FTC seeks additional info on Pfizer's proposed takeover of Seagen

 The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has sought additional information and documentary material related to Pfizer's proposed acquisition of Seagen Inc , Seagen said on Friday.

The antitrust agency sent the requests separately to both the companies, a regulatory filing said.

Pfizer struck a $43 billion deal in March to acquire Seagen and its targeted cancer therapies, to counter the fall in COVID-related sales and generic competition for some top-selling drugs.

The recent scrutiny by the antitrust agency to block Amgen's $27.8 billion deal to buy Horizon Therapeutics has made investors jittery around the Pfizer-Seagen deal as well.

Seagan continues to expect its merger with Pfizer will be completed in late 2023 or early 2024, it said in the filing. 

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/1-us-ftc-seeks-additional-214610644.html

Harris says US must ‘reduce population’ to fight climate change

 Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday called on the US to “reduce population” in an effort to combat climate change, but she meant to say “reduce pollution,” according to the White House. 

The shocking gaffe happened as the 58-year-old vice president delivered remarks at Coppin State University in Baltimore, Md., on the need to build a “clean energy economy.” 

“When we invest in clean energy and electric vehicles and reduce population, more of our children can breathe clean air and drink clean water,” Harris said, eliciting applause from the audience. 

The official White House transcript of her speech acknowledges and corrects Harris’ disquieting error. 

In the transcript, “population” is crossed out and “pollution” is added in brackets to denote what the VP intended to say.

The slip-up alarmed many on the right on Twitter.

“Are you the population she wants to reduce?” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) remarked in a tweet

“Wait, what?” Josiah Neeley, a senior fellow at the R Street Institute think tank, said of the vice president’s eyebrow raising remark. 

Harris, whom a recent poll found to be one of the most unpopular vice president’s in US history, has a history of making head-scratching remarks as President Biden’s right-hand woman. 

Earlier this month she gave a repetitive definition of the word “culture” at a music festival in New Orleans that drew mockery on social media. 

“Culture is — it is a reflection of our moment in our time, right? And in present culture is the way we express how we’re feeling about the moment,” Harris said, in part, at the Essence Festival of Culture in the Caesars Superdome.

And just this week, Harris stumbled and struggled to define what artificial intelligence is, serving up a word salad during a meeting with labor union and civil rights leaders.

“I think the first part of this issue that should be articulated is AI is kind of a fancy thing,” Harris said on Wednesday. “First of all, it’s two letters. It means artificial intelligence, but ultimately what it is, is it’s about machine learning.”

Harris was also ridiculed in April after she went on a puzzling digression during an abortion rights rally, speaking about the “moment” in time the country is in. 

“So I think it’s very important — as you have heard from so many incredible leaders for us at every moment in time and certainly this one — to see the moment in time in which we exist and are present, and to be able to contextualize it, to understand where we exist in the history and in the moment as it relates not only to the past but the future,” she said.\White House officials are reportedly concerned about Harris’ becoming “a drag on the ticket” as the 2024 election looms, according to Axios, but senior adviser Anita Dunn has directed staff members to schedule more events for the unpopular vice president.

https://nypost.com/2023/07/15/kamala-harris-says-us-must-reduce-population-to-fight-climate-change-in-latest-gaffe/

Do-It-Yourself Medications: Self-Injected Drugs on the Rise

 "I've always been a little wary of needles," Heather, 65, a resident of Southern California, said as she reminisced about a long-ago high school biology class. The instructor asked them all to prick their finger to find out their blood type. It took her the whole hour to work up her nerve, said Heather, who asked that her real name not be used to protect her privacy, but she did it.

Several decades later, the challenge surfaced again. Her doctor decided to add the lowest dose of Ozempic (semaglutide), injected once a week, to her dose of oral metformin to help manage her blood sugar. 

"It's a tiny little needle, and it's an automatic injector," Heather told herself, yet she felt like she was right back in high school biology class. So her husband did the honors for the first dose. It wasn't nearly as bad as she imagined, she said. The needle, she said, was short and fine. 

"I felt the medicine going in a little bit and some stinging. The next week, I did it on my own," she said. 

Heather's off the Ozempic now, her blood sugar managed well again just with metformin. But she, as well as the rest of us, should expect to be taking more injectables in the future, experts say. The era of do-it-yourself medicine, via self-injection at home, is here, growing, and shows no signs of slowing down.

In the past, self-injected medicine was mainly insulin, injected by those with diabetes, along with anti-coagulants for those at high risk of blood clots, said Eric J. Topol, MD, editor-in-chief of Medscape (WebMD's sister publication for healthcare professionals), a professor of molecular medicine, and executive vice president of Scripps Research in La Jolla, CA. 

"Fast forward," Topol said. "Now we have all these autoimmune disease drugs [that can be self-injected]. We have these anti-obesity, anti-diabetes drugs, we have the powerful low-cholesterol agents, the drugs like Repatha [evolocumab]. We have people taking two or three different injectable drugs every other week."

All this, he said, comes after many people, just 2 years ago, claimed they had "needle phobia" when offered a COVID-19 vaccine. In one U.K. study, researchers who polled more than 15,000 adults and matched them to a general population sample concluded that about 10% of vaccine hesitancy was due to fear of blood, needles, or invasive medical procedures. 

 "And now we are in a world where we are training the public to inject themselves," Topol said.

The market for self-injected drugs is increasing, with no signs of slowing down, according to analysts' reports. While estimates range greatly, one analysis estimated that the global self-injection devices market size was $6.6 billion in 2021 and would grow nearly 6% a year from 2022 to 2030. 

Self-injected devices include prefilled syringes or pens and auto-injectors. As of August 2021, according to a market review, nearly 80 auto-injectors have been developed by more than 20 drug companies. When researchers evaluated 2,964 shots given from the auto-injectors, just 12 device malfunctions occurred, for a failure rate of 0.40%. 

Chances are, someone you know self-injects a medication, such as Humira (adalimumab) for arthritis, Repatha (evolocumab) to manage cholesterol, Dupixent (dupilumab) for asthma or, yes, Ozempic (semaglutide) for diabetes control or Wegovy (semaglutide) for weight loss.

Three key things are driving this trend, according to George I'ons, head of product strategy for Owen Mumford Ltd. in Oxford, U.K., which designs, develops, and makes injectable drug delivery systems for drug, biotech, and generics industries. These include:

• Staff shortages at medical clinics and hospitals 

• Financial pressures on healthcare systems 

• A growing aging population likely to need more medications on a regular basis

Having patients give themselves shots, when possible, not only saves clinic time and expense, but also spares the patients a trip to the clinic, of course, and often a copay. "The more people can do for themselves, the less you need to occupy staff time," I'ons said. That means more time staff can spend on areas that really need attention. That 20 or 30 minutes of clinic time that don't need to be spent giving someone medicine can be put to valuable use, he said.

Improved Devices, Needles

While the needle phobics may shudder at the self-injector trend, ongoing device improvements are aimed at comfort. For instance, I'ons said, "a lot of auto-injectors hide the needle before and after use." The user feels just a piece of plastic against the skin.

Needles have often gotten so thin, that at least with some devices, "you could quite easily not even feel the thing going in," he said. For insulin delivery, I'ons said, the needles have gotten thinner and shorter over the years.

But not all medicines delivered by self-injector can use the smallest needle, he said. Some drugs, because of their viscosity, or thickness, may need bigger needles.

When people complain of discomfort as the medication is injected, they could be feeling not the tiny needle, but the drug itself, or one of its inactive ingredients, I'ons said. He cited the case of drug maker AbbVie removing the buffer, citrate, from Humira (adalimumab) and offering a citrate-free version in 2018 because the citrate was linked to pain where people got the shot. 

Companies said they are focused on technology advances to make self-injection less unpleasant. "Significant advances in technology, as well as our investments in R&D, have allowed Lilly to explore a variety of different injection methods over the years," Nadia Ahmad, MD, associate vice president and medical director of obesity clinical development for Eli Lilly & Company, said in a statement. 

Some people prefer the shots over pills, she said, because "in some cases, it may lead to higher adherence and better efficacy through consistent use."

Education Helps Self-Injection Skills

Introducing patients to self-injections is part of the day's work for Amy Hess-Fischl, a certified diabetes educator and registered dietitian who works as a diabetes educator at the University of Chicago. "As they sit down, I hand them a needle, a syringe, and say, 'Go ahead and inject.' Once they do that, they say, 'Oh my God, it's so small.'" It gets the anxiety of the unknown out of the way, she said. 

She's talking about insulin injections. "When it comes to these other injectables, with so many, you don't even see the needle." 

She reminds patients that the needles are decreasing in size, in general, in both the length and the thickness, or gauge. Some needles are now so short and so small, they can be compared to an eyelash, she said.

She reminds patients, too, that self-injecting can be empowering. "It's about patient-centered care. I think this new revolution in injectables is going to improve patient-centered care and reduce anxiety."

Support and education are important, she said. While there are online resources for self-injecting, the human touch remains important, she said. Any healthcare providers prescribing a self-injected medication, Hess-Fischl said, "needs to have a plan about where to send this patient to be successful." If the healthcare provider doesn't come through, she suggests patients call the drugmaker, and staff there should be able to give instruction, or tell them where to get the instruction.

The Next Market?

While many drugs can be self-injected, not all can. Many patients with chronic diseases depend on drugs that must be delivered with an IV, which means spending hours in a clinic or other facility.

One barrier is the high viscosity of some of these medicines, making it impossible to make and inject some of the monoclonal antibodies at the small volumes needed for shots under the skin. 

Science could change that, said Jeffrey Hackman, CEO and chairman of Comera Life Sciences, who has come up with ways to change some biologics into forms that could be given under the skin and self-injected by the patient at home. 

"I don't think we can ever get out of IV medicines [entirely]," he said. But he has hopes that some biologics now given via IV at clinics will be self-injected at home within the next 5 to 7 years, and much more quickly than the process now requires.

SOURCES:

Heather, former Ozempic user, Southern California.

Eric J. Topol, MD, editor-in-chief, Medscape; professor of molecular medicine and executive vice president, Scripps Research, La Jolla, CA.

George I'ons, head of product strategy, Owen Mumford Ltd., Oxford, U.K.

Medical Device and Diagnostic Industry: "An expert look at issues driving up the demand for self-administration drug-delivery devices that combine pre-filled safety-engineered aspects."

Psychology of Medicine: "Injection fears and COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy."

Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences: "Caffeine as a Viscosity Reducer for Highly Concentrated Monoclonal Antibody Solutions."

Grandview Research: "Self-Injection Devices Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report by Product (Autoinjectors, Needle-free Injectors), By Usability (Disposable, Reusable), By Application (Cancer, Pain Management), By Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2022-2030."

Nadia Ahmad, MD, associate vice president, medical director of obesity clinical development, Eli Lilly & Co., Indianapolis.

Amy Hess-Fischl, diabetes educator, University of Chicago.

AbbVie: "Getting to Know Humira (adalimumab) Citrate-Free." 

Jeffrey Hackman, CEO, chairman, Comera Life Sciences, Woburn, MA.

https://www.medscape.com/s/viewarticle/994394

Does Rapid Weight Loss From GLP-1s Decrease Muscle Mass?

 Recently, the glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist semaglutide has changed the obesity treatment landscape. This and other similar medications approaching the market are in high demand due to their ease of use, effectiveness, and lack of interactions with other medications.

Semaglutide is a weekly subcutaneous injection approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for weight loss in conjunction with lifestyle change. It elicits on average weight loss of 15%-18% from baseline in adults with overweight or obesity (body mass index [BMI] ≥ 27 with at least one obesity-related comorbidity or BMI ≥ 30) in a period of 52-68 weeks (Wilding et al; Rubino et al). Liraglutide is a daily GLP-1 agonist, which is FDA approved for treatment of overweight, with an average weight loss of 8% from treatment start.

Though GLP-1 agonists are very effective for weight loss, questions about side effects have arisen, as discussed in detail previously on Medscape. And now, there are also concerns surrounding GLP-1 agonist induced rapid weight loss and its resulting impact on muscle mass.

Current modalities of weight loss don't specifically target fat mass (FM), so it is expected that to a degree, fat free mass (FFM), including muscle mass, will also be lost along with fat mass.

Loss of muscle mass is associated with an increased risk for lower bone density, fatigue, injuries, and decreased strength. In addition, sarcopenic obesity, a combination of high body fat percentage and low skeletal muscle mass, is concerning in patients older than 65 years and/or postmenopausal patients. Because GLP-1 agonists cause more rapid and sustainable weight loss compared with intensive behavioral lifestyle therapy, there has been more media attention recently about possible muscle mass loss with GLP-1 agonist use.

However, proper well-rounded approaches to obesity treatment can mitigate the issue of muscle mass loss even when rapid weight loss occurs. When weight loss is achieved with very low–calorie dietary changes alone (without exercise), it is also associated with significant reductions in lean muscle mass; however, incorporating exercise, preferably resistance training, can mitigate the muscle mass loss. The muscle preserving effect of exercise is especially prominent in older populations where it is needed most and should be incorporated (Armanento-Villareal et al; Winter et al; Batsis and Zagaria; Mason et al).

Furthermore, studies in rat models demonstrate liraglutide induces myogenesis in myoblasts and protects against muscular atrophy. In human studies, GLP-1 infusion was associated with an improved skeletal and cardiac muscle microvasculature, suggesting that GLP-1 agonists may have some positive effects on the muscle. A recent systematic review examined the effect of gradual vs rapid weight loss and demonstrated no significant difference in muscle loss between the rapid weight loss group and gradual weight loss group. Even after gastric bypass surgery, most of the muscle mass loss occurred during the first year, when weight loss is happening. However, after the first year, skeletal muscle was maintained even without introducing additional dietary or exercise interventions.

Age, although a consideration, should not be a discriminating factor against treating obesity. Sarcopenic obesity is a serious risk especially in patients aged 65 years or older, but GLP-1 agonist therapy can be beneficial to prevent muscle atrophy and increase blood flow to skeletal and cardiac muscle. In addition, patients must be encouraged to maintain an appropriate dietary and exercise regimen to appropriately treat their obesity. Management of obesity is complex and multifaceted, and patients should understand their responsibility of following clinician recommendations during this journey to decrease the associated side effects.

Overall, with any level of weight loss achieved with current strategies, a certain amount of muscle mass loss is expected. All efforts to actively preserve muscle mass can prevent too much muscle loss.

Therefore, providers prescribing medications like GLP-1 agonists to treat obesity must also counsel patients about incorporating aerobic exercise and resistance training as part of the treatment plan as well ensuring they eat a high-protein diet. Generally, resistance training is preferred over aerobic exercise for muscle mass preservation and increased strength, but studies also demonstrate benefit with aerobic exercise.

In the first few visits of initiating obesity treatment, patients should be encouraged to start to incorporate light physical activity as tolerable while starting to make dietary changes to include at least 0.8g/kg/day of protein (Fappi et al). These initial visits are also an important opportunity for clinicians to ingrain the importance of exercise as part of healthy weight loss. At every visit, physical activity level should be assessed.

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/994030

Targeted For Tyranny: We're All Suspects Under The Government's Pre-Crime Program

 by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rurtherford Institute,

“There is now the capacity to make tyranny total in America.”

- James Bamford, journalist

We’re all being targeted now.

We’re all guilty until proven innocent now.

And thanks to the 24/7 surveillance being carried out by the government’s spy network of fusion centers, we are all now sitting ducks, just waiting to be tagged, flagged, targeted, monitored, manipulated, investigated, interrogated, heckled and generally harassed by agents of the American police state.

Although these precrime programs are popping up all across the country, in small towns and big cities, they are not making us any safer but they are endangering individual freedoms.

Nationwide, there are upwards of 123 real-time crime centers (a.k.a. fusion centers), which allow local police agencies to upload and share massive amounts of surveillance data and intelligence with state and federal agencies culled from surveillance cameras, facial recognition technology, gunshot sensors, social media monitoring, drones and body cameras, and artificial intelligence-driven predictive policing algorithms.

These data fusion centers, which effectively create an electronic prison—a digital police state—from which there is no escape, are being built in partnership with big tech companies such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon, which helped to fuel the rise of police militarization and domestic surveillance.

While these latest expansions of the surveillance state are part of the Biden Administration’s efforts to combat domestic extremism through the creation of a “precrime” crime prevention agency, they have long been a pivotal part of the government’s plans for total control and dominion.

Yet this crime prevention campaign is not so much about making America safer as it is about ensuring that the government has the wherewithal to muzzle anti-government discontent, penalize anyone expressing anti-government sentiments, and preemptively nip in the bud any attempts by the populace to challenge the government’s authority or question its propaganda.

As J.D. Tuccille writes for Reason, “[A]t a time when government officials rage against ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ that is often just disagreement with whatever opinions are currently popular among the political class, fusion centers frequently scrutinize peaceful dissenting speech.”

Indeed, while the Biden Administration was recently dealt a legal blow over its attempts to urge social media companies to do more to combat so-called dis- and mis-information, these fusion centers are the unacknowledged powerhouses behind the government’s campaign to censors and retaliate against those who vocalize their disagreement and discontent with government policies.

Already, the powers-that-be are mobilizing to ensure that fusion centers have the ability to monitor and lockdown sectors of a community at a moment’s notice.

For instance, a 42,000-square-foot behemoth of a fusion center in downtown Washington is reportedly designed to “better prepare law enforcement for the next public health emergency or Jan. 6-style attack.” According to an agency spokeswoman, “Screens covering the walls of the new facility will show surveillance cameras around the city as well as social media accounts that may be monitored for threatening speech.”

It’s like a scene straight out of Steven Spielberg’s dystopian film Minority Report, set in 2054, where police agencies harvest intelligence from widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining, precognitive technology, and neighborhood and family snitch programs in order to capture would-be criminals before they can do any damage.

Incredibly, as the various nascent technologies employed and shared by the government and corporations alike—facial recognition, iris scanners, massive databases, behavior prediction software, and so on—are incorporated into a complex, interwoven cyber network aimed at tracking our movements, predicting our thoughts and controlling our behavior, the dystopian visions of past writers is fast becoming our reality.

Our world is now characterized by widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining, fusion centers, driverless cars, voice-controlled homes, facial recognition systems, cybugs and drones, and predictive policing (pre-crime) aimed at capturing would-be criminals before they can do any damage.

What once seemed futuristic no longer occupies the realm of science fiction.

The American police state’s take on the dystopian terrors foreshadowed by George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Phillip K. Dick have all been rolled up into one oppressive pre-crime and pre-thought crime package.

In this way, the novel 1984 has become an operation manual for an omnipresent, modern-day surveillance state in which ordinary Americans find themselves labeled domestic extremists for engaging in lawful behavior that triggers the government’s precrime sensors.

The technocrats who run the surveillance state don’t even have to break a sweat while monitoring what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, how much you spend, whom you support, and with whom you communicate and then classifying you as a danger.

Computers now do the tedious work of trolling social media, the internet, text messages and phone calls for potentially anti-government remarks, all of which is carefully recorded, documented, and stored to be used against you someday at a time and place of the government’s choosing.

In this way, with the help of automated eyes and ears, a growing arsenal of high-tech software, hardware and techniques, government propaganda urging Americans to turn into spies and snitches, as well as social media and behavior sensing software, government agents are spinning a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports aimed at snaring potential enemies of the state.

It’s also a setup ripe for abuse.

For instance, an investigative report by the Brennan Center found that “Over the last two decades, leaked materials have shown fusion centers tracking protestors and casting peaceful activities as potential threats. Their targets have included racial justice and environmental advocates, right-wing activists, and third-party political candidates.”

One fusion center in Maine was found to have been “illegally collecting and sharing information about Maine residents who weren’t suspected of criminal activity. They included gun purchasers, people protesting the construction of a new power transmission line, the employees of a peacebuilding summer camp for teenagers, and even people who travelled to New York City frequently.”

In one Florida county, police have been using their precrime program to generate “lists of people it considers likely to break the law, based on arrest histories, unspecified intelligence and arbitrary decisions by police analysts.” Then, according to the Tampa Bay Times, deputies are deployed “to find and interrogate anyone whose name appears, often without probable cause, a search warrant or evidence of a specific crime. They swarm homes in the middle of the night, waking families and embarrassing people in front of their neighbors. They write tickets for missing mailbox numbers and overgrown grass, saddling residents with court dates and fines. They come again and again, making arrests for any reason they can.”

The goal? “Make their lives miserable until they move or sue.”

This is how the government is turning a nation of citizens into suspects and would-be criminals.

This transformation is being driven by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the agency notorious for militarizing the police and SWAT teams; spying on activists, dissidents and veterans; stockpiling ammunition; distributing license plate readers; contracting to build detention camps; tracking cell-phones with Stingray devices; carrying out military drills and lockdowns in American cities; using the TSA as an advance guard; conducting virtual strip searches with full-body scanners; carrying out soft target checkpoints; directing government workers to spy on Americans; conducting widespread spying networks using fusion centers; carrying out Constitution-free border control searches; funding city-wide surveillance cameras; and utilizing drones and other spybots.

Twenty years after being formed in the wake of 9/11, the DHS is a massive, costly, power-hungry bureaucracy working hard to ensure that the government is all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful.

Yet here’s the thing: you don’t have to do anything illegal or challenge the government’s authority in order to be flagged as a suspicious character, labeled an enemy of the state and locked up like a dangerous criminal.

In fact, all you need to do is use certain trigger words, surf the internet, communicate using a cell phone, drive a car, stay at a hotel, purchase materials at a hardware store, take flying or boating lessons, appear suspicious to a neighbor, question government authority, or generally live in the United States.

The following activities are guaranteed to get you censored, surveilled, eventually placed on a government watch list, possibly detained and potentially killed.

Use harmless trigger words like cloud, pork and pirates. Use a cell phone. Drive a car. Attend a political rally. Express yourself on social media. Serve in the military. Disagree with a law enforcement official. Call in sick to work. Limp or stutter. Appear confused or nervous, fidget, whistle or smell bad. Allow yourself to be seen in public waving a toy gun or anything remotely resembling a gun, such as a water nozzle or a remote control or a walking cane, for instance. Stare at a police officer. Appear to be pro-gun, pro-freedom or anti-government. Attend a public school. Speak truth to power.

It’s just a matter of time before you find yourself wrongly accused, investigated and confronted by police based on a data-driven algorithm or risk assessment culled together by a computer program run by artificial intelligence.

Before long, every household in America will be flagged as a threat and assigned a threat score.

Without having ever knowingly committed a crime or been convicted of one, you and your fellow citizens have likely been assessed for behaviors the government might consider devious, dangerous or concerning; assigned a threat score based on your associations, activities and viewpoints; and catalogued in a government database according to how you should be approached by police and other government agencies based on your particular threat level.

Combine predictive policing with surveillance, overcriminalization and precrime programs, then add in militarized police trained to shoot first and ask questions later, and as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, you’ll be lucky to escape with your life.

If you’re not scared yet, you should be.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/targeted-tyranny-were-all-suspects-under-governments-pre-crime-program

House Approves Ban On Transgender Procedures In Military, Repeals Abortion Travel Policy

by John Haughey via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

House conservatives are bundling the nation’s defense budget with “culture war” amendments they say are needed to reverse the Biden administration’s “woke” politicization of the military through “radical race theories” instituted in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.

In the span of 10 hours on July 13, the Republican-led House repealed the Department of Defense’s (DOD’s) abortion travel policy, prohibited DOD health care programs from providing gender transition procedures, and introduced a host of other proposed add-ons targeting DEI programs—including several that failed—to a must-pass defense budget normally approved in bipartisan accord.

Democrats resisted fiercely, contending the nation’s defense budget is being held hostage by a relatively small cadre—the 40-member House Freedom Caucus—manipulating its pivot in sustaining the GOP’s narrow 10-seat chamber majority to impose an “extreme right-wing agenda” onto the Pentagon and, eventually, the nation.

That was the nub of repeated—and often heated—point-counterpoint exchanges during daylong deliberations on the House floor as the proposed $886.3 Fiscal Year 2024 defense budget, referred to as the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), was introduced for adoption with 370 proposed amendments.

80 Hot-Button Amendments

Both House and Senate armed forces adopted their versions of the proposed NDAA last month. The House did so in a 58–1 vote and the Senate 24–1.

The annual defense budget is geared to be implemented when the new fiscal year begins on Oct. 1. The House is expected to formally adopt the NDAA by July 14 when it resumes deliberations at 10:30 a.m. after adjourning around 11:30 p.m. on July 13.

Both chambers’ defense spending plans top out at the $886.3 billion requested in March by the Biden administration, but the Senate version of the NDAA—which will be introduced on the Democrat-led chamber floor next week—does not include the amendments in the House version targeting “woke” policies.

Representatives in early afternoon began sorting through 80 proposed NDAA amendments dispatched to the floor by the House Rules Committee that morning. The day before, the panel had forwarded 290 proposed add-ons “en blanc,” meaning many are packaged for composite votes because they are not contentious.

Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) listens during a hearing with the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on Capitol Hill in Washington on July 11, 2023. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

DOD Abortion Travel Policy ‘Illegal’

Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) sought to repeal a DOD policy that reimburses expenses for service members who travel to obtain an abortion from a state where the procedure is restricted to a state where it is permitted. It was among the contentious add-ons adopted in a near-total partisan vote, 221–213.

Mr. Jackson maintained the policy was installed by the Biden administration in October 2022 “to sidestep” the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2022 Roe v. Wade repeal to “not only expand abortion access but also leave American taxpayers on the hook to subsidize abortion services.”

He said the policy is in direct violation of Section 1093 of U.S. Code Title 10 “which restricts funds made available to the DOD from being used for abortions.”

Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) called the amendment “a dangerous health care travel ban” for women serving in the military, noting 46 percent are now based in states where abortion is restricted or banned.

A former Navy officer, Ms. Sherrill asked: “How am I supposed to recommend to young girls in my district that they should attend a service academy like I did when we know this amendment would mean they would be signing away their right to basic health care? This makes our service women pawns in [conservative Republicans’] extreme agenda and is a steppingstone to larger bans, restrictions, and wholesale disregard for women’s health care in America.”

Reps. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.) and Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.)—in a theme Democrats would repeat all day and night—also argued the proposed amendment is “part and parcel” of a GOP plan to implement a federal abortion ban.

House Armed Services Committee Chair Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) said the amendment simply repeals an illegal policy.

“DOD’s abortion policy is a flagrant disregard to our moral principles. This is part of the Biden administration’s politicization of the military. It is completely unnecessary. It is clearly unlawful,” Mr. Rogers said.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), an Air Force veteran, called Democrats’ contention that repealing the policy is “somehow attacking women in the service” a “lie.”

“To say you would be somehow hurting someone’s rights in the military because you stand with life is pretty bizarre to me,” she said.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/house-approves-ban-transgender-procedures-military-repeals-abortion-travel-policy

Elon Musk says xAI will use Twitter data and work with Tesla

 Elon Musk on Friday said his new artificial intelligence company, xAI, will use public tweets from Twitter to train its AI models and work with Tesla on AI software.

The billionaire, who owns Twitter and runs Tesla, said during a Twitter Spaces audio chat that a relationship between his companies would have "mutual benefit" and could accelerate Tesla's work in self-driving capabilities.

Musk has criticized other AI companies accusing them of developing the technology without considering risks to humans.

On Friday, Musk said xAI's goals were to increase "understanding of the universe" and to provide an alternative to Microsoft, Google and OpenAI in achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI), which refers to AI that can solve problems like a human.

He also accused all AI companies of training their models using Twitter data in what he characterized as an illegal manner.

Musk, who has advocated for regulations in AI, said he has pushed for meetings with White House officials and has emphasized the importance of regulating AI in his recent meetings with top government officials in China.

https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/TESLA-INC-6344549/news/Elon-Musk-says-xAI-will-use-Twitter-data-and-work-with-Tesla-44342325/