP is now willing to accept Trump’s repeated assaults on the basic structures of American democracy. While the key state-level Republicans rejected Trump’s direct demands to invalidate the results in their own states, most House Republicans voted to reject the election results and most Republican state attorneys general filed a lawsuit to decertify the outcome in the key swing states won by President Joe Biden. In the election’s aftermath, the majority of Republican-controlled states, inspired by Trump’s baseless claims of endemic voter fraud, passed laws on a party-line basis making it more difficult to vote, or increasing partisan control over election administration.
Sean Wilentz, a Princeton historian who specializes in American politics, told me that U.S. history has no exact precedent for a party embracing a leader so openly hostile to the core pillars of democracy. Presidents have often been accused of violating the Constitution through their policy actions, he said, but there is not another example of a president moving as systematically to “manipulate the apparatus of government or elections in order to subvert the will of the people.”
The closest parallel to Trump’s actions, Wilentz said, may be the strategies of the slaveholding South in the decades before the Civil War. Those included violent attacks on abolitionists, suppression of antislavery publications, and the promulgation of extreme legal theories such as the denial of basic rights to Black people in the Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision, all of which were designed to protect slavery against the emerging national majority dubious of it. That decades-long “antidemocratic thrust” from the South, Wilentz noted, “finally culminated in the greatest violation of the American Constitution in our history, which was secession.”
By contrast, Wilentz added, the GOP’s continued embrace of Trump amid the evidence of his misconduct contrasts sharply with the party’s refusal to defend Richard Nixon in the final stages of Watergate. “When Richard Nixon was about to be impeached, he didn’t storm the Capitol to get rid of Barry Goldwater,” Wilentz said, referring to the conservative Republican senator who warned Nixon that he would lose a Senate vote to remove him. “He resigned.”
All of this suggests that personal accountability for Trump is unlikely to erase the tolerance for antidemocratic actions that has spread in the GOP since his emergence. Yet many experts who study the health of democracy still believe that prosecuting him remains essential.
Kristy Parker, a counsel at Protect Democracy, a bipartisan group that focuses on threats to democratic institutions, says it is crucial to show the “silent majority” of Americans who support the constitutional system that no one is above the law. “They need to see that the Department of Justice prosecutors are willing to take the risk of indicting Trump,” Parker told me. “They need to see the election workers ensuring that people get their vote counted. They need to see the police officers standing up to the rioters. They need to see people within the system working.”
Michael Waldman, the president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, told me that he has been ambivalent about indicting former presidents, because of the risk of precipitating a retaliatory spiral between the parties. “It is a line that we as a country have never crossed,” Waldman said shortly after the Trump indictment was disclosed last night. “One could imagine how it could be abused and become one more shattered norm.”
Waldman said that failing to indict Trump would have been far more dangerous, because such a decision would have suggested that there is no effective way to hold presidents accountable for misbehavior. Neither of Trump’s two impeachments really damaged his position in the party, Waldman noted, in part because virtually all GOP elected officials defended his behavior. But the multiple criminal indictments facing Trump, he said, show that “the criminal-justice system still is producing tangible legal consequences” that future presidents cannot brush off as easily as an impeachment.
Waldman said the trials of hundreds of January 6 rioters already demonstrate that prosecution can have some deterrent effect. Unruly crowds of supporters, Waldman noted, did not descend on courthouses in Manhattan or Florida after Trump’s earlier indictments, despite his signals that he’d like to see that happen. “The fact that this stuff is not just a bad idea but illegal and you can go to jail for it really makes a big difference,” Waldman said.
John Dean, the White House counsel whose Senate testimony helped doom Nixon during Watergate, also considers prosecution of Trump to be “essential,” he told me. President Gerald Ford’s decision to pardon Nixon and preempt a trial, Dean said, was “a historical disaster,” because it emboldened presidents to believe they would never face criminal charges for their actions. Allowing Trump to avoid consequences, Dean believes, would send an even more dangerous signal than Ford did with Nixon. “Trump’s corruption is so much more fundamental to the system than Nixon’s,” Dean said. “Nixon, he abused power, he had his enemies list, he wanted to make government work for the benefit of Republicans and not Democrats. But he wasn’t going after the foundations of government and the system like Trump.”
Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election required the cooperation of many other GOP officials and conservative activists and lawyers. Now a growing number of them face consequences of their own, including disbarment proceedings, ongoing state and local investigations, and the potential of further federal charges from Special Counsel Jack Smith against the six unnamed co-conspirators listed in the Trump indictment.
“I’m not sure how much additional prosecutions will deter Trump—unfortunately, he’s all-in on winning as a way to stay out of prison at this point,” says the Dartmouth College political scientist Brendan Nyhan, a co-founder of Bright Line Watch, a collaborative of political scientists studying threats to U.S. democracy. “But Republican operatives and activists may hesitate as the evidence mounts that participating in an attempted coup puts you in legal jeopardy. That’s important, because Trump can’t carry out his plots by himself.”
Some analysts have worried that the trials could strengthen Trump if die-hard supporters of his on a jury refuse to convict him regardless of the evidence. But Parker told me that cannot be allowed to dissuade prosecutors from bringing cases when there’s evidence that Trump violated the law. The problem, she said, is analogous to the challenges she faced as a Department of Justice civil-rights attorney prosecuting excessive-force cases against police officers who were likely more popular in the community than the victims they abused: “You can’t just give in and allow, effectively, a bully to force his way out of accountability, because then you’ve crushed the ideal that no one is above the law.”
Yet although all these possible sanctions create legal reasons for the GOP to resist another Trump-led attack on democracy, the party’s political incentives point in the opposite direction.
A recent national poll released by the Bright Line Watch project found that the majority of Republican voters accepted all of Trump’s key arguments about 2020 and the multiplying legal challenges accumulating against him. In that survey, only small minorities of Republicans said that he had committed crimes in any of the cases he’s facing. Most Republicans said Trump was singled out for prosecution for behavior that would not have prompted charges against other people. Six in 10 Republicans described the January 6 riot as “legitimate protest.” And although the share of Republicans who said that Biden was elected through fraud had declined somewhat from its peak of about three-fourths, nearly two-thirds of them still denied the legitimacy of his victory.
These attitudes provide an ominous backdrop to Trump’s hints that if he wins the nomination but loses the general election, he’s likely to challenge the results again. Trump might not attempt another mass physical attack on the Capitol in 2025, but such sentiments could allow him to enlist Republicans again for a more targeted legal effort to overthrow the results in a few key states or in Congress, Nyhan told me. The widespread Republican rejection of the idea that Trump violated any laws in his actions after 2020 offers reason to doubt that the party would object any more strenuously if he launched another campaign to delegitimize the results in 2024.
Nyhan said he can imagine future circumstances in which Democrats at some point challenge the legitimacy of a presidential race, such as the election coming down to a Republican-controlled state that has restricted voting rights. But he said the more immediate danger is that Republicans won’t accept any presidential race they lose. Traditionally, presidential nominees from each party, including Al Gore and John McCain, have made statements in which “the losing side specifically affirms the legitimacy of the winner,” Nyhan said. But for the GOP next year, he added, “we can no longer take that for granted whether or not Trump is the nominee, and that’s really worrisome.”
Trump may constitute a unique threat to America’s democratic traditions. But he has always connected his claims of pervasive electoral fraud to the widespread anxiety among white, Christian conservatives that they are losing control of the country to a racially diverse, secular, and LGBTQ-friendly Democratic coalition centered in the nation’s largest cities. As Trump put it during one 2020 rally before a predominantly white, rural audience in Georgia: “This is our country. And you know this, and you see it, but they are trying to take it from us through rigging, fraud, deception, and deceit.” Whether Trump is convicted for trying to overturn the 2020 election or not, voters who accept that argument will remain the most powerful force in the GOP coalition. And they will continue to demand leaders who will fight the changes that they believe threaten their position in American society.
Those other Republican leaders may not attempt to overturn an election as brazenly as Trump did with the conduct Smith catalogs in his indictment. But, as Wilentz told me, for the foreseeable future, they are likely to pursue other means “toward the same end: that majoritarian democracy cannot be tolerated under any circumstances if the outcome is not what you wanted it to be.” | US Political Corruption |
The hackers demanded a ransom from MGM, according to two of the people. It wasn’t immediately clear how much ransom was requested or if the hackers deployed ransomware to lock up the company’s files.
Caesars didn’t respond to messages seeking comment, but the company is expected to disclose the cyberattack imminently in a regulatory filing.
MGM declined to respond to questions about the attack. In a statement on Tuesday, MGM said the investigation is ongoing. The company said it was continuing to implement measures to secure its business operations.
MGM was still working to resolve the turmoil caused by the hackers, known as Scattered Spider, four days into the cyberattack that has disrupted the company’s websites, reservation system and some slot machines at its casinos across the country, according to two of the people.
Caesars was also hacked by the same group in a cyberattack a few weeks earlier, and ended up paying tens of million of dollars to the hackers, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. The hackers first breached an outside IT vendor before gaining access to the company’s network, two of the people said.
Scattered Spider, which is also known as UNC3944, is composed of hackers who are based in the US and UK, some as young as 19 years old, according to a cybersecurity researcher familiar with the group. The group has targeted telecommunications and business process outsourcing companies to pull off SIM swaps of phone numbers that can then be used in phishing attacks to steal data from victim systems and extort a ransom.
Charles Carmakal, chief technical officer for Mandiant Inc., part of Google Cloud, described the hackers as “one of the most prevalent and aggressive threat actors impacting organizations in the United States today.” Mandiant first came across the group in May 2022.
He said many of the members of the group are young native English speakers who are “incredibly effective social engineers.” They have started deploying ransomware encryptors and sometimes expose victims on infrastructure used by another hacking group, ALPHV.
The FBI said in April 2022 the group had leased its ransomware to others that has resulted in compromises of at least 60 entities worldwide.
In the MGM hack, Scattered Spider may have worked with ALPHV, according to two people familiar with the group’s operations.
Hackers use several different techniques to extort victims for money.
For instance, ransomware is a type of malware that locks up a victim’s computer files. The hackers then promise to provide a decryption key if an extortion fee is paid.
More recently, hacking groups have shifted away from ransomware and instead focused on stealing sensitive data from victims. They then threaten to release the information online unless they are paid. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
Higher education braces for the worst in debt ceiling fight
Higher education is biting its nails watching the debt ceiling timer tick down in Washington.
Colleges and universities are working in the background on contingency plans if the U.S. defaults, a scenario that would lead to consequences experts say even they can’t fully comprehend.
While the schools won’t immediately shut down when the debt limit is reached, they will lose significant funding from the federal government, and students will not receive the aid they need, in some cases, to stay in class.
“Unfortunately, in the last several years, colleges and universities and financial aid offices have gotten used to a political game of chicken in Washington, D.C., and the potential for federal shutdowns, but this one is just a little bit different,” said Justin Draeger, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.
“We use the word unprecedented a lot in Washington, D.C., but this truly is one of those unprecedented times, and we would expect major disruptions to federal student aid if we hit the debt ceiling,” he added.
Republicans and President Biden have been in negotiations for weeks over the debt ceiling, with Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) calling their most recent sit-down “productive” but not yet enough to produce an agreement.
“Don’t give up on us,” McCarthy told reporters on Monday evening.
It’s estimated that without a deal, the U.S. will default by the beginning of June, sending the markets into a tailspin and potentially causing a global recession.
Colleges are hopeful any potential default would last only a short while, limiting the impact on the number of students it would affect because a majority of their aid is distributed in the fall or winter sessions.
However, there are still some students who receive aid in the summer or use it for other expenses — a spigot that would be cut off.
“For individual students who don’t receive their student aid disbursements, the difference between a couple of days and a couple of weeks can be huge because federal student aid just doesn’t cover tuition fees at an institution. It also covers things like rent and other costs of living, like insurance or transportation and food,” Draeger said.
A longer-term default has more dire consequences for higher education because the federal financial aid year starts July 1.
And on the list of priorities of items to be funded amid a longer-term default, experts aren’t confident higher education will make it.
“We know basically how we think the Treasury will respond to a default. They will prioritize making interest payments first and then trying to make payments to really high-priority issues like national security and Social Security and the large entitlement programs. And after you fund those things, there really won’t be a lot of additional revenue available to allocate,” said Jon Fansmith, senior vice president of government relations for the American Council on Education.
While colleges and universities are keeping a close eye on negotiations, it is hard for them to prep for something as catastrophic as a default, especially when success in higher education is closely linked with the economy.
During the 2008 Great Recession, “the federal government stepped up with expanded aid. They made the loans. They provided the Pell Grants,” Fansmith said. “If we are in a default situation, the federal government can’t. They won’t have the authority to spend more.”
There are certain steps universities can take, particularly bigger ones, such as shifting resources to help low-income students stay in school.
“If you were planning to expand your science lab or build new facilities, things that require sort of capital investment, you would likely delay or cancel those kinds of projects,” Fansmith said.
Draeger said his organization would push schools to put a pause on tuition payments to assist students.
“Given that the ramifications of a United States default are just so large, I think they find themselves in the same boat as everyone else, which is what do you do if the United States can’t pay its bills? The level of contingency plans that you can make around that just becomes very narrow,” Draeger said.
The situation in higher education is potentially more difficult than it is for K-12 public schools, which receive a lot more support from state governments.
“There’s very little sort of direct federal funding that goes right to institutions from the federal government, which means that institutions are much more susceptible to changes in the economy than K-12,” Fansmith said.
He added those schools don’t experience the pinch in funding as much during an economic recession at the state level. States will pull back on higher education funding during an economic downturn in a way they won’t apply to K-12 schools. The only way colleges can make up that loss in cash is to raise tuition for students already experiencing financial hardship.
However, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers said a long-term default could threaten the jobs of teachers at a time when some states are having trouble finding educators for their schools.
“What if it goes on for a long time, and all of a sudden there’s no Title I funding? That could be 100,000 teachers that get laid off,” she said.
But a more immediate concern is some of the concessions Republicans are looking for from the president to raise the debt ceiling.
“If you just look at the Republican demands, you see the cutting of access to Head Start for 200,000 children and access to child care for 100,000 children. You see the reduction of Pell Grants that could affect about 6.6 million kids,” Weingarten said.
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | US Federal Policies |
Ohio special election could play decisive role in abortion fight
Ohio voters will go to the polls on Tuesday to vote on a ballot measure that could raise the threshold for changing the state constitution — and in the process have a direct impact on abortion rights in the battleground state.
The measure, known as Issue 1, would raise the threshold for amending the state constitution from a simple majority to 60 percent of voters. The amendment concerns a procedural process, but the issue has become politically charged in the shadow of a ballot measure set for November that would enshrine abortion protections in the state constitution.
Because of this, the Aug. 8 election is seen as the latest front in the war over abortion rights as both parties grapple with how to handle the issue heading into next year’s presidential election.
“We are deeply opposed to Issue 1 because it is special interests and corrupt politicians trying to gain more power for themselves and take away Ohioans’ right to one-person, one-vote, to democracy and of course to their ability to vote in November to protect reproductive freedom,” said Lauren Blauvelt, the vice president of government affairs and public advocacy at Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio.
Abortion rights proponents have argued that the Aug. 8 measure was designed specifically to make enshrining abortion rights more difficult. On the other hand, advocates for the measure argue that the measure is intended to limit the influence of special interests and lobbyists in amending the constitution. But some have also pointed to it as an opportunity to try to stop what they view as a “radical” abortion amendment.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) has been among the most vocal proponents of the measure, having put forward the proposal along with a GOP state representative last November. He said at the time that the measure was designed to protect the state constitution from “continued abuse” from special interests and influence from people out of state.
“The Ohio Constitution is supposed to serve as a framework of our state government, not as a tool for special interests,” he said.
But LaRose, who’s running to replace Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) in next year’s closely watched Senate race, stirred controversy with comments he made to supporters in May in which he said the amendment is “100 percent about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution.”
The Aug. 8 measure would also amend the constitution to require that petitions to have voters weigh in on a possible amendment receive signatures from all 88 of the state’s counties instead of just half. It would also eliminate a 10-day period that those backing a petition currently have to gather additional signatures if some of their signatures are ruled invalid.
The fight over abortion rights in Ohio, like in other states around the country, was kicked into overdrive after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year. A bill banning abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy, which was signed into law by Gov. Mike DeWine (R) in 2019, subsequently went into effect after the ruling, only for it to be temporarily blocked in September.
Blauvelt said she is part of Ohioans for Reproductive Freedom, a coalition of patient advocates, civil rights leaders, activists, medical providers and other state residents that has operated since Roe was overturned. Planned Parenthood was one of the parties that pursued the lawsuit to block the abortion ban.
Blauvelt, of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio, said the case will likely be decided in the state’s Supreme Court, and the coalition does not expect to win there based on the current conservative-leaning makeup. She said the group worked to conduct research and gather 700,000 signatures from state residents to put the abortion measure on the November ballot.
Notably, the number of signatures they secured was about 300,000 more than needed.
The November measure would establish a “fundamental right to reproductive freedom” with “reasonable limits” in the state and ensure that “every individual” has the right to make their own reproductive decisions, including on contraception, pregnancy and abortion.
Abortion rights activists argue that LaRose’s comments and the timing of the measure that it’s designed to sink the abortion measure in November. Those on the other side push back against that notion, arguing that the state constitution should require more than just a simple majority that can be too easily subject to outside influence.
Mark Weaver, a Republican strategist whose political consultancy firm has produced some advertisements encouraging Ohioans to vote in favor of the measure on Tuesday, said raising the threshold would require members of both parties to come together to amend the constitution instead of the “very low bar” of a simple majority.
“Ohioans know that outside corporate interests have littered our state constitution with their profit-making schemes,” Weaver said.
He pointed to a 2009 constitutional amendment that legalized gambling in Ohio as an example. The amendment narrowly passed with 52 percent of the vote after parties who eventually became the owners and operators of four casinos introduced a petition for the measure.
Weaver said these casinos essentially wrote “guaranteed profits” into the state constitution.
But Jeff Rusnak, an Ohio-based strategist supporting the abortion rights effort, argued that it was in fact special interests that have spurred the effort to raise the threshold for changing the constitution.
Billionaire Richard Uihlein, a major Republican donor, has been among the biggest financial backers of the Aug. 8 measure, donating $4 million to the campaign committee supporting it. The vast majority of financial support for both the “yes” and “no” campaigns have come from out of state.
Rusnak said those supporting the measure on Tuesday are “fabricating” an issue that does not exist.
“The issued constitutional amendments are a rarity in the state. They don’t occur as often as they would like, and passing them, frankly, is even more difficult. This has been in place for over 100 years in Ohio, and it’s worked. There’s no reason to change. It’s somewhat convenient now for them to say this,” Rusnak said.
Weaver, the Republican strategist, argued that those advocating for the abortion proposal but opposing the Aug. 8 measure acknowledge that a clear consensus doesn’t exist in Ohio on the “hard-left pro-abortion proposal.”
“If they thought there were 60 percent of Ohioans who would support that radical idea, they wouldn’t be opposing Issue 1,” he said.
Special elections often see lower turnout than general or primary elections, but both sides seem to agree that turnout will likely be higher than normal given the attention that the measure has received.
Weaver said “corporate media” like the editorial board for the Ohio news outlet The Plain Dealer have denounced Issue 1 and thus given the issue a higher profile and made additional participation likely.
Blauvelt and Rusnak, the abortion rights advocates who oppose the Aug. 8 measure, said they have seen a surge in early voting. Rusnak said early ballots have come from urban and suburban areas in particular.
“If you look at the early vote numbers and the interest around this issue, we’re seeing much larger than normal certainly for a special election but higher numbers than you would see in an off-year election,” Rusnak said. “There’s tremendous attention around this issue.”
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | US Local Elections |
Caesars Entertainment reportedly paid "tens of millions of dollars" to hackers who threatened to release company data, Bloomberg has reported. The attack was reportedly perpetrated by a group called Scattered Spider (aka UNC 3944), a group skilled at using social engineering to bypass corporate network security. It's the second notable attack of a Las Vegas casino group, following a hack that caused a cyber outage at MGM Resorts.
Members of the hacking group are reportedly located in the US and UK and are as young as 19 years old. They began targeting Caesars as early as August 27th, and obtained access to an outside vendor before entering the company's network, according to the report. Caesars is expected to disclose the attack "imminently" in a regulatory filing.
Scattered Spider has reportedly been activate since May of 2022, and has largely attacked telecom and business outsourcing organizations, according to Trellix. The group is known to impersonate IT personnel and uses social engineering to persuade company officials to rum remote monitoring and other tools. From there, they exploit vulnerabilities and use tools like "Stonestop" to evade security software. Security Week describes them as a "financially-motivated threat actor."
The group has been implicated in the MGM Resorts cyber outage as well, though another ransomware group called ALPHV/BlackCat also took credit. ALPHV also claims to have used social engineering to get inside, saying it took just a ten minute conversation to gain access. MGM has reportedly declined to pay the demanded ransom. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
- Liz Cheney didn't feel the need to join the Freedom Caucus when she first joined Congress.
- In her new book, Cheney wrote that Jim Jordan asked her to join the group by pointing to its lack of women.
- "Tempting as this offer was, I took a pass," she wrote.
Even at the beginning of her first term in the House, Liz Cheney was skeptical of the Freedom Caucus.
Cheney, whose conservative pedigree was well-known as the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, didn't feel compelled to join the far-right group after her 2016 election. And Cheney relayed this sentiment to her then-constituents in deep-red Wyoming, which she detailed in her new book, "Oath and Honor."
But according to Cheney, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, who at the time chaired the Freedom Caucus, sought to convince her to join the group by pitching that they needed a female member within its ranks.
"It went something like this: 'Would you consider joining the Freedom Caucus? We don't have any women, and we need one,'" Cheney wrote of Jordan's pitch. "Tempting as this offer was, I took a pass."
Cheney's predecessor, now-Sen. Cynthia Lummis, was a member of the Freedom Caucus during her time in the lower chamber. But Cheney in her new book said she wasn't in agreement with some of the group's rules and touted her own record of conservatism against some of those very same members.
"I wasn't comfortable with a number of things about the group, including their rule requiring every member of the caucus to support any position that was held by 80 percent of the membership," she wrote. "It didn't seem right to me for a member of Congress to agree to have their vote bound by anything other than their obligations to their constituents and to the Constitution."
"My voting record was more conservative than those of many members of the Freedom Caucus, a supposedly 'conservative' group," she added.
The Freedom Caucus rose to fame as an insurgent group that was designed to force GOP leaders to capitulate to more conservative policy. Technically speaking, the group's membership is not officially public, but many lawmakers have made their membership public. At times, their tactics have backfired as Republican speakers were forced to rely on House Democrats to obtain the votes needed to pass critical pieces of legislation. Former Speaker John Boehner of Ohio has called Jordan a "legislative terrorist."
Cheney, a former vice chair of the House January 6 committee who during her last term in Congress became one of former President Donald Trump's sharpest GOP critics in the aftermath of the 2020 election, lost her Republican primary to now-Rep. Harriet Hageman last year.
Jordan's office did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment. | US Congress |
I blame the father. Frederick Trump raised his children, one in particular, to believe that the world was divided into winners and losers and that there was no greater crime than to fall into the latter category. In 2020, Donald Trump was ready to bring down the American republic rather than admit before the shade of his dead father that he had lost a presidential election. Scholars speak of “losers’ consent” as an essential prerequisite of a democratic system: without it, there can be no peaceful transfer of power. For two and a half centuries, that model held in the US. But in 2020 it ran into a man who would rather destroy his country than wear the scarlet letter L on his forehead.
The result is the indictment against Trump that arrived this week, the third – with one more expected – and easily the most serious. Across 45 pages, Trump is charged with plotting to overturn a democratic election – to thwart the will of the voters who had rejected him at the ballot box and thereby remain in power.
The weary assumption is that, like the two previous indictments, this will not much damage Trump’s prospects in the 2024 election and might even boost them: a major national poll this week found him crushing all his Republican rivals for the party’s presidential nomination and dead even in the presumed match-up against Joe Biden. Even so, this case, whose court date will be set on 28 August, could scarcely be more significant. It will be the first great trial of the post-truth age.
None of this should come as a surprise. Trump never hid who he was or what he intended. In 2016, he refused to say whether he would accept the outcome of the election he fought against Hillary Clinton: “I’ll keep you in suspense,” he said, and he was similarly coy four years later.
Nor did he conceal his belief that his seat in the Oval Office put him above the law. Referring to the second article of the US constitution, he told an audience of teenagers in 2019, “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”
As for the impunity granted to him by his supporters, who give him more cash every time another felony charge lands, that too was foretold – by Trump himself. Back in January 2016, he predicted that he could stand on Fifth Avenue and “shoot somebody” and he would not lose any voters. So far, murder has not appeared on any Trump charge sheet, but the prescience of the remark still stands.
More subtly, Trump revealed, and reveals, much of himself in the attacks he makes on others. He is currently insistent that he is the victim of Biden’s “weaponised” Department of Justice, suggesting that the independent federal prosecutors who drew up this week’s indictment were, in fact, mere partisan hacks doing the bidding of the president. And yet it is not Biden but Trump himself who has signalled that, if returned to the White House, he would end the independence of the criminal justice system, as part of a takeover of swathes of the administrative state, concentrating colossal power in his own hands. “What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them,” one senior Trump lieutenant told the New York Times. It is Trump, not Biden, who envisages using the justice department as a hit squad against his enemies: he has promised, if re-elected, to order a criminal investigation into the current president. Again, no surprise: remember the way Trump led the 2016 crowds in anti-Clinton chants of “lock her up”.
But just because we can’t claim to be surprised does not mean we shouldn’t be shocked. Several crucial principles are at stake in this case. One is that every vote must count: the victims of Trump’s conspiracy were the tens of millions of Americans who voted for Biden, whose ballots would have been cast aside had the ex-president prevailed.
Another is that nobody is above the law. While Trump claims to be the victim of political persecution, the truth is that it would have been an intensely political decision not to pursue him, especially when more than 1,000 of his devotees have been charged for storming the Capitol on 6 January 2021. If they can be prosecuted for seeking to overturn the 2020 election, why can’t he?
But perhaps the central principle at stake here is that there is such a thing as the truth. Trump has challenged that notion from the very start. Not just by lying – he’s not the first politician to do that – but by seeking to shake public faith in the very idea that truth is even possible.
The former president spread specific lies claiming decisive electoral fraud in key states – as the indictment memorably puts it, “These claims were false, and the defendant knew that they were false” – in order to construct the big lie of a stolen election. He built an alternative reality on that lie that persists to this day – a reality made up, incidentally, of the kind of “alternative facts” to which we were introduced within hours of his taking office. That episode related to the seemingly trivial matter of the size of his inauguration crowd. But it established Trump’s post-truth position: that there are no commonly accepted facts – not even those you can see with your own eyes – only claim and counter-claim.
That’s why one of Trump’s go-to lines has long been “Nobody really knows”. (“Nobody really knows” if climate change is real was a 2016 classic of the form.) In a blizzard of competing claims, the blinded citizen can either retreat, confused, or else be guided by the leader who kindly tells them what is true and what is not. That was the Putin manoeuvre – his power rests on it – and Trump has made it his own. Not for nothing is his personal social media platform called Truth.
Now, though, Trump’s brand of post-truth is set to face its most severe challenge. As the Economist notes this week, “a courtroom is a place where reality counts … In court, truth means something”. Up until now, Trump has succeeded in persuading half the country that they cannot trust awkward, discomforting facts, including those uncovered by federal investigators, because all such people – FBI agents, judges – are tools of the deep state. Every morsel of evidence can be dismissed as the handiwork of the “globalists and communists” who constitute America’s “corrupt ruling class”.
The tactic has been remarkably effective. The acid of Trumpian post-truth has corroded large parts of the US system already, breaking public trust in elections, the media and much else. Will the courtroom that hears the United States of America v Donald J Trump be able to shut it out and remain free of its sulphuric touch? On the answer, much more than the fate of one poisonous man – shaped by a poisonous father – depends.
Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist | US Political Corruption |
House Democrats lining up to support the CR, diminishing chances of a shutdown
House Democrats are lining up behind the GOP’s short-term proposal to fund the government, predicting there will be plenty of bipartisan support to pass the legislation through the lower chamber this week and send it to the Senate.
Emerging from a closed-door caucus meeting in the Capitol basement on Tuesday morning, a host of Democrats, representing a wide cross-section of ideologies, said they intend to vote for the measure when it hits the floor later in the day.
“There’s gonna be a lot of Democratic votes,” Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) said. “I’m inclined to be [among them]. I can’t really think of a compelling reason not to.”
The Democrats emphasized that they’re wary of the Republicans’ “laddered” approach, which splits the agencies into two different buckets and attaches different funding timelines to each one. But those concerns are minor, the lawmakers said, relative to their other priorities: Keeping spending at fiscal year 2023 levels and avoiding contentious policy provisions on conservative wish-list items like abortion and border security.
“I’m not sure it’ll be unanimous. But it looks to me like it addressed our major concerns,” Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) said.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) has not yet endorsed the proposal publicly, but leaving Tuesday’s meeting he acknowledged that there are no “poison pill” provisions, nor spending cuts, that would act to dissolve Democratic support.
And other lawmakers went much further, saying all indications are that Democratic leaders will ultimately support the legislation, joined by much of the caucus.
“They didn’t say that specifically,” Rep. Juan Vargas (D-Calif.) said. “But I don’t see anything that would [scare Democrats away]. The two big things are: There are no big cuts, and there’s no poison pill. What else do you want?”
Democratic votes will be crucial to the success of the short-term funding package, known as a continuing resolution (CR), because a number of conservative Republicans are vowing to oppose it to protest the absence of steep spending cuts.
With just a slim majority, GOP leaders can afford few defections. And complicating the equation for newly installed Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), some of those GOP opponents are also vowing to oppose the rule preceding the CR, which could keep the final bill off the floor altogether.
To avoid that scenario, GOP leaders plan to bring the bill directly to the floor on what is known as the suspension calendar, a procedural gambit that sidesteps the rule but also requires support from two-thirds of the chamber to secure passage.
The House Freedom Caucus, a bloc of roughly three dozen conservatives, announced Tuesday that it is opposing the package, although it’s unclear how many Republicans are planning to defect.
Democrats are expected to make up the difference. But they know they have leverage in the debate. And heading into Tuesday’s vote, some said they want clear assurances from Johnson that the House will vote quickly on additional legislation providing emergency assistance to Ukraine and Israel — provisions that were not included in the CR.
“We want to give our leadership plenty of time to negotiate everything that they can,” said Rep. Ann Kuster (D-N.H.), head of the New Democrat Coalition, who cited the Ukraine and Israel funding specifically.
“We’re not cheap dates,” echoed Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), senior Democrat on the powerful Rules Committee.
Jeffries said he has spoken with Johnson several times in recent days, and “I expect that we’ll have one or two more conversations in the next few hours.”
House passage would send the CR to the Senate, where it is also expected to pass before the shutdown deadline on Friday at midnight. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has already endorsed Johnson’s proposal, and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has also strongly suggested that Democrats are ready to back it.
Mychael Schnell contributed.
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | US Congress |
Jenna Ellis – the Donald Trump lawyer who like the former president faces criminal charges regarding attempted election subversion in his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020 – says she will not vote for him in the future because he is a “malignant narcissist” who cannot admit mistakes.
“I simply can’t support him for elected office again,” Ellis said. “Why I have chosen to distance is because of that frankly malignant narcissistic tendency to simply say that he’s never done anything wrong.”
Ellis, 38, was speaking on her show on American Family Radio, a rightwing evangelical network run by the American Family Association, a nonprofit that by its own description has been “on the frontlines of America’s culture war” since 1977.
Ellis was one of 18 Trump associates charged with him in Georgia over attempts to overturn Biden’s victory there. Charged with violating state anti-racketeering laws and solicitation of violation of an oath by a public officer, she was granted $100,000 bail and pleaded not guilty.
Trump pleaded not guilty to 13 racketeering and conspiracy charges.
Denying all wrongdoing and claiming political persecution, he also faces four federal counts related to election subversion; 40 federal counts related to retention of classified information; 34 state counts in New York over hush-money payments; and civil cases including a $250m lawsuit lodged by the New York attorney general over his business affairs and a defamation claim arising from a rape allegation a judge said was “substantially true”.
Nonetheless, Trump leads polling regarding the 2024 Republican presidential primary by vast margins, in national and key state surveys.
Ellis is a former counsel for the Thomas More Society, a conservative group, whose claims to be a constitutional lawyer have been widely doubted.
Described by the New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman as “a lawyer whom Trump sought out after seeing her television commentary”, in 2020 Ellis rose from relative obscurity to become part of what she called an “elite strike force team” working to overturn Trump’s defeat by Biden.
That effort failed. American Family Radio signed up Ellis in December last year. On her show on Thursday, she spoke to Steve Deace, another rightwing host.
Deace said: “Before that man [Trump] needs to be president again … [to] escape the quote-unquote, ‘witch-hunts’, that man needs Jesus again because … his ambitions would be fueled by showing some self-awareness. And he won’t do it because he can’t admit, ‘I’m not God.’”
Ellis said Deace had “perfectly articulated exactly how I as a voter feel”. She knew Trump well “as a friend, as a former boss”, she said, adding: “I have great love and respect for him personally.
“But everything that you just said resonates with me as exactly why I simply can’t support him for elected office again. Why I have chosen to distance is because of that, frankly, malignant narcissistic tendency to simply say that he’s never done anything wrong.
“And the total idolatry that I’m seeing from some of the supporters that are unwilling to put the constitution and the country and the conservative principles above their love for a star is really troubling.
“And I think that we do need to, as Americans and as conservatives and particularly as Christians, take this very seriously and understand where are we putting our vote.” | US Political Corruption |
Former President Donald Trump responded to efforts by Democrats to ban him from presidential primary ballots in 2024 on Monday, saying the U.S. Constitution protects him.
Trump is facing efforts in several states to remove his name from ballots over his involvement in the January 6, 2021 Capitol protests, which his critics argue amounted to an insurrection against the United States. Attorneys for Trump argue that his statements regarding the 2020 election are protected by the First Amendment.
"At no time do Petitioners argue that President Trump did anything other than engage in either speaking or refusing to speak for their argument that he engaged in the purported insurrection," attorney Geoffrey Blue wrote in a Colorado court filing on Monday.
"The Fourteenth Amendment applies to one who ‘engaged in insurrection or rebellion,’ not one who only ‘instigated’ any action," he added.
Efforts to boot Trump from the ballot have sprung up in Colorado, California, Georgia, Florida and elsewhere, though legal experts say they are likely to fail.
Trump's lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the effort in Colorado on Friday. It cites the state's anti-SLAPP law, which shields people from lawsuits that harass them for behavior protected by the First Amendment.
Denver District Judge Sarah B. Wallace has scheduled a hearing on the motion for Oct. 13. A hearing on the constitutional issues will come on Oct. 30. It will be the first time an effort to remove Trump's name from the ballot will be argued in open court.
Trump's opponents argue that his candidacy violates the 14th Amendment clause prohibiting candidates who have "engaged in insurrection or rebellion." Civil rights attorney Stephen Yagman, an ex-con attorney who brought the case in California, points to Trump's statements surrounding January 6 and the 2020 election as evidence of supporting such an insurrection.
"There is only one issue that would need to be litigated potentially and that issue is did Trump engage in insurrection or rebellion," Yagman told the Los Angeles Times earlier this month. "I think the answer to that question for anyone who has eyesight is that he did."
Some legal experts have argued that the 14th Amendment can't be used against Trump. George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said there "are good faith arguments in favor of this claim," but he views the theory as "not simply dubious but dangerous."
"The amendment was written to deal with those who engage in an actual rebellion causing hundreds of thousands of deaths," Turley said. "Advocates would extend the reference to ‘insurrection or rebellion’ to include unsupported claims and challenges involving election fraud."
The Associated Press contributed to this report. | US Federal Elections |
NEWARK, N.J. -- A New Jersey political consultant who had two hitmen kill a colleague for $15,000 was sentenced to 24 years in federal prison on Thursday.
Sean Caddle, a one-time Democratic campaign consultant, pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit murder-for-hire in the killing of Michael Galdieri, whose apartment was set on fire after he was fatally stabbed in 2014.
U.S. District Judge John Michael Vazquez called the murder one of the most “heinous” cases he's seen.
The case captured attention when prosecutors announced Caddle's guilty plea in early 2022, apparently solving the mysterious death of Galdieri, the son of a former state senator, eight years earlier. Former Democratic state Sen. Raymond Lesniak, for whom Caddle worked for years, called it the “most bizarre thing I've ever experienced in my life."
And this week, prosecutors finally revealed a motive for the hit: Caddle told prosecutors he wanted him dead because Galdieri was threatening to extort money from him in exchange for not exposing wrongdoing Galdieri claimed Caddle committed through his political consulting business. Just what the wrongdoing might have been or how much money Galdieri allegedly sought has not been made public.
Prosecutors got a lucky break when one of two ex-convicts who pleaded guilty to a 2014 Connecticut bank robbery told authorities — unprompted — that he had information about a murder that same year. George Bratsenis was later sentenced to 16 years and Bomani Africa to 20 years after they ultimately pleaded guilty to helping Caddle with the murder.
Bratsenis and Africa had met while in a New Jersey prison where Caddle’s now-deceased brother, James Caddle, also was serving time.
Bratsenis told authorities that he went to work for Caddle, who invited him to his Jersey City home for dinner in March or April of 2014. Caddle told him he was aware of his “extensive” criminal history and asked if he could find someone to commit murder for $15,000, Bratsenis said.
Caddle said he wanted Galdieri dead within a month and gave Bratsenis up to $4,000 upfront, according to prosecutors.
On May 22, 2014, the Bratsenis and Africa drove together to the apartment of Galdieri, who had been expecting Bratsensis because they had discussed robbing drug dealers together, authorities said.
Not long after letting the men in, Galdieri was fatally stabbed by both men and they doused his home in gasoline and set it on fire, according to authorities.
A day later, Bratsenis and Caddle met in the parking lot of a diner where Caddle paid him the remaining money. He didn't bring enough initially, however, and had to withdraw more from the bank account of his political consulting business, prosecutors said.
Interviewed about Galdieri’s death that same day, Caddle told prosecutors about Galdieri's drug use but did not disclose his role in the killing, they said.
A prosecutor’s memo describes Caddle as “cold-hearted” and says he even attended the repast after Galdieri’s funeral.
Prosecutors sought a 15-year sentence even though life in prison is the minimum for conspiracy to commit a murder-for-hire that results in a death. Some of the sentencing memo was redacted, but prosecutors noted that Caddle’s history didn’t include other violent crimes and said he cooperated with investigators.
It’s unclear whether Caddle’s cooperation will lead to other arrests or charges. The investigation has led to one other guilty plea: In November, a former top aide to the state Senate president pleaded guilty to tax and fraud charges related to political consulting he did with Caddle. By inflating political invoices, the former aide made $107,800 and failed to pay taxes, prosecutors said. | US Political Corruption |
Subsets and Splits