Protesters march through Minneapolis in support of Daunte Wright after first day of testimony in the trial of Kim Potter.
All eyes are now on Kim Potter as the former suburban Minneapolis police officer is expected to testify in her own defense on Friday.
Potter, a 26-year police veteran, is facing first- and second-degree manslaughter charges after shooting and killing Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, in April when she mistook her Taser for her handgun.
After the prosecution rested its case Thursday morning, Judge Regina Chu asked Potter if she still wanted to testify.
“Yes, your honor,” Potter responded, verbally addressing the court for one of the first times. “I’ll testify.”
“You don’t need any more time to think about that?” the judge asked
“No, your honor,” Potter said.
One of her attorneys, Earl Gray, chimed in to tell the judge, “For the record, we have thought at length about that, and she wants to testify.”
Matthew Barhoma, a criminal defense appeals attorney who is not involved in the case, said Potter’s case “lives or dies” on her testimony.
Daunte Wright, left, was killed in an April traffic stop. Kim Potter, right, is charged with manslaughter in his killing. (Facebook/Hennepin County Sheriff)
“No matter how great the defense is, if you fumble on the stand here in front of the jury, you’re never going to win them back,” Barhoma told Fox News Digital. “It’s a do-or-die strategy.”
The prosecution called about two dozen witnesses before resting its case, including Wright’s mother, father and girlfriend, to give “spark of life” testimony, which is permitted in Minnesota courts.
Randy Zellin, the head of the criminal practice at Wilk Auslander LLP and an adjunct professor of law at Cornell University, said Potter’s best chance of being acquitted lies in making her own connection with the jury from the witness stand.
“I do believe that somehow she needs to take the jury back, have the jury step into her shoes, and try to understand what she was going through in that moment, the terror,” Zellin, who is also not involved in the case, told Fox News Digital.
“She needs the jury to understand that she was mistaken, but not so mistaken that it becomes criminal.”
In this screen grab, police body cam video is shown in court on Friday, Dec. 10, 2021 at Hennepin County Courthouse in Minneapolis, Minnesota, of former Brooklyn Center Police Officer Kim Potter reacting after a traffic stop in which Daunte Wright was shot on April 11, 2021. (Court TV, via AP, Pool)
The defense has argued that Potter made a mistake, but that it never would have happened if Wright surrendered.
Several different body camera videos have been played for the jury throughout the trial. Potter and her trainee, Anthony Luckey, originally pulled Wright over because he had expired tags. The pair tried to arrest Wright when they realized he had an outstanding warrant on a weapons violation, but Wright tried to get back into his car.
As the officers struggled with Wright, Potter threatened to Taser him twice before yelling, “Taser, Taser, Taser,” and fatally shooting him once in the chest with her handgun.
The shooting occurred in Brooklyn Center in April, only about 10 miles away from where Derek Chauvin was being tried for murder charges in the death of George Floyd.
Demonstrators hold a banner in front of the FBI Minneapolis Division building as they march days after Daunte Wright, 20, was shot and killed by former Brooklyn Center Police Officer Kim Potter, in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, April 13, 2021. (REUTERS/Nick Pfosi)
Multiple prosecutors who secured a guilty verdict against Chauvin – including Assistant Attorneys General Matthew Frank and Erin Eldridge – are trying Potter.
“The biggest question that a defense attorney is faced with is, will my client pass muster on cross-examination? And who is that person that’s cross-examining them? And in this case, that individual is very, very, very detail-oriented,” Barhoma said.
“So is Potter going to be able to pass muster against this kind of scrutiny and really be able to uphold that this was human error, that this was not recklessness, and that she should not be held liable for that?”
School districts across the country are issuing warnings, increasing security and cancelling classes Friday in response to vague, anonymous shooting and bomb threats being made on TikTok that officials say are not considered credible.
Schools in Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois, Montana, New York and Pennsylvania will increase their police presence Friday due to the threats while schools in California, Minnesota, Missouri and Texas closed for the day.
“We are writing to inform you and not alarm you,” Oak Park and River Forest, Illinois, school administrators said in message to parents. “We have been made aware of a nationwide viral TikTok trend about ‘school shooting and bomb threats for every school in the USA even elementary’ on Friday, December 17.”
The administrators said local police departments would increase their presence around schools “out of an abundance of caution.”
Gilroy police in northern California said they had found threats on social media not to be credible, but school officials at Gilroy High School said final exams scheduled for Friday, the last day before winter break, would be postponed to January out of an abundance of caution.
“Making the decision to cancel classes tomorrow has not been an easy one,” Principal Greg Kapaku said in a message to parents.
TikTok announced the company was working with law enforcement to investigate in a statement released on Twitter.
“We handle even rumored threats with utmost seriousness,” the statement said, “which is why we’re working with law enforcement to look into warnings about potential violence at schools even though we have not found evidence of such threats originating or spreading via TikTok.”
Under the crush of thousands of lawsuits, Purdue filed for bankruptcy restructuring in September 2019, which automatically put a hold on all the claims against it.
Nearly two years later, Judge Robert Drain, the bankruptcy court judge in White Plains, N.Y., confirmed a plan that had been approved by a majority of creditors who voted. Purdue would be formally dissolved and would re-emerge as a new company called Knoa Pharma that would still produce OxyContin but also other drugs. The new company’s profits would go to states and communities to fund opioid treatment and prevention efforts.
The Sacklers would renounce their ownership, eventually sell their foreign pharmaceutical companies as well, and contribute $4.5 billion of their fortune to the state and local opioid abatement funds.
In exchange, all lawsuits against Purdue would be extinguished, a benefit typical of bankruptcy. What made the settlement so contentious was the Sacklers’ insistence on being released from all Purdue-related opioid claims, although they had not personally filed for bankruptcy.
In court, lawyers said there are more than 800 lawsuits that name the Sacklers.
After Judge Drain approved the plan, it was immediately appealed by the United States Trustee, a branch of the Justice Department that monitors bankruptcy cases; eight states, including Maryland, Washington and Connecticut; the District of Columbia; and about 2,000 individuals. The appeal was filed in federal district court.
Lawyers challenging the plan argued that the Sacklers had essentially gamed the bankruptcy system. Moreover, they argued, Judge Drain lacked the authority to shut off a state’s power to pursue the Sacklers under its own civil consumer protection laws.
“Today’s ruling is a critical development that restores the state’s ability to protect the safety of Marylanders by holding fully accountable those who created or contributed to the opioid crisis, particularly members of the Sackler family,” said Brian E. Frosh, the Maryland attorney general.
The congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol ramped up its pressure on a key member of former President Donald Trump’s inner circle this week – all while revealing more about the chaos that unfolded that day.
The House approved a resolution Tuesday asking that former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows be charged with contempt of Congress after he refused to testify before the committee, citing executive privilege.
Policemen and firefighters gather near a building where a fire broke out in Osaka, western Japan on Friday. Dozens of people are feared dead, fire department officials said.
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Policemen and firefighters gather near a building where a fire broke out in Osaka, western Japan on Friday. Dozens of people are feared dead, fire department officials said.
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TOKYO (AP) — More than 20 people were feared dead after a fire broke out Friday in a building in Osaka in western Japan, officials said, and police were investigating arson as a possible cause.
The fire started on the fourth floor of an eight-story building in the major business, shopping and entertainment area of Kitashinchi, Osaka fire department official Akira Kishimoto said.
Twenty-seven people were found in a state of cardiac arrest and one other woman was injured, Kishimoto said. The woman was conscious and brought down by an aerial ladder from a window on the sixth floor and was being treated in a hospital.
Later Friday, 19 people were pronounced dead and three others were resuscitated, NHK national television and other media reported. Japanese authorities declined to confirm those reports.
A doctor at one of the hospitals treating the victims said he believed many of them died after inhaling carbon monoxide as they had limited external injuries.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said “many people have died or being in a state of heart and lung failures,” without disclosing the exact number. Osaka Gov. Hirofumi Yoshimura offered condolences.
The building houses an internal medicine clinic, an English language school and other businesses. Many of the victims are believed to be visitors at the clinic on the fourth floor, fire department officials said.
The cause of the fire and other details were not immediately known. Osaka police said they were investigating to determine whether the fire was caused by arson or an accident.
Media reports said police were searching for a man who witnesses saw carrying a paper bag from which an unidentified liquid was dripping. Police declined to confirm those reports.
NHK said a female outpatient at the clinic’s reception desk saw the man, while another person nearby said the fire started soon after he put the leaky bag on the floor.
People on other floors of the building were believed to have been safely evacuated, Kishimoto said.
NHK quoted a witness as saying she heard a woman’s voice coming from the fourth floor calling for help. Another witness told TV Asahi he saw flames and smoke coming out of windows on the fourth floor when he stepped outside after hearing a commotion.
In total, 70 fire engines were mobilized to fight the fire, which was mostly extinguished within about 30 minutes of an emergency call, officials said.
In 2019 at the Kyoto Animation studio, an attacker stormed into the building and set it on fire, killing 36 people and injuring more than 30 others. The incident shocked Japan and drew an outpouring of grief from anime fans worldwide. In 2001, an intentionally set blaze in Tokyo’s Kabukicho entertainment district killed 44 people — the country’s worst known case of arson in modern times.
NEW YORK, Dec 16 (Reuters) – The U.S. government on Thursday permanently eased some restrictions on a pill used to terminate early pregnancies, allowing the drug to be sent by mail rather than requiring it to be dispensed in person.
The decision by the Food and Drug Administration comes as the right to obtain an abortion, established in the 1973 Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade, hangs in the balance.
The medication, generically known as mifepristone, is approved for use up to 10 weeks of pregnancy and is also sometimes prescribed to treat women who are having miscarriages.
“The FDA’s decision will come as a tremendous relief for countless abortion and miscarriage patients,” said Georgeanne Usova, senior legislative counsel at the ACLU.
The restrictions on the pill had been in place since the FDA approved the drug in 2000 and were lifted temporarily by the government earlier this year due to the pandemic. That enabled women to consult healthcare providers by telemedicine and receive the pills by mail. The FDA’s decision makes that temporary change permanent.
As a result of the FDA rule change, many patients will not need to go to a clinic, medical office or hospital in person to receive the medication, but can opt to receive the pill through the mail from a certified prescriber or pharmacy.
The decision will increase access to medication abortion for women in remote and rural areas without providers nearby.
Low-income women who face obstacles reaching clinics such as lack of transportation and inability to take time off work will also gain greater access to the drug.
However, 19 states including Texas have laws that supersede the FDA decision by barring telehealth consultations or mailing of abortion pills. Women in those states would not be able to make use of the rule change at home but could potentially travel to other states to obtain medication abortion.
States such as California and New York that have sought to strengthen access to abortion may make the drug available to women from other states.
The change is likely to add to the intense U.S. political debate over abortion. Conservative Supreme Court justices indicated in Dec. 1 oral arguments over an abortion ban in Mississippi at 15-weeks of pregnancy that they are open to either gutting Roe or overturning it entirely. A decision is due by the end of June.
The Charlotte Lozier Institute and Susan B. Anthony List, which advocate against abortion, said in a statement that the FDA decision ignored data on complications and put women at risk.
The groups called on the FDA to restore the in-person dispensing requirement and add restrictions.
FDA records show that of the 3.7 million women who took Mifeprex, the branded version of the drug, to terminate a pregnancy between September 2000 and December 2018, 24 died from complications.
SOME RESTRICTIONS REMAIN
The FDA left in place some restrictions, such as the need to use a certified pharmacy and requiring the prescribers to be certified. The ACLU said it was “disappointing that the FDA fell short of repealing all of its medically unnecessary restrictions on mifepristone and these remaining obstacles should also be lifted.”
The organization sued the U.S. government on behalf of a
Hawaii doctor and several professional health care associations in 2017 challenging the restrictions that it said limited access to medication abortion.
Medication abortion involves two drugs, taken over a day or two. The first, mifepristone, blocks the pregnancy-sustaining hormone progesterone. The second, misoprostol, induces uterine contractions.
(This story has been refiled to remove extraneous word in third paragraph)
Author and cultural critic bell hooks poses for a portrait on December 16, 1996 in New York City, New York.
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Author and cultural critic bell hooks poses for a portrait on December 16, 1996 in New York City, New York.
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“We black women who advocate feminist ideology, are pioneers. We are clearing a path for ourselves and our sisters. We hope that as they see us reach our goal – no longer victimized, no longer unrecognized, no longer afraid – they will take courage and follow.”
bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman
There are well-worn bell hooks books scattered throughout my library. She’s in nearly every section – race, class, film, cultural studies – and, as expected, her books take up an entire shelf in the feminism section. I doubt I would have survived this long without her work, and the work of other Black feminist thinkers of her generation, to guide me. I’ve retrieved every bell hooks book today, and the unwieldy stack comforts me as I assess the impact of her loss.
If you ever heard hooks speak, it would come as no surprise that she first attended college to study drama, as she recounted in a 1992 essay. In the 1990s she blessed my college campus for a week, and I was mesmerized by lectures that were deliciously brilliant yet full of humor. Her banter with the audience during the Q&A floated easily between thoughtful answers, deep questioning and sly quips that kept us at rapt attention. Her words garner just as much attention on the page. She was a prolific writer, and her intellectual curiosity was boundless.
Discovering bell hooks changed the lives of countless Black women and girls. After picking up one of her many titles – Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center;Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics;Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism – the world suddenly made sense. She reordered the universe by boldly gifting us with the language and theories to understand who we were in an often hostile and alienating society.
She also made clear that, as Black women, we belonged to no one but ourselves. A bad feminist from the start, hooks was clearly uninterested in being safe, respectable or acceptable, and charted a career on her own terms. She implored us to transgress and struggle, but to do so with love and fearlessness. Her brave, bold and beautiful words not only spoke truth to power, but also risked speaking that same truth to and about our beloved icons and culture.
As we traversed hostile spaces in academia, corporate America, the arts, medicine and sometimes our own families, hooks not only taught us how to love ourselves, but also insisted that we seek justice. She helped us to better understand and, if necessary, forgive the women who birthed and raised us. She claimed feminism without apology, and encouraged Black women in particular to embrace feminism, and to do more than simply identify their oppression, but to envision new ways of being in the world. She called on us to honor early pioneers such as Anna Julia Cooper and Mary Church Terrell, who first claimed the mantle of women’s rights.
The lower-case name bell hooks published under challenged a system of academic writing that historically belittled and ignored the work of Black scholars. She also used language that was as plain and as clear as her politics. While her writing was deeply personal, often carved from her own experiences, her ideas were relentlessly rigorous and full of citations—even though she eschewed footnotes, another refusal of the academy’s standards that endeared her to those of us determined to remake intellectual traditions that denied our very humanity.
Rejecting footnotes seemed to symbolize the fact that the knowledge hooks most valued could not fit into those tiny spaces. Her writing style hinted at the fact that her ideas were always more expansive than even her books could hold. While there were no footnotes, her books were love notes to a people she loved fiercely.
No matter where she taught or lived, bell hooks always kept Kentucky and her family ties close. She frequently claimed her southern Black working-class background and an abiding love for her home. Although she was educated at prestigious schools, she always spoke with the wisdom and wit of our mothers, grandmothers and aunties. Her return to the Bluegrass State and Berea College towards the end of her career has a narrative elegance. A generation of feminists has lost a foundational figure and a beloved icon, but her legacy lives on in her writing, which will provide sustenance for generations to come.
Lisa B. Thompson is a playwright and the Bobby and Sherri Patton Professor of African & African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Follow her @drlisabthompson on Twitter and Instagram.
WE ARE NOT THERE YET— As we enter the third year of the pandemic, my mind keeps flashing back to a trailer I saw last year for a widely panned Michael Bay movie, which portrays an unlikely dystopian pandemic future, but captures the feeling of helplessness and despair that so many — even those of us lucky enough to have access to vaccines and the privilege to social distance — feel right now with the country on the brink of an Omicron surge.
Last year, when I put together a 2021 pandemic guide, it seemed like this year would bring back a sense of normalcy. And in many ways it did: Kids headed back to classrooms, sports seasons resumed relatively routine schedules, families celebrated the holidays together, people got on planes and many workers went back to the office full time.
Yet more people have died this year than last year as the virus tore its way through largely unvaccinated pockets of the country killing older Americans at alarming rates. One out of every hundred Americans 65 and older have died from Covid.
These days, with hospitals so full they are refusing patients, it’s hard to see how this pandemic will ever end, so I reached out to several Nightly go-to experts to help me figure out what is actually ahead. Here are five predictions for 2022:
The U.S. will hit one million deaths in the spring.
Earlier this week the country hit 800,000 Covid deaths and is still recording about 1,300 deaths a day. Even if the Omicron death rate is lower, the overall infection rate will likely be higher, leading to another surge in deaths, said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
“Omicron is starting to rival our most transmissible infectious agent of all: measles,” said Peter Hotez, a vaccine expert at the Baylor College of Medicine, who predicts the country will see a million deaths by the end of March.
Even folks who have gotten their booster dose are getting breakthrough infections, though they are largely spared from severe outcomes. But nearly 75 percent of the population has yet to receive a booster dose, and 40 percent of the U.S. population has yet to receive a single vaccine dose — leaving a vast number of Americans still deeply vulnerable to the worst of the crisis.
We will run out of room on our vaccination cards.
The mRNA vaccines are proving to be not as long lasting as we had hoped, said Hotez, who is working on a low-cost recombinant protein vaccine.
Even three doses may not be enough. “We haven’t hit the ceiling yet of how high we can get an immune response,” said Kirsten Lyke, a vaccine researcher at the University of Maryland School of Medicine who has been studying Covid shots.
That means we will probably be getting another shot. It’s unclear whether future shots will be the same as the previous ones or reconfigured to better tackle new variants, and whether they will become annual rituals. Researchers are now working on a coronavirus shot that will protect against a broad range of coronaviruses as well as variants.
We will be talking about an Omega variant.
“We will go through the whole Greek alphabet,” said Syra Madad, an infectious disease epidemiologist and senior director of the system-wide special pathogens program at NYC Health + Hospitals. We may not hit the Greek alphabet’s last letter in 2022, but it won’t be a distant possibility.
As long as there are large unvaccinated pockets of the world, new variants will emerge, Hotez said. Less than 50 percent of the world’s population is vaccinated.
“Mother Nature has told us what she has in store for us,” Hotez said, who argues the U.S. has a responsibility to provide doses and combat global anti-vaccine messages. “If we fail to vaccinate the Southern hemisphere, she will get us.”
Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. We’ll have more on what to expect on Covid medicines and what “normal” might mean coming up. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at [email protected]. Or contact tonight’s author at [email protected], or on Twitter at @RenuRayasam.
We will talk less about social distancing and more about Covid drugs.
Instead, 2022 will bring new advancements in Covid therapeutics that won’t stop the spread or bend the curve, but could help cut infection mortality rates. The FDA is considering the approval of two antiviral pills — one from Pfizer and one from Merck/Ridgeback Biotherapeutics — that have the potential to drastically lower the chances of severe illness and death. The catch is that they have to be taken early, which will require widespread, cheap testing.
“I do think relying on pharmaceutical interventions is going to miss the mark,” said Spencer Fox, associate director of the University of Texas Covid-19 Modeling Consortium. “There are things we can do to prevent transmission rather than trying to deal with repercussions of transmission.”
There will (hopefully) be a new normal.
If 2020 caught us by surprise, 2021 plunged us into either ignorance or despair. Some people ignored the virus completely. But others tried to live Covid-safe lives and failed. We planned masked Christmas parties that turned into holiday superspreading events. Broadway reopened and canceled shows. Many major companies scrapped return-to-office plans more than once.
2022 will hopefully be the year where people and policymakers get realistic and figure out how to live with endemic Covid.
“We are not back to square one,” Madad said. “Pandemics do end.”
That means figuring out policies and guidance that are more sustainable, she said. Some of those policies are straightforward — booster shots for long-term care residents should be an urgent priority, and more rapid, frequent testing. The Biden Administration has so far resisted sending tests directly to Americans. Others, like designing office and school policies or planning parties and trips, will be more complicated but vital as Covid waves go and come.
“Covid has really humbled us as society,” Fox said. “My new normal is planning things with a sense of flexibility.”
The vaccine had already proven to be less effective than its mRNA counterparts: the single shot was 71 percent effective against hospitalizations compared with 93 percent for Moderna and 88 percent for Pfizer, according to a CDC report.
All the bad news doesn’t mean that 16 million J&J recipients in the U.S. should panic — the clotting risk is limited to a three-week window after the initial shot. Plus they should just get a follow-up shot. And soon.
Plus, while J&J may produce fewer antibodies than the other two shots, it creates a better T-cell response, which is a different arm of immunity, Lyke said. There’s also data showing that J&J’s shot might have a more durable response — eight months compared to six months with mRNA vaccines — something that Lyke’s lab is currently studying. The shot is still available for people who are allergic to mRNA vaccines or who might not be comfortable with the new technology.
In any case, she points out, one and done was still better than zero. About 85 percent of hospitalized patients are unvaccinated, according to new research from Kaiser Family Foundation and the Peterson Center on Healthcare.
— Crackdown on China’s treatment of Muslim minority headed to Biden’s desk:The Senate today unanimously passed a bill to crack down on the Chinese government’s genocide targeting Uyghur Muslims, sending the measure to Biden’s desk for his signature. Despite the bill’s overwhelming support, it faced a long and complicated road to final passage as its co-authors, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), encountered obstacles from the White House and the private sector. The legislation briefly became intertwined with Democrats’ unrelated domestic agenda items, as well as a GOP-led blockade on foreign-policy nominations.
— Rep. Alan Lowenthal won’t seek reelection in 2022:Rep. Alan Lowenthal will not run for reelection, adding to a generational changing of the guard in California politics. The Long Beach Democrat said in a statement that he would not seek a sixth term in Congress, choosing instead to “pass the baton” and spend time with family. Lowenthal’s current seat is safely Democratic and will likely remain so even under new lines, though the latest iteration from the state’s independent redistricting commission eliminated one Southern California seat to account for slower population growth.
— More than 100 Marines kicked out of the service for refusing Covid vaccine: The Marine Corps has booted 103 of its members for refusing the Covid vaccine, the service announced today, even as all the military branches report that a vast majority of troops have gotten the shots. The news comes the same day the Army announced that it has relieved six leaders — including two commanding officers — over the issue, and that almost 4,000 active-duty soldiers have refused the vaccine.
— Chamber launches ads targeting Manchin, hoping to kill Build Back Better: Washington’s largest business lobby got the bipartisan infrastructure bill it wanted. Now it’s going in for the kill on the piece of Biden’s agenda that it doesn’t want — Democrats’ $1.7 trillion reconciliation bill. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is readying a multi-pronged ad blitz aimed at keeping the pressure on two of the bill’s key holdouts in the Senate, Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.
Gen. Micael Bydén, the Swedish supreme commander, spoke to POLITICO today during a visit to Washington where he met with counterparts including Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Nahal Toosi writes.
Russia’s menacing of Ukraine is top of mind for Sweden as well as neighboring countries. President Vladimir Putin has amassed nearly 100,000 troops along the border with Ukraine, which Moscow earlier invaded in 2014.
The U.S. and its European allies have warned Putin that Russia will face severe sanctions and other penalties should he attempt another incursion, and that they will not waver in their military support for Ukraine. Biden has indicated, however, that he won’t send American troops to directly fight in that ongoing war.
Enforcement of the agency’s decades-old rules requiring the pills to be physically handed out by a medical provider was suspended earlier this year following a lawsuit from the ACLU arguing that the risks of traveling to a doctor’s office during the Covid-19 pandemic outweighed any potential harms from having the drugs delivered. Now, the agency says it will move to make the looser distribution rules permanent.
Alexis McGill Johnson, the president & CEO of Planned Parenthood, called the decision “long overdue” and a “victory for public health and health equity.”
“This decision will remove a sometimes insurmountable barrier for patients seeking an abortion,” she said in a statement following the hearing.
The agency’s move is set to open a new front in the ongoing battle over abortion rights, with activists and lawmakers on the right pushing national and state restrictions on the pills while their counterparts on the left work to get information out about where people can obtain the drugs no matter where they live or what bans are enacted.
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A district in Gasoncade County will be closed Friday and school districts across Mid-Missouri say they’ve been made aware of a trend on social media app TikTok that challenges kids to threaten their schools.
“There is a TikTok challenge working its way across the nation that challenges students/people to make bomb threats or school shooting threats for school on” Friday, the Mexico School District said in a social media message Thursday. “We are aware of the circulation of this challenge and take all threats seriously. Currently, there have been no threats to any of the schools in Mexico.”
The Gasconade County Sheriff’s Office said Gasconade County R-II will close Friday because of the trend.
“Our office will take every threat seriously and students/non-students will face possible legal consequences for making threats. Gasconade County Sheriff’s Office will assist other agencies with an increased presence of law enforcement at our local schools,” Gasconade County Sheriff Scott Eiler wrote in a Facebook post.
Maries County Sheriff Chris Heitman said in a Facebook post that his office was aware of the trend and that while no specific threats had been issued against local schools, extra deputies would be on the lookout Friday.
“Honestly, I do not feel like the school is going to be attacked tomorrow but we want to be prepared just in case,” Heitman said.
Heitman said several parents reached out to him with concern when learning about the trend.
“These kids don’t realize that they’re gonna get caught eventually, and that it is a crime, and its something they could get in trouble for,” Heitman said.
Heitman said often times these threats do not turn out to be credible, but law enforcement will treat them as a potential threat.
“It can be considered a terroristic threat, which is something they can get jail time for,” Heitman said
Columbia Public Schools spokeswoman Michelle Baumstark said the district is aware of the trend but has seen no specific threats.
“No specific schools or districts are mentioned in these threats, and we have no reason to believe there is a threat for our district or any of our schools,” the Jefferson City School District said in a message sent to parents and shared with media.
Noelle Gilzow, a teacher for Columbia Public Schools, said this is not the first time a social media trend like this circulated in schools.
“Like there would be a new challenge for each month, all the way through the school year and the next one after the bathroom challenge was to slap a teacher,” Gilzow said.
Gilzow wants students to know this is not something to joke about.
“This is a real problem, it really happens people really die, so I think to make light of it and have it be a challenge and even play around is just egregious,” Gilzow said.
School of the Osage sent an alert to parents saying the district is working with law enforcement.
Officials in districts across the nation have been made aware of the trend and sent out similar messages.
Thomas Jefferson Middle School in Jefferson City was the target of social media threats by students last Friday, the school’s principal said. Principal Shawn Kelsch wrote to parents over the weekend that the students responsible are under police investigation, have been suspended and are being referred for expulsion.
Joe Biden this month took another step toward the removal of the controversial postmaster general Louis DeJoy, even as the Trump-era appointee continues to make his mark on the embattled postal service, rolling out new plans to slow down delivery and close postal stations around the country.
DeJoy, a Republican logistics executive, caused a national furor last year over his attempts to slow down mail delivery before the 2020 presidential election, in which millions of Americans voted by mail.
Biden has not said outright whether he wishes to oust DeJoy, although his press secretary, Jen Psaki, has said she is “deeply troubled” by his leadership. Even so, the president lacks the authority to dismiss the postmaster general. That power rests with the USPS Board of Governors, a nine-member panel that can remove DeJoy with a majority vote. There were three vacancies on the board when Biden took office, and he filled those vacancies with Democratic allies earlier this year.
Now the president has taken a further step toward reshaping the board by nominating two new governors to replace those whose terms are expiring. His decision not to renominate the Democratic board chairman, Ron Bloom, is significant, since Bloom was one of DeJoy’s biggest allies on the board and earlier this year said he considered DeJoy “the proper man for the job”.
Indeed, the postmaster general bought as much as $305,000 in bonds from Bloom’s asset management firm earlier this year, according to DeJoy’s financial disclosure paperwork. Bloom has said he doesn’t benefit from the purchase. The asset purchases and Bloom’s continued support for DeJoy led some Democratic senators to say they wouldn’t support Bloom’s renomination.
Even as Biden appears to inch closer to ousting DeJoy, the embattled postmaster general has begun to leave his mark on the agency. DeJoy abandoned his initial attempts to slow down mail delivery ahead of the 2020 election after he faced lawsuits and backlash, but soon after he announced a significant reduction in the agency’s 60,000-member administrative workforce.
DeJoy also released in April a 10-year plan for revamping postal operations. Some provisions are supported by unions and postal advocates, such as a $40bn investment in the agency’s vehicle fleet and logistics network, and modernizing thousands of retail post offices. The plan also calls for an end to a mandate that requires the USPS to fund retiree health benefits decades in advance, which postal management has decried for years as an unnecessary burden on its finances.
DeJoy’s plan would attempt to fill the postal service’s $160bn funding hole through a wide variety of cost-cutting measures.
An aunt of Addison Stewart, Meg Aherne, said: “I don’t even know what to write at this stage. Everyone is devastated, she was always such a sweet, kind, old soul.”
Under the crush of thousands of lawsuits, Purdue filed for bankruptcy restructuring in September 2019, which automatically put a hold on all the claims against it.
Nearly two years later, Judge Robert Drain, the bankruptcy court judge in White Plains, N.Y., confirmed a plan that had been approved by a majority of creditors who voted. Purdue would be formally dissolved and would re-emerge as a new company called Knoa Pharma that would still produce OxyContin but also other drugs. The new company’s profits would go to states and communities to fund opioid treatment and prevention efforts.
The Sacklers would renounce their ownership, eventually sell their foreign pharmaceutical companies as well, and contribute $4.5 billion of their fortune to the state and local opioid abatement funds.
In exchange, all lawsuits against Purdue would be extinguished, a benefit typical of bankruptcy. What made the settlement so contentious was the Sacklers’ insistence on being released from all Purdue-related opioid claims, although they had not personally filed for bankruptcy.
In court, lawyers said there are more than 800 lawsuits that name the Sacklers.
After Judge Drain approved the plan, it was immediately appealed by the United States Trustee, a branch of the Justice Department that monitors bankruptcy cases; eight states, including Maryland, Washington and Connecticut; the District of Columbia; and about 2,000 individuals. The appeal was filed in federal district court.
Lawyers challenging the plan argued that the Sacklers had essentially gamed the bankruptcy system. Moreover, they argued, Judge Drain lacked the authority to shut off a state’s power to pursue the Sacklers under its own civil consumer protection laws.
“Today’s ruling is a critical development that restores the state’s ability to protect the safety of Marylanders by holding fully accountable those who created or contributed to the opioid crisis, particularly members of the Sackler family,” said Brian E. Frosh, the Maryland attorney general.
The number of Omicron cases in Los Angeles County rose to at least 30, officials said Thursday has they continued to urge vaccinations and booster shots to slow the spread.
Of the 30 total Omicron cases in L.A. County, 24 people were fully vaccinated and four had also received booster doses. None have been known to be hospitalized, and none have died.
Nationally, more than 300 Omicron cases have been confirmed, and at least 49 in California.
Health officials have begun to warn that Omicron may pose a threat to hospitals in the coming weeks, due to its explosive spread. Even if it does pose a risk for less severe disease in general, the sheer increase in its transmissibility could still result in hospitals being overwhelmed.
“Given what we know, Omicron does pose a significant threat to our community in L.A.,” county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said Thursday. “Unvaccinated individuals appear to remain at the highest risk. But all the evidence to date indicates that those fully vaccinated are also at increased risk, particularly for getting infected and infecting others.”
That’s why it’s so important that fully vaccinated people get booster shots, and why it’s important to get tested before attending holiday gatherings, as vaccinated asymptomatic people can potentially be infected and spread the virus to others.
Early data suggest that effectiveness against symptomatic illness from Omicron for the two-shot Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine falls to 35% but rises to 75% following a booster shot. Still, this is not as good as the vaccine effectiveness against Delta, which was 95% following the booster, according to Dr. Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla.
Omicron’s spread is one of the factors that led California officials to order a statewide mandate for people to wear masks in indoor public settings that took effect Wednesday.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Omicron nationally is now accounting for 3% of analyzed coronavirus cases but is substantially higher in some locations. In the New York and New Jersey areas, Omicron is estimated to comprise 13% of new cases.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical advisor for the pandemic, said Thursday that he anticipates Omicron will become the dominant variant soon.
“It has an extraordinary ability to transmit efficiently and spread. It has what we call a doubling time of about three days,” Fauci said on ABC’s “Good Morning America. “And if you do the math on that, if you have just a couple of percentage of the isolates being Omicron, very soon it’s going to be the dominant variant. We’ve seen that in South Africa. We’re seeing it in the U.K., and I’m absolutely certain that’s what we’re going to be seeing here relatively soon.”
Globally, health officials and experts are warning against being complacent about Omicron, based on early reports suggesting it may cause milder illness. Even if the strain really is less likely to cause severe illness for a particular person, because the variant is far more contagious, many more people could end up getting infected and hospitals could be overwhelmed anyway.
Topol suggested that those who suspect Omicron won’t be a big deal are in denial.
“For the pandemic, the U.S. has invented the 5 denials of warnings (it won’t happen here),” Topol wrote in a tweet. He said there is ample “alarming Omicron signals” coming from several countries, including South Africa, Denmark and Norway.
The state is already dealing with a post-Thanksgiving surge of COVID-19 cases from the Delta variant.
California’s COVID-19 hospitalizations have hit their highest number in more than a month. Over the last three weeks, COVID-19 hospitalizations statewide have risen by 16%, from 3,109 patients in hospitals on Nov. 23 to 3,613 as of Tuesday.
The increase has been dramatic across Southern California. Since Nov. 23, COVID-19 hospitalizations have risen by 49% in Ventura County, 47% in San Diego County, 39% in Los Angeles County, 36% in Riverside County, 26% in San Bernardino County and 15% in Orange County.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., had said he hoped the Senate would vote on President Biden’s spending bill before Christmas, but that plan has stalled.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP
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J. Scott Applewhite/AP
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., had said he hoped the Senate would vote on President Biden’s spending bill before Christmas, but that plan has stalled.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP
President Biden in a Thursday evening statement acknowledged the roadblocks his nearly $2 trillion social spending package faced, saying that it could take weeks before the package was ready for a vote. Still, he said he would continue to push for the bill to get enough Democratic support to pass through the Senate.
“It takes time to finalize these agreements, prepare the legislative changes, and finish all the parliamentary and procedural steps needed to enable a Senate vote. We will advance this work together over the days and weeks ahead” Biden said.
The statement came after Senate Democrats appeared on the verge of abandoning their pledge to pass Biden’s plan before Christmas.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., had insisted over the past several weeks that the bill would pass the Senate before the holiday. But Democrats have been unable to convince Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., the key holdout on the bill, to pledge his support.
Schumer avoided admitting defeat this week even as it became clear that plans for a vote were slipping.
“The bottom line is there are good discussions going on,” Schumer told reporters on Wednesday. “We are moving with progress.”
But by Thursday afternoon, little progress had been made.
Biden said he had spoken to congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi and Schumer and briefed them on discussions he and his staff have had with Manchin.
“In these discussions, Senator Manchin has reiterated his support for Build Back Better funding at the level of the framework plan I announced in September. I believe that we will bridge our differences and advance the Build Back Better plan, even in the face of fierce Republican opposition.”
Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., downplayed the severity of the delay for the Build Back Better bill.
“I don’t think it’s going to be before Christmas,” Kelly said. “But you know it shouldn’t be, it should be when we’re ready.”
“It’s likely to be one of the first things to take up after the holidays,” he added.
Democrats still can’t get Manchin’s support
The months-long struggle stalled out in the Senate after House Democrats mustered the votes to pass a version of the bill last month. The bill was snarled in familiar fights between Manchin and virtually every other member of his party over the cost of the bill and plans to significantly expand the social safety net.
Democrats hope to pass the legislation using a feature of the budget process, known as reconciliation, that would allow them to avoid a GOP filibuster and pass the bill with a simple majority. That requires unanimous support within their party, giving holdouts like Manchin veto power over the entire bill.
Manchin has raised concerns about a number of elements of the bill but his latest objections were related to the cost of the child tax credit. The American Rescue Plan, which was approved without GOP votes earlier this year, expanded the credit to reach more low-income families, increased the overall value of the credit and turned a portion of the credit into an monthly payment of up to $300 per child.
That expansion is set to expire at the end of the year.
Democrats planned to extend the monthly payments for one year but Manchin has raised concerns about the total cost, particularly if Democrats eventually try to make the changes permanent.
“I’m not opposed to the child tax credit,” Manchin said in a testy exchange with reporters this week. “I’ve never been opposed to the child tax credit.”
But Manchin has refused to publicly commit to what specific changes to the bill or the credit would satisfy him enough to win his support.
For example, a research program that the F.D.A. allowed to provide telemedicine consultations and send pills by mail reported that 95 percent of the 1,157 abortions that occurred through the program between May 2016 and September 2020 were completed without requiring any follow-up procedure. Patients made 70 visits to emergency rooms or urgent care centers, with 10 instances of serious complications, the study reported.
In 2020, medical groups filed a lawsuit asking that the in-person dispensing requirement be lifted because the pandemic meant that patients faced greater risk of being infected with the coronavirus if they needed to visit clinics to obtain abortion pills. A judge granted the request that summer, but, after a challenge by the Trump administration, the Supreme Court reinstated the restriction.
The experience since April suggests that more women will seek medication abortion if they do not have to visit a provider for the pills. Abortion on Demand, which formed this spring as one of several organizations that operate websites to arrange telemedicine consultations and to mail pills, has seen steadily increasing interest, said Leah Coplon, Abortion on Demand’s director of clinical operations.
The TelAbortion Project, the research program authorized by the F.D.A. to conduct telemedicine appointments and mail pills, also heard from more women, said Elizabeth Raymond, senior medical associate at Gynuity Health Projects, which runs the program. She said that of 2,083 abortions provided under the program between July 2016 and October 2021, more than a third — 715 — occurred during the pandemic.
Kirsten Moore, director of the Expanding Medication Abortion Access Project, said abortion rights supporters had hoped that the F.D.A. would also lift the other two restrictions related to mifepristone, especially the requirement that providers be certified, because it means that women won’t necessarily be able to get the pills from their regular doctor or clinic.
Still, Ms. Moore said she hoped that the increased availability of medication abortion would help open up appointments for women who need surgical abortions by creating “more room in the abortion ecosystem for patients who need to get into a clinic.”
NEW YORK, Dec 16 (Reuters) – A federal judge has thrown out a $4.5 billion settlement that would have shielded the Sackler family, which owned OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, from future lawsuits over opioids, upending the company’s plan to reorganize in bankruptcy court.
U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon in Manhattan said in a written ruling on Thursday the bankruptcy court did not have the legal authority to release the family from liability. She noted the ruling was likely to be appealed to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Purdue and lawyers for the Sacklers could not immediately be reached for comment.
The company has been accused of pushing massive amounts of its OxyContin pain drug on patients, while underplaying its potential for addiction and abuse, which it has denied. It filed for bankruptcy in 2019, facing a slew of legal claims over the drug.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain in September approved a reorganization plan, including a settlement of the lawsuits against the company in which the Sacklers would pay $4.5 billion and be released from future liability.
The U.S. Department of Justice’s bankruptcy watchdog and some states had appealed Drain’s ruling, saying the Sacklers were not entitled to the legal protections because they did not file for bankruptcy themselves.
About $10 billion was transferred from Purdue to the Sacklers between 2008 and 2018, about half of which went to taxes or business investments, according to court documents.
A lawyer for the Sacklers at a hearing told McMahon there was no evidence the family intentionally transferred the money anticipating bankruptcy.
More than 500,000 people have died from opioid overdoses since 1999, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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