Missouri Bill Bars Pharmacists From Questioning Ivermectin Prescriptions

BY THOMAS KIKA ON 5/14/22 

A bill coming out of the Missouri state legislature would bar pharmacists from questioning and potentially preventing ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine prescriptions.

The measure that would put this rule into effect was included in HB 2149, a bill that broadly concerns professional licensing. The bill passed the Missouri state House by an overwhelming majority on Thursday, 130-4, according to The Kansas City Star. It will now be sent to the desk of Republican Governor Mike Parson to potentially be signed into law.

As worded, the bill would bar pharmacists in the state from contacting patients or doctors "to dispute the efficacy of ivermectin tablets or hydroxychloroquine sulfate tablets for human use." The measure also prevents doctors who "lawfully" prescribe either of the drugs from being stripped of their professional licenses or otherwise punished.

Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine rose to prominence during the pandemic as potential treatments for COVID-19 and gained significant popularity among anti-vaccination advocates. Neither drug has been approved by the FDA to treat COVID and several accredited studies have indicated that the drugs can be harmful to patients in certain cases. A recent study also found that ivermectin in particular is no more effective against the virus than a placebo.

Above, a representational image of a vial of ivermectin.

LUIS ROBAYO/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

The measure was added to HB 2149 by Senator Rick Brattin, a Republican state lawmaker from Harrisonville, Missouri. Brattin, who admitted to buying ivermectin for himself in the past, said he had heard concerns from numerous doctors about the potential for losing their licenses over prescribing the drugs.


"Unfortunately, because of the politicization of those two drugs, [doctors are] being targeted," Brattin explained to The Kansas City Star. "I wanted to protect them from that."

The measure has also drawn heavy criticism, especially from Democrats.

"...The Missouri legislature has chosen to 'own the libs' by issuing a gag order against every pharmacist in this state from offering their medical opinion on taking either one of those medications—even if it could kill their patient," Lindsey Simmons, a former U.S. House candidate and Democrat, tweeted Thursday. "Pharmacists can be disciplined for informing the patient of the medication's risks, but not for simply handing it over. And for an authoritarian government that purports to be 'pro life' and for 'free speech,' they've put forward a law that prohibits one + could end the other.

Representative Patty Lewis, a Democratic state lawmaker and member of the committee that crafted the bill, explained to the Star that the measure was added in order to appease far-right elements in the state's Senate.

Ivermectin is traditionally prescribed as anti-parasitic for patients dealing with things like worms, and can also be useful against head lice and for skin conditions like rosacea. Hydroxychloroquine is typically used to treat malaria, and has also found use against conditions like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.

Newsweek reached out to the office of Governor Parson for comment.

Major US baby formula producer agrees with regulators on restarting production

AFP
May 16, 2022

Abbott warned that it will take six to eight weeks to get baby formula back on the shelves even afer it resumes production at its facility in Sturgis, Michigan

Abbott warned that it will take six to eight weeks to get baby formula back on the shelves even afer it resumes production at its facility in Sturgis, Michigan

Washington (AFP) - Amid a US shortage of baby formula, officials announced Monday a previously closed manufacturer would re-open and encouraged foreign companies to apply to import their products -- although it will take weeks to see more stock back on store shelves.

A "consent decree" agreement between the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and major formula manufacturer Abbott outlines steps needed to restart production at the company's plant in Michigan, which was shut down due to a recall, Abbott said in a statement.

"Once the FDA confirms the initial requirements for start-up have been met, Abbott could restart the site within two weeks," the statement said.

However, the company cautioned that "from the time Abbott restarts the site, it will take six to eight weeks before product is available on shelves."

Abbott, which produces the popular Similac brand used by millions of American families, announced a voluntary recall on February 17 after the death of two babies.

In a separate move, the FDA also said Monday it plans to accept applications from international baby formula manufacturers "who don't normally distribute their infant formula products in the US," FDA Commissioner Robert Califf said in a statement.

Currently, the United States produces about 98 percent of the formula it consumes.
Import applications

The FDA plans to work to quickly review such applications, especially ones that come from "countries that have health and safety inspection systems similar" to the United States, according to a senior White House official.

The process would also prioritize applications showing "clear quality and safety and nutritional adequacy," a different senior administration official added.

According to Califf, foreign-made baby formula could appear on US shelves within "weeks."

The Biden administration was also reaching out to US manufacturers to offer help with logistical challenges, such as shipping, the officials said.

US families have grown increasingly desperate for formula amid a perfect storm of supply chain issues and the massive recall.

The average out-of-stock rate for baby formula hit 43 percent earlier this month, according to Datasembly, which collected information from more than 11,000 retailers.

Abbott's agreement with the FDA to restart production at the plant in Sturgis, Michigan also needs to be reviewed by a federal court after the Justice Department filed a complaint on Monday.

The complaint says the facility "failed to comply with regulations designed to ensure the quality and safety of infant formula, including protection against the risk of contamination from bacteria."

"The actions we are announcing today will help to safely increase the supply of baby formula for families," US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.

Robert Ford, chairman and chief executive officer of Abbott said he regretted the situation and that the company already had begun "working to implement improvements and take corrective action."

"We know millions of parents and caregivers depend on us and we're deeply sorry that our voluntary recall worsened the nationwide formula shortage," he said in the statement.

The FDA and White House officials reiterated Monday that parents who are concerned about running out of baby formula should talk to their child's doctor, and that it is not safe to water down existing formula or to make your own at home.

The scarcity is the latest crisis to confound President Joe Biden's push to get the US economy on sound footing amid the highest inflation in four decades and the ongoing global supply chain bottlenecks.

Power outage: Could a solar storm switch off the world's technology?

DPA
May 16, 2022

The Northern Lights, also known as the aurora borealis, at Selfoss in southern Iceland. Auroras are the result of disturbances in the magnetosphere caused by the solar wind, the stream of particles and plasma emanating from the sun. Owen Humphreys/PA Wire/dpa

The Northern Lights, also known as the aurora borealis, at Selfoss in southern Iceland. Auroras are the result of disturbances in the magnetosphere caused by the solar wind, the stream of particles and plasma emanating from the sun. Owen Humphreys/PA Wire/dpa

Solar storms make for wonderful light shows as auroras zipping through the heavens but they can also bring about a state of emergency.

The phenomenon doesn't present any danger to the Earth as a planet, but could well harm humans who are increasingly dependent on technology.

During a solar storm, or disturbance on the sun, high-energy particles and a massive plasma cloud can emanate outwards across the heliosphere towards the planets, potentially massively disrupting infrastructure on and around Earth.

Space company SpaceX felt the painful effects of such space weather recently, when a solar storm knocked out 40 of its satellites.

Solar storms mostly occur from giant explosions of plasma known as coronal mass ejections, and solar flares from active regions - and we are likely to see more of them in the coming years. The sun has a roughly 11-year cycle and its activity has been increasing again since 2019, with forecasts suggesting a peak in 2024 to 2026.

The violent particle and radiation bursts during phases of high activity are likely to have increasingly severe consequences on Earth, given our growing reliance on technology.

Solar storms hurl high-energy particles and billions of tons of plasma into space, which can swiftly come rocketing towards the Earth, some 150 million kilometres away.

Although the Earth is protected by its magnetic field and atmosphere, such storms can cause massive damage, wrecking satellites and power grids and causing the collapse of communication and navigation systems.

"It is possible at any time for a very extreme solar storm to occur, and it could have far-reaching consequences," says European Space Agency (ESA)'s space weather mission coordinator in Germany, Melanie Heil.

Space travellers use the site's satellite control centre to monitor solar storms. While Heil says it isn't "super likely" that all of the satellites will break down, some could be affected.

What's needed on Earth is a timely warning, in order to protect the power grids. Turning down capacities in generators and transformers might protect them from damage. However, a major event could be tough to predict. "The latest calculations say we can expect about a 10% probability of an extreme space weather event in the next 10 years," says Heil.

Any warning time is likely to be brief as solar particles shoot through the vastness of the solar system at a speed that is hard to imagine. "If we weren't able to observe something like this, we would be vulnerable at any time," Heil says. Certain observation points already provide data but work is still under way to expand capacities to create more reliable predictions.

Scientists hope that ESA's Vigil probe will allow them a much better look at solar storms. "Because of its location in space, the Vigil mission will be able to take a sharp look at potentially dangerous solar activity," says ESA mission chief Giuseppe Mandorlo. The mission is scheduled to launch in 2027 and, unlike in the past, is able to take a sideways look at the sun and track the storms, says Heil.

ESA was surprised at the damage suffered by billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX. "It wasn't actually a particularly strong solar storm, which is why no official warning was sent out," says Heil.

The SpaceX satellites were in the wrong place at the wrong time, she says. When it hit, the storm compressed the atmosphere so much that the orbiters were unable to reach their target point 300 kilometres higher up and burned up in the atmosphere.

SpaceX wants to use satellites to set up its Starlink system to provide high-speed internet connections.

The private space company is doing a "good job" with Starlink, says the US space agency NASA. Both NASA and US weather agency NOAA are currently working with SpaceX to further improve Starlink operations.

NASA is also working to better understand weather events in space, as everyone is wondering how severe the current solar cycle will be.

It is a question with no answer so far. Solar Cycle Prediction Panel (SCPP) suggested its maximum would be pretty muted, similar to the previous cycle, in a 2020 forecast. However, that prediction was countered by a team led by Scott McIntosh of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. His researchers say the maximum is likely to be strong, with many solar storms.

How Archaeologists Recreated a Lost Norwegian Village

2022/5/14
© InsideHook


By Tobias Carroll

Countless human settlements all over the world are lost to time and the elements. That can be a challenge for the archaeologists tasked with exploring the ways people lived in the past in these locations; it’s much easier to visualize how a specific place worked when one can walk around what remains of it, after all. All of this helps to explain why a new initiative around the town of Borgund, Norway is so exciting — and holds so much promise.

The Borgund Kaupang Project, begun in 2019, focuses on learning more about one of a handful of Norwegian towns to exist in medieval times. As the Project’s website notes, there have been a number of excavations of the town over the years, but “little research has been carried out on the extensive datasets available.” At least, not until now.

An article at Atlas Obscura documents the processes taken by the archaeologists involved in revisiting Borgund. As Gitten Hansen, one of the archaeologists working on the project, told Atlas Obscura, excavations began in 1953. “We’re talking about the largest excavation of a medieval site in Norway outside of the still existing towns,” Hansen said — all of which suggests there’s a lot for scientists and historians to revisit.

The excavations continued for decades, with most of what was found left in the care of the University Museum of Bergen. Using these items, archaeologists have done everything from restoring textiles found in the digs to speculating about the role of shipbuilding in the town. It’s both an interesting way to recall the past and a wide-ranging exploration of what can be gleaned from the most modest of objects and records.

Val Demings slams Rubio, anti-abortion rhetoric at pro-choice conference – Orlando Sentinel

May 14, 2022

The Black Chronicle News Service

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In a speech in Orlando on Saturday, U.S. Senate hopeful Val Demings touted her pro-choice stance and attacked Republican Sen. Marco Rubio’s position on abortion as “radical.”

Rubio, who’s seeking a third term, has long supported bans on abortion with no exceptions, most recently saying a failed Senate bill to codify Roe v. Wade would legalize ”the killing of unborn children right up to the day of delivery.” The 1973 Supreme Court ruling is on the cusp of being overturned, according to a draft opinion obtained by Politico.

His campaign described his likely opponent in November as “a radical who supports abortion up until the moment of birth,” in what is likely to become a wedge issue in the race, Florida Politics reported.

Demings called the claim “foolishness,” voicing her support for abortions “up until the point of viability or when it threatens the health of the mother.” She also pointed to Rubio’s past support for a 2001 “scarlet letter” law signed and later deemed unconstitutional, which required unwed mothers in Florida who wished to put their children up for adoption to publish details about their sex lives in newspapers.

“Desperate people say desperate things,” Demings said in response. “… I know they are searching for something to draw the attention away from his extreme view about the constitutional right that people have in this country.”

She added, “The nerve of him to say there should be no restrictions, even including incest, rape and abuse — now I think that’s extreme.”

Speaking at the She’s The Change conference hosted at the Rosen Plaza Hotel by pro-choice group Ruth’s List, Demings also called Roe v. Wade “established law.” The Women’s Health Protection Act, the Senate bill that would have codified the ruling and invalidated state abortion bans, failed to overcome the Republican filibuster, with a 51-49 vote against moving the legislation forward.

“When I decided to raise my family, I didn’t ask my congressman, I didn’t ask my governor and I’m dang sure I didn’t ask my senator,” Demings said. “Women have a right to choose her own destiny. We’re not going back, we’re not shutting up, we’re not sitting down, we are going to fight and fight and fight some more.”

The leaked draft opinion penned by Justice Samuel Alito sparked outrage throughout the U.S., with mass protests taking place around the country while doctors and abortion providers speak out as others, including religious conservatives, praise the possible decision.

It also comes as Republican state legislatures pass restrictive abortion bans in anticipation of the Supreme Court’s official ruling, expected to come down later this year. Last month, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, except if the fetus is found to have a “fatal fetal abnormality.”

Senate Minority Leader Lauren Book claps at the end of Congresswoman Val Demings speech at the Ruth’s List Florida’s, She’s the Change leadership conference in Orlando, Fla., Saturday, May 14, 2022. (Willie J. Allen Jr./Orlando Sentinel) (Willie J. Allen Jr./Orlando Sentinel)

The law, which many fear could be expanded next year after the Supreme Court’s ruling, does not include exceptions for rape or incest. A statewide poll by the University of North Florida found nearly 60% of Floridians are opposed to the newly-signed ban.

“We are here today to protect life,” DeSantis said at a signing ceremony in Kissimmee. “We are here today to defend those who can’t defend themselves.”

Florida Democrats have scrambled to mobilize their base ahead of November’s elections, where Rubio’s Senate seat and the governorship are at stake, as the party nationally has embraced abortion as a key issue in this year’s midterms. A Pew Research Center poll in March found 61% of voters support legal abortion in all or most circumstances.

What killed the whales? Two found dead off the Florida Keys, and one towed to a marina

2022/5/11 1
 Miami Herald

Gwen Filosa/flkeysnews.com

Two sperm whales died within seven days of each other in the Florida Keys, according to state and federal officials.

One was a juvenile whale that died May 4 off Key Largo. The other, a large adult that died after beaching itself near Mud Key, about 15 miles northeast of Key West in the Gulf of Mexico, was found on Tuesday, according to state wildlife officials.

The adult whale, a male, was towed to Robbie’s Marina on Stock Island, just east of Key West.

Kelly Richmond, spokeswoman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, said the whale is 47 feet long.

“We just started a necropsy on the animal now,” Richmond said Wednesday morning. “It will likely take the better part of a day, and even then, we might not have all the results.”

Casey Taylor, manager of Robbie’s Marina, said he was called at about 4 p.m. Tuesday about the whale.

He said it arrived at the marina via TowboatUS, a sea towing business, around 2:30 a.m. Wednesday. The marina workers used a travel lift to remove it from the water so it would not be damaged by other fish. Taylor said the mammal weighs 40 tons.

The other whale was a newborn female calf that still had an open umbilical cord when it was found on a small barrier island off John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park in Key Largo, said Blair Mase, southeast regional marine mammal stranding coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Fisheries Service.

“It looks like it just separated from mom, and that was likely the cause of death,” Mase said, although the official cause of death is still pending necropsy results.
How did the whales die?

After someone reported the young mammal swimming alone, rescuers from Dolphins Plus Marine Mammal Responder, a federally authorized whale and dolphin rescue nonprofit, followed it for about a half a mile as it swam to shore, said Allison Garrett, a NOAA Fisheries spokeswoman.

At least one tiger shark was trailing the 9 1/2-foot-long whale, but Mase said it did not die from bites inflicted by the fish.

“It died naturally on its own,” Mase said.

Given that the adult whale that died in the Gulf of Mexico was a male, there is likely no connection between his death and that of the calf that died last week, Mase said. But, it is unusual to have two sperm whale strandings in the same region within such a short time period, she added.

“There were two in a week, so this is something we are keeping a close eye on, and we’re trying to find as much information as possible to see what’s going on and see why (the adult whale) possibly died,” Mase said.
About sperm whales

Among the common human causes of deaths of sperm whales and other marine mammals are boat and ship strikes and entanglements in fishing gear, Mase said. As part of the analysis, toxicology samples will be examined to see if any environmental factors contributed to the deaths.

Sperm whales are the largest of the toothed whales, according to NOAA Fisheries. They are named for the waxy substance found in their heads that allows them to focus on sound. It is this substance that made them a target of whaling when it was legal between the early 1800s and 1987. The substance was used as lamp oil, lubricants and candles, according to NOAA.

Females reach physical maturity around 30 years old, according to NOAA, and can grow to about 35 feet long. Males reach physical maturity around 50 years old, and grow about 52 feet.

Sperm whales live in oceans throughout the world, but are found mostly in deep water, and can dive to depths of more than 10,000 feet and stay under for up to over an hour, federal scientists say.

With whaling outlawed, their populations are recovering and they are still listed as “endangered” under the Endangered Species Act and “depleted” under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

Anyone who sees an injured or dead whale should call 877-942-5343 (877-WHALE HELP), said Garrett, the NOAA Fisheries spokeswoman.

She said people should keep a safe distance from the animals and not touch them.

“Please don’t intervene,” Garrett said. “If you can safely get a photo or video, that’s great, but do not go near them for your safety and the safety of the animal.”

The body of a 47- foot male sperm whale lies on the dock of Robbie's Marina in Stock Island Wednesday, May 11, 2022. - Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission/Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission/TNS

Fla. scientist probes flesh-eating bacteria for clues to next pandemic

2022/5/16
 Orlando Sentinel


ORLANDO, Fla. -- A bout with flesh-eating bacteria can start out with a day at the beach, a hardly worrisome cut and then, in less than 24 hours, a raging infection fought with heavy antibiotics and gruesome scalpel work.

It would be reassuring to know where and when Florida’s coastal waters are ripe with “one of the fastest growing organisms on earth,” said a University of Central Florida scientist.

Salvador Almagro-Moreno, a native of southern Spain, graduate student in Ireland and researcher at Dartmouth College, arrived at UCF in 2017, where he is now an assistant professor of medicine. He’s diving into the mysterious world of flesh-eating bacteria, which is nasty stuff for sure, but there’s a bigger target on his to-do list.

His main school of thought, from where he orchestrates research, instructs students and hopes to bring a difference, is from a concept called One Health, which the COVID-19 pandemic has ushered into prime time.

One Health acknowledges intricate, if often poorly known ties between people, animals, plants and their ecosystems in an interwoven fabric of life.

One Health expects that assaults from climate change, population growth and environmental destruction could fray that fabric or shred it disastrously, resulting in diseases such as cholera outbreaks, Ebola epidemics and, as suspected, the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19 pandemic and its 6 million global deaths, and still others nobody has heard of yet.

Almagro-Moreno wrote the cover story, “The Rise of New Pathogens,” for the current May-June edition of the American Scientist magazine.

“The emergence of novel human pathogens is without a doubt one of the most pressing problems that we face,” he said in the story. “I have been working for almost two decades trying to understand what the biological rules and evolutionary forces are that make a microorganism transition to causing disease in humans.”

Almagro-Moreno is pursuing simple but daunting questions: what are the warning signs for looming disease calamities, and how can they be interpreted and best communicated?

Each day, for example, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issues predictions at airnow.gov for several days of air quality.

The ozone smog forecast for Orlando was for moderate concern on Wednesday, meaning that people who are “unusually sensitive” to the lung-damaging pollutant should consider shortening activities outdoors.

Otherwise, forecasts for Thursday through Sunday called for good, or low levels of ozone smog.

That’s something of the approach that Almagro-Moreno hopes to achieve.

But trying to predict the behavior of a potentially lethal organism as it ricochets among environmental fluctuations, interactions with animals and potential infections of humans – that’s way harder than forecasting the health risk of ozone smog, he said.

In no small part it’s harder because One Health science is in its infancy. In a sense, Almagro-Moreno is just beginning to develop momentum at laboratory.

“We know very little about the rules of pathogen emergence,” Almagro-Moreno said.

Florida struggles now with a pair of troublemakers that -- incubated in natural environments, exacerbated by pollution and affecting people -- speak to the One Health concept.

One is the occurrence along the state’s southwest coast of red tides, which are composed of single-cell organisms producing neurotoxins. They have caused massive die-offs of marine life and driven away tourists with lung-irrigating fumes.

Another is blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria producing toxins in fresh waters, including many Orlando lakes, and including Lake Ivanhoe, which is popular for aquatic sports but now is posted as hazardous because of cyanobacteria.

Almagro-Moreno lives nearby in the Mills 50 district and met at Lake Ivanhoe to discuss his research.

To understand the effects of chemicals or environmental exposures, or to unravel genetic traits, scientists often turn to four creatures, the fruit fly, zebra fish, roundworm and mouse, for experiments.

Those four, all well documented, are called model organisms.

For his One Health investigations, and more specifically to probe the behaviors of waterborne pathogens, Almagro-Moreno also chose model organisms, but of a different nature.

The first is cholera, a disease recorded in thousands of years of history. He and students are collaborating with Asian and Latin American countries to probe the evolution and outbreaks of cholera.

The second is a native of Florida, one that can be contracted through the prick of fish spine, nick from a seashell or, as well, from eating raw oysters.

It is flesh-eating bacteria. “This is their home – they have been here far longer than we have,” Almagro-Moreno said. The microorganism, he said in a TEDx talk a few years ago, “a very proud Florida native.”

To understand its behaviors, whether in a chill mode or on a rampage, his students have gone to the Indian River Lagoon in Brevard County for sampling of bacteria, environmental conditions and other factors.

“I thought it was really suitable,” he said of flesh-eating bacteria, “for understanding what do you need to become a pathogen, what do you need to colonize humans, what do you need to kill humans and how does the environment affect those traits?”

His ultimate goal is to develop a standardized approach for assessing and predicting emerging pathogens, an approach that can then have applicability for assessing other threatening organisms.

“But, to be honest … the beauty of it is that I live in Florida,” he said. “So this work matters to me as a Floridan. It’s a win-win.”

Terrible outbreaks of disease are not new, Almagro-Moreno said.

“Unfortunately for those of us trying to forecast them, they do not typically occur in a slow and predictable fashion,” Almagro-Moreno wrote in his American Scientist story.

“Harmless organisms can undergo quantum leaps in evolution to become deadly and then spread like wildfire.”

MEANING MORE U$D FOR CUBA

Reversing Trump measures, US will expand flights to Cuba and resume family reunifications

2022/5/16
Miami Herald


The Biden administration is restoring flights to Cuban cities other than Havana and reestablishing a family reunification program suspended for years, following recommendations of a long-anticipated review of U.S. policy toward Cuba, senior administration officials told McClatchy and the Miami Herald on Monday.

The administration will also allow group travel for educational or professional exchanges and lift caps on money sent to families on the island.

The policy changes come after a months-long review that began in earnest after a series of protests roiled the island nation on July 11, prompting a new round of U.S. sanctions on Cuban officials.

Cuba is facing the worst economic crisis since the Soviet Union collapsed, with widespread shortages of food and medicines, and thousands of Cubans trying to reach the United States.

One senior administration official said the new policy measures allow the administration to continue supporting the Cuban people and guarding U.S. national security interests.

“Our policy continues to center on human rights, empowering the Cuban people to determine their own future and these are practical measures intended to address the humanitarian situation and the migration flows,” the official said, adding that labor rights will also be at the center of any talks with the Cuban government.

As promised in his campaign for the White House, President Joe Biden will reverse several of the measures taken by his predecessor, including by allowing commercial and charter flights to destinations outside the Cuban capital. Currently, American airline companies can only fly to Havana, leaving Cuban Americans with few options to visit their families in other provinces.

The Cuban Family Reunification Parole Program, which has not taken new cases since 2016 and left 22,000 pending applications in limbo, will also be reinstated, the officials said, following bipartisan calls to address the issue.

An administration official said the United States intends to uphold migration accords with Cuba from the 1990s, under which the United States committed to issuing 20,000 immigration visas to Cubans annually, a request made by a Cuban government delegation that recently traveled to Washington to discuss an ongoing wave of Cubans trying to reach the U.S. mainland by land and sea.

One senior administration official also said the State Department will increase visa processing in the embassy in Havana, which resumed this month.

Other measures include lifting the cap on family remittances, currently $1,000 per quarter per person, with an eye on supporting the emerging private sector.

The officials said the administration will encourage more electronic payment companies to work in Cuba to facilitate remittances. Official remittance channels were shut down after the Trump administration sanctioned Fincimex, the financial firm run by the Cuban military, and the Cuban government refused to pass the business to a non-military entity.

Fincimex will not be removed from the Cuba sanction list, one senior official said, but the administration “has engaged” in talks with the Cuban government about finding a non-military entity to process remittances.

The administration will also expand travel to Cuba by once again allowing group travel under the “people-to-people” educational travel category, which was created under former President Barack Obama to allow Americans to visit the island on organized tours to promote exchanges between the two countries. The Trump administration later restricted most non-family travel to Cuba and eliminated the category in 2019.

The U.S. officials said there will be more regulatory changes to allow certain travel related to professional meetings and professional research, but individual people-to-people travel will remain prohibited.

Other measures aim at supporting independent Cuban entrepreneurs by authorizing access to expanded cloud technology, application programming interfaces and e-commerce platforms. The officials said the administration will “explore” options to facilitate electronic payments and expand Cuban entrepreneurs’ access to microfinancing.

Last week, the Treasury Department for the first time authorized an American company to offer a microloan and investment to a small Cuban private business.

The changes will be announced later on Monday but will be implemented in the coming weeks.

The Biden administration has fielded criticism for so far keeping in placer most measures taken by President Trump, who vowed a “maximum pressure” campaign against the communist government over its role in Venezuela. But some Cuban exiles, Cuban American Republican politicians and activists on the island have expressed concern about any easing of sanctions at a time the government has cracked down on protesters and handed down harsh sentences to July 11 demonstrators.

A senior administration official said the administration consulted the policy options with members of Congress and Cuban Americans.

Relations between Washington and Havana soured over the islandwide anti-government demonstration last July. President Biden ordered sanctions against the military, police and security forces involved in the crackdown. And Havana responded by saying the demonstrations were financed by the United States.

The more recent spat involves the invitations to attend the Summit of the Americas, a meeting of leaders from nations in the hemisphere to be held in Los Angeles in June. The U.S. government has said Cuba will likely not receive one. A senior administration said the invitations have not been issued yet.

But the current wave of Cuban migrants reaching the U.S. southern border got the two governments to sit down for the first time since president Biden took office. The Cuban diplomat leading the talks, Carlos Fernández de Cossio, said he left with the sense that the talks could be the first step to improving relations.

A senior administration official said the U.S. delegation did not address policy topics beyond migration.

Mass shooting in Buffalo: Tucker Carlson and other right-wing conspiracy theorists share the blame

Amanda Marcotte, Salon
May 15, 2022

Buffalo mass shooting site (Photo by John Norbile for AFP)

In the 16 months since Jan. 6, 2021, Donald Trump and the hosts Fox News hosts — especially its top-rated personality, Tucker Carlson — haven't exactly been subtle in approving of what happened and longing to see more right-wing violence. Trump has publicly mused about issuing pardons to the Capitol insurrectionists if he wins back — or rather steals back — the White House in 2024. Like many of the far-right Republicans in Congress, Trump has also made a martyr out of Ashli Babbitt, the QAnon believer who was shot during the Capitol riot when she tried to break into a secure area and quite likely attack members of Congress. Carlson, meanwhile, has been at the forefront of popularizing various often contradictory conspiracy theories, mostly intended to portray the Jan. 6 insurrectionists as noble patriots and lambaste any Republican who dares say otherwise. While these GOP leaders and media personalities are generally careful to avoid direct calls for violence, their overall message of sympathy and support for right-wing terrorism is undeniable.

So Saturday's mass shooting in Buffalo, while horrifying, is really no surprise.

The alleged shooter who killed 10 people and injured three others in a Buffalo supermarket is 18-year-old Payton Gendron, who appears to have target a busy location in a predominantly Black neighborhood. As has become far too common with these kinds of mass murders, Gendron reportedly live-streamed the massacre on video, and apparently also published a manifesto that echoes many of the paranoid right-wing talking points one can hear every day streaming from the mouths of Fox News hosts and Republican politicians: a series of scurrilous lies about "critical race theory," George Soros and the "great replacement."

Now a familiar refrain will commence. No doubt we will be hear a great deal of umbrage in the coming days from Republican leaders and right-wing pundits. "How dare you blame us?" they will proclaim, in almost hysterical terms, acting shocked, shocked, that anyone would suggest that their words have had horrible consequences. The point of this fake outrage will be to make it too emotionally exhausting to hold them accountable, and to reinforce the ridiculous victim complex that fuels the American right as it increasingly slides into fascism. But let's not mince words: These folks share the blame. They have been encouraging violence, and violence is what they got.

The "great replacement" theory has been a favorite of Carlson's for some time now. This particular paranoid hypothesis is deeply rooted in neo-Nazi and other white nationalist circles. A cabal of rich Jewish people, the theory holds, has conspired to "replace" white Christian Americans with other races and ethnic groups in order to gain political and social control. Carlson doesn't actually say "Jews," and generally blames the sinister plan on Democrats, socialists or unspecified "elites," but otherwise has kept the conspiracy theory intact. (Antisemitism remains the mix by singling out individual Jewish people especially Soros, as the alleged ringleaders.) It's not like Carlson only invokes this narrative on occasion. As Media Matters researcher Nikki McCann Ramirez has documented, Carlson is obsessed with this idea that the people he calls "legacy Americans" — a not-so-veiled euphemism for white Christians of European ancestry — are under siege from shadowy forces flying the banner of diversity. He uses anodyne terms like "demographic change" to make the point, but has gotten bolder more recently, using the word "replacement" to make it even clearer that he's borrowing his ideas from the white-supremacist fringe.

According to a New York Times analysis, in fact, Carlson has invoked the "great replacement" theory in over 400 episodes of his show, one of the most popular cable news shows in the country.

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Carlson has also explicitly linked this conspiracy theory to the threat of violence, repeatedly "warning" that America faces a new civil war unless these fictional conspirators stop trying to "replace" his cherished "legacy Americans." The GOP base has been getting the message. A poll conducted in December showed that nearly half of Republican respondents buy into the idea that there's a conspiracy to "replace" white Christians with different racial and ethnic groups. That proportion has probably risen since then, as Carlson's deluge has further mainstreamed this delusional and dangerous notion. Unsurprisingly, there has been a concurrent rise in hate crimes, of which this Buffalo shooting is merely the most dramatic recent example.

When called out for stoking a conspiracy theory that is likely to inspire violence, Carlson inevitably plays the victim, accusing liberals of being "hysterical" and characterizing these criticisms as "cancel culture." This only encourage his viewers to embrace the conspiracy theory even more, telling themselves that they (and he) are bold truth-tellers fighting against the forces of liberal oppression. That's why the how-dare-they posturing we will almost certainly see from Carlson and other right-wing pundits in coming days so predictable. This article, for instance, will quite likely be characterized as hysterical name-calling or an attempt to censor bold political speech. But let's understand this feigned outrage for what it is: an attempt to leverage an act of terrorism in a way that leads people to accept it or even condone it.

RELATED: Trump's anti-vaccine hysteria has a mission: violence

The "great replacement" theory fits in with the larger pattern of right-wing Republicans (especially our former president and his allies) and Fox News pundits encouraging not just right-wing paranoia, but the inevitable acts of violence that flow from it. The most straightforward example of this, of course, is the relentless rewriting of the history of Jan. 6, which began in the immediate aftermath and continues to this day. Republican leaders in Congress voted down Trump's impeachment only weeks after the riot and have tried to block congressional efforts to uncover exactly how the attempted coup went down.

Over this past winter, Fox News, Trump and other GOP leaders made another big push towards political violence, hyping outrageous conspiracy theories about COVID vaccines and encouraging their audiences toward aggressive acts of so-called resistance. As with Carlson, these threats are often packaged as "warnings," as when Trump declared on Fox News in February, "You can push people so far and our country is a tinderbox too, don't kid yourself." Around the same time, Carlson, Sean Hannity, Carlson and Glenn Beck all started pushed the idea that anti-vaccination fanatics were potentially justified in using violence as "self-defense."

Indeed, as the shooting was unfolding in Buffalo, there was an overt call for right-wing violence at Trump's rally in Austin, Texas, where oock geezer turned gun advocate Ted Nugent told the crowd of 8,000 that he'd "love" it if they all "went out and just went berserk on the skulls of the Democrats and the Marxists and the communists." In his speech afterward, Trump praised Republican politicians in Texas, including Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton, who have slavishly proven their loyalty to him.

Many of the people arrested for their actions on Jan. 6 , 2021, have stopped being apologetic about what they did, and are now portraying themselves as martyrs and heroes. Last week, one of the most prominent ringleaders on the insurrection, Tim "Baked Alaska" Gionet, a troll to the very end, dramatically declared at a hearing that he was changing his plea. He had agreed to plead guilty to a lesser offense, but now wants to plead not guilty, even though he filming himself inside the Capitol during the riot and put the evidence online. Other Jan. 6 defendants have also become more confrontational, including pulling a gun on probation officers, acquiring new guns in defiance of a court order, or claiming that their actions on that day amounted to "self-defense." In fairness, why shouldn't they feel emboldened? Most Republican voters, along with the party's leadership, are more interested in making excuses for Trump's coup than holding anyone accountable for it.

And all of the above doesn't even touch on the way Republican politicians and right-wing media have mainstreamed the QAnon conspiracy theory by regularly slurring Democrats, LGBTQ folks and their allies as "groomers." Demonizing political opponents with false allegations of pedophilia is unbelievably slimy, even by Republican standards. It also serves to inspire or encourage potential acts of violence, by dehumanizing their targets and creating a delusional narrative that makes such attacks seem justified.

RELATED: Tucker Carlson's insecurity and the "great replacement" theory

Perhaps the horror unleashed in Buffalo on Saturday will cause Carlson and his allies to rethink their paranoid, racist and inflammatory rhetoric. That is doubtful, however. After all, this is just the latest in a series of mass shootings inspired by the "great replacement" theory, including the Walmart shooting in El Paso that left 23 dead and the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh in which 11 people died. Since those massacres, the "great replacement" theory has only become more popular with Republican voters, largely thanks to Carlson and similar figures on the right. It has also become popular with Republicans, including J.D. Vance, the Republican nominee in Ohio's Senate race. Just this week, the conspiracy theory got another round of hype as Republican pundits and politicians pretended to believe that President Biden was stealing baby formula from Americans to feed "illegals," their slur for refugees applying for asylum. Those who would support deliberately starving babies for racist and xenophobic reasons aren't likely to feel any real empathy for the victims and their families in Buffalo. We cannot legitimately hope that they will be chastened by this latest round of violence, but we can make clear that their hateful rhetoric helped to unleash it.

HasanAbi gives commentary on the mass shooting in Buffalo, NY that was live streamed on social media (Twitch) and former Breitbart editor, conservative news host Ben Shapiro's tweet regarding the matter.

Hussein Picker

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Hasan Piker (Hasanabi) is a Twitch streamer, leftist political commentator, and podcaster. He streams everyday, posts stream highlights on his Youtube, does Leftovers (H3 Podcast) with h3h3Productions and Fear & Malding Podcast with Will Neff. His streams consist of news coverage, reaction content, and gaming. Hasan frequently reacts to Joe Rogan (JRE), Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro, Steven Crowder, Jordan Peterson, Vice, Channel 5 (All Gas No Breaks), JCS - Criminal Psychology, Jubilee, and a revolving door of (bad) reality shows like MasterChef, 90 Day Fiancé, and The Moment of Truth. He often collaborates with other streamers like xQcOW, Mizkif, Ludwig, Pokimane, Austin Show, Myth, OTK, and OfflineTV. Not hasan minhaj.

Hasan reacts to Buffalo police say shooting suspect had racist agenda, posted extremist views, Buffalo Massacre: Gunman Cited Racist “Great Replacement” Conspiracy Theory Popularized by Fox News. People gathered Sunday at the supermarket in Buffalo, New York, on Sunday where a mass shooting left 10 people dead; Buffalo residents hold vigil at scene of mass shooting.

After 10 Killed In Buffalo Supermarket Mass Shooting, the Buffalo shooting raises questions about Red Flag Law in New York.