Tracey A Wilkinson/NY Times:
Dr. Caitlin Bernard Was Meant to Write This With Me Before She Was Attacked for Doing Her Job
My colleagues and I have watched all this in horror. We are worried that this could happen to us, too. A law that recently went into effect in Indiana mandates that doctors, hospitals and abortion clinics report to the state when a patient who has previously had an abortion presents any of dozens of physical or psychological conditions — including anxiety, depression, sleeping disorders and uterine perforation — because they could be complications of the previous abortion. Not doing so within 30 days can result in a misdemeanor for the physician who treated the patient, punishable with up to 180 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.
The law is written so broadly that a primary care provider who sees a patient with depression, an anesthesiologist whose patient has an allergic reaction to a medication or a radiologist who notes a patient has free fluid in the abdomen could be punished with a fine and jail time if they don’t report these things as possible complications of that person’s prior abortion. Any health care provider so charged could easily become a target of national attention, with attacks against them professionally and personally.
Michelle Goldberg/NY Times:
A 10-Year-Old Endures the Predictable Result of an Abortion Ban
Not long after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, an Indiana obstetrician and gynecologist named Caitlin Bernard told The Indianapolis Star about a call she’d gotten from a doctor in Ohio. The Ohio doctor had a 10-year-old patient who was six weeks and three days pregnant. An Ohio law banning abortion after fetal cardiac activity can be detected — usually around the sixth week of pregnancy — had just gone into effect, so the girl needed to cross state lines for care. The report, being illustrative of the ghoulish impact of abortion prohibitions, went viral, and Joe Biden mentioned it in a speech.
The right, however, quickly convinced itself that the tale was dubious and probably false. The conservative website PJ Media claimed, last Friday, that the account had “many of the elements of a hoax.” On Monday, Ohio’s Republican attorney general, Dave Yost, went on Fox News to say that he knew of no police reports about a 10-year-old rape victim. “The more you learn about this, the more unbelievable it becomes,” said the host, Jesse Watters.
Scott Wilson/WaPo:
Democratic cities in Republican states seek ways around abortion bans
The net result is confusion, as GOP states impose bans while liberal prosecutors say they will decline to enforce them
“We cannot ease up, we must continue to fight, because we all know what is truly at stake,” said New Orleans City Council member Helena Moreno, arguing for the resolution last week. “We’re a blue dot here, a city that is fighting for its people, for all of its people.”
The movement is spreading, even as its chief proponents acknowledge limits to what they can accomplish. Prosecutors in Charlotte, Atlanta and Indianapolis have pledged not to use public resources to pursue abortion providers. While New Orleans is among the first to direct police not to investigate abortion cases, several others are likely to follow in the coming weeks.
Josh Kraushaar/Axios:
GOP fears Senate debacle
Top Republicans, once confident about winning control of the Senate in the midterms, fear they'll blow it after nominating several deeply flawed candidates in winnable states, according to conversations with GOP strategists, pollsters and other officials.
Why it matters: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has been sounding this alarm for months: electing fringe candidates with checkered pasts could squander a golden chance to reclaim power. Now, McConnell is left hoping for a red wave so wide and powerful that candidate quality is irrelevant.
Mediaite:
CNN’s Don Lemon Says Media Must Not Accept ‘False Equivalence’ Between Democrats and Republicans: ‘They Have a Lot to Answer For’
CNN’s Don Lemon argued Thursday that members of the media must hold Republican guests to a different standard than Democrats because “they have a lot to answer for.”
The Don Lemon Tonight host joined New Day with hosts John Berman and Brianna Keilar to discuss his thoughts on how the media should approach conservatives in a post-Roe v. Wade and post-Jan. 6 world.
Rachel Roubein/WaPo:
Democrats' economic package may have just turned into a health-care bill
There’s been another seismic shift in the negotiations over Democrats’ long-stalled economic package.
The climate change and tax increase provisions appear out. What’s left is a health care bill — and one that’s much smaller than the once-in-a-decade remake of the system Democrats had originally envisioned.
The latest: Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) told Democratic leaders yesterday that he wouldn’t support an economic package with new climate spending or new tax increases targeting wealthy individuals and corporations, The Post’s Tony Romm and Jeff Stein scooped last night.
But Manchin is open to provisions that aim to lower prescription drug costs for seniors, as well as a two-year extension of enhanced Obamacare subsidies set to expire at the end of the year.
Tara McGowan/Poynter:
Democracy dies behind a paywall
Paywalls bolster news organizations’ bottom lines, but leave Americans in the dark. As a public service, let everyone read election stories for free.
I often refer to people who don’t pay for news as “passive” news consumers. That doesn’t suggest a moral failing on their part. It just means they’re simply consuming the news that comes to them through their daily scrolling of social media feeds, email inboxes and conversations with people they trust.
American news consumers fall into three groups today: a small lobbying class that can afford thousands of dollars in news-analysis subscriptions like Politico Pro; a larger but still very limited group that will pay to get behind paywalls; and by far the largest group of Americans — those who will not or cannot pay for their news.
Passive consumers may have faith that good, accurate news about the world and their own communities will somehow find them. But with few exceptions, they’re wrong about that. Increasingly, the fact-based news that’s necessary for a pro-democracy citizenry is behind a paywall. On social media, passive consumers are more likely to see propaganda that capitalizes on the ways information is distributed there. Biased algorithms reward salacious and emotionally charged content — often favoring right-leaning messaging that is outright false. Platforms could turn off these algorithms with a click, but we know that they won’t — because disinformation is their business model.
An interesting piece from Brazil via the Intercept (you can use Google translate) on JBS and political influence/corruption:
FEEDING NEGATIONISM
JBS committee funds climate change denialist politicians in the US
JBS committee in the United States and people connected to the company donated the equivalent of BRL 3.3 million to 137 American politicians between 2011 and 2020. The company sells sustainability as one of its core values and claims to have “the mission of feeding the world in balance with the planet”. Thanks to that, it won free advertising on Grupo Globo's main news radio.
The practice, however, contradicts the discourse. Among the top 10 beneficiaries, seven deny the existence of global warming. Many even act directly to stop policies to combat the climate crisis or to promote actions that aggravate the environmental emergency that JBS says it wants to fight.