“a notoriously right-wing federal appeals court attempted to rewrite a federal law that, among other things, requires most US hospitals to provide abortions to patients who are experiencing a medical emergency if a doctor determines that an abortion will stabilize the patient.
The case is Texas v. Becerra, and all three of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s judges who joined this opinion were appointed by Republicans. Two, including Kurt Engelhardt, the opinion’s author, were appointed by former President Donald Trump.
The case involves the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), a federal statute requiring hospitals that accept Medicare funds to provide “such treatment as may be required to stabilize the medical condition” of “any individual” who arrives at the hospital’s ER with an “emergency medical condition.” (In limited circumstances, the hospital may transfer the patient to a different facility that will provide this stabilizing treatment.)
EMTALA contains no carve-out for abortion. It simply states that, whenever any patient arrives at a Medicare-funded hospital with a medical emergency, the hospital must offer that patient whatever treatment is necessary to “stabilize the medical condition” that caused the emergency. So, if a patient’s emergency condition can only be stabilized by an abortion, federal law requires nearly all hospitals to provide that treatment. (Hospitals can opt out of EMTALA by not taking Medicare funds but, because Medicare funds health care for elderly Americans, very few hospitals do opt out.)
This federal law, moreover, also states that it overrides (or “preempts,” to use the appropriate legal term) state and local laws “to the extent that the [state law] directly conflicts with a requirement of this section.” So, in states with sweeping abortion bans that prohibit some or all medically necessary abortions, the state law must give way to EMTALA’s requirement that all patients must be offered whatever treatment is necessary to stabilize their condition.”
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“when an emergency room patient presents with a life-threatening illness or condition — or, in the words of the EMTALA statute, that patient has a condition that places their health “in serious jeopardy,” that threatens “serious impairment to bodily functions,” or “serious dysfunction of any bodily organ or part” — then Medicare-funded hospitals must provide whatever treatment is necessary.
The Texas case, in other words, asks whether a state government can force a woman to die, or suffer lasting injury to her uterus or other reproductive organs, because the state’s lawmakers are so opposed to abortion that they will not permit it, even when such an abortion is required by federal law.
And yet, despite the fact that the EMTALA statute is unambiguous, and despite the fact that this case only involves patients whose life or health is threatened by a pregnancy, three Fifth Circuit judges told those patients that they have no right to potentially lifesaving medical care.”
“Many providers like Balay see an obvious link between rising congenital syphilis rates and sparse access to obstetric care (i.e., care for pregnant people, also called maternity or prenatal care). That’s largely because, historically, prenatal care is where syphilis transmission to a fetus has been interrupted. Testing is standard in prenatal care, and all but eight states require syphilis testing during pregnancy.
The problem is simple, as Balay explains. “There just is not enough obstetric care,” she said. And as prenatal care becomes increasingly scarce, so do opportunities to catch and treat syphilis.
Balay is not alone in thinking that scarcity helps explain what’s happening with congenital syphilis, especially among Indigenous Americans.
In a recent CDC report, 37 percent of US babies with syphilis were born to parents who didn’t get timely syphilis testing during pregnancy. But that number was higher, 47 percent, when the parents were American Indian. And most of those parents who didn’t get timely testing didn’t get any prenatal care at all.
In rural states, increasingly inadequate maternity care access is making intensified mother-to-child syphilis transmission all but inevitable. That puts Indigenous women and their newborns at especially high risk.”
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“One of the most promising solutions to South Dakota’s maternal care scarcity problem got a boost last year when the state’s voters approved an initiative to expand Medicaid beginning in early 2023. The expansion means more than 52,000 of the state’s residents are newly insured, which shifts the costs of their care from IHS to a better-funded federal program. It also means that hospitals caring for these patients will get paid more for the care they provide to the thousands of tribal residents newly covered by Medicaid. And most importantly to patients, expansion will make it more financially feasible to get the care they need.”
“many people referenced in these documents are not accused of wrongdoing, and the filings are not a “client list” as some surmised.
Instead, the “list” is actually dozens of documents from a 2015 court case filed by Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre against his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, who has been convicted of child sex trafficking. These documents reference roughly 150 of Epstein’s associates, including Clinton and Trump, but don’t provide significant new information so much as they offer a more in-depth look at the people in Epstein’s circles.”
“For nearly all of US history, American property taxes have taken a pretty standard form. Individuals pay a tax based on the assessed value of their land, buildings, and any other improvements to their property combined. If you renovate your house and make it nicer, for example, your overall property tax could go up. The proposed land-value tax in Detroit, by contrast, would effectively tax land at a higher rate than any buildings or amenities on the property.
Mayor Duggan, who is spearheading the effort, hopes this land-value tax idea will incentivize development on blighted property as well as offer some tax relief to homeowners, who bear some of the highest rates in the country. The Duggan administration estimates that under his proposal 97 percent of Detroit homeowners will see an average decrease of 17 percent in property tax. The proposal is not about lowering taxes generally, but about increasing taxes on those who own vacant land (a big problem in the city) and decreasing future taxes on people who develop their land.
“I think it is an important idea for any place where people are holding onto valuable land that could be used for more productive purposes,” James Hohman, the director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Michigan, told Vox.”
“The lightweight howitzer system is easy to tow and transport, with six howitzers fitting into a C-17 Globemaster III cargo plane. However, the M777’s reduced mobility compared to self-propelled howitzers makes it more vulnerable on the battlefield. Spotter drones used by both Russia and Ukraine make it easier to zero in on established artillery positions when they fire and employ counter-battery fire against them. As a result, many of Ukraine’s M777s have been damaged or destroyed.
With advanced air defense systems on both sides of the conflict, the use of fires in the Russo-Ukrainian War has fallen mostly to artillery. The Army’s move to acquire more M777s will replenish its stocks and ensure that the force is equipped to fight a similar war. BAE noted that total orders for the M777 currently exceed 1,200.”
“China has constructed a new aircraft carrier target on a sprawling range in the northwestern end of the country that is a dead-ringer for the U.S. Navy’s newest supercarrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford. The target underscores the People’s Liberation Army’s continued focus on expanding and refining its ability to engage American carriers and other warships over long distances, which includes a growing arsenal of anti-ship ballistic and cruise missiles. This is all part of China’s evolving anti-access and area denial strategy across much of the Western Pacific.”
“a 538 analysis of data from the Cooperative Election Study, a Harvard University survey of at least 60,000 Americans taken before the 2020 elections and the 2022 midterms, shows that Hispanic voters remain to the left of the general electorate on key issues like immigration and environmental policy. In other areas, Hispanic voters are largely similar to the general electorate.”
“”Examining 100 years of Border Patrol apprehensions data finds none of the three U.S. periods with a significant decline in illegal immigration were due to enforcement policy,” found a May National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) report. Most recently, after the Biden administration introduced targeted sponsorship programs to benefit Venezuelans and nationals of three other countries, encounters with those groups fell by 95 percent between December 2022 and March 2023, according to NFAP. The Cato Institute, parsing data from Customs and Border Protection and other sources, found that ending the pandemic-era Title 42 order—which allowed federal immigration agents to immediately expel migrants—halved “successful covert illegal immigration.””
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“If none of that is convincing, take it from federal immigration officials. “It would break the border,” one Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official told NBC News. A former DHS official warned that by mandating the detention of all border crossers, facilities might run out of space, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement might hypothetically “have to detain families instead of detaining a single adult male accused of rape.””
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“It’s hardline measures and a lack of workable legal pathways—not the president’s “open border policies,” as many critics charge—that have made the border unmanageable. If lawmakers are serious about reducing pressures at the border, they should look to proven methods, such as expanding guest worker programs and private sponsorship schemes.
As the border discussions stand, these ideas aren’t on the table. Instead, decision makers in Washington have proven all too willing to embrace what could be long-lasting—and what would certainly be costly, inhumane, and ineffective—changes to the immigration system.”