White House says it's cutting back funding for COVID tests. Why experts say Americans may pay the price this fall

Adrianna Rodriguez, USA TODAY

The White House is gearing up to make some “painful decisions” as COVID-19 funding is running out without relief from Congress.

The Biden administration said this week it will divert $10 billion in coronavirus relief from testing and other programs to maintain stockpiles of vaccines and treatments for Americans heading into the fall and winter.

“These are very, very difficult choices,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House COVID-19 response coordinator, told reporters Thursday. “This is not where we should be in the pandemic.”

Health experts agree vaccines should be a priority, but testing remains a pillar of the nation's COVID-19 public health strategy. Without it, they say the U.S. will have a hard time managing surging cases expected in the fall and winter.

Dr. Michael Mina, a testing expert and chief medical officer of eMed, called the scenario a pandemic "Groundhog Day."

“We’re probably going to hit the fall and we’re going to see something very similar to what we saw last year,” he said. “Testing is one of the best tools that we have – especially self-testing – to enable friends and family to gather safely and keep society running during big waves.”

Officials say the reallocation may include cutting back on free at-home rapid tests, scaling back funding for research and development of new COVID-19 vaccines and limiting orders of personal protective equipment.

Reducing testing capability could make tests more expensive and harder to access, experts say. Without tests, people won’t know if they're infected with the coronavirus and will be more likely to spread it, leading to more cases.

“I can see where prioritizing vaccination is in line with the administration’s stance,” said Dr. Neil Sehgal, assistant professor of health policy and management at the University of Maryland School of Public Health. “But cases still really matter, and testing matters to detect cases early and try to limit spread.”

Americans vulnerable to severe disease need timely access to testing to be prescribed life-saving treatments, experts noted. Pfizer’s antiviral, Paxlovid, has been shown to be effective at keeping high-risk COVID-19 patients out of the hospital but it must be given within five days of symptoms.

Not having the ability to test means vulnerable people may miss their window for treatment, leading to more hospitalizations and deaths, said Dr. Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

As tests become more expensive and harder to find, health experts worry vulnerable communities and essential workers will be the first to suffer despite the administration's effort to increase equitable access.

“Only the most privileged among us would have access to preventative tools,” Sehgal said. “If you’re a front line or essential worker who has been in the thick of this since the pandemic started, it’s becoming more difficult to protect yourself.”

The Biden administration has been warning for months of the potential for rationing and other tough trade-offs if Congress doesn't act to provide additional funding. Lawmakers in March appeared near a deal for $10 billion of the $22.5 billion that President Joe Biden has requested, but negotiations broke down.

How does COVID affect me?: Don’t miss an update with the Coronavirus Watch newsletter.

Officials said they had to act swiftly to secure vaccines before other nations locked in their place in line ahead of the U.S. But even after diverting funds, there still won’t be enough money to provide them to everyone, Jha said.

“Let me be clear: We do not have enough resources to make sure that every American who wants one of the next generation of vaccines will be able to get one,” he said. “But we needed to be at the negotiating table … and that’s why we pulled the funds.”

Experts agree that securing next-generation vaccines is important, especially after Moderna revealed data showing its new combination vaccine booster protects against the omicron variant better than its original booster dose.

But they expressed dismay that the U.S. has to choose between vital public health strategies to protect Americans.

“It’s really unfortunate and kind of shocking that we’re in this position,” Inglesby said. “It’s hard to fathom how we can be in this position two years into this.”

Sat, June 11, 2022

Contributing: Karen Weintraub, USA TODAY; Associated Press. Follow Adrianna Rodriguez on Twitter: @AdriannaUSAT.

Health and patient safety coverage at USA TODAY is made possible in part by a grant from the Masimo Foundation for Ethics, Innovation and Competition in Healthcare. The Masimo Foundation does not provide editorial input.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: COVID tests: Why experts say it may be harder to find them in the fall

Why tech majors like Google and Amazon don’t want H-1B kids to “age out”



By Ananya Bhattacharya
Tech reporter

QUARTZ
Published June 13, 2022

America’s technology behemoths are worried about their foreign workers’ children.

In a letter to Alejandro Mayorkas, the US secretary of homeland security, a coalition of tech companies like Amazon, Google, and Twitter, has urged the government of that country to let the children of visa holders stay past the age of 21.

More than 200,000 children of high-skilled immigrants are at risk of being booted out of the country under the current immigration system.

The idea that these children, having spent their entire lives in America, can’t continue staying on their dependent visas causes stress, anxiety, and depression in families. More importantly for tech companies, which hire most of the H-1B workers, it makes parents reconsider their decision to live and work in the US

“This uncertainty harms families and prevents our companies from attracting and retaining critical talent in the US,” the signatories wrote in their letter to Mayorkas. The children have to either leave the country or attempt to “re-enter the labyrinthine, high-stakes immigration system for a different visa where options are extremely limited.”

Immigrants and their American-bred children migrating to other parts of the world is particularly ominous for the US technology sector.
Plugging America’s tech skills gap

As of March, American companies had more than 11 million open jobs, five million more than the number of suitable workers available. Demand for technology talent has been especially high.

“Many of these job vacancies are for highly-skilled positions, and US companies recruit foreign-born workers to fill in the worker shortages,” the letter stated. “These openings are especially critical given the pandemic as the US seeks to maintain its ‘world leader’ status in innovation and ingenuity.”

As a long-term solution to retain foreign talent—and thereby maintain America’s competitive edge—the tech firms also encouraged the Biden administration to pass a bipartisan America’s Children Act.

The bill will create a pathway to citizenship for these young “documented dreamers” by locking in their age to the date they file for a green card. This eliminates the concern of a green card being issued after they turn 21.

Wikipedia fights Russian order to remove Ukraine war information

The Kremlin's Spasskaya Tower and St. Basil's Cathedral 

are seen through the art object in Zaryadye park in Moscow

Mon, June 13, 2022

LONDON (Reuters) - The Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia, has filed an appeal against a Moscow court decision demanding that it remove information related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, arguing that people have a right to know the facts of the war.

A Moscow court fined the Wikimedia Foundation 5 million roubles ($88,000) for refusing to remove what it termed disinformation from Russian-language Wikipedia articles on the war including "The Russian Invasion of Ukraine", "War Crimes during the Russian Invasion of Ukraine" and "Massacre in Bucha".

"This decision implies that well-sourced, verified knowledge on Wikipedia that is inconsistent with Russian government accounts constitutes disinformation," Stephen LaPorte, Associate General Counsel at the Wikimedia Foundation, said in a statement.

Wikipedia, which says it offers "the second draft of history", is one of the few remaining major fact-checked Russian-language sources of information for Russians after a crackdown on media in Moscow.

"The government is targeting information that is vital to people's lives in a time of crisis," LaPorte said. "We urge the court to reconsider in favor of everyone's rights to knowledge access and free expression."

The Moscow court argued that what it cast as the disinformation on Wikipedia posed a risk to public order in Russia and that the Foundation, which is headquartered in San Francisco, California, was operating inside Russia.

The Foundation was prosecuted under a law about the failure to delete banned information. The case was brought by Russia's communications regulator Roskomnadzor, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wikipedia.

The Wikipedia appeal, which was filed on June 6 with details released on Monday, argues that removing information is a violation of human rights. It said Russia had no jurisdiction over the Wikimedia Foundation, which was globally available in over 300 languages.

Wikipedia entries are written and edited by volunteers.

Narratives of the war, Europe's biggest ground invasion since World War Two, vary drastically -- and have become highly politicised with journalists in both Moscow and the West routinely accused of misreporting the war.

Ukraine says it is the victim of an unprovoked imperial-style land grab by Russia and that it will fight to the end to reclaim the territory that Russian forces have occupied. Kyiv has repeatedly asked the West for more help to fight Russia.

President Vladimir Putin and Russian officials do not use the words "war" or "invasion". They cast it a "special military operation" aimed at preventing the persecution of Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine.

Putin also says the conflict is a turning point in Russian history: a revolt by Moscow against the United States, which he says has humiliated Russia since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union and pushed to enlarge the NATO military alliance.

Ukraine and its Western backers deny Moscow's claims that Russian speakers were persecuted. Kyiv says Russian forces have committed war crimes, including killings, torture and rape in places such as Bucha.

Russia says the alleged evidence of war crimes consists of carefully constructed fakes and that Ukraine and its Western backers have spread disinformation about Russian forces.

($1 = 57.0000 roubles)

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

New Mexico, the most Hispanic state in the US, weighs benefits of language programs


Cedar Attanasio

Las Cruces Sun-News

Lilianna Naizer-Baldwin,10, foreground center, raises her hand during her Spanish class at the New Mexico International School in Albuquerque, N.M., on Friday, May 27, 2022. Mary Baldwin, a psychology intern at UNM Hospital Health science Center, immigrated to the U.S. from Honduras when she was 10. Now her daughter Lilianna is the same age and, thanks to the dual-language program, she's fluent enough to cook banana-leaf-wrapped tamales with her Spanish-speaking grandmother. New Mexico is the only state in the country where the right to learn in Spanish is laid out the constitution.

ALBUQUERQUE - Jacqueline Powell and her fourth-grade classmates toiled over pencil and paper to write a letter in Spanish about what they did in class this year.

Powell explained the assignment in perfect Spanish before struggling to translate the words to end her sentence. The 10-year-old charter school student raised her forearms to her temples in a show of mental effort, making her large round glasses seesaw up and down.

That struggle, fought every week at the New Mexico International School in Albuquerque, has put her speaking ability far ahead of some of her high school peers. It has allowed her to speak in Spanish with her grandmother, who is from Chihuahua, Mexico, and she has fostered a secret language between her and her mom, whose husband and step children can't speak Spanish.

While dual-language programs are offered in thousands of schools across the U.S., New Mexico is the only state where the right to learn in Spanish is laid out in the constitution.

Fourth grade Spanish/English dual language class student Jaqueline Powell, 10, writes her assignment in Spanish at the New Mexico International School in Albuquerque, N.M., on Monday, May 23, 2022.

Dual language programs like the one at the New Mexico International School are championed by Hispanic parents who want their children to cultivate cultural roots. They are also seen by education experts as the best way for English learners to excel in K-12 schools.

The question for lawmakers in the nation's most heavily Hispanic state is why New Mexico's dual-language programs aren't being used by the students who most need them.

Legislative analysts are expected in the coming weeks to release a report that will highlight challenges facing dual language and other multicultural programs. It will include a look at decades-old trends such as a lack of oversight by education officials, declining participation, and a reduction in the number of multicultural programs, said Legislative Finance Committee spokesman Jon Courtney.

The report also will acknowledge the lack of information about how well language programs are doing after two years without comprehensive academic testing due to the pandemic.

The number of dual language immersion programs has increased from 126 before the pandemic to 132 last year.

Spanish teacher Titi Martin-Borregon teaches Fourth grade Spanish/English dual language class students at the New Mexico International School in Albuquerque, N.M., on Monday, May 23, 2022.

State officials are supposed to assess the programs every three years. But the New Mexico Public Education Department has done only one in-person visit and evaluated only one school over the past three years, said department spokeswoman Judy Robinson.

The department has started a series of forums for parents around the Hispanic Education Act, a state law that informs multicultural programs.

While there isn't a consensus among educators as to how to best teach young children languages, a New Mexico court found in 2018 that well-run dual-language programs are the "gold standard" for English learners.

The alternative, more popular in Arizona, is to separate children out for remedial instruction.

In New Mexico, English learners make up a larger share of dual language program participants. They comprise 63% of participants in the current school year, up from 53% last year.

At the New Mexico International School in Albuquerque, around half of students are Hispanic, like Jacqueline, and reflective of the city's population.

"Many of their parents are trying to reclaim the language," school principal Todd Knouse said.

Spanish teacher Titi Martin-Borregon teaches Fourth grade Spanish/English dual language class students at the New Mexico International School in Albuquerque, N.M., on Monday, May 23, 2022.

English-speaking parents say they have an easier time learning about the benefits of dual-language programs and jumping through the hoops to get into charter schools. The schools are free but don't provide bussing.

"It's almost like a privilege type of experience to get your kid into these programs because it does take a lot of research. Tracking down the programs, the distance of how long you're willing to drive, the (admission) lottery," said Mary Baldwin, 34, whose daughter attends the Albuquerque school.

"And then there's so much shame that gets placed on the Spanish language or the culture itself," she said. "Some families might not be aware that being bilingual is a huge strength not just culturally but also professionally."

Baldwin immigrated to the U.S. from Honduras when she was 10. Her daughter is the same age now and is fluent enough to cook banana-leaf-wrapped tamales with her Spanish-speaking grandmother as a result of the dual-language program.

Fans of New Mexico's programs say they elevate Spanish-speakers' skills and give them confidence in an environment where everyone is equal as they learn a new language. The programs also increase fluency and literacy in their home language.

"It's generally beneficial to have two languages," said Stephen Mandrgoc, a University of New Mexico historian who has studied bilingual programs in the southwest and oversees Spanish colonial heritage programs.

Albuquerque, NM on Monday, May 23, 2022. The group at the New Mexico International School, a charter school, alternates every other week between a Spanish-only homeroom and an English-only one.

When it comes to languages spoken by New Mexico's Native American tribes and pueblos, there are some state laws that protect student rights. Still, only two dual language programs are offered in Native American languages — both in Diné, the language of the Navajo people.

Some tribes like Jemez Pueblo face a more pressing existential threat to their language because of a small population and cultural taboos that limit the creation of language materials. Other tribes like Santa Clara Pueblo say underinvestment is a problem.

New Mexico officials have appropriated millions of dollars to support curriculum projects, but much of the funds go unspent. Advocates say one problem is the time in which grants must be spent, from less than a year to sometimes as short as a month before it reverts back to the state.

Cedar Attanasio is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues. Follow Attanasio on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Las Cruces Sun-News: Most Hispanic US state weighs benefits of language programs

Sat, June 11, 2022,

Op-Ed: Can intermarriage spare California from America's identity politics?

Justin Gest
Sun, June 12, 2022,

(Richard Bailey / Getty Images)

The boundaries of Americans' partisan identities now predominantly overlap with the boundaries of our personal identities. As a result, American politics are now profoundly connected to questions of “who we are” and, not surprisingly, intransigent.

In researching the politics of six of the world’s “majority minority” societies — where one or more racial or religious minority groups have come to outnumber the majority group over time — I noted tribalized politics that can resemble our own. And I’ve found that whether their diverse communities coexist or conflict has a lot to do with the choices of governments and influential leaders.

While the same is true in the U.S., there is something individuals can do (which no fearmongering politician can stop) to fight the toxic division shredding America’s social fabric: Build relationships with people different from you.

Relationships and marriages between people from different racial or religious communities blur the boundaries that otherwise separate diverse societies and foil political campaigns and policies that aim to divide. When multiethnic or multi-religious populations mix and intermarry, they are less likely to vilify opponents, making it more likely that partisan fault lines will shift away from racial and religious identities to other sources of affinity — such as policy preferences.

Legally, California pioneered the idea of intermarriage in the United States. In Perez vs. Sharp, the California Supreme Court struck down state laws that prohibited marriages between white people and racial minorities. The 1948 decision, which ruled that the discriminatory laws violated constitutional requirements of due process and equal protection, preceded the U.S. Supreme Court's legalization of interracial marriage in Loving vs. Virginia by 19 years. According to the Pew Research Center's most recent review of U.S. Census Bureau data, nearly half of the U.S. metropolitan areas with the most intermarriages are in California.

At the time of the Loving decision, about 3% of U.S. marriages were between people who identify with different races or ethnic groups. By 2015, the rate increased to 17% of American newlyweds. In the Los Angeles metropolitan area, 22% of newlyweds intermarried, as well as 28% in San Diego, 29% in Stockton, and 30% in the Santa Barbara and Santa Maria region.

According to Pew, 5 out of 6 American interracial marriages today involve one partner who identifies as white. The most common racial or ethnic pairings among these newlywed couples is one Hispanic and one white spouse (42%) and one white and one Asian spouse (15%). White/Black newlyweds make up 11% of intermarriages.

Despite the growth of intergroup marriages and people who identify as mixed-race, the extent of intergroup contact in the U.S. is still small. New research from Ipsos Public Affairs shows that 57% of Americans have not even shared a meal with someone of a different race in the last year. Only 14% of Americans report that they have shared meals with at least one person from every major U.S. racial group in the last year.

Across the world’s wealthiest democracies, Americans most frequently report the strongest conflict between people who support opposing political parties and between people of different racial backgrounds. Fifty-point gaps separate Democratic and Republican public opinion on questions about the character of various groups such as immigrants, Muslims and Black people. Only when these gaps shrink will politicians be more likely to focus on wedge issues not grounded in racial or religious differences. But people who at least share some meals with racial or partisan outgroups are more likely to believe that Americans can reconcile their differences.

However, even the experiences of the multiracial children of interracial marriages are, well, mixed.

On the one hand, multiracial people’s social position between the white American majority and minority groups defies binary characterizations of the nation. Multiracial people believe their heritage has made them more open to other cultures, and psychologists find that immersion in multiracial communities reduces white people’s propensity to generalize about race. There is also evidence that white people find news about mixed-race marriage and multiracialism far less threatening than narratives about the nation’s demographic change to a majority minority society.

On the other hand, multiracial Americans still face substantial discrimination and they are often pressured to identify with one group or another. They may have their sense of identity or belonging ignored by people with whom they co-identify, or be doubted by strangers.

Despite its extraordinary diversity, California’s politics remain subject to the same racial boundaries that vex the rest of the United States. One reason why may be that the state’s diversity is concentrated in major cities and still separated by neighborhood-level segregation. Another reason is that Californians, despite their independent streak, are not shielded from the national discourse that reinforces the significance of racial differences.

If California is to transcend American identity politics, we must redefine or push aside the social boundaries that currently divide us.

Progress will come when more Americans come to see this nation in the way multiracial people see themselves — as indivisible.

Justin Gest is an associate professor at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government. He is the author, most recently, of “Majority Minority.”

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

U.S. Supreme Court takes no action on Bayer bid to nix weedkiller suits

Mon, June 13, 2022
By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday took no action on Bayer AG's bid to dismiss legal claims by customers who contend its Roundup weedkiller causes cancer as the German company seeks to avoid potentially billions of dollars in damages.

The case was not mentioned on a list issued by the court on Monday as it decided on whether to hear pending appeals, raising at least the possibility that the justices are considering hearing it. Bayer has asked the justices to take up its appeal of a lower court decision that upheld $25 million in damages awarded to California resident Edwin Hardeman, a Roundup user who blamed his cancer on the pharmaceutical and chemical giant's glyphosate-based weedkillers.

The Supreme Court's decision on whether to take up the appeal is being closely watched as Bayer maneuvers to limit its legal liability in thousands of cases.

U.S. President Joe Biden's administration in May urged the court not to hear the Bayer appeal, reversing the government's position previously taken under former President Donald Trump.

Bayer has lost three trials in which Roundup users have been awarded tens of millions of dollars in each. Bayer has pinned hopes for relief on the conservative-majority Supreme Court, which has a reputation for being pro-business. Bayer has won three trials, including one last week.

Bayer has asked the Supreme Court to review the verdict in Hardeman's case, which was upheld by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in May 2021. Hardeman had regularly used Roundup for 26 years at his home in northern California before being diagnosed with a form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Bayer has said it should not be penalized for marketing a product deemed safe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and on which the EPA would not allow a cancer warning to be printed.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

Attention, Florida Girl Scouts: This is no time to be kind, considerate of others | Frank Cerabino

Frank Cerabino, Palm Beach Post

Amelia Denney, 5, carries boxes of this year's Girl Scout Cookies in West Palm Beach. 

SOUTH OF SOUTHERN PHOTOGRAPHER

The Girl Scouts in Florida have no idea what danger they’re in.

“June is Pride Month and that means more than just a rainbow,” the Girl Scouts of Southeast Florida Facebook page announced. “It’s a celebration of the history, culture, and contributions of LGBTQIA+ people and their communities.”

Oh, the poor innocents.

“Your troop can learn about inclusivity, share what pride means to them, and read stories from people within the community.”

I guess they haven’t haven’t been paying attention to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ relentless effort to legislate hate and misinformation while silencing reason and compassion whenever they make an unauthorized appearance.

Another misfire: Florida's Rubio takes aim at COVID-19 vaccinations, not AR-15s | Frank Cerabino

Girl Scouts out of step with Florida

Inclusivity and gay pride have been officially redefined as pedophile “grooming.” It’s now branded as part of the sinister gay agenda that must be banished.

Books those same Girl Scouts might read about people being proud to be gay are being removed from their school bookshelves this summer.

So the Girl Scouts offering rainbow-flagged gay pride patches with red hearts on them is so, well, … 2017 of them.

Oh, the poor little lambs. And that’s just the half of it. The local Girl Scouts group is also promoting the “Juneteenth Freedom Day” patches to observe Black history.

Black history? Sound the alarm! Black history is on the naughty list in Florida.

Remember, we can’t be talking about the struggle to achieve social justice in this country because “social justice is closely aligned to Critical Race Theory,” as the state has recently warned.

The Scouts obviously have no idea that Florida has become a safe space for white pride, which has been turned into laws that redefine woeful chapters in American history as “subjective indoctrination that pushes collective guilt.”

But here’s how the Girl Scouts put it:

“Juneteenth occurs on June 19 every year and is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States! Your troop can learn about the holiday together, attend or host a celebration, support black-owned businesses, and talk about the importance of diversity in our country.”

I guess they also haven’t gotten the memo that diversity has been vilified under the state’s Stop WOKE (Wrong to Our Kids and Employers) Act, as a problematic form of discrimination against white workers and students.

“We believe an important component of freedom in the state of Florida is the freedom from having oppressive ideologies opposed upon you without your consent,” DeSantis said.

DeSantis, on the other hand, relishes taking punitive action on anybody who challenges his own oppressive ideologies.

Even Disney not safe from DeSantis

For example, When Disney World announced it could not support Florida's so-called “Don’t Say Gay” legislation, a hateful bill crafted to make gay teenagers feel ashamed about their sexual orientation, DeSantis punished the Florida business for not obeying his wishes.

He got the state Legislature to dissolve the private tax district Disney has had in Florida since its inception, and accused the company — which has donated more than $100,000 to his campaign — of becoming an unwholesome business in the state.

“It took a look under the hood to see what Disney has become to truly understand their inappropriate influence,” DeSantis told supporters in a fundraising letter.

Imagine that. And if you think that because you're Girl Scouts you are safe from DeSantis’ petty vindictiveness, think again.

Here’s just a sampling of his vindictive scorecard for the last couple weeks.

The horrific May 24 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, prompted a national outcry for sensible gun regulations. In Uvalde, an 18-year old purchased an AR-15 and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and then used this weapon of war to kill 19 elementary school children and two teachers. Some of the bodies were mutilated so badly that they had to be identified by their clothing.

All over America, organizations called for new laws that would ban the sale of AR-15s to teenagers, enact red flag laws, and limit the size of magazines on firearms.

Two days after the shooting, the Tampa Bay Rays and the New York Yankees jointly decided to drop their game coverage on Twitter that night, and instead “offer facts about the impact of gun violence.”

The teams pointed out that 4,500 veterans die of gun suicides every year, and that guns were the leading cause of death for children in 2020.

“Everyday, more than 110 Americans are killed with guns, and more than 200 are shot and injured,” the Rays site tweeted.

The baseball team announced it was donating $50,000 to Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit that lobbies for gun safety regulations.

A week later, DeSantis retaliated against the Rays by vetoing legislation that provided $35 million for a new spring training facility for the team in Florida. DeSantis later linked the veto to the team’s gun-violence message, explaining that it is “inappropriate to subsidize political activism of a private corporation.”

The real problem is that the Tampa Bay Rays had offered a counternarrative on guns that didn’t conform to DeSantis’ own views. He had been promising fewer gun regulations, telling Florida gun owners he planned to support legislation that would allow them to carry firearms publicly without permits.

DeSantis said this past week that any gun control legislation would just “kneecap the rights of law-abiding citizens.”

"With all due respect to these leftists, they just want to come after your Second Amendment rights," DeSantis said.

With all due respect to reality: The teenage shooters in both Uvalde and Buffalo, N.Y., where 10 people were killed, were both law-abiding citizens who purchased their firearms legally. And in other news, the Second Amendment does not prohibit gun regulation or grant an unfettered constitutional right to unlimited firepower.

The Rays repeated unassailable facts about gun violence, and for that, they were punished by Florida’s governor.

Special Olympics faces play or pay in Florida

Next, DeSantis went after the Special Olympics. That’s right, Girl Scouts. Pay attention. If he’ll go after the Special Olympics, well, you’re basically antifa.

The 2022 Special Olympics USA Games held in Orlando this month included a vaccine requirement for participants.

We can’t have COVID-19 vaccine requirements in Florida, because DeSantis appointed an anti-vaxxer for a state surgeon general, and the governor’s own turn away from vaccinations, which has led to thousands of unnecessary deaths in Florida, has to be sublimated to his “free Florida” campaign strategy.

So that meant threatening the Special Olympics with a $27.5 million fine if it kept its vaccination requirement for the Florida event.

“We’ve never seen something wielded like this vaccine to try to marginalize disfavored people,” DeSantis said. “And a lot of these special Olympians have also had COVID by now.”

The Special Olympics caved at the last minute, eliminating its vaccine requirement.

“We don’t want to fight,” the group said in a statement. “We want to play.”

I hope you’re paying attention, Girl Scouts. You may be next.

Girl Scouts need to take Florida precautions

So here’s my suggestion. Get rid of those patches that celebrate gay pride and acknowledge our country’s mistreatment of its Black citizens.

I’m sure the NRA can get you some AR-15 patches for the girls to wear, and there must be some Confederate soldier gravesites you can visit to earn a White Lives Matter merit badge.

And have you thought about including free samples of hydroxychloroquine to hand out with Thin Mints on your next cookie drive?

I’m worried about you, Girl Scouts. There’s a dangerous bully on the loose in Florida, and I don’t want you to be his next victim.

Frank Cerabino is a columnist at the Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. 

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: DeSantis targets Special Olympics, Rays, Disney. Are Girl Scouts next?

Sun, June 12, 2022

Under decades-old Hyde Amendment, millions of Americans already live in a 'post-Roe' world



Nada Hassanein and Eli Marcel Cahan
Fri, June 17, 2022, 

Rachael Lorenzo tried to seek an abortion after doctors found a pregnancy complication that would likely lead to a miscarriage.

But the clinic on the Acoma Pueblo, an Indigenous community in west central New Mexico, didn’t offer abortions. Clinicians said to wait until the miscarriage occurred naturally.

“That experience was incredibly traumatizing,” Lorenzo said, recalling the miscarriage in 2013.

Lorenzo learned that federal funds, such as those that support the agency responsible for Indigenous health care, the Indian Health Service, can’t be spent on abortions.

That’s because of the Hyde Amendment, a provision passed three years after the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that restricts federal spending on abortions. Because of Hyde, millions of people across the U.S. already live in a “post-Roe” world, out of reach of abortion care.

Overturning Roe could make matters worse, experts say. By further amplifying long-standing inequities in reproductive care disproportionately faced by people of color, its reversal would put those who suffer greater maternal health risks in further peril.

Who will be impacted most if Roe is overturned?

Millions of Americans of childbearing age who depend on government support for their health care already face the barriers imposed by Hyde. Indigenous communities like Lorenzo’s. Military service members. Medicaid beneficiaries, who are disproportionately of color and make up the majority of patients at low-income, federally funded community health clinics across the nation.

Most callers to Access Reproductive Care-Southeast, an abortion assistance group, are Black women and birthing people who receive Medicaid or are uninsured. ARC operates in six states in the South, where legislatures are expected to ban abortion if Roe is overturned.

Oriaku Njoku, ARC’s co-founder and executive director, said that even with Roe in place, people still struggle to access care because of the Hyde Amendment’s restrictions.

“Yes, abortion is legal, but it's not accessible for so many people,” Njoku said. “The idea of being able to have $500 on hand to pay for a first-trimester abortion is something that is not accessible or reality for a lot of people.”

Njoku said Roe’s repeal would “make it even more of a burden.”

“The post-Roe reality that folks are afraid of are actually the lived experiences of the South right now,” Njoku said.

Liza Fuentes is a senior researcher at the reproductive health policy research group Guttmacher Institute. She said many communities already “do not have the dignity to have a timely, affordable abortion, because so many restrictions are layered on top of it.”

“Were it not for the Hyde Amendment, their abortion care would be covered,” she said.

Reproductive rights advocates and clinicians have long pressed for reversal of the Hyde Amendment because of its life-threatening and life-altering consequences for women of color.

‘High and dry’: Abortion bans could be riskiest on women in maternal health care 'deserts'

Amid the national reckoning with structural racism, politicians have, too. Recently, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., who has led a coalition to repeal the provision, wrote in a Medium post that “now is the moment to dismantle systems of oppression,” like those that “push comprehensive reproductive health care out of reach for our nation’s most vulnerable.”

“I need you to legislate and vote like lives depend on it,” Pressley wrote to her colleagues, “because they do.”

But so far, such efforts haven’t been successful. Hyde has been renewed in federal budgets every year since it passed in 1976.

The Biden administration excluded the amendment from its 2023 federal spending proposal, but Republicans are expected to oppose the move. The administration also tried to eliminate the rider from the 2022 budget but conceded to Republican demands. Biden supported the rider for years but reversed his stance while campaigning for president.

For people on public insurance, the lack of abortion coverage means saddling out-of-pocket costs from about $500 up to $1,000 for the procedure, plus logistical barriers including childcare, travel distance and expenses and time off work.

More: Abortion by pill figures to rise if Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade

Low-income moms can find themselves in an economic bind, asking: “Do I pay for my abortion? Or do I go without groceries for a month, or more?” Lorenzo said. The Laguna Pueblo, Mescalero Apache and Chicana mother of two co-founded Indigenous Women Rising, a reproductive care resource group that offers an abortion fund for tribal women.

These obstacles mean women are forced to travel at least 50 miles and are twice as likely to be unable to receive an abortion. More than 20% of women forced to travel more than 100 miles won’t get one. A recent study published in JAMA Network Open found the longer the distance to an abortion facility, the greater the delay in obtaining abortion care and the more likely someone is to not receive one. Most of the study’s participants were Medicaid recipients.

Though 16 states offer their own abortion funding for Medicaid patients, the Hyde Amendment has an impact across more than three dozen states, according to Guttmacher – affecting 7.8 million Medicaid patients of reproductive age. Half are women of color, including Black and Hispanic women, who already experience higher rates of maternal death.

Black Maternal Health Week: 'We have to do better,' support, listen to Black moms, experts and loved ones say

More than 2 million American Indian and Alaska Native people receive health care through the Indian Health Service. The program typically operates the only health facilities for miles near tribal lands.

Native women would often ask Lorenzo, a community leader, why they couldn't get an abortion at their local IHS-run clinics and ask for help. “That involves a lot of political education about the Hyde Amendment and why it pertains to Native people,” she said.

That’s why Lorenzo started the abortion fund at Indigenous Women Rising, educating and advocating for the community's health and reproductive rights. “It’s not like we can just go anywhere.”

Lorenzo said the lack of coverage ignores women’s specific needs and vulnerabilities within circumstances like poverty, which pregnancy can exacerbate.

“We have to take into consideration when we're helping specifically Indigenous people access abortion care, especially since a lot of our folks, unfortunately, live in domestic violence situations, or they’re caregivers of elders, or they're under 18,” Lorenzo said.

How many abortions are actually performed in the US?

Dr. Rebecca Simon, a family medicine physician in a New Mexico IHS facility, said that as a doctor, it can feel as if your hands are tied.

“I’ve been trained to provide abortions, and I want to be that person for my patient, who can allow them to get safe, effective care in the community they live in,” Simon said, “it can be frustrating.”

Ushma Upadhyay, an associate professor in obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive science at University of California, San Francisco, studies abortions and health insurance. In an analysis of pregnancy outcomes among Medicaid patients searching for abortions online, she found that state-level restrictive abortion policies were associated with not getting an abortion at all.

“There are a lot of hurdles,” said Upadhyay, adding that restricting abortion access "can change pregnant peoples’ entire life trajectory.”

The landmark Turnaway Study from UCSF documented harms women experience after abortion denials. They include long-lasting economic hardship and insecurity, remaining with a violent partner, and dangerous pregnancy-related health conditions like hypertension and postpartum hemorrhage, which women of color already disproportionately endure.

Homicide is a leading cause of death during pregnancy. These women are more likely to be killed.

Time and time again, Simon said, she has seen those harms.

“I’ve had patients who told me they didn’t want to be pregnant but who came back several months later having been unable to get the care they needed," Simon said. “I do worry that the barriers these patients have to overcome can be too big of a burden. It really feels like moving mountains.”

Kwajelyn Jackson, executive director of the Atlanta-based abortion clinic Feminist Women’s Health Center, said her center serves 2,500 to 3,000 abortion patients a year. More than half are Black, and two-thirds are low-income, on Medicaid or uninsured.

“Abortion is carved out as being separate from or different from other kinds of health care,” Jackson said. “Communities of color, who have been harmed by or neglected by traditional health care systems, are also the very ones who are not able to access abortion services in the ways that they need.”

Lorenzo gets calls from several states including Oklahoma, where the governor recently enacted the most restrictive law in the country, banning abortion from fertilization. The advocate wishes policymakers would respect women’s agency, circumstances and lived experiences.

“The ability for them to make decisions about their own bodies is sacred.”

Pregnancy-related deaths could rise 20% or more in states that outlaw abortion, experts say

Nada Hassanein is USA TODAY's environmental and health inequities reporter. Eli Marcel Cahan is a freelance journalist. Both are recipients of the 2022 USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism Impact Fund.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Hyde Amendment: Millions of Americans already live in a post-Roe world

Meet the Pharmacist Expanding Access to Abortion Pills Across the US

Abigail Abrams
Mon, June 13, 2022


Credit - Courtesy Honeybee Health

On a recent spring evening, Jessica Nouhavandi found herself at the National Abortion Federation conference, surrounded by abortion providers talking excitedly about one key question: how to expand access to medication abortion in more states.

Nouhavandi’s company, Honeybee Health, is a crucial part of that goal. Barely four years old, the online, California-based mail-order pharmacy start-up is already one of the nation’s leading distributors of abortion pills. At some point, one of Nouhavandi’s fellow conference attendees asked if she could have imagined this moment just a few years ago. Nouhavandi remembers shaking her head in disbelief, her voice growing stronger with an unexpected surge of pride. “It was a very emotional moment to think of how far we’ve come in such a short amount of time,” she says.

A few days later, Nouhavandi got emotional for a different reason. On May 2, Politico published a draft of a Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade. Most abortion providers had been expecting the outcome, but the leaked draft confirmed their worst fears and focused the country’s attention on the stakes of the fight that abortion-rights advocates like Nouhavandi have been waging.

If the Supreme Court does overturn Roe, about half of U.S. states are expected to ban or severely restrict abortion. Advocates see medication abortion—a regimen of two drugs that can now be mailed directly to patients’ homes or to another location of their choosing—as key to the future of abortion access in the United States. Nouhavandi, 37, is leading that fight.

Read More: Inside the Effort to Promote Abortion Pills For a Post-Roe America.

Nouhavandi is co-founder and lead pharmacist at Honeybee Health, the first mail-order pharmacy in the U.S. to ship abortion pills. It’s now one of just two American pharmacy companies doing so—six months after the FDA permanently removed a requirement that the pills be dispensed in person and more than a year after the agency said it would stop enforcing the regulation during the COVID-19 public health emergency. Honeybee now operates in 48 states and territories, and works with a wide range of providers, from independent abortion clinics to most of the major abortion telehealth startups, to primary care practices starting to prescribe abortion pills for the first time.

With her signature collection of colorful glasses and broad smile, Nouhavandi has become a familiar face and critical resource as providers and activists scramble to find creative ways to educate patients and clinicians about abortion pills before the Supreme Court’s final ruling, which is expected at some point in June or early July. “Every person should have the choice to do what’s best for them. And that’s not always the case with health care in our country,” Nouhavandi says. “But as long as there are still states that are protecting the right to abortion … we’ll continue to find ways to support people, especially those that need it most.”

New FDA regulations transformed access to abortion pills

When Nouhavandi and her co-founder Peter Wang launched Honeybee Health in 2018, abortion access was not particularly on their minds. They’d been operating a regular community pharmacy outside Los Angeles and thought a new, online, mail-order pharmacy could help lower prescription drug costs by offering generic medications from wholesalers without going through health insurance.

But in 2020, when coronavirus precautions made people want to stay home and orders from Republican state officials temporarily closed some abortion clinics, providers began exploring how they might get abortion pills to patients outside of a traditional office setting. While other medical appointments largely moved online, specific requirements for mifepristone, one of the two drugs involved in medication abortion, prevented clinics from using telehealth appointments or mailing the medication. So medical groups sued the FDA, asking the agency to allow them to mail the pills during the ongoing public health emergency. In July 2020, a federal district court judge in Maryland agreed, and temporarily suspended the in-person dispensing requirement, saying providers could offer telemedicine appointments and then mail the pills to their patients. (The Supreme Court later reinstated the regulation after a challenge from the Trump Administration, but the FDA said it would stop enforcing it last spring and then permanently removed it in December.)

The ruling was transformative for abortion-rights advocates. But for the first several weeks after the judge’s decision, providers weren’t sure how using a pharmacy would work since the FDA still imposed special requirements on the drugs, says Elisa Wells, co-founder and co-director of Plan C, which aims to increase information about abortion pills and advises many abortion providers.

“Everyone was working from home, so the providers we had been working with were getting [the pills] shipped to their homes, which were then their offices,” Wells says. “They were packaging them up themselves, and they were figuring out how to print labels. All this stuff that a pharmacy would normally do for you.”

One day, Wells was on a webinar where an ACLU lawyer said the court ruling should allow providers to contract with online pharmacies. A number of providers had already been in touch with Nouhavandi, and they started more serious discussions about how Honeybee could help. “It wasn’t even a question,” says Nouhavandi, who has long had an interest in reproductive health and access. “It was yes, absolutely, let’s figure out how to do this.”

Honeybee had to figure out every detail from scratch: how they would receive prescriptions, what directions to patients should say, what information pharmacists needed if patients called Honeybee with questions instead of their own clinician. Nouhavandi brought in abortion providers to help educate her staff.

The process wasn’t easy. For starters, few people knew about abortion pills. When Nouhavandi texted her group chat of college-educated friends that she was starting this new project, her peers said they’d never heard of medication abortion. Even in pharmacy school, Nouhavandi says, “it’s just not something that is extensively taught. So pharmacists must go out of their way to get up to speed.”

This lack of information was due in part to the restrictions that the FDA has put on mifepristone since the drug was first approved in 2000. Most notably, the FDA required it to be dispensed in a clinic, doctor’s office or hospital. Providers are also required to get specially certified to prescribe the medication, must counsel patients on the risks, and then have the patient sign a form confirming they’ve been told that same information. These steps, while each relatively small, collectively created regulatory barriers that providers argue are not medically necessary and do not exist for even some highly addictive drugs.

Read More: Republican States Crack Down on Access To Abortion Pills As Supreme Court Decision Looms.

Abortion-rights activists, doctors, and researchers have spent years amassing data that shows medication abortion is safe and pushing for the government to treat it like other drugs with similarly low risks. They applauded the FDA’s December decision to remove the in-person dispensing requirement, but many were frustrated the agency didn’t go further. The FDA left the other requirements in place and added a new one: that pharmacies like Honeybee have to get certified to distribute mifepristone.

The FDA told TIME that after reviewing data and published literature about mifepristone, it concluded it was safe to get rid of the in-person requirement “provided all the other requirements of the [drug safety program] are met, and pharmacy certification is added.”

But the new certification requirement “came out of left field,” Nouhavandi says. One major wrinkle was that no certification process currently exists. Mifepristone’s manufacturers are working with the FDA to get a procedure approved, but that process could still take months.

In the meantime, the FDA has still paused enforcement of the in-person dispensing requirement during the pandemic public health emergency, and is allowing mail-order pharmacies to ship the pills as Honeybee has been doing. Amidst this confusing regulatory landscape, other larger pharmacies have not jumped to enter the market. TIME asked the five biggest pharmacy companies in the U.S. about whether they planned to seek certification, and most did not respond or declined to comment. CVS told TIME that retail pharmacies are not currently allowed to distribute mifepristone, and said it would review any changes from the FDA in the future.

Nouhavandi says she expects that some of the larger companies are “probably not wanting to touch this subject.” That’s been a boon to Honeybee’s business, which increased its revenue from just $27,000 when it launched near the end of 2018 to more than $14 million in 2021. But Nouhavandi says that as she has embraced distributing medication abortion, it’s been “disappointing” to see hesitancy from some investors. While her board and current investors are very supportive, she says, others she meets with—including people who say they support women’s health—are “skittish” about helping startups that work on abortion. And while Honeybee Health is based in a state that has moved to protect abortion rights, not all companies are in the same position. “We’re both supportive and outspoken regarding abortion rights,” Nouhavandi says. “But not all of our pharmacist colleagues have that level of support in their local environment.”

Preparing for the next shoe to drop

Despite the regulatory hurdles and the looming ruling on Roe, Nouhavandi feels energized. “I’ve never been more focused and excited as I have been in the last year,” she says. Which is good, because these days the business is crazier than ever. Since the Supreme Court leak, Honeybee has seen an 80% increase in demand for abortion pills, which now now make up roughly 30% of the company’s orders. Honeybee has grown to nearly 75 employees. A self-described coffee fiend who was never very good at work-life balance, Nouhavandi now regularly works 14-hour days packed with six to 10 meetings—often with investors, regulatory advisors, and lawyers. When we spoke, she was working out of a coworking space in Las Vegas, where she’d gone to consult with a provider interested in using telehealth to prescribe abortion pills.

If Roe is overturned, not that much will change for Nouhavandi. Already 19 states effectively outlaw mailing abortion pills, and Honeybee only ships to states where doing so is legal. “We have to stay within the law to ensure that we can continue to doing this work. Because this is the first time pharmacy is doing this, the scrutiny on us is even more,” she says.

Some abortion telehealth companies and clinics work with patients who drive from states where abortion pills are restricted to a state with more permissive laws, in order to take their telehealth appointment and pick up pills. Others know that patients might give pills to a friend in a state with more restrictions once they secure the medication themselves. Honeybee can’t control what happens to the medication once it’s in patients’ hands, but Nouhavandi emphasizes that the company is determined to abide by local laws. “We understand that we’re part of a bigger fight,” she says. “And so we can’t just go rogue and push the boundaries, because it really jeopardizes the whole movement.”

As the potential end of Roe draws closer, Honeybee has put more information about medication abortion up on its website, and Nouhavandi says that she knows disseminating accurate information, and countering misinformation, will be one of the major fights ahead. Right now, she’s trying to help more providers get certified to prescribe mifepristone, while positioning her own company to grow if demand requires it. “If that volume increases significantly, we’re totally prepared,” she says.

Honeybee Health is not a panacea, Nouhavandi acknowledges. Every patient can’t use medication abortion, and Honeybee Health can only mail the pills to states in which abortion is legal. But by working to make the pills widely available, the company can help offload demand, allowing the shrinking number of clinics to handle the expected influx of people traveling to get procedural abortions across state lines.

And that, Nouhavandi says, will remain her focus even in a post-Roe America. The goal, she says, is to make it “as easy as possible for patients and providers alike to get access” to abortion—now and in the future.

North Central Planned Parenthood workers file for union election

Bella Carpentier, Post-Bulletin, Rochester, Minn.

Jun. 12—ROCHESTER — North Central States Planned Parenthood workers filed with the National Labor Relations Board on May 26, 2022, for election to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa.

This came after the Planned Parenthood North Central States executive team decided against voluntarily recognizing the unionization of its workers, according to Jon Lutz, a health educator with Planned Parenthood in St. Paul.

"When we filed, we already had the majority of our colleagues in our five state area agree that they wanted to unionize and now all we have to do is prove it," Lutz said.

Lutz has been teaching sex education since 2013 and decided to work with Planned Parenthood in 2018, even though it meant taking a pay cut.

"I wanted to be a part of the organization that was doing the best sex ed in Minnesota. I wanted to learn from colleagues I've met in the sex education community who I really respected," Lutz said.

According to Lutz, he saw these colleagues who loved the work at Planned Parenthood having to leave because of financial reasons or work multiple jobs. With patient demand for care through Planned Parenthood high, Lutz said he started hearing about people having to take double shifts or skip breaks because of short staffing.

"I want this great job to continue to be a great job, and that's why for me, it's so important to to get unionized," Lutz said.

On May 2, news broke of the Supreme Court drafting an opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade.

If the ruling is overturned, Minnesota Planned Parenthood locations would likely see an upswing in the number of people coming in from out of state, as North Dakota and South Dakota have trigger laws that would outlaw abortion almost immediately while Wisconsin and Iowa are at-risk states.

"Every day, my coworkers and I provide the safe, quality reproductive care that our communities need and deserve. As everyone is aware, our right to provide this care is constantly under attack," Sadie Brewer, a registered nurse working at Planned Parenthood's Vandalia Street Clinic in St. Paul, said in a news conference on May 26. "What we need most at this critical time is as much protection as we can get — and a union will give us just that."

According to Lutz, he has noticed his students seem worried from about the overturn of Roe v. Wade.

"Something I would want any teenager I talk to to know is that abortion remains safe and legal, and even when Roe v. Wade falls, as it seemingly will, it will remain safe and legal in Minnesota," Lutz said. "We at Planned Parenthood are ready to help. We are not going anywhere."

The NLRB is in the process of scheduling when the election will be, according to Lutz. What will happen at the election is employees will either vote in favor of or against unionizing, and the majority vote plus one will decide what occurs.

"I'm extremely proud of the organizing work that my colleagues have done across five states (and) hundreds of employees during a pandemic," Lutz said. "We started with a majority and are building towards a super majority. We are going to win this election."