Latest in Politics
Republicans on the powerful House Oversight Committee formally launch Biden impeachment inquiry
Democrats slammed Thursday’s hearing as a baseless distraction from Trump indictments and government shutdown.
read moreTexas lawsuit threatens abortion pill access networks like Mayday health
Since the federal right to an abortion was overturned last year, 24 states have banned or severely restricted the right to terminate a pregnancy. Except in extremely rare circumstances, doctors are not able to perform or prescribe abortions to patients needing or requesting one.
These restrictions have left women like Cassie, who requested she not be fully named for privacy reasons, without many options. Traveling outside of her home state of Louisiana could cost thousands of dollars in missed work and travel expenses, but Cassie needed a way to end her unwanted pregnancy.
She turned to Plan C Pills, a website that provides a one-stop-shop for people looking to access abortion pills anywhere in the country. She just had to enter her state to access a list of resources, including online clinics, independent clinics, and European and Australian clinics.
She said the pills were delivered just a few weeks after her first search, in discreet packaging.
“If you’re thinking about doing it, you won’t have regrets about it,” she said.
Cassie may be one of the last people in abortion-banned states able to easily access pills through websites like Plan C. These sites are facing an increasing number of legal challenges as courts across the country take up abortion-related cases.
Dr. Jennifer Lincoln, an OB-GYN practicing in Oregon, runs Mayday Health, a site that helps people in restrictive states access abortion pills by mail. The site went up the day Roe vs. Wade was overturned.
“With the fall of Roe, we knew with worse restrictions coming that people still were going to get abortions and still needed abortion access,” Lincoln said. “So we wanted to make sure that they knew that they could still access abortion pills in all 50 states, even if abortion is banned.”
Mayday is currently navigating a series of lawsuits that threaten its entire operation. A Texas judge appointed by former President Donald Trump is considering a petition that questions the approval of mifepristone, the first of two abortion pills, in the United States.
As soon as Wednesday, the judge could decide to halt all sales of the drug –– even in states where abortion remains legal –– until a lawsuit seeking to ban it plays out in court.
“The plaintiffs are asking the judge to decide that there is a sufficient likelihood that the FDA acted incorrectly in the way that they went about approving medication abortion,” Alyssa Morrison, a reproductive staff attorney at Lawyers for Good Government, said. “If he sides with them, providers and prescribers and pharmacies are going to be extraordinarily hesitant to prescribe abortion pills until litigation is finished.”
Right now, Mayday Health sources some of its pills from American clinics, who send pills to addresses in states where abortion is permitted. Mail-forwarding then allows that package to be sent into restricted states.
Wednesday’s case could end that method for Mayday completely.
“For providers in states where abortion is legal who are turning a blind eye to whether or not abortion medications are being forwarded via mail forwarding services, it will force them to take a more risk averse approach,” Morrison said. “Abortion opponents have shown themselves to be nothing if not extraordinarily proactive in their desire to impose liability and to really aggressively pursue lawsuits.”
Morrison said that the judge’s halt on abortion medication could last a year or longer. She added that she thinks an outcome banning abortion medication is likely, given the judge’s track record on abortion-related issues.
Reproductive health lawyers say cases like this are extremely unprecedented. The FDA’s approval process is not frequently called into question by a federal judge, even with regard to drugs that are far more controversial.
Though the judge’s ruling could put a stop to the mail-forwarding of abortion pills, international shipping could remain an option for people seeking medication abortions.
Aid Access, which services both Plan C Pills and Mayday Health by shipping pills from overseas manufacturers, has long been operating in a legal gray area, according to Morrison. But, the group utilizes European prescribers and has said that they will not stop servicing clients in the United States.
“It (the judge’s ruling) would strongly strengthen the argument that it is illegal for these providers to just ship medications into the US,” Morrison said. “But Aid Access has sort of indicated over their many, many years of operating that they will continue to operate until they’re forced not to.”
Still, Lincoln says limiting access to abortion medication within the US poses a significant challenge for many people regardless –– especially those who discover they are pregnant later in their term.
“International pharmacies are not bound by US law so they’re able to ship those medications directly to your house,” Lincoln said. “But, this (international shipping) can take longer –– it can take a few weeks longer –– and that can be really hard for people to wait.”
Plus, delayed access to medication abortion can pose serious health risks for people having a miscarriage. Pills are a non-invasive, safe process to evacuate a fetus when the child is not likely to survive or the mother is at risk.
Wednesday’s case means people experiencing a miscarriage may be unable to access that medication under most circumstances.
“I had multiple miscarriages before my first child, who was very much wanted,” Lawyers for Good Government staff attorney Khadijah M. Silver said. “I had to use mifepristone. It makes rejection of an unviable fetus safer and it saves lives.”
Despite these legal challenges, pro-abortion networks are continuing to file counter lawsuits. GenBioPro, a mifepristone producer, has filed a lawsuit arguing that the FDA’s federal approval of the medication means it should override state bans.
Attorney generals from several abortion-safe states have also filed a lawsuit in federal court, arguing people seeking abortions have been subject to overly strict regulations in its use from the FDA. According to Silver, the two opposing cases could kick Wednesday’s case up to the Supreme Court.
“You have two federal judges coming to exact opposite conclusions around the same point in time around the same legal issue,” Silver said. “That could then usher that case up before the Supreme Court. Either way, the hearing will create a great deal of ambiguity surrounding the availability of medication abortion that will likely last for the duration of the litigation, which could be years.”
Still, Lincoln said Mayday Health will continue to do what they can to ensure access to abortion medication during the litigation period –– in ban and non-ban states alike. She advised that Americans stock up on what is available to them, using websites like Mayday Health or turning to their local pharmacies.
She said people can order medication abortion in advance without being pregnant, and can access other methods, like the morning after pill, over the counter.
“Lawsuits like these will just keep on coming,” Lincoln said. “We’ll just fight some more. It’s a great day to get subpoenaed if it means you’re doing the right thing.”
COVID created an expanded social safety; activists are now quietly working to bring it back
WASHINGTON — In March 2020, the economy was grinded to a halt, as the COVID-19 pandemic forced sudden widespread shutdowns of businesses. As Congress watched the economy fall off the cliff, it responded by doing something lawmakers have resisted since the 1960s: a large expansion of the social safety net.
Emergency paid sick and family leave, modernizing and expanding unemployment insurance, monthly tax payments to families with children and expanded health care access all were passed during the emergency. These programs provided a critical lifeline and saved millions of families financially. In turn, it rescued the U.S. economy from a crash that could have rivaled the Great Depression.
“It was just sort of a sense of hope for the future,” said Piper Stiles, a Maine resident and a single mother of a 10 year old, about the importance of the assistance.
But these programs were temporary. President Joe Biden tried to extend them through his Build Back Better agenda, but Congress failed to find the votes. And despite calls in Washington to cut the deficit rather than expand programs at this time, activists are pressing to foster the permanent return of these benefits.
How Congress acted
The first action that passed Congress at the beginning of the pandemic was emergency paid leave, through the Families First Coronavirus Response Act. The law created paid family, sick and medical leave for the government and employers with less than 500 employees.
Despite its limited form, it was still a major victory for advocates, like Dawn Huckelbridge, director of Paid Leave for All. “Congress suddenly felt the urgency that working families every day had about a lack of paid leave,” she said.
Soon thereafter, Congress temporarily altered unemployment insurance (UI) in the CARES Act. They increased weekly payments by $600, created a benefit program for those outside UI qualifications, like gig workers and contractors, and extended how long recipients can receive checks.
The National Employment Law Project’s UI Campaign Coordinator Alexa Tapia credited workers for why Congress acted boldly, compared with weaker responses to other recessions. “Workers really organized and advocated and made the urgency and the need for this known,” she said.
One year later, a Democratically controlled Congress moved forward even more provisions through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). Newly-created ones included Affordable Care Act (ACA) premium subsidies eligibility expansion and subsidy increases for low-income recipients. It also expanded the child tax credit, from $2,000 per child to $3,000 for children 6 to 17-years-old and $3,600 for children under 6. The provision also made half of the credit come available as a monthly payment.
Elisa Minoff, senior policy analyst at the Center for the Study of Social Policy and the center’s lead in work on the ABC Coalition, a group dedicated to creating a guaranteed income for children, said momentum had been building for years. “Giving cash to poor families helps lift them out of poverty,” she said. “The pandemic really shined a light on the disparities in our economy. So I think there was interest in thinking about what are the supports that can actually help families who are left behind.”
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) championed an expanded child tax credit for nearly two decades, and it’s that longer term activism that Bob Greenstein, a visiting fellow at the Brooking Institute’s Hamilton Project, said is the reason why Congress could act so quickly. “While most of the provisions that got enacted did not look in January 2020 like they were about to be, it is worth noting years of groundwork had been laid.”
But even despite bipartisan support for some of these initiatives, there was pushback even from the beginning from conservatives concerned about spending and government expansion. “In the early days of the COVID pandemic, Club for Growth was way ahead of the curve recognizing the damage inflicted on economic freedom, opportunity, and liberty,” a Club for Growth, a conservative economic group, spokesperson said. Over two years, the debt expanded by $5.9 trillion, a concerning figure for conservative spending hawks like the Club. Slowly, Republicans started backing away, to the point where ARPA had zero Republican support.
‘It kept families from sinking’
Stiles worked jobs that shut down early on in the pandemic, so she relied on unemployment benefits, which she called a huge help. When the monthly expanded child tax credit payments started coming, Stiles said they didn’t suddenly make her financially sound, but they provided optimism.
“Could this be sort of an inoculant for our culture,” she said, “to (be) willing to extend actual meaningful support to people who are struggling economically?”
The benefits for Stiles were in addition to her support from Maine’s Parents as Scholars program, a Temporary Assistance for Needy Families benefit that aids parents in college. And while Stiles said the extra cash injection wasn’t life changing, she paid off debt that improved her credit rating, and used payments to open a savings account for her daughter.
The government’s interventions had meaningful effects. After the child tax credit expanded in 2021, child poverty fell from 9.7% in 2020 to 5.2%. The drop was even larger for Black and Hispanic children.
During UI expansion, despite the unemployment rate hitting 14.7%, the poverty rate in 2020 fell to 9.3% in June from 11% in February. The national uninsured rate fell to a record low of 8% by early 2022, and the paid leave scheme prevented an estimated 15,000 cases of COVID-19 per day nationwide.
“It saved people’s lives,” Huckelbridge said about emergency leave. “It kept families from sinking.”
Kali Daugherty, a Wisconsin resident and also a single mother of a 10-year-old, was working three jobs before the pandemic. When it hit, she lost one of them. While financial difficulties are constant in her life, she said the expanded child tax credit payments alleviated that. “We weren’t better financially off completely, but we weren’t struggling.”
Using the payments, she didn’t rely on her credit card between paychecks to get last minute groceries or other essentials to last until the next pay day, avoiding acquiring more debt and paying off some. Daugherty also used it for things she wouldn’t do otherwise, like using some of the last payment through the program to take her son to a waterpark, thanks to the increased financial security.
But the child tax credit expired at the end of December 2021, and emergency paid leave ended a year earlier, with ARPA only partially bringing it back via a tax credit. UI expansion and reform lapsed in September 2021.
Some of these programs were supposed to be extended through Build Back Better. UI reforms weren’t in the bill the House passed, but a paid leave scheme was, along with extensions of both the expanded child tax credit and health care subsidies.
But when it came time to pass the bill in the Senate, support dried up. “When we got past the sense of dire emergency, and the economy began to rebound, the support gradually diminished,” Greenstein said.
The final iteration of Build Back Better came through the Inflation Reduction Act. The climate and tax focused bill only included an extension of the ACA subsidy expansion and increases, until 2025, and changes to Medicare.
Ben Day, executive director of Healthcare NOW, a group advocating for a national single-payer health care system, said he thinks health care survived because of what the pandemic revealed. “It just dramatically exposed how employment based health insurance doesn’t make sense at all.” Even then, he said he was disappointed at how few of the health care items from Build Back Better became law.
Return to the status quo
A stereotype of the American social safety net programs is that once you start one, it’s hard to do away with it. An example is the public outcry against the GOP push to repeal the ACA in 2017. Americans, according to polling, were split on whether the expanded child tax credit should be permanent, but broadly support paid leave.
Huckelbridge said the Trump Administration’s Labor Department failed to advertise emergency paid leave, so when it expired there wasn’t outrage. Meanwhile, Greenstein said that trope isn’t exactly true, as Congress before has expanded access to government benefits during economic downturns then taken them away as the economy recovers, though not on a scale like this.
When the programs expired, millions who benefited suddenly lost support. The child poverty rate rose from 12.1% in December 2021 to 17% in January 2022 after the expanded child tax credit’s end.
Daugherty said when payments stopped she returned to the financial struggles expansion temporarily ended. “We just went back to how things were,” she said. Daugherty’s income is just over the limit for other programs, meaning she doesn’t have access to other support. “This is all we had to rely on.”
Tapia contended that paring back the expanded unemployment benefits harmed some workers more than others. “Many Black and Brown workers were left without the benefits they need,” she said. “Every job loss is a crisis, and we need to ensure we have UI benefits that allow workers to meet their family needs, and be able to find good jobs.”
That disproportionate effect on who programs help is partially why Minoff thinks securing a permanent solution is difficult. “There are still a lot of myths and stereotypes about families that are steeped in racism that sort of have a hold on the political discourse,” she said.
The path forward
While coming so close to a long-term law on paid leave Huckelbridge said was “devastating,” the advancement on the issue she said is enormous. “We’ve made more progress in the last three years than we had in the decades prior.”
Day said a key part of that has been an increasing embrace of government, a shift that he thinks was accelerated by the pandemic. “The more the US government provides these programs that have life saving impacts, the more that narrative (of demonizing government) changes.”
That change is happening with voters. In the 2010 elections, exit polls reported 56% of voters said the government was doing too much. But in the 2022 elections, 53% said the government should do more.
Now that some programs have already been implemented, the case for bringing them back gets easier, Greenstein said. Driving that is now-existing evidence for the activists’ arguments. “We have the data showing how immensely successful this program was,” Tapia said about UI enhancement.
And despite the more partisan nature of the debate in the latter half of the pandemic, there are some residual areas where activists see bipartisanship. Republicans have expressed openness to paid leave in the past, particularly parental leave, and Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) have their own proposals to expand the child tax credit, though different than what activists support.
Overall, Minoff said more lawmakers are prioritizing bringing back the expanded child tax credit, because it benefited so many of their constituents. “They’ve heard directly from families in their communities,” she said. “Now that we’ve tried it, I think it can definitely be easier to get something permanent.”
Stiles and Daugherty are now, after being beneficiaries of the programs, involved in the ABC Coalition’s Parent Advisory Board. If and when the expanded credit returns permanently, they’re pushing it be stronger with more robust benefits.
But while they’re involved in this fight specifically, they also stressed this benefit can’t stand alone. Instead, all of the programs previously mentioned and more need to return or be created for there to be a more effective safety net.
“Welfare in the United States is such a dirty world, and it’s just not in other areas,” Stiles said. “What really needs to shift to allow the change that needs to happen is something that is more subtle and internal, and I feel like that’s the conversation that we need to be having.”
Latest in Education
Two students take on the Education Department in a landmark Supreme Court case
The Biden administration’s $400 billion student-debt relief is being challenged by two borrowers who could invalidate the program altogether.
read moreSlideshow: Activists urge Supreme Court to approve student debt relief
WASHINGTON –– Hundreds of activists gathered outside the Supreme Court Tuesday morning to urge the justices to allow President Joe Biden’s student debt relief program to take effect. Inside the high court, the justices heard oral arguments in Biden v. Nebraska, a case challenging Biden’s authority under federal law to cancel student debt.
Nonprofits including the NAACP paid to send seven buses of students from six states to protest in front of the court Tuesday morning. The speakers, including several Democratic lawmakers, emphasized that student debt relief is not only legal but also just and necessary.
Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fl.) speaks to reporters after attending the rally outside the court. (Jacob Wendler/MNS)
Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) speaks to reporters outside the court. (Jacob Wendler/MNS)
Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Mass.) urges the court to allow student debt cancellation to take effect. (Jacob Wendler/MNS)
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) speaks about the need for student debt relief. (Jacob Wendler/MNS)
Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) speaks at the rally. (Jacob Wendler/MNS)
A protester takes a photo of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). (Jacob Wendler/MNS)
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) speaks in favor of student debt relief Tuesday morning. (Jacob Wendler/MNS)
Supreme Court hears student loan forgiveness arguments in $400 billion case
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday for Biden v. Nebraska, a case which challenges President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive up to $20,000 for those with federally held student debts.
The case looked at two major issues: standing and merit.
The first questioned whether the respondents, in this case the six Republican-led states suing, had standing to challenge Biden and Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona for their loan forgiveness plan.
In other words, if Cardona’s plan caused injury to these states, it gave the states the ability to challenge it.
To that end, the arguments largely focused on whether or not the states had standing. Nebraska Solicitor General James Campbell said that the Missouri-based entity MOHELA, which the state argued suffered financial losses due to the program, gives the states standing.
Video by Julia Narvaez Munguia/MNS
But some Justices argued that MOHELA could have filed its own lawsuit but decided against it. Notably, Trump-appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett said she didn’t understand why the states stood in for MOHELA in the lawsuit.
“If MOHELA is an arm of the state, why didn’t you just strong-arm MOHELA and say you’ve got to pursue this suit,” Barrett said.
If the Justices agree the states have no standing, the case would be thrown out before getting to the second issue of merit.
Cardona’s plan to forgive loan debt hinges on the Higher Education Relief for Students Act, which gives the executive branch authority to provide emergency relief without express authorization from Congress if it modifies or waives existing protocols.
Campbell said that Cardona’s loan forgiveness does neither of these things, but instead creates a “breathtaking and transformative power beyond [the secretary’s] institutional role and expertise.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said that she wasn’t clear on the distinction between creating a power and modifying or waiving one.
“Why doesn’t it all reduce to the same thing?” Brown said.
It’s unclear how the Court, which is led 6-3 by conservative Justices, will rule. Some experts believe that Biden does not have much of a case on the merits, while others argue the states have no standing to sue the federal government.
But the program has broad sweeping implications for millions of current and former students who have borrowed money from the federal government. Over $400 billion in federal loans would be forgiven should the Court decide against striking down the program.
“There’s 50 million students who will benefit from this, who today will struggle,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor said. “Many of them don’t have assets sufficient to bail them out after the pandemic. They don’t have friends or families or others who can help them make these payments.”
A ruling against Biden’s plan could invite further suits by Republican-led states that would impact all kinds of future executive actions. It’s why the courts may decide to focus on the first issue of standing, which would help avoid questions of the Biden administration’s authority going forward.
“What you’re saying is now we’re going to give judges the right to decide how much aid to give them instead of the person with the expertise and the experience the secretary of Education who’s been dealing with educational issues and the problems surrounding student loans,” Sotomayor said.
Health & Science
GOP lawmaker introduces bill banning medical abortions
The Ending Chemical Abortions Act of 2023, introduced by Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) on Thursday morning, quickly garnered support from anti-abortion rights groups and opposition from abortion-rights activists.
read moreHouse Republicans Question OSHA’s new Excessive Heat in the Workplace Rules
WASHINGTON — Fearing executive overreach, Republican lawmakers hammered the Assistant Secretary of Labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration about the agency’s new rules for excessive heat in the workplace on Wednesday.
Lawmakers questioned Douglas L. Parker, the Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA, about the agency’s effectiveness in keeping workers safe during a subcommittee hearing on workforce protections. More than a year after the subcommittee met with Parker to discuss the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down OSHA’s Emergency Temporary Standard, which required COVID-19 vaccination in the workplace, as an overreach of executive power, Republicans expressed skepticism of OSHA’s recent rules for excessive heat in the workplace.
With new standards for workers experiencing extreme weather conditions, such as requirements for sufficient drinking water and allowing regular breaks in the shade, Republicans fear the regulations could lead to more executive overreach in the agriculture industry.
“It has taken its eye off the ball when it comes to protecting worker safety, focusing instead on political goals that could not win support through the democratic channels of our government,” House Education and Workforce Subcommittee Chair Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.) said. “The result has been harmful and ill-considered policies that have compromised our system of checks and balances.”
Kiley was accompanied by his republican colleagues, including Rep. Mary E. Miller (R-Ill.), as he expressed his concerns about OSHA and its overreach into areas he felt were reserved to the democratic process. The Emergency Temporary Standard for COVID-19 vaccines required workers to comply with vaccination or face unemployment. In January 2022, SCOTUS ruled in a 6-3 decision against the mandate. With OSHA developing rules to address excessive heat, Miller expressed concerns about the agriculture industry facing the same ultimatum.
“It would have terrorized our economy if the American workers refused to comply and it would have put 84 million American workers out of work,” Miller said. “But, now I’m troubled that you’re targeting farmers in your quest for power and threatening to shut down the agriculture industry because it’s hot outside in the summer.”
Across the aisle, Democrats support OSHA’s efforts and have begun introducing heat stress legislation to protect workers experiencing excessive heat both indoors and outdoors.
“I would challenge the gentlelady from Illinois to work in extreme heat, in a farm, for protracted hours,” said Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), “to see whether or not she thinks that workers should be protected from extreme heat.”
Takano, an advocate for excessive heat rules such as required breaks in cooler locations and sufficient water, said he believes providing workers with rest will lead to productivity gains.
More imminently, Parker told the committee he is concerned about the impact a potential government shutdown could have on OSHA and its ability to function.
“To truly embrace health and safety as a core value requires a strong OSHA,” Parker said, “A government shutdown followed by significant budget reductions would severely compromise our ability to protect workers.”
During a government shutdown, OSHA’s outreach activities, assistance to employers, development of materials to prevent heat illness and ability to conduct proactive program inspections would end.
“We’ll be limited to a more reactive mode,” Parker said. “Unfortunately, that only happens after a worker has the courage to complain or a worker is already sick or dead from heat.”
With the government shutdown looming, several lawmakers are calling for bipartisan action in order to support America’s workforce and prevent unnecessary harm.
“Today’s subcommittee hearing on workforce protections should be listened to and taken into consideration,” Rep. Haley M. Stevens (D-Mich.) said. “We should put gamesmanship aside. We’ve got plenty of solutions at the table. There’s no need for a Republican shutdown.”
Texas lawsuit threatens abortion pill access networks like Mayday health
Since the federal right to an abortion was overturned last year, 24 states have banned or severely restricted the right to terminate a pregnancy. Except in extremely rare circumstances, doctors are not able to perform or prescribe abortions to patients needing or requesting one.
These restrictions have left women like Cassie, who requested she not be fully named for privacy reasons, without many options. Traveling outside of her home state of Louisiana could cost thousands of dollars in missed work and travel expenses, but Cassie needed a way to end her unwanted pregnancy.
She turned to Plan C Pills, a website that provides a one-stop-shop for people looking to access abortion pills anywhere in the country. She just had to enter her state to access a list of resources, including online clinics, independent clinics, and European and Australian clinics.
She said the pills were delivered just a few weeks after her first search, in discreet packaging.
“If you’re thinking about doing it, you won’t have regrets about it,” she said.
Cassie may be one of the last people in abortion-banned states able to easily access pills through websites like Plan C. These sites are facing an increasing number of legal challenges as courts across the country take up abortion-related cases.
Dr. Jennifer Lincoln, an OB-GYN practicing in Oregon, runs Mayday Health, a site that helps people in restrictive states access abortion pills by mail. The site went up the day Roe vs. Wade was overturned.
“With the fall of Roe, we knew with worse restrictions coming that people still were going to get abortions and still needed abortion access,” Lincoln said. “So we wanted to make sure that they knew that they could still access abortion pills in all 50 states, even if abortion is banned.”
Mayday is currently navigating a series of lawsuits that threaten its entire operation. A Texas judge appointed by former President Donald Trump is considering a petition that questions the approval of mifepristone, the first of two abortion pills, in the United States.
As soon as Wednesday, the judge could decide to halt all sales of the drug –– even in states where abortion remains legal –– until a lawsuit seeking to ban it plays out in court.
“The plaintiffs are asking the judge to decide that there is a sufficient likelihood that the FDA acted incorrectly in the way that they went about approving medication abortion,” Alyssa Morrison, a reproductive staff attorney at Lawyers for Good Government, said. “If he sides with them, providers and prescribers and pharmacies are going to be extraordinarily hesitant to prescribe abortion pills until litigation is finished.”
Right now, Mayday Health sources some of its pills from American clinics, who send pills to addresses in states where abortion is permitted. Mail-forwarding then allows that package to be sent into restricted states.
Wednesday’s case could end that method for Mayday completely.
“For providers in states where abortion is legal who are turning a blind eye to whether or not abortion medications are being forwarded via mail forwarding services, it will force them to take a more risk averse approach,” Morrison said. “Abortion opponents have shown themselves to be nothing if not extraordinarily proactive in their desire to impose liability and to really aggressively pursue lawsuits.”
Morrison said that the judge’s halt on abortion medication could last a year or longer. She added that she thinks an outcome banning abortion medication is likely, given the judge’s track record on abortion-related issues.
Reproductive health lawyers say cases like this are extremely unprecedented. The FDA’s approval process is not frequently called into question by a federal judge, even with regard to drugs that are far more controversial.
Though the judge’s ruling could put a stop to the mail-forwarding of abortion pills, international shipping could remain an option for people seeking medication abortions.
Aid Access, which services both Plan C Pills and Mayday Health by shipping pills from overseas manufacturers, has long been operating in a legal gray area, according to Morrison. But, the group utilizes European prescribers and has said that they will not stop servicing clients in the United States.
“It (the judge’s ruling) would strongly strengthen the argument that it is illegal for these providers to just ship medications into the US,” Morrison said. “But Aid Access has sort of indicated over their many, many years of operating that they will continue to operate until they’re forced not to.”
Still, Lincoln says limiting access to abortion medication within the US poses a significant challenge for many people regardless –– especially those who discover they are pregnant later in their term.
“International pharmacies are not bound by US law so they’re able to ship those medications directly to your house,” Lincoln said. “But, this (international shipping) can take longer –– it can take a few weeks longer –– and that can be really hard for people to wait.”
Plus, delayed access to medication abortion can pose serious health risks for people having a miscarriage. Pills are a non-invasive, safe process to evacuate a fetus when the child is not likely to survive or the mother is at risk.
Wednesday’s case means people experiencing a miscarriage may be unable to access that medication under most circumstances.
“I had multiple miscarriages before my first child, who was very much wanted,” Lawyers for Good Government staff attorney Khadijah M. Silver said. “I had to use mifepristone. It makes rejection of an unviable fetus safer and it saves lives.”
Despite these legal challenges, pro-abortion networks are continuing to file counter lawsuits. GenBioPro, a mifepristone producer, has filed a lawsuit arguing that the FDA’s federal approval of the medication means it should override state bans.
Attorney generals from several abortion-safe states have also filed a lawsuit in federal court, arguing people seeking abortions have been subject to overly strict regulations in its use from the FDA. According to Silver, the two opposing cases could kick Wednesday’s case up to the Supreme Court.
“You have two federal judges coming to exact opposite conclusions around the same point in time around the same legal issue,” Silver said. “That could then usher that case up before the Supreme Court. Either way, the hearing will create a great deal of ambiguity surrounding the availability of medication abortion that will likely last for the duration of the litigation, which could be years.”
Still, Lincoln said Mayday Health will continue to do what they can to ensure access to abortion medication during the litigation period –– in ban and non-ban states alike. She advised that Americans stock up on what is available to them, using websites like Mayday Health or turning to their local pharmacies.
She said people can order medication abortion in advance without being pregnant, and can access other methods, like the morning after pill, over the counter.
“Lawsuits like these will just keep on coming,” Lincoln said. “We’ll just fight some more. It’s a great day to get subpoenaed if it means you’re doing the right thing.”
Latest in Environment
Native communities cite dismal statistics on lack of access to water at senate committee hearing
Senate Indian Affairs Committee discussed the lack of access to clean water in Native communities.
read moreSenate Budget Committee hears testimony on coastal costs of climate change
WASHINGTON – Members of the Senate Budget Committee heard from climate experts and stakeholders at a hearing Wednesday about the economic costs of climate change on coastal communities, continuing the debate over how – and whether – to distribute funds to sustainability projects.
The hearing came amid a push by chairman Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) to examine how climate change affects the economy. Democrats pressed the witnesses on how rising sea levels affect property owners on the coasts, while Republicans urged that climate change is not a large enough threat to warrant high spending.
Whitehouse, who is from coastal Rhode Island, warned of a cascade of economic effects of climate change.
“As homes and businesses in coastal communities face more frequent sunny day flooding and wetter and more violent ocean storms, insurance will become more expensive and harder to find,” Whitehouse said. “Mortgages depend on insurance, so lending will suffer.”
Sean Becketti, a principal at mortgage analytics firm Elliot Bay Analytics, testified that coastal homeowners’ properties make up a significant share of their wealth, which will decline when coastal flooding increases.
He added that lenders may be more reluctant to offer standard 30-year mortgages on coastal homes.
“Unlike the experience with [the 2008 housing crisis], these homeowners will have no expectation that the value of their homes will ever recover,” he said.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said he is concerned that the U.S. would be “wasting limited resources” if it pours money into climate change solutions. He said that as a long as China and India don’t join in on climate change efforts, the U.S. will have little impact on global climate.
“I’m not a climate change denier,” Johnson said. “I’m just not a climate change alarmist.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the committee’s ranking member, questioned the effectiveness of a carbon tax, which Whitehouse has pushed for. In 2019, Whitehouse sponsored the American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act, which imposes fees on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. The bill never reached the floor.
Marlo Lewis Jr., a fellow at libertarian think tank the Competitive Enterprise Institute, agreed. He said that the U.S. should focus on adapting to rising temperatures rather than “basically [crippling] the United States economically.”
“A carbon tax is either pain for no gain or it’s a cure worse than the disease,” Lewis said.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) cited the Quinault Indian Nation’s plan to relocate residents who live seven feet above sea level to higher grounds as an example of threats to coastal communities in her state.
Matthew Eby, the CEO of the nonprofit First Street Foundation, responded that relocation projects are extremely costly.
“I can tell you that it’s much, much more expensive to try and do these things retroactively than to actually manage these things from the beginning,” Ebay said.
Democrats emphasized that the federal government needs to assist local municipalities with funds to combat climate change. However, this may not be in the budget committee’s hands. The panel creates budget resolutions that guide the allocation of funds, but policy decisions are delegated to other committees.
Whitehouse invited Kate Micahud, the town manager of Warren, Rhode Island, to highlight how rising sea levels affect small coastal towns.
Michaud said that Warren has experienced flooding that threatens coastal homes and roads. She described Warren as a “microcosm” of hundreds of coastal towns nationwide.
“There’s definitely a difference between surviving and living, and people want to live,” Michaud said. “Climate change is really a threat to that.”
Senators hear how climate change could lead to economic pain
WASHINGTON — Senators on Wednesday grappled with the already-existing and looming-future economic costs of climate change, and how to prevent them.
At a Budget Committee Hearing, experts delivered testimony that revealed a concerning state that America is in: unmitigated climate change could lead to economic chaos worse than the 2008 financial crisis and further strain budget deficits.
Senate Budget Committee Chair Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) kicked off the hearing by discussing how the climate crisis is different from others that have stressed the economy in the 21st century.
“Look at our national debt. One thing that stands out is how much of it was incurred as a result of exogenous shocks to the economy,” he said, adding that both the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic added $10 trillion to the debt. “Headlights, and better attention to what they illuminated, could have helped… Now we have all these warnings.”
Dr. Mark Carney, former governor of both the Banks of England and Canada, said coastal erosion will weaken property values in those regions. Extreme weather will increase food costs. And increased flooding will damage infrastructure not built to withstand the new environment.
“The hit to GDP growth from unmitigated climate change is expected to be significant,” Carney said. He added global GDP per capita could fall between 10 to 20% without efforts to curb climate change.
Dr. Robert Litterman, the chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Climate-Related Market Risk Subcommittee, made the case that pushing incentives is the way to get action on this issue.
“We need to create incentives to reduce emissions, we all understand this,” he said. “People respond to incentives. If we get the right incentives, we’ll get the right behaviors.”
He added those incentives need to also be applied on a global scale, as the U.S. needs to work diplomatically with other nations to “harmonize” the incentives across the world and therefore hopefully yield stronger emission reductions.
The need for a global push was echoed by Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah). He voiced frustration that those engaged in the climate debate often forget the U.S. isn’t the leader in emissions.
“We have to do things that have a global impact,” he said. But Romney also listed policy proposals he’d be supportive of. “Research and technology and a price on carbon are the things that would make a difference.”
A carbon tax has long been an idea to address climate change, but it failed to make it into the Inflation Reduction Act last year.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) questioned the panelists about how a carbon tax could impact American households. Former Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin explained his case for pricing.
“The literature says very clearly that the right way to do this is a revenue-neutral carbon tax.” He explained that means taking the revenues from a carbon tax and using it to offset corporate and income taxes so people don’t feel the burden of it.
But Graham was skeptical and went back and forth with the panelists about what the tax could mean for utility bills, gas prices and other services.
Overall, both sides acknowledged there is a need to take action, but differ on its urgency and how to do so.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) summed up the general sentiment in his remarks: “We know that the cost of doing nothing is huge.”
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read moreThe Duality of Invasions: Iraq and Ukraine
Nervous laughter filled the room after a moment of awkward silence and a visibly embarrassed former U.S. President having just made one of the biggest gaffes of his post-political career.
On May 18, 2022, George W. Bush stood at a podium in his presidential center in Dallas, Texas, and lamented Vladimir Putin for rigged elections and totalitarianism. He condemned the “wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq” while meaning to refer to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. Critics of the former President were quick to question the blunder, wondering if it was an admission of guilt or a sign of overlapping legacies of illegal occupation.
This year marked the 20th anniversary of the Iraq war, an invasion that claimed the lives of more than 4,700 U.S. and allied troops and more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians. It also marked the one-year anniversary of the Russian offensive into Ukraine, which is estimated to have killed or wounded more than 200,000 Russian troops and 100,000 Ukrainians. What do these two wars of choice have in common and how do they differ?
Murky Rationale For War
The silence of the night covered the secrecy of withdrawal as over 100 heavily armored military vehicles containing about 500 U.S. soldiers made their way to the Khabari border crossing between Iraq and Kuwait. On December 18, 2011, the last American combat troops left Iraq. The war has ended but the problems for the Iraqi people have just begun, according to Saad Hamza Kheder, a former Iraqi soldier.
“Iraq was destroyed by the war,” said Kheder. “The Americans wanted the oil….they wanted to control the people of Iraq: Sunni, Shi’ite, and Kurdish,” he added. Kheder served in the Iraqi army during the Iran-Iraq war and retired in 1991 as a captain. He was in the Ministry of Trade in the Mosul province, some 250 miles from Baghdad, during the US invasion.
The rationale for the Iraq war has been subject to numerous debates. The official position of the U.S. government was of concern that Saddam Hussein was harboring weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and had links to al-Qaeda. According to an Arms Control Association fact sheet, over 900 inspections were carried out at more than 500 sites by the United Nations Monitoring, Verification, and Inspections Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) between 2002 and 2003. No chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons were found.
A 2003 Gallup Poll found that seventy-two percent of Americans supported the invasion of Iraq. This high level of support for war in the U.S. began to fall as the intelligence used to support the invasion proved to be inaccurate.
Similarly, Russia’s rationale for invading Ukraine was also based on faulty reasoning.
On February 24, 2022, President Putin laid out his goals for the “demilitarization” and “denazification” of Ukraine. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, of Jewish origins himself, responded by saying, “Could a people who lost more than 8 million lives in the battle against Nazism support Nazism?”
Putin also falsely claimed that Russian-speaking Ukrainians needed to be liberated from genocidal Ukrainian nationalists in the country.
The Russian invasion came at a time when Ukrainian officials allied themselves more closely to the West and made clear their desire to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a military alliance of countries from Europe and North America. Since the invasion, Finland became the latest addition to the group earlier this year.
Observers claim that the rationale behind Putin’s actions may just be an attempt at bringing back Soviet-era domination of surrounding territories. This supplements his belief of Russians and Ukrainians are one people. The annexation of Crimea and the Russian claimed “liberation” of the Donbas region point towards motives inspired by hegemonic ideas.
Javed Ali, a professor at the University of Michigan, an expert on national security and intelligence, and a former member of the FBI said he believes Putin’s motivations for war are constantly evolving. “Now, it’s more about protecting or preserving this historical notion of a greater Russia, of what Ukraine used to be part of, the ethnic-speaking Russians that are still in Ukraine, and the cultural and historical ties and the economic importance of Ukraine to that greater Russia. Those are the narratives that Putin is holding on to now.”
Ali suggested that the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the Russian invasion of Ukraine share a commonality, and why the leaders of both countries chose war remains murky. “Whatever the initial justification was, there was some personal motivation for Putin that’s just as unclear as it is for the Iraq war decision with Bush,” said Ali.
Media Manipulation
On March 17, 2003, days before the U.S. occupation of Iraq, former President George W. Bush addressed the nation, justifying his decision to go to war. “Intelligence gathered by this, and other governments, leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. This regime has already used weapons of mass destruction against Iraq’s neighbors and against Iraq’s people.”
In the years since that speech, multiple reports and analyses, such as the Chilcot Inquiry, proved President Bush wrong and held that government officials exaggerated the threat of Saddam Hussein and his supposed arsenal of WMDs.
Yet, in the lead-up to the war, mainstream media outlets large and small helped cement the belief that Saddam Hussein harbored WMDs and that the war was one of necessity, not of choice. Editors ran stories with questionable sources and false information that was not properly vetted. Reporters were pressured by public opinion to act “patriotic,” and broadcast companies filled their airtime with U.S. government officials backing the war.
Jonathan Landay was one of the reporters who doubted the truthfulness of the Bush administration’s claims in 2003. He and his reporting team at Knight Ridder published stories that questioned the ramp-up to war, running counter to many national publications at the time. “They (reporters) did not question what senior officials were telling them… and the fact is that the senior officials were political appointees, political appointees have political agendas.”
Landay, who now works as a national security correspondent for Reuters, suggested the U.S. media was fed the wrong information from government sources, “On the one hand, they (Bush administration) go with the weapons of mass destruction, but they reject the intelligence assessment that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. And that was an argument that we [as reporters] were being told. Our sources were telling us all of this and whether or not the other organizations bothered to look into those questions, I can’t say.”
In 2023, Russian news organizations and their reporters do not have the freedom to question the legitimacy of the Ukrainian war and face punishment from security forces if they do. As an authoritarian regime with totalitarian tendencies, Putin’s Russia has little to no press freedom. According to Reporter Without Borders, almost all independent media have been banned since the invasion, and all others are subject to military censorship. With state-owned media like Russia Today controlling the public narrative, Russia is ranked 155 out of 180 countries on the World Press Freedom Index.
“Media manipulation, information warfare, as always, has long been a practice by states as part of their regular military operations. So, we’ll always see that,” explained Landay. “In the case of Ukraine, we can see where Russia has relied on misinformation and disinformation to try and legitimize its decision to invade. One example is an allegation that the United States was running secret bioweapon labs in Ukraine and doing all sorts of dastardly things. It’s disinformation that found its way from Russian mouthpieces to China where state media regurgitated these same false stories, and these same false stories were picked up other places around the world.”
Whether it’s the disinformation provided by the Kremlin or faulty intelligence released from the White House, the evidence shows that media outlets played a significant role in manipulating public support.
Resource Exploitation and War Profiting
A fact of Iraq war history that is often neglected is that the United States was anticipating one of the worst energy crises since the Arab oil embargo in the 1970s, as laid out in the National Energy Policy Development Group Report of 2001. The group was headed by Bush’s Vice President, Dick Cheney, who had previously served as chairman of Halliburton, a huge player in the oil and gas industry.
The report starts with a letter penned to Bush where Cheney mentions the need to “increase our energy supplies” and “increase our energy resources.” Iraq is a resource-rich country with the fifth-largest oil reserves and the twelfth-largest gas reserves in the world. Its oil industry was fully nationalized before the invasion, but within a few years following Operation Iraqi Freedom, it was largely privatized with foreign firms deriving huge benefits. American private contractors from Bechtel, Fluor, Parsons, and Halliburton, among others, reaped billions of dollars from reconstruction projects. In many cases, these contracts were either designated as no-bid or with very limited competition.
An estimated $60 billion to $200 billion was spent on post-war reconstruction efforts in Iraq. According to the Special Inspector General For Iraq Reconstruction Report of 2013, there was massive fraud, waste, and abuse of these funds. A report from the Costs of War project at Brown University puts the total cost of the Iraq war at around $2 trillion, but other estimates place the costs much higher.
“If you look today, 20 years to the war, and say, who is the economic winner of the war? It’s actually not the U.S., it’s China. It didn’t spend one penny on the war or didn’t have one soldier there. But if you look at the major contracts for oil for construction, it was won by China,” says Joseph Sassoon, Professor of History and Political Economy at Georgetown’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies.
According to MEED, a media publishing company covering Middle East business intelligence news, Chinese contractors in Iraq won “87 percent of all oil, gas, and power project contracts awarded in the country during 2022.”
Similar to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, President Putin has fueled Russia’s war and quelled domestic challenges with oil and gas revenues. His decision to invade Ukraine has triggered what can be considered a global financial crisis with rising inflation, disruption of long-standing coal, oil, and gas flows, and a series of sanctions.
Ukraine has Europe’s second-biggest gas reserves and is rich in iron, titanium, lithium, and other rare earth materials. According to the International Energy Agency, “Ukraine’s abundant coal reserves account for more than 90% of the country’s fossil fuel reserves….most coal in Ukraine is in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine in the regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, and Dnipropetrovsk.”
Putin’s initial advance into the Donbas, Luhansk, and Donetsk regions is where the country’s energy resources are concentrated. Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 had already opened up billions of dollars worth of natural assets in the Black Sea, now guarded by Russian naval forces. This could be considered Russia’s attempt at securing energy supplies for an uncertain future for worldwide energy consumption. Bush had a similar agenda during the uncertainty in global financial markets in the early 2000s.
According to a joint assessment by the Government of Ukraine, the World Bank, the European Commission, and the United Nations, “the cost of reconstruction and recovery in Ukraine has grown to US $411 billion.” This covers the one-year period up to the first anniversary of the invasion. These estimates make the reconstruction effort much more expensive than the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War II.
Last year, President Zelensky signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with a leading asset and investment management company, BlackRock, to design a roadmap for reconstruction efforts. A similar MoU was signed with U.S. investment bank JPMorgan Chase in February. Companies worldwide are positioning themselves to get lucrative contracts that can be considered a “gold rush.” A strong anti-corruption effort with reconstruction will need to be pursued to avoid repeating mistakes from Iraq.
International Reaction
The decision to invade and occupy Iraq in 2003 led to mixed reactions worldwide. Military operations initiated by the U.S. and its coalition force caused turbulence in NATO and undermined the authority of the United Nations. Strong voices of opposition were raised around the globe, including in France and Germany, who opposed the war under their pacifist agenda. Political commentators criticized the U.S. for acting selfishly and interrupting the process of international law. Hundreds and thousands of citizens from cities like Madrid and Lahore took to the streets in anti-war demonstrations.
Although many opposed the operation and some suggested the war was illegal, more than 45 countries offered military forces to combat the authoritarian regime. Countries like Poland and the United Kingdom even deployed troops to the battlefield as part of a multi-force coalition. The potential threat of WMDs, Saddam’s autocratic power, and Iraq’s alleged affiliation with al-Qaeda made it easier to justify the legitimacy of the invasion.
Today, Russia’s war in Ukraine has caused a similar, if not more, negative reaction. The UN general assembly approved a resolution demanding Russia’s unconditional and immediate withdrawal from Ukraine. NATO has condemned Russia’s aggression on Ukraine as an unprovoked and brutal act, accusing it of disrupting international law and undermining international security. Public opinion on Putin’s Russia has also plummeted after the initial military operation. According to a 2022 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, “a median of 90% of adults across 18 surveyed countries said they had no confidence in Russia’s president to do the right thing regarding world affairs, while a median of just 9% had confidence in him. Ratings for Putin reached record lows in every nation with available trend data.”
What Putin lacked compared to Bush was the support of other nations. Putin’s operation in Ukraine united Western nations and NATO. When asked about Putin facing the stronger alliance and expansion of NATO, Ali suggested that it is a consequence Putin did not foresee. Under Western support, Ukraine has resisted Russia’s aggression for more than a year and is stuck in the conflict without a clear exit strategy.
Additionally, with Finland now entering NATO, Russia must contend with a new adversary nation on its border.
“I would have to think it is Putin’s worst nightmare that NATO has now gotten even bigger as a result of this campaign that he launched,” Ali explained on where Russia stands on the world stage. “On the flip side, Russia has brought together countries like Iran, North Korea, and China. Not at a coalition level, but maybe at a bilateral level, in a way that probably the West didn’t anticipate, either.”
The Road Ahead
With diverging reports on casualties and a strong standoff between the two nations, it is unclear how long the Russia-Ukraine war will continue. The Iraq war, spanning nearly a decade, was filled with similar uncertainty following the initial advance into the country. Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), a transitional government following the U.S. invasion of Iraq and labeled as “Bush’s man in Iraq,” recently shared a personal anecdote with these reporters about the prolonged stay in Iraq. “Me and the President, we were both athletes. I told him, ‘Mr. President, this is a marathon, not a race’,” he said. President Putin has warned that the war with Ukraine could be lengthy. Still, with China intermediating and casualties on both sides piling up, this marathon is one that the Russian President is in no rush to finish.
Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba visited Iraq on April 17 to garner political support from the Middle East. He stood beside Iraq’s foreign minister, Fuad Hussein, who emphasized the importance of de-escalating the situation, “Wars end with negotiation and dialogue; that’s why we believe in the language of dialogue.”
Transgender service members say whiplash in policy has taken a toll on their financial stability, mental wellness
WASHINGTON — Kora Delta was one of thousands of U.S. troops who helped evacuate more than 100,000 people from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021. The mission came as she was awaiting gender-affirming care, a few months after the Biden administration announced that transgender people could serve openly in the military, reversing a Trump-era policy.
“I still put my best foot forward and we still got those people out of that country,” said Delta, an Air Force command and control battle management operator. “I was at my worst. I still acted for my country.”
Delta is one of the thousands of openly transgender service members who would be prohibited from serving in the military as part of new legislation introduced in Congress.
The legislation, dubbed the Ensuring Military Readiness Act and introduced by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) would largely disqualify transgender individuals from serving in the military; companion legislation introduced by Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) is being considered in the House this week. Rubio has long been a vocal opponent of policies that aim to increase diversity or protect LGBTQ people from discrimination.
While the legislation has little chance of passing the Democratic-controlled Senate and becoming law, it represents an ever-present spectre of policy reversal hanging over the transgender community. If a conservative Republican captures the White House in 2024, they could use executive action, as the Trump administration did, to re-impose the ban.
Transgender service members and veterans say the whiplash in policy over the last six years — from the Trump-era ban to the Biden administration revoking it to the new legislation — has taken a toll on their financial stability, mental wellness and long-term planning.
David Stacy, who leads the federal policy team at the nonprofit advocacy group Human Rights Campaign, said Republicans are also likely to propose amendments on the issue during the debate on the annual defense policy bill later this year. However, he said Democrats in the upper chamber would likely block any action on transgender military service.
“The bottom line is we don’t expect this bill to move, although who knows if the House Republicans decide to bring it to the floor,” Stacy said. “I’m cautiously optimistic that we would have a majority of both chambers that would be in favor of continuing the effective current policy and not making a change here.”
As the House Armed Services Committee decides whether to move companion legislation forward in the House, its personnel subcommittee is also set to hear testimony from military leaders on related issues Thursday, signaling that the military’s diversity policies remain a top issue for Republicans.
The hearing, titled “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Impacts to the Department of Defense and the Armed Services,” will focus on the impact of DEI policy on the military’s readiness, lethality, and cohesion, per the committee.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), one of the bill’s original cosponsors, contends that allowing transgender people to serve sows division within the military.
“We’ve got to go by an agenda that people understand, that they believe in, and I think this has caused us problems,” Tuberville said. “You know, being a former coach and coaching teams, you don’t need anything that causes division. I think this is gonna cause division.”
After former President Donald Trump tweeted his opposition to allowing transgender people to serve in July 2017 and later followed through, his administration faced a wave of legal challenges from civil rights organizations challenging the ban. With the approval of the Supreme Court, transgender people were largely prohibited from enlisting in the military beginning in April 2019, and those already serving were mostly required to serve in their sex assigned at birth.
One of President Joe Biden’s first executive actions upon taking office in 2021 was to repeal the ban and prohibit discharges from the military based on gender identity. Since 2021, transgender individuals have been able to serve openly in the military, but many say the fight is far from over.
The legislation introduced by Banks and Rubio comes on the heels of a wave of state bills from Republican elected officials targeting transgender people, including bans on participation in school sports and barriers to gender-affirming care.
“This is part and parcel of a larger legislative effort we are seeing across the country in various states to exclude transgender people and write them out of equal access to very public spaces or healthcare,” said Kara Ingelhart, a senior attorney at LGBTQ civil rights organization Lambda Legal. “That’s incredibly harmful to the entire community and everyone who loves and supports them, especially young people who are looking up at elected officials for an example of how to be and how to envision their futures.”
The bill faces an uphill battle in both the Senate and the House, where Republicans hold a narrow majority.
Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.), who was an outspoken critic of the Trump administration’s policy, said Republicans should be ashamed of themselves for attacking transgender service members.
“The trans troop ban is a bigoted and ignorant policy that is a slap in the face to courageous trans Americans who serve and seek to serve our country in uniform,” Wexton said in a statement to Medill News Service.
Biden is also expected to veto the legislation if it were to make its way through Congress, but Ingelhart said simply debating the validity of gender identity does harm to transgender individuals, who are at higher risk for mental health challenges.
Studies have found that transgender individuals are up to six times as likely as the general population to have been hospitalized for a suicide attempt.
The bill’s opponents argue that banning transgender people, who are about twice as likely as the general population to have served in the military, excludes a critical population from enlisting when the armed forces are consistently struggling to meet recruitment goals. The Army missed its goal last year by 25%.
Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD, said the bill has the potential to impede military strength.
“This legislation imposes a baseless and discriminatory restriction that harms our national security,” Ellis said in a statement to Medill News Service. “Transgender Americans have been serving openly for years and their service and sacrifice make our military and our entire country stronger.”
Research undertaken in 2020 by the Palm Center, an independent think tank that focused on LGBTQ+military issues, concluded that the Trump-era ban harmed military readiness by impeding recruitment, retention, cohesion and morale in the military, in addition to hurting the military’s reputation.
Those who support the proposed ban argue that the issue is discouraging many potential recruits from enlisting. Conservatives are also slamming Biden’s reversal as one of many unneeded diversity initiatives pushed by the Pentagon.
Jon Schweppe, director of policy and government affairs at the American Principles Project, a conservative think tank that has endorsed Rubio’s bill, said people from the South who disproportionately join the military are skeptical of new policies such as the Biden administration’s stance on transgender service.
“We want to make sure we have a full fighting force,” Schweppe said. “But I would actually posit that this direction the military has gone, which is very out of step with the American people… and probably hurting recruitment numbers.”
A RAND Corporation study commissioned by the Department of Defense in 2015 found that “there has been no significant effect of openly serving transgender service members on cohesion, operational effectiveness, or readiness” in 18 foreign countries.
Transgender service members and veterans, however, note the benefits they offer the military, including diversity of perspectives.
Alleria Stanley, director of communications at SPARTA, a transgender military advocacy organization, said allowing transgender people to serve strengthens the military beyond just expanding the recruiting pool.
“There are no negative impacts to our deployability, and the diversity that we bring brings increased readiness and increased lethality,” said Stanley, who served in the Army for 20 years. “By our diversity, we increase additional ideas, perspectives and insights from our unique points of view.”
Delta also said that, in addition to the diversity brought by transgender service members, permitting them to serve openly allows troops to serve to the best of their ability.
“Once people transition and become their true selves, there’s not a mental block that they have. They can be their true selves” Delta said. “With that they become exceptional. They soar above everyone else. They become absolute rock stars. They become an even better, stronger, faster, more intellectual performer than they previously were.”
In making the argument that allowing transgender people to serve harms military strength, conservatives have also likened gender dysphoria to other physical and mental conditions that disqualify individuals from enlisting, such as peanut allergies and ADHD.
“Americans who were treated for ADHD in the past two years must receive a waiver to enlist,” Banks said in a statement about the new bill. “Our military holds recruits to stringent medical standards for a reason and the Biden administration’s special carveout for those suffering from gender dysphoria was purely political.”
Danni Askini, co-executive director of national programs at Gender Justice League, said this comparison runs contrary to the current consensus in the scientific community.
The American Psychological Association and the World Health Organization no longer classify gender dysphoria as a mental disorder, and the American Medical Association explains transgender identities as “normal variations of human identity and expression.”
“It’s specious and frankly disgusting that people would try to liken being a transgender person to having a disease. [It] shows an immense amount of ignorance about — and a lack of relationship to — transgender people,” Askini said.
It remains unclear whether culture war issues like restricting the ability of trans people to participate in sports or seek gender-affirming care as minors is a winning issue for Republicans. Even as many Republican candidates highlighted these issues in the 2022 midterm elections, less than 5% of voters surveyed by the Human Rights Campaign after the elections identified them as motivators at the ballot box.
Stacy said that in the midterm election cycle, the salience of transgender issues diminished significantly from Republican primaries to general elections, noting the tenacity of public support for allowing transgender people to serve in the military.
Public opinion polling has consistently found that a substantial majority of Americans — including veterans, military families and active duty troops — support allowing transgender individuals to serve.
While Schweppe acknowledged that Democrats have at times succeeded at framing the debate over transgender military service in a way that benefits them, he remains confident Republicans will ultimately win voters over on the issue.
“Ultimately, when we’re talking about fighting what I would call a really dangerous and destructive ideology, I think we are winning, in large part because once people know the consequences of how this has been impacting society, how this is impacting kids, schools, all that, they really don’t like it,” he said.
As the future of transgender military service comes under debate, though, advocates say troops’ economic stability and freedom to pursue their plans are threatened.
Askini pointed out the importance of military service as an economic opportunity and a stabilizing force for many people, including transgender troops. With estimates placing the number of transgender people serving in the military around 15,000 as of 2018, the military remains the largest employer of transgender people in the country.
Specialist Adrian Daniel, the first transgender person to transition in the Mississippi Army National Guard, said he hopes to remain in service for the foreseeable future but could not continue to do so if he were forced to serve in his sex assigned at birth.
“It really made my heart drop because I want to retire out of the military,” Daniel said of the new legislation. “And that’s always been my dream. But at the same time, I’m not going to fight for a country that’s taken my rights away.”
Activists said transgender people should not be dissuaded by elected officials who aim to limit their ability to serve.
“There are activists and lawyers who are out there who are going to fight these fights and people should continue to make the plans that they want to make, pursue their dreams and pursue their careers and opportunities without having to fear or think about stupid legislation like this, because it will never become law,” Askini said. “We will never let it.”
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WASHINGTON — The National Gallery of Art opened up its doors last Thursday night for an evening of music and dancing.
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Ashburn, Va. — William Hennessy has worked as a court artist for over 40 years. He began in 1982, covering the Senate before C-SPAN coverage began.
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read more‘Raise revenue or cut benefits’: Budget Committee members debate future sources of Medicare funding
WASHINGTON – Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, advocated for a bill he introduced in April that would fund Medicare for decades to come, according to an estimate released last week from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Office of the Actuary, in a hearing Wednesday morning.
While the proposal did not garner much Republican support, there is no clear consensus from the minority party on how to sustain Medicare for future generations. Still, committee members were able to find common ground on the prevalence of tax loopholes and the opportunity to save costs in the program — though they disagreed on solutions.
“We face simple arithmetic, raise revenue or cut benefits,” Sen. Whitehouse said. “Those are the options if we are to preserve Medicare. If we abide by what seems like a bipartisan commitment not to cut benefits, we must safeguard Medicare by raising revenue.”
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The Medicare and Social Security Fair Share Act proposes implementing a 1.2% tax increase — from 3.8% to 5% — for those earning income exceeding $400,000 a year. However, raising revenue for Medicare through higher taxes is not a popular idea among Republicans on the committee.
“I think the chairman and so many Democrats are pretty much one-trick ponies associated with Medicare; the only solution is increasing taxes,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said. “I don’t think we ever generate revenue by increasing taxes because it harms economic growth.”
A lack of a concrete Republican proposal poses a challenge for policy debates to happen, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said.
“When Paul Ryan was the chairman of the Budget Committee, he put forward a plan,” he said. “I disagreed with it, but I credit him and his colleagues with putting forward an idea. There’s no idea right now, apparently, in terms of the Republican Budget Committee.”
The bill would also expand Medicare’s reach by taxing investment income in addition to wages and salaries. This policy aims to prevent hedge funds and private equity firms from escaping Medicare taxes, which many have been able to do legally under current regulations.
“Closing this loophole would just mean that the labor of hedge fund managers would be taxed similarly to workers who are employed at the same companies these hedge fund managers are investing in,” said Chye-Ching Huang, executive director of the Tax Law Center at the New York University School of Law.
An important component of reforms aimed at closing loopholes, she said, is maintaining IRS base discretionary funding so that they can investigate taxpayers who are exploiting the system. Ms. Huang said she has seen signs of bipartisan support for closing the loopholes wealthy payers use to evade Medicare taxes.
Sen. Whitehouse said “faint outlines of progress began to emerge” during the committee today. Lawmakers on both sides expressed support for raising revenue and saving costs in Medicare, he said.
He said the bipartisan standing ovation at the 2023 State of the Union Address when President Joe Biden pledged to continue funding Medicare should offer some hope that the two parties can work together toward finding a solution.
Yellen assures lawmakers that banking system is ‘sound’ while pledging collaboration with Congress on budget
WASHINGTON – Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Thursday offered reassurances to lawmakers and the American public, pledging that the “banking system remains sound” as concerns over the stability of the U.S. financial system continue to mount.
The recent decision to shut down two at-risk lenders has prompted questions about the overall health of global institutions, particularly in light of the recent crisis experienced by Silicon Valley Bank, with was the 16th largest bank in the country in terms of deposits.
Yellen, who was testifying before the Senate Committee on Finance, remained steadfast in her confidence in the financial system, highlighting the resilience of the U.S. banking industry and the measures in place to safeguard against such crises.
“I can reassure the members of the committee that our banking system remains sound and that Americans can feel confident that their deposits will be there when they need them,” Yellen said. She explained that the FDIC insures deposits up to $250,000 per account and that the agency has successfully protected bank customers during past financial crises.
She faced sharp questions from lawmakers about the terms of the rescue for troubled banks. Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) questioned whether a community bank in his home state of Oklahoma would get the “same treatment as SVB Bank just got.”
Yellen responded that such a rescue would only happen if federal regulators as well as the Treasury secretary and the president determine that “the failure to protect uninsured depositors would create a systemic risk and significant economic and financial consequences.”
Yellen was initially invited to testify about President Joe Biden’s budget proposal for the 2024 fiscal year, which was released last week. Yellen said the budget seeks to increase taxes for the wealthy to strengthen Social Security and Medicare. She also discussed the ongoing inflation.
Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) criticized the $6.8 trillion budget proposed by Biden, calling it “short-sighted and partisan.” He also raised concerns about the president’s reluctance to negotiate with Republicans regarding fiscal policies related to the new extension of the debt ceiling.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) was equally critical and emphasized the need to address the budget proposal in a bipartisan approach, something he believes “seems uninteresting” to the president.
But Yellen attempted to refute any claims of Biden’s administration ignoring the Republican perspective. She reassured lawmakers that the president is willing to involve both sides of the government in discussions regarding the budget and other decision processes.
She also emphasized the importance of continued collaboration and cooperation between the administration and members of Congress in addressing fiscal matters and ensuring the financial system’s stability. “He stands ready to work with Congress,” she said.
SOTU: Health Care
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump said Tuesday that Congress should approve his plan to replace Obamacare with a new health care program that would provide “affordable alternative” insurance options and criticized Democrats for trying to impose “a socialist takeover of our health care system.”
“A good life for American families requires the most affordable, innovative and high-quality health care system on earth,” Trump said in his third State of the Union address.
Trump said he has proposed health care plans that would be up to 60% cheaper than the Affordable Care Act plans. Both the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services did not respond when asked if a specific replacement plan has existed or ever will.
The president blamed Democrats for not providing the American people with the health care reforms he has promised.
“As we work to improve Americans’ health care, there are those who want to take away your health care, take away your doctor, and abolish private insurance entirely,” said Trump, referring to the Democrats.
Democrats stood up at this comment, pointed their fingers at Trump and shouted “YOU.”
Trump said 130 Democrats endorse legislation to impose a “socialist takeover” of the health care system by “taking away the private health insurance plans of 180 million.”
Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., are pushing for a “Medicare for All” plan that would end private health insurance while other candidates like former Vice President Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., are pushing to expand on Obamacare.
“We will never let socialism destroy American health care,” Trump said.
Trump emphasized the administration’s efforts to protect patients with pre-existing conditions, to which Democrats threw up their hands and shook their heads in disagreement. Led by House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Senate and House Democrats brought more than 80 patients, doctors and health care advocates from across the country as guests to the speech.
“President Trump will speak to an audience filled with Americans who are suffering because of his broken promises on prescription drug costs and his all-out assault on Americans with preexisting conditions,” Pelosi said in a press release Tuesday morning.
The president also called upon Congress to pass legislation to lower prescription drug prices.
“Get a bill to my desk, and I will sign it into law without delay,” the president said.
Democrats responded to this by booing and holding up three fingers to represent H.R. 3, legislation proposed by the late Rep. Elijah E. Cummings that would require the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to negotiate certain drug prices. The bill has been on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s desk for over a month after being passed in the House.
Generic prescription drug prices dropped 1% in 2018, the first price drop in 45 years, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Trump said it was the first time in 51 years. Brand-name drug prices, however, are still increasing.
Trump said the administration will continue to make health care more transparent by requiring hospitals to make their prices negotiated with insurers public and easily accessible online. He also pointed to the passage of administration-backed legislation called “Right to Try,” which allows terminally ill patients access to drugs not fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration if they feel they have tried all other options.
He also said he has launched new initiatives to improve care for Americans with kidney disease, Alzheimer’s and those struggling with mental health challenges, in addition to pursuing new cures for childhood cancer and AIDS.
The House Ways and Means Committee will hold a hearing Wednesday afternoon to further discuss Trump’s health care policies and overcoming pharmaceutical barriers in particular.
Trump Sticks By Wall in State of the Union Address
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump’s call for a wall to secure America’s southern border in his State of the Union address Tuesday night was no surprise to opponents.
Jennifer Johnson, the policy director at the Southern Border Communities Coalition, said Trump continually characterizes the southern border as a violent area.
“More of a reality check, these are families and children seeking protection, fleeing spiraling violence and poverty,” she said.
Chris Montoya, who served as a Customs and Border Protection agent for 21 years, said that “crime rates are pretty low in border cities. Being a border patrol agent is one of the safest law enforcement jobs. All those things together means a safe border.”
Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y., invited as his guest a mother who had been separated from her children at the border.
Other Democrats brought undocumented immigrants as their guests, including Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif., and Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-N.J.
Rep. Sheila Jackson, D-Texas, was enthusiastic about their attendance at the address. “Their presence here today is representative of the big tent that America is,” she said.
In his address, Trump attributed what he called at crisis at the border to America’s “reduced jobs, lower wages, overburdened schools, and hospitals that are so crowded you can’t get in.” He referenced San Diego and El Paso as being cities that were once violent, and now safe with the addition of physical barriers.
Trump also mentioned the prevalence of MS-13 within the country. “They almost all come through our Southern border,” he said.
Montoya said MS-13 members do enter through the southern border on rare occasions, but it is uncommon for CBP agents to make an arrest.
Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin is the ranking member on the Senate Subcommittee for Border Security and Immigration. He said nothing changed in Trump’s rhetoric. “If we’re waiting on him, we’re not going to get this solved,” he said.
Washingtonians alternately protest, celebrate the State of the Union
WASHINGTON – DC-area residents had very different reactions to President Donald Trump’s second State of the Union address Tuesday night. But whether they celebrated or denounced the event, emotions were strong.
Around 40-50 people gathered at each of two intersections near the Capitol ahead of the address — far fewer than the 400 people who protested last year, according to Resist DC, the community action group that organized both years’ protests.
People lined the sidewalks along the streets that President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and other Trump cabinet members’ motorcades were expected pass by. They held homemade signs lit with string lights so they would be visible to government officials in their cars and chanted anti-Trump messages to music and drums.
Eileen Minarick, 70, said she was protesting simply “because the state of our union is terrible.”
Elsewhere in the city, local bar patrons gathered to drink beer, compete in presidential bingo and watch the State of the Union.
Grassroots activist group CODEPINK hosted a number of guest speakers, including actor Danny Glover, for a lively discussion before the main event. Topics ranged from the Bolivarian revolution to ending domestic violence.
Anita Jenkins, spokeswoman for Stand Up for Democracy, riled the crowd with a call to establish the District of Columbia the 51st state in the United States.
“The people of D.C. have no representation… We have nobody to speak for us,” she said. Modifying the words of America’s early founders, she said, “Taxation without representation is a rip-off.”
As President Trump appeared on the projector, shouts of disapproval rose from the bar patrons. The State of the Union 2019 had begun and the energy was energetic in its moroseness.
Across town, the atmosphere was also charged. Members of DC Young Republicans and Arlington Falls Church Young Republicans filled a restaurant for a celebratory viewing party.
“In the past, most of the people in this room voted for a wall… but the proper wall never got built,” said Donald Trump. He paused and then said, “I’ll get it built.” Hoots and hollers erupted in the bar and two girls were seen smiling and hugging each other.
Though Trump stressed unity in his national address, DC-area residents remained divided in their reactions.
2020 Candidates Alternate Cheers, Hisses to Trump Wall, Immigration Proposals during State of Union
WASHINGTON – Several Democratic 2020 presidential candidates expressed their displeasure with many of President Donald Trump’s policies during the State of the Union address Tuesday.
Sens. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., could be seen shaking their heads when Trump mentioned controversial topics such as his commitment to building a border wall and the dangers of migrant caravans heading to the U.S. southern border.
Harris, who announced her candidacy on Jan. 21, shook her head and visibly mouthed, “They’re not,” as Trump said, “Large, organized caravans are on the march to the United States.”
In a Facebook Live address before the State of the Union, Harris told viewers, “It’s a moment for a president to rise above politics and unite the country with a vision that includes all Americans, not just the ones who may have voted for them. It’s a moment to bring us together.”
Early in the address, Harris was often reluctant to give Trump a standing ovation, asking her colleagues, “Really?” as they cheered the president’s comments about space exploration.
The candidates and their Democratic colleagues booed and hissed as Trump labeled the numerous investigations into his campaign finance and relationship with Russia “ridiculous partisan investigations.”
“If there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation,” he said. “It just doesn’t work that way!”
Democrats cheered later as Trump mentioned that women have filled 58 percent of new jobs in the past year. New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who has formed a presidential exploratory committee, pointed at the newly elected House Democrats, who stood up and chanted, “USA, USA.”
“I think he didn’t realize that all the female jobs he created were for [congresswomen],” Gillibrand said after the speech.
The Democratic candidates stood and applauded with everyone in the chamber when Trump recognized World War II veterans, a SWAT team member and a childhood cancer survivor.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., sat stoically as Trump denounced socialism. Sanders, who calls himself a democratic socialist, is widely considered likely e to enter the presidential race. Unlike Sanders, Gillibrand and Harris stood and applauded as Trump said, “America will never be a socialist country.”
TRUMP STRIKES CHORD WITH WOMEN, FALLS FLAT ON BIPARTISAN BORDER WALL PITCH
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump got one of his biggest rounds of applause during his State of the Union address Tuesday night when he noted that Congress now has a record-high number of elected women, but it wasn’t lost on the crowd that when the women rose to cheer they were mostly on the Democratic side of the aisle.
“Americans can be proud that we have more women in the workforce than ever before,” Trump said as the women lawmakers rose to clap and celebrate. He then advised them “Don’t sit. You’re going to like this.”
“Exactly one century after the Congress passed the constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote, we also have more women serving in the Congress than at any time before,” he said. There were 117 women elected to Congress in 2018.
Bipartisan chants of “USA! USA!” filled the chamber as both the Democrats and Republicans broke into uproarious applause. Many of the Democratic women wore white and donned pins that read “ERA YES,” in a nod to the women of the suffragette movement.
Trump called his list of priorities “the agenda of the American people” in his second State of the Union address Tuesday, which was delayed a week because of the 35-day government shutdown, which didn’t end until the previous Friday. The address was the first the president has delivered before the new Democratic majority in the House.
The president remained on-script for the duration of the 84-minute speech and touted his administration’s achievements from the past two years. He also laid out several legislative priorities going forward, including a “smart, strategic, see-through steel barrier,” an infrastructure bill and the eradication of HIV and AIDS.
Rep. French Hill, R-Ark., was glad that health care was a topic in the speech, while Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., described the speech as “terrific.”
“We haven’t gotten that right when it comes to protection our citizens with pre-existing conditions, correcting all the problems and costs associated with the ACA,” French said. “I like that he kept an emphasis on that while also tackling the prescription drug process.”
For Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., laying out these broad initiatives wasn’t enough.
“I wrote down a number of initiatives — defense spending, cancer research, transportation, infrastructure — and never heard anything of how we’re going to pay for them,” he said.
The president also pushed his plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria and to reduce drastically the number of troops in Afghanistan.
Among Democrats, reactions were mixed as Trump highlighted his achievements. When Trump lauded the U.S. increase in gas and oil production, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who has championed a Green New Deal to address accelerating climate change, remained seated.
Many Democrats applauded Trump’s push for a new infrastructure bill and decision to withdraw troops from Syria and Afghanistan.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who sat behind Trump with Vice President Mike Pence, was clearly following a printed version of the speech. She applauded when Trump mentioned criminal justice reform and bipartisan efforts on lowering drug costs and furthering women’s rights.
After praising a recent bipartisan effort to secure criminal justice reform, Trump shifted to a project he said would require the same bipartisan effort: a southern border wall.
“Simply put, walls work and walls save lives,” he said. “So let’s work together, compromise and reach a deal that will truly make America safe.”
However, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, was not encouraged by the president’s attempt to strike a bipartisan tone.
“I just don’t think he is to be trusted,” she said. “This is not a president who is working for the middle class of this country.”
Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., said that while parts of Trump’s speech were good, he was too combative at times.
“There should have been more emphasis on the fact that the government was shut down and we all need to work together to bring it back,” he said. “Blaming the Democrats is not going to keep the government open.”
Freshmen members of Congress excited, disappointed at their first State of the Union address
WASHINGTON — Before attending his first State of the Union address, Rep. Jefferson Van Drew, D-N.J., felt a sense of excitement and joy, but also feared the president might once again fan partisan flames by rehashing controversial issues.
“I hope that right now, he doesn’t talk about closing the government again. I hope he doesn’t talk right now about declaring a national emergency. I would so much rather see that we try to work together and get something done. That requires flexibility on Democrats side as well. Both sides have to do this,” said Van Drew.
Partisanship is the reason the approval rating for Congress is so low, but issues like border security, and infrastructure deserve cooperation between the two parties, said Van Drew.
“Rather than just argue and disagree and investigative and be hurtful on both sides, maybe we can actually get something get done.”
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Chris Pappas, D-N.H.
Although having been full-fledged members of Congress for a little over a month, the freshmen class of senators and representatives still retains a “sense of awe” about the State of the Union address, said Rep. Chris Pappas, D-N.H. Pappas said he hoped Trump would strike a conciliatory tone with Democrats, allowing lawmakers to avoid a second government shutdown.
Pappas brought a transgender military veteran from his home state to hear the president as a symbol of his hope that Trump’s transgender military service ban will be lifted.
“That doesn’t make us any safer and in fact plays politics with the military,” he said.
In addition to passing social justice reform, Pappas said he would like Trump to speak about the opioid crisis, prescription drug costs and infrastructure — and Trump did.
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Rep. Sean Casten, D-Ill.
In Illinois Rep. Sean Casten’s dreams, Trump’s State of the Union address would make climate change a priority, but said his expectations were low. Trump did not in fact mention the environment.
“Truth is what I hope he doesn’t say is what I fear he will say,” Casten said, “which is that he’s going to threaten to shut down the government again if he doesn’t get a wall.”
Casten’s guest was Julie Caribeaux, the executive director of Family Shelter Service, which receives federal aid and provides support for victims of domestic abuse. He said domestic violence victims are some of the “primary victims” of Trump’s rhetoric.
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Anthony Brindisi, D-N.Y.
Rep. Anthony Brindisi, D-NY, was hoping for a message of bipartisanship and unity, things that “the American people are calling for.” Trump did call on Congress to act together on many issues.
Brindisi’s top priorities this year are trying to find common ground with the Republicans on immigration reform, infrastructure and lowering prescription drug costs. On infrastructure, he said he specifically wanted to hear Trump’s ideas on investing in job training programs. Trump mentioned all the issues, but with little specificity except that he wants a border wall and enforcement to stop what he called “caravans of migrants” heading to the southern border.
“Those are things that I talked about during the campaign that many people back in upstate New York are calling for and those are things I hope he does say,” Brindisi said.
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Rep. Susie Lee, D-Nev.
Rep. Susie Lee, D-Nev., said she gets excited every time she walks onto the House floor, and Tuesday was no exception. Although there were parts of the speech she did not agree with, namely Trump’s insistence on a border wall, Lee said she appreciated the call for bipartisanship.
Lowering prescription drug prices, investing in infrastructure and a comprehensive border control strategy — these are all components of his speech Lee said she could agree with.
“These are all ideas I can get behind and they work together to produce some results for American families,” she said.
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Rep. Deb Halaand, D-N.M.
Rep. Deb Haaland, D-N.M., said she was dismayed about Trump’s urgency regarding funding for a border wall.
“I wasn’t surprised. Let’s put it that way about the president’s speech. I mean, of course, we don’t want a wall,” said Halland. “He instilled fear and everybody about the danger, you know, the danger that’s coming across the border.”
Haaland hopes to focus on promoting awareness about climate change and wished the President would be more receptive to the diverse issues and people around the country.
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Rep. Chuy Garcia, D-Ill., said he enjoyed his first State of the Union in a historical sense, but wanted President Trump to address issues he feels are important, including raising the minimum wage and healthcare.
Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, D-Ill.
He said while the president did mention lowering prescription drug costs, there was another area of healthcare that was not noted, such as the millions who do not have healthcare at all.
“He wrapped himself around a lot of patriotism and recognition of your courageous battles and victories and but in the end, I think he failed to address important things more,” Garcia said.
Post-SOTU Interviews with Illinois Democratic Reps. Jan Schakowski and Cheri Bustos
Our Alex Lederman sat down with Illinois Democratic Reps. Jan Schakowski and Cheri Bustos after the State of the Union to hear their thoughts on President Obama’s address.
Schakowski — Evanston’s congresswoman since 1999 — said “(Obama)’s vision of what makes our country strong was so human and so true.”
Bustos said Obama is focused on the future — our children and grandchildren — and working together to solve the nation’s problems.
Medill’s State of the Union night on social media
Medill on the Hill produces live State of the Union broadcast
WASHINGTON — It was the third day of reporting for the 21 students in Medill on the Hill. It also happened to be the day the president would deliver his final State of the Union address.
Months ago, buoyed by the excitement of the possibilities and the folly of youth, some of us came up with the idea of taking Medill on the Hill to a new level — producing live TV while also finding new ways of storytelling for the website and social media.
On State of the Union night, Jan. 12, the Washington web team led by Alex Duner and Celena Chong managed the flow of copy and constant web updates streaming in from reporters around Capitol Hill and elsewhere in D.C. There also was a constant stream of @medillonthehill tweets and snapchats as well as several Periscopes.
Tyler Kendall, Allyson Chiu and Shane McKeon were responsible for the main story, and Chiu said the experience was, “the highlight” of her journalism career.
“It was hectic, crazy and we were definitely all running on adrenaline by the end of the night,” she said.
Other reporters were assigned to stories on specific issues the president mentioned, or how local college students reacted to the speech. One even tweeted the speech in Spanish.
My task was to produce the Washington end of a live television broadcast.
Nine months ago Jesse Kirsch came back from 2015 Medill on the Hill with an idea for Carlin McCarthy, another producer with the Northwestern News Network, and me.
He said, with the optimism of a television anchor, that for the 2016 State of the Union we should produce a live broadcast with analysts at our home studio in Evanston and reporters in our D.C. bureau and on Capitol Hill. I said, with the skepticism of a television producer, that I thought he was crazy.
It took long nights, patience and a lot of support from the Medill faculty and staff, but we pulled it off.
Jesse opened the show in Evanston and before we knew it Isabella Gutierrez was doing a live hit from the Washington bureau. Then we were live in Statuary Hall with Noah Fromson, followed by a live report from graduate student Ryan Holmes on what to watch for just minutes before we streamed the live feed of President Barack Obama addressing a joint session of Congress for his final State of the Union.
We did a live interviews with Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin, wrote scripts while we counted down the seconds until they were read and gathered quotes from senators and members of Congress. Alex Lederman also provided quick-turn video interviews with two congresswomen.
Associate Producer Geordan Tilley, who interviewed Durbin, was nervous before the show, but she said she is proud of the Medill effort.
“I thought the show was some of our best work, Tilley said. “Especially considering how many firsts were involved, not the least of which was our first time going live.”
Medill Today | September 28, 2023
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