The hospitals in Indiana’s largest health system and in its most populous county have begun visitor restrictions because of a rise in reported cases of flu and other respiratory viruses, they announced Monday.
Tuesday, December 6, 2022
Biden’s efforts to protect abortion access hit roadblocks
The Biden administration is still actively searching for ways to safeguard abortion access for millions of women, even as it bumps up against a complex web of strict new state laws enacted in the months after the Supreme Court stripped the constitutional right.
Looking to seize on momentum following a midterm election where voters widely rebuked tougher abortion restrictions, there’s a renewed push at the White House to find ways to help women in states that have virtually outlawed or limited the treatment, and to keep the issue top of mind for voters.
In reality, though, the administration is shackled by a ban on federal funding for most abortions, a conservative-leaning Supreme Court inclined to rule against abortion rights and a split Congress unwilling to pass legislation on the matter.
Meanwhile, frustration on the ground in the most abortion-restricted states is mounting.
“This is not going away anytime soon,” said Jen Klein of the Biden administration’s Gender Policy Council. “Tens of millions of Americans are living under bans of various sorts, many of them quite extreme, and even in states where abortion is legal, we’re all seeing the impact on providers and on systems being loaded by people who are coming across state lines.”
Since the U.S. Supreme Court decision in June, roughly half the states have some type of abortion restrictions in place, with at least 11 states essentially banning the procedure.
Administration officials are meeting Tuesday and Wednesday with state lawmakers ahead of their 2023 sessions, including in states with more extreme bans on the table, and will discuss safeguarding rights and helping women access care as top issues. The meetings follow sit-downs with roughly nine governors, attorneys general and Democratic state legislators from more than 30 states.
The administration, meanwhile, is implementing Biden’s executive orders signed in July and August that directed federal agencies to push back on abortion restrictions and protect women traveling out of their state to seek one, though some women’s rights advocates say it doesn’t go far enough.
And there are still other avenues left for the administration to explore, said Kathleen Sebelius, a former U.S. health and human services secretary.
HHS might look to wield its power around federal protections for health care providers, life-saving abortions, abortion pills and travel for women in abortion-restricted states, she said. During her tenure, for example, the agency did some policy maneuvering to expand rights for same-sex couples, including a requirement that any hospitals receiving federal funds allow their patients to select a same-sex partner as a visitor, years before gay marriage was legalized.
“It’s amazing how broad a lot of the agency’s authorities are and how much creative thinking can go on,” Sebelius said.
Already, the Justice Department has sued Idaho over its restrictive abortion policy and indicted at least 20 people who have been accused of obstructing access to abortion clinics. Attorney General Merrick Garland has said he would protect the right for women to travel between states for medical care.
Veterans and their beneficiaries are able to access abortion, even in states that have outlawed it, through the Department of Veteran Affairs in cases where the woman’s life or health is at risk or in cases of rape or incest. The Defense Department will cover leave and travel costs for troops seeking abortions if they are not available in their state.
The Federal Trade Commission has sued at least one data broker for selling information that tracks people at reproductive health care clinics, while the Federal Communication Commission reminded 15 mobile carriers of privacy laws in a recent letter.
Perhaps most consequentially, the Department of Health and Human Services told hospitals they “must” provide abortions if a mother’s life is at risk. The agency cited federal law, called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA, that requires medical facilities to provide treatment if a person may be in labor or faces an emergency health situation.
But “no executive action can replace a precedent of nearly 50 years,” Klein said. “The most important thing is to fight for national legislation.”
None is upcoming in the lame-duck session before Republicans take control of the House. And Biden is limited in what else he can do.
Indeed, the administration’s moves so far have made little difference in Ohio, said Kellie Copeland, the executive director at Pro-Choice Ohio. A law that would essentially ban abortion once fetal cardiac activity is detected is awaiting a court ruling. Currently, abortion is banned at 22 weeks, state Medicaid funds can’t be used for abortion and parental consent is required for a minor to receive care.
“I can say as an advocate in Ohio, no one is saying, ‘Oh wow, this has made a difference,’” Copeland said. “The impact has not been felt.”
Copeland’s organization is one of about 50 local advocacy groups and abortion clinics entrenched in states and cities that asked the president in an August letter to offer federal travel and childcare vouchers for people living in states where abortion is banned, introduce federal protections for mailing abortion pills, and gather hospital attorneys to reiterate that doctors must give abortions in life-saving situations.
Chaos has ensued at hospitals located in the country’s most restrictive states, where doctors treating critically ill pregnant patients must weigh their medical recommendations against potential punishments like prison time. Reports of sick pregnant women turned away by doctors or facing unsafe delays in medical care are pouring in.
“It’s made it incredibly dangerous for patients, it’s put physicians in a terrible position,” American Medical Association President Jack Resneck, Jr. said during a meeting with reporters Tuesday. “And yet, when we go and talk about it, we’re seeing purveyors of disinformation say, ’oh those stories are exaggerated or that’s not true.”
Resneck said for physicians it feels as though “state’s attorneys general or governors or law enforcement officers” are standing over their shoulders in the exam room. He worries it could drive an already problematic health care worker shortage to worsen in those states.
“I’m worried about ... whether we’re going to have the workforce in those states in the future to take care of pregnant patients,” he said.
HHS is investigating at least one hospital in Missouri after officials there refused to let doctors perform an abortion on a woman during a medical emergency, but won’t say how many complaints it has received against providers or hospital system for failing to provide life-saving care.
In August, HHS also invited states to apply for Medicaid waivers that would unlock federal funds to pay for travel costs for women who live in states where abortion procedures have been severely restricted.
Not a single state has applied, although the agency said it is in talks with officials in some states about applications.
In Louisiana, where abortion is banned except in certain cases where a mother’s life is at stake, federal policies around travel are likely to have the most impact, said Michelle Erenberg of the New Orleans-based abortion rights advocacy group Lift Louisiana.
She’s not hopeful that other federal proposals will ease how women access abortion directly in the state.
“It’s a little frustrating,” Erenberg said. “Also, we understand there’s only so much the administration is going to be able to do when a state like Louisiana has decided to enact a near total ban on abortion care.”
Memphis hospital: Halt to trans procedures is temporary
A Memphis hospital says it has paused, not stopped, its gender-affirming services in response to possible legal action by civil rights advocates who argue the hospital’s move is illegal and discriminatory.
Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee accused Memphis-based Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare of halting all gender-affirming surgeries due to a newly adopted policy. The ACLU said its client, 19-year-old Chris Evans, was scheduled for surgery in November but was alerted less than a week before the procedure that it had been canceled.
The hospital, known as MLH, said in a statement that it has not changed its practices “regarding the treatment of transgender and/or non-binary patients.”
“In recent weeks, some care providers voiced questions about patients receiving gender affirming procedures at a facility affiliated with our health system,” spokesperson Rachel Powers said. “This resulted in a temporary pause to review current practices.”
The ACLU demanded in a letter to the hospital that officials reschedule its client’s surgery by the end of the year and “rectify its unlawful actions.” The ACLU also threatened to file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights.
“We understand the physicians are moving forward with getting the patients rescheduled before the end of the year,” Powers said.
Lucas Cameron-Vaughn, an ACLU-TN attorney, said Monday that the hospital’s attorney had requested more time to investigate the situation and the ACLU agreed to hold off on filing a complaint with the federal government until then.
“Ending medically necessary healthcare for one particular group of people based on sex, whether by formal written policy or simply in practice, is discrimination and violates federal law,” Cameron-Vaughn said. “We will evaluate whether we need to file a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights once we have a response from the hospital.”
MLH is one of Tennessee’s largest providers for Medicaid and uninsured patients in the state. Its website says it serves more than 128,000 adult Medicaid patients each year.
Gender-affirming health care and transgender rights have faced increased scrutiny, particularly in Republican-led states like Tennessee.
Earlier this year, Vanderbilt University Medical Center announced it would pause all gender-affirming care for minors amid outrage about leaked videos showing a doctor calling gender-affirming surgeries “huge money makers.” Another video showed a staffer saying anyone with a religious objection should quit.
Republican leaders inside Tennessee’s GOP-controlled General Assembly have since vowed to ban gender-affirming care for minors during the upcoming 2023 legislative session — a promise that Republican Gov. Bill Lee has said he supports. However, to date, those lawmakers have not publicly demanded that hospitals halt all gender-affirming care, even for adults.
Politicians who received money from FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's spokesman says she has donated the funds received to a nonprofit
Sam Bankman-Fried opened up his wallet to Washington in a big way during the 2022 election cycle, donating about $40 million publicly.
So which politicians got money from the founder and former CEO of collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX?
MarketWatch has compiled an interactive list below of the candidates and committees who received funds from Bankman-Fried based on the latest disclosures to the Federal Election Commission.
Overall, he gave almost all of the $40 million to Democratic politicians or groups, and just over $200,000 to Republicans, according to the disclosures.
In a wide-ranging interview at the New York Times Dealbook Summit last week, Bankman-Fried said donations were made to candidates who voiced support for pandemic prevention.
At least two Democratic senators received over $20,000 each from Bankman-Fried through joint political action committees tied to their candidacies. Those are Michigan's Debbie Stabenow and New Hampshire's Maggie Hassan. New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand got at least $10,000. Gillibrand is the co-sponsor of a crypto bill that would have the Commodity Futures Trading Commission oversee bitcoin, ether and most other digital assets and give a secondary regulatory role to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In the wake of FTX's collapse, politicians have been saying they will donate or have donated the money that they received from SBF to charities or other groups, or they're giving it back.
Gillibrand spokesman Evan Lukaske said the senator donated her funds to Ariva Inc., a Bronx-based nonprofit that offers free financial counseling. Stabenow, whose own bill empowering the CFTC to regulate crypto was backed by Bankman-Fried, plans to donate the contributions to a local charity. A representative for Sen. Hassan did not respond to requests for comment.
While 50 Democratic House and Senate candidates received donations, only eight Republican Senate candidates received money from the former CEO.
SBF -- known for being a Democratic megadonor -- has claimed he made contributions that don't show up in FEC disclosures. He told video blogger Tiffany Fong that he donated as much to Republicans as he did to Democrats, but the GOP donations were "dark-money" contributions, making his claim difficult to verify. Such secret contributions, allowed by the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United ruling, wouldn't show up in the FEC disclosures used to compile MarketWatch's list.
Another FTX exec, Ryan Salame, became known as a Republican megadonor earlier this year, with a MarketWatch analysis in October finding that he publicly gave about $17 million to GOP groups.
Use our interactive below to search through donations as reported to the FEC.
Donations also filtered into committees associated with Bankman-Fried himself -- Guarding Against Pandemics and GMI PAC.
We Are Not "Enabling" Or "Encouraging" Ukraine To Strike Within Russia: White House
Update(1645ET): A top US State Department official on Tuesday suggested that the Ukrainians were indeed behind the spate of likely drone attacks which hit Russian airbases from Monday into the overnight hours.
Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland told CNN that while "nobody has claimed responsibility" for the drone strikes - at least one of which struck a base hundreds of miles inside Russian territory, it remains that the "targets were the very precise bombers that the Russians have been using to attack critical infrastructure," and that's when she said, "the Ukrainian people are incredibly innovative; they are making their own drones, air and sea, that are incredibly effective."
However, she underscored that the US policy of wanting the Ukrainians to avoid direct attacks on Russia hasn't changed. A separate State Dept. briefing also sought to distance the Biden administration from the brazen cross-border attacks, which reportedly resulted in multiple Russian troop casualties and likely damage to long-range bombers:
The US State Department said the US is not "enabling" or "encouraging Ukraine to strike beyond its borders" with lethal aid, after Russia blamed several recent attacks on Russian military infrastructure on Ukraine.
"We are providing Ukraine with what it needs to use on its sovereign territory, on Ukrainian soil, to take on Russian aggressors, Russian aggressors that have crossed over the border," State Department spokesperson Ned Price said.
Price followed by again emphasizing that the US has not "provided Ukraine with weapons that it is to use inside of Russia."
He said: "We have been very clear that these are defensive supplies."
On Monday The Wall Street Journal reported based on anonymous American officials that the Pentagon had secretly modified HIMARS long-rage rocket systems to limit their range to 50 miles, before they were transferred to Kiev.
* * *
earlier
Overnight into Tuesday a third airfield deep inside Russia came under attack, suffering a fire after an oil storage depot was bombarded by what the Kremlin described as a drone attack that was repelled after the initial blast. A large blaze raged throughout the night as emergency crews responded.
It came the day after two explosions rocked a pair of air bases even further inside Russian territory, which killed three military personnel in the Ryazan region, and Russian Engels-1 airbase in Saratov. Those incidents were also subsequently described by the defense ministry as the result of drone attacks.
The Russian city of Kursk, which lies closer to Ukraine than the other two sites of attack, had thick black smoke rising over its airfield in the early Tuesday hours. "Oil tankers at a base near the city of Kursk, around 60 miles from the border, were on fire and streaming smoke into the sky early Tuesday morning," The Daily Mail writes based on regional sources.
International reports say the large Kursk fire has burned for some ten hours, given a large oil depot was ignited, following the attack:
The inferno covered almost 5,500 square feet and new teams of firefighters were being rushed to the scene, local media said.
Suspected Ukrainian drones also attacked the Belbek military airport in Sevastopol - but were downed by air defenses, say reports.
Increasingly it is looking like Ukraine has made the decision to try and hit much more aggressively inside Russian territory, whether utilizing drones or possibly the longer range missiles being provided by the West, marking a huge escalation.
"Drones were also targeted at a fuel store in Bryansk region, but failed to cause major damage, said Russian sources," Daily Mail continues.
The Monday attacks had damaged "two nuclear-capable bombers that were thought to be preparing for an attack on Ukraine, killed three ground crew and injured two more."
As for the fresh probable drone attack on the Kursk base, Britain’s ministry of defense said, "If Russia assesses the incidents were deliberate attacks, it will probably consider them as some of the most strategically significant failures of force protection since its invasion of Ukraine."
The UK defense official was quoted further as saying, "The Russian chain of command will probably seek to identify and impose severe sanctions on Russian officers deemed responsible for allowing the incident."
So it seems this is Ukraine's response to the widespread aerial attacks on its national energy grid, namely to extend its counteroffensive toward conducting risky cross-border raids on major Russian bases.
This significance of this can't be overestimated - it takes all sides into dangerous, new and unpredictable territory which makes eventual direct Russian-NATO confrontation all the more likely.
Ukraine's Ukrenergo is meanwhile warning the population of more emergency power shutdowns to come across the country. "Due to the consequences of shelling… to maintain the balance between the production and consumption of electricity, a regime of emergency shutdowns will be introduced in all regions of Ukraine.
"In priority, electricity will be supplied to critical infrastructure facilities," Ukrenergo said of the rationing measures on Telegram Monday, during the fresh wave of many dozens of Russian airstrikes.
The 400 mile distance of Engels airbase from the Ukrainian border raised eyebrows following Monday's attack. It also hosts long-range nuclear-capable strategic bombers, some of which were likely damaged.
Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu is at the same time vowing that Russia will not stop until the "military potential" of Ukraine is crushed, according to Interfax. Shoigu said in a defense ministry conference call, "The Russian Armed Forces are inflicting massive strikes with long-range precision weapons on the military command and control system, defense industry enterprises, and related facilities to crush Ukraine’s military potential."
"The Russian armed forces continue to liberate the Donbas. Recently, Mayorsk, Pavlovka, Opytnoye, Andreevka, Belogorovka Yuzhnaya and Kurdyumovka have come under our control," he added.
Independent journalist Michael Tracey summarizes the game-changing nature of the events of the last 24 hours as follows, and the significance of Washington clearly encouraging it, or at least not pressing Ukraine's forces to put on the brakes as far as the fresh cross-border attacks...
"So the US is engineering the war effort of a client state now bombing targets 400 miles inside Russia -- confirmed via the usual tactic of oblique, cheeky acknowledgment from top Ukraine officials. Definitionally an "escalation" -- this is what the US has signed onto indefinitely."
GSK, Pfizer, Sanofi escape U.S. federal litigation over Zantac
Drugmakers GSK Plc, Pfizer Inc , Sanofi SA and Boehringer Ingelheim on Tuesday defeated thousands of U.S. lawsuits claiming that the heartburn drug Zantac caused cancer, as a judge found the claims were not backed by sound science.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg in West Palm Beach, Florida, knocks out about 50,000 claims in federal court, though it does not affect tens of thousands of similar cases pending in state courts around the country.
"We are extremely surprised by this miscarriage of justice and fully expect that the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeal will reverse these rulings on appeal," lawyers for the plaintiffs said in a joint statement.
A Sanofi spokesperson said the decision "significantly decreases the scope of the litigation potentially by over 50%."
A spokesperson for GSK said the company welcomed the decision, while Pfizer and Boehringer Ingelheim did not immediately respond to requests for comment. All the drugmakers have denied that Zantac causes cancer.
Zantac, first approved in 1983, became the world's best selling medicine in 1988 and one of the first-ever drugs to top $1 billion in annual sales. Originally marketed by a forerunner of GSK, it was later sold successively to Pfizer, Boehringer Ingelheim and finally Sanofi.
Numerous generic drugmakers also launched versions of the medicine, but are not part of the federal mass tort litigation.
In 2019, some manufacturers and pharmacies halted sales of the drug over concerns that its active ingredient, ranitidine, degraded over time to form a chemical called NDMA. While NDMA is found in low levels in food and water, it is known to cause cancer in larger amounts.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2020 pulled all remaining brand name and generic Zantac products off the market, citing research showing the amount of NDMA in the products increases the longer the drug is stored and could potentially become unsafe.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/1-gsk-pfizer-sanofi-escape-201228268.html
U.S. lawmakers ease proposed curbs on Chinese chips amid corporate pushback
U.S. senators have scaled back a proposal that placed new curbs on the use of Chinese-made chips by the U.S. government and its contractors, according to a recent draft seen by Reuters, amid pushback from trade groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The move is the latest example of industry's efforts to weaken proposals aimed at crimping China's burgeoning tech sector, by pointing out how such measures will raise costs.
Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer and John Cornyn, a prominent Republican China hawk, unveiled a measure in September that would have required U.S. federal agencies and their contractors to stop using semiconductors manufactured at China's SMIC, as well as chips made by Chinese memory chip leaders YMTC and CXMT.
The text of a new version of the measure, dated Dec. 1, no longer forbids contractors from "using" the targeted chips and pushes the compliance deadline back to 5 years from the immediate or 2 year implementation deadlines included in the first version.
"This does not clearly prohibit contractors from themselves using covered semiconductor products," said Robyn Burrows, a lawyer at Blank Rome specializing in federal contracting, when asked to read excerpts of the new draft.
Chips made by SMIC are commissioned by companies all over the world and can be found in products as diverse as cell phones and cars. They are difficult to identify because chips are not typically labeled with the names of the companies that manufacture them.
The measure, which was pitched as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), drew fire from the Chamber of Commerce and other trade groups, who said in a letter last month that it would be costly and difficult for companies to determine whether SMIC manufactured the chips contained in a vast array of electronics.
The powerful U.S. business group argued in a letter signed by telecommunications and defense industry groups that rooting out such chips from common appliances like toasters or forcing federal contractors like paper suppliers to take on such a monumental task would not further U.S. national security.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-lawmakers-ease-proposed-curbs-172511413.html
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