Summer

US Economy Grew at 2.6% Annual Rate in Q3, GDP Report Shows

The U.S. economy grew slowly over the summer, adding to fears of a looming recession — but also keeping alive the hope that one might be avoided.

Gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation, returned to growth in the third quarter after two consecutive quarterly contractions, according to government data released Thursday. But consumer spending slowed as inflation ate away at households’ buying power, and the sharp rise in interest rates led to the steepest contraction in the housing sector since the first months of the pandemic.

The report underscored the delicate balance facing the Federal Reserve as it tries to rein in the fastest inflation in four decades. Policymakers have aggressively raised interest rates in recent months — and are expected to do so again at their meeting next week — in an effort to cool off red-hot demand, which they believe has contributed to the rapid increase in prices. But they are trying to do so without snuffing out the recovery entirely.

The third-quarter data — G.D.P. rose 0.6 percent, the Commerce Department said, a 2.6 percent annual rate of growth — suggested that the path to such a “soft landing” remained open, but narrow.

loss of purchasing power over time, meaning your dollar will not go as far tomorrow as it did today. It is typically expressed as the annual change in prices for everyday goods and services such as food, furniture, apparel, transportation and toys.

President Biden cheered the report in a statement Thursday morning. “For months, doomsayers have been arguing that the U.S. economy is in a recession, and congressional Republicans have been rooting for a downturn,” he said. “But today we got further evidence that our economic recovery is continuing to power forward.”

By one common definition, the U.S. economy entered a recession when it experienced two straight quarters of shrinking G.D.P. at the start of the year. Officially, however, recessions are determined by a group of researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research, who look at a broader array of indicators, including employment, income and spending.

Most analysts don’t believe the economy meets that more formal definition, and the third-quarter numbers — which slightly exceeded forecasters’ expectations — provided further evidence that a recession had not yet begun.

But the overall G.D.P. figures were skewed by the international trade component, which often exhibits big swings from one period to the next. Economists tend to focus on less volatile components, which have showed the recovery steadily losing momentum as the year has progressed. One closely watched measure suggested that private-sector demand stalled out almost completely in the third quarter.

Mortgage rates passed 7 percent on Thursday, their highest level since 2002.

“Housing is just the single largest trigger to additional spending, and it’s not there anymore; it’s going in reverse,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at the accounting firm KPMG. “This has been a stunning turnaround in housing, and when things start to go really quickly, you start to wonder, what are the knock-on effects, what are the spillover effects?”

The third quarter was in some sense a mirror image of the first quarter, when G.D.P. shrank but consumer spending was strong. In both cases, the swings were driven by international trade. Imports, which don’t count toward domestic production figures, soared early this year as the strong economic recovery led Americans to buy more goods from overseas. Exports slumped as the rest of the world recovered more slowly from the pandemic.

Both trends have begun to reverse as American consumers have shifted more of their spending toward services and away from imported goods, and as foreign demand for American-made goods has recovered. Supply-chain disruptions have added to the volatility, leading to big swings in the data from quarter to quarter.

Few economists expect the strong trade figures from the third quarter to continue, especially because the strong dollar will make American goods less attractive overseas.

Jim Tankersley contributed reporting.

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On Portugal’s ‘Bitcoin Beach,’ Crypto Optimism Still Reigns

LAGOS, Portugal — The Bam Bam Beach Bitcoin bar, on an uncrowded beach in southwestern Portugal, is the meeting place.

To get there, you drive past a boat harbor, oceanside hotels and apartment buildings, then park near a sleepy seafood restaurant and walk down a wooden path that cuts through a sand dune. Yellow Bitcoin flags blow in the wind. The conversations about cryptocurrencies and a decentralized future flow.

“People always doubt when to buy, when to sell,” said Didi Taihuttu, a Dutch investor who moved to town this summer and is one of Bam Bam’s owners. “We solve that by being all in.”

melted down, and crypto companies like the experimental bank Celsius Network declared bankruptcy as fears over the global economy yanked down values of the risky assets. Thousands of investors were hurt by the crash. The price of Bitcoin, which peaked at more than $68,000 last year, remains off by more than 70 percent.

But in this Portuguese seaside idyll, confidence in cryptocurrencies is undimmed. Every Friday, 20 or so visitors from Europe and beyond gather at Bam Bam to share their unwavering faith in digital currencies. Their buoyancy and cheer endure across Portugal and in other crypto hubs around the world, such as Puerto Rico and Cyprus.

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In beach towns like Ericeira and Lagos, shops and restaurants show their acceptance of digital currencies by taking Bitcoin as payment. Lisbon, the capital, has become a hub for crypto-related start-ups such as Utrust, a cryptocurrency payment platform, and Immunefi, a company that identifies security vulnerabilities in decentralized networks.

“Portugal should be the Silicon Valley of Bitcoin,” Mr. Taihuttu said. “It has all the ingredients.”

news outlets covered his family’s story, Mr. Taihuttu’s social media following swelled, turning him into an influencer and a source of investment advice. A documentary film crew has followed him on and off for the past 18 months. This summer, he settled in Portugal and quickly became something of an ambassador for its crypto scene.

He has goals to turn Meia Praia, the beach where Bam Bam is located, into “Bitcoin Beach.” He is shopping for property to create a community nearby for fellow believers.

“You prove that it is possible to run some part of the world, even if it’s just one,” said Mr. Taihuttu, with a Jack Daniel’s and Coke in hand. He has shoulder-length black hair and wore a tank top that showcased his tan and tattoos (including one on his forearm of the Bitcoin symbol).

Ms. Bestandig was among those who Mr. Taihuttu drew to Portugal.

collapse of Mt. Gox, a Tokyo-based virtual currency exchange that declared bankruptcy in 2014 after huge, unexplained losses of Bitcoin.

If cryptocurrency prices do not recover, “a lot of them will have to go back to work again,” Clinton Donnelly, an American tax lawyer specializing in cryptocurrencies, said of some of those gathered at Bam Bam.

Even so, Mr. Donnelly and other bar regulars said their belief in crypto remained unshaken.

Thomas Roessler, wearing a black Bitcoin shirt and drinking a beer “inspired by” the currency, said he had come with his wife and two young children to decide whether to move to Portugal from Germany. He first invested in Bitcoin in 2014 and, more recently, sold a small rental apartment in Germany to invest even more.

Mr. Roessler was concerned about the drop in crypto values but said he was convinced the market would rebound. Moving to Portugal could lower his taxes and give his family the chance to buy affordable property in a warm climate, he said. They had come to the bar to learn from others who had made the move.

“We have not met a lot of people who live this way,” Mr. Roessler said. Then he bought another round of drinks and paid for them with Bitcoin.

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How a Hospital Chain Used a Poor Neighborhood to Turn Huge Profits

RICHMOND, Va. — In late July, Norman Otey was rushed by ambulance to Richmond Community Hospital. The 63-year-old was doubled over in pain and babbling incoherently. Blood tests suggested septic shock, a grave emergency that required the resources and expertise of an intensive care unit.

But Richmond Community, a struggling hospital in a predominantly Black neighborhood, had closed its I.C.U. in 2017.

It took several hours for Mr. Otey to be transported to another hospital, according to his sister, Linda Jones-Smith. He deteriorated on the way there, and later died of sepsis. Two people who cared for Mr. Otey said the delay had most likely contributed to his death.

the hospital’s financial data.

More than half of all hospitals in the United States are set up as nonprofits, a designation that allows them to make money but avoid paying taxes. Although Bon Secours has taken a financial hit this year like many other hospital systems, the chain made nearly $1 billion in profit last year at its 50 hospitals in the United States and Ireland and was sitting on more than $9 billion in cash reserves. It avoids at least $440 million in federal, state and local taxes every year that it would otherwise have to pay, according to an analysis by the Lown Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.

In exchange for the tax breaks, the Internal Revenue Service requires nonprofit hospitals to provide a benefit to their communities. But an investigation by The New York Times found that many of the country’s largest nonprofit hospital systems have drifted far from their charitable roots. The hospitals operate like for-profit companies, fixating on revenue targets and expansions into affluent suburbs.

borrowing tricks from business consultants, have trained staff to squeeze payments from poor patients who should be eligible for free care.

John M. Starcher Jr., made about $6 million in 2020, according to the most recent tax filings.

“Our mission is clear — to extend the compassionate ministry of Jesus by improving the health and well-being of our communities and bring good help to those in need, especially people who are poor, dying and underserved,” the spokeswoman, Maureen Richmond, said. Bon Secours did not comment on Mr. Otey’s case.

In interviews, doctors, nurses and former executives said the hospital had been given short shrift, and pointed to a decade-old development deal with the city of Richmond as another example.

In 2012, the city agreed to lease land to Bon Secours at far below market value on the condition that the chain expand Richmond Community’s facilities. Instead, Bon Secours focused on building a luxury apartment and office complex. The hospital system waited a decade to build the promised medical offices next to Richmond Community, breaking ground only this year.

‘Glorified Emergency Room’

founded in 1907 by Black doctors who were not allowed to work at the white hospitals across town. In the 1930s, Dr. Jackson’s grandfather, Dr. Isaiah Jackson, mortgaged his house to help pay for an expansion of the hospital. His father, also a doctor, would take his children to the hospital’s fund-raising telethons.

Cassandra Newby-Alexander at Norfolk State University.

got its first supermarket.

according to research done by Virginia Commonwealth University. The public bus route to St. Mary’s, a large Bon Secours facility in the northwest part of the city, takes more than an hour. There is no public transportation from the East End to Memorial Regional, nine miles away.

“It became impossible for me to send people to the advanced heart valve clinic at St. Mary’s,” said Dr. Michael Kelly, a cardiologist who worked at Richmond Community until Bon Secours scaled back the specialty service in 2019. He said he had driven some patients to the clinic in his own car.

Richmond Community has the feel of an urgent-care clinic, with a small waiting room and a tan brick facade. The contrast with Bon Secours’s nearby hospitals is striking.

At the chain’s St. Francis Medical Center, an Italianate-style compound in a suburb 18 miles from Community, golf carts shuttle patients from the lobby entrance, past a marble fountain, to their cars.

after the section of the federal law that authorized it, allows hospitals to buy drugs from manufacturers at a discount — roughly half the average sales price. The hospitals are then allowed to charge patients’ insurers a much higher price for the same drugs.

The theory behind the law was that nonprofit hospitals would invest the savings in their communities. But the 340B program came with few rules. Hospitals did not have to disclose how much money they made from sales of the discounted drugs. And they were not required to use the revenues to help the underserved patients who qualified them for the program in the first place.

In 2019, more than 2,500 nonprofit and government-owned hospitals participated in the program, or more than half of all hospitals in the country, according to the independent Medicare Payment Advisory Commission.

in wealthier neighborhoods, where patients with generous private insurance could receive expensive drugs, but on paper make the clinics extensions of poor hospitals to take advantage of 340B.

to a price list that hospitals are required to publish. That is nearly $22,000 profit on a single vial. Adults need two vials per treatment course.

work has shown that hospitals participating in the 340B program have increasingly opened clinics in wealthier areas since the mid-2000s.

were unveiling a major economic deal that would bring $40 million to Richmond, add 200 jobs and keep the Washington team — now known as the Commanders — in the state for summer training.

The deal had three main parts. Bon Secours would get naming rights and help the team build a training camp and medical offices on a lot next to Richmond’s science museum.

The city would lease Bon Secours a prime piece of real estate that the chain had long coveted for $5,000 a year. The parcel was on the city’s west side, next to St. Mary’s, where Bon Secours wanted to build medical offices and a nursing school.

Finally, the nonprofit’s executives promised city leaders that they would build a 25,000-square-foot medical office building next to Richmond Community Hospital. Bon Secours also said it would hire 75 local workers and build a fitness center.

“It’s going to be a quick timetable, but I think we can accomplish it,” the mayor at the time, Dwight C. Jones, said at the news conference.

Today, physical therapy and doctors’ offices overlook the football field at the training center.

On the west side of Richmond, Bon Secours dropped its plans to build a nursing school. Instead, it worked with a real estate developer to build luxury apartments on the site, and delayed its plans to build medical offices. Residents at The Crest at Westhampton Commons, part of the $73 million project, can swim in a saltwater pool and work out on communal Peloton bicycles. On the ground floor, an upscale Mexican restaurant serves cucumber jalapeño margaritas and a Drybar offers salon blowouts.

have said they plan to house mental health, hospice and other services there.

a cardiologist and an expert on racial disparities in amputation, said many people in poor, nonwhite communities faced similar delays in getting the procedure. “I am not surprised by what’s transpired with this patient at all,” he said.

Because Ms. Scarborough does not drive, her nephew must take time off work every time she visits the vascular surgeon, whose office is 10 miles from her home. Richmond Community would have been a five-minute walk. Bon Secours did not comment on her case.

“They have good doctors over there,” Ms. Scarborough said of the neighborhood hospital. “But there does need to be more facilities and services over there for our community, for us.”

Susan C. Beachy contributed research.

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Boston Celtics Suspend Head Coach Udoka For Team Policy Violations

By Associated Press

and Newsy Staff
September 23, 2022

Coach Ime Udoka was suspended for the entire upcoming season for allegedly having an inappropriate relationship with a woman in the organization.

The Boston Celtics suspended coach Ime Udoka for the upcoming season after a months-long investigation by an external law firm that found multiple violations of team policies, team owner Wyc Grousbeck said Friday.

“We go to great lengths … to run the organization with the central core value of respect and freedom in the workplace from harassment or any unwelcome attention,” Grousbeck said at a news conference a day after the reigning Eastern Conference champions suspended Udoka for the entire 2022-23 season. “This feels very much, to me, like one of a kind. That’s my personal belief. But I’ll have to verify that.”

Neither Grousbeck nor president of basketball operations Brad Stevens would elaborate on the specifics of the violations or the private report that was delivered to the team two days ago. But a person with knowledge of the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the details were not made public, told The Associated Press that it involved an inappropriate relationship with a woman in the organization.

pic.twitter.com/ySo5wGKrfX

— Boston Celtics (@celtics) September 23, 2022

Udoka’s multiple violations involved only one woman, a Celtics spokesman said Friday. No one else in the organization is facing discipline, Grousbeck said, adding that the team will be vigilant to make sure that Udoka’s behavior doesn’t indicate a larger problem.

“I personally don’t believe that they’re a deeper signal,” Grousbeck said. “But we will be — I will be, personally — talking to members of the organization to make sure that that’s the case.”

A first-year coach who’s three months removed from a trip to the NBA Finals, Udoka was suspended days before training camp was to open for the Celtics, who are among the favorites to win it all this season. Assistant Joe Mazzulla was elevated to interim coach through June 30, 2023, though the team said it had not decided about Udoka’s future beyond then.

Grousbeck said the team learned of the problem earlier this summer and immediately brought in an outside law firm to investigate. A report was issued Wednesday. Grousbeck said he met with Udoka, who expressed “acceptance and appreciation for how this has been handled.”

Grousbeck would not say whether the suspension was unpaid but confirmed that it comes with a “significant financial penalty.”

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

: newsy.com

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Low Water Levels At Hoover Dam, Glen Canyon Dam Threaten Power Supply

Water and power supplies for tens of millions of American are being threatened as Lake Powell and Lake Mead water levels continue to drop.

America’s two largest reservoirs are in trouble. The Colorado River feeds Lake Powell and Lake Mead and both are at near-record lows, which is threatening the water and power supply for tens of millions of Americans.

“Between 2 and 4 million acre-feet of additional conservation is needed just to protect critical levels in 2023,” Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton said.

The two-decade-long mega-drought is drying out the west.

“Less of the precipitation that feeds the river actually makes it into the river,” water policy researcher Jeff Lukas said.

You don’t have to tell Robert Gripentog. His family has owned the Las Vegas Boat Harbor since the 1950s.

“It costs us a lot of money because we have to chase the water down,” he said. “We have to move the marina.”

He’s stayed open as the water levels have dropped more than 40 feet in just the last two years and he’s lost about 40% of his business.

“We need to come up considerably from where we’re at right now,” Gripentog continued.

In July, Lake Mead hit its lowest level since it was created — just 1,040 feet.

There was some short-term good news this summer, though. A strong monsoon season in the southwest pushed the depth up four feet. However, that doesn’t come close to solving the problem.

As the water keeps dropping year after year, there’s less drinking and irrigation water for 40 million people across the region. And there’s concerns about the two dams’ production of hydro-electric power.

When the water drops below 950 feet, the massive Hoover Dam can’t generate any more power. But it doesnt’ have to get that low to cause problems. Its power output is already down 36% due to the current water level and there’s a chance it could drop too low to make power in the next three years.

The Glen Canyon Dam on Lake Powell is facing the same problem. The Bureau of Reclamation expects it to be just 32 feet above the minimum pool power level by January 1. There’s a 10% chance it could drop below the cut-off level by next year and a 30% change by 2024.

The Hoover Dam powers the lives of more than 1.3 million people and more than half the power goes to Southern California.

Jim McCarthy is the president of the Electric Vehicle Association of Southern California.

“We need to realize we’re going to have less hydro power, at least in the near term,” he said.

The state is home to almost half of all electric cars in the country.

The heat wave earlier this month threatened the state’s power grid. Officials asked electric car owners not to recharge their EVs.

If the state loses the Hoover Dam’s hydro power, the drive for consistent clean energy to support clean energy cars becomes less clear.

“If we lose a lot of hydro power, it will be a problem,” McCarthy continued. “We need to upgrade now. But if you drive an EV, at least you can power on your own.”

The group responsible for grid integrity says the western grid is at risk of an energy emergency because of falling hydro-power levels.

Last fall, the drought dried up Lake Orville in Northern California, forcing that hydro plant to shut-down for the first time since the 1960s.

Hydro power is the “black-start” power used to jump-start the country’s power grid after blackouts.

The Department of Energy says hydro is critical to grid reliability because it consistently flows, except when it doesn’t.

: newsy.com

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More Americans Filed Unemployment Claims Last Week

By Associated Press

and Newsy Staff
September 22, 2022

First time applications for jobless aid — which generally reflect layoffs — rose by 5,000 to 213,000 last week, the Labor Department reported.

The number of Americans filing for jobless benefits rose slightly last week with the Federal Reserve pushing hard to cool the economy and tamp down inflation.

Applications for unemployment benefits for the week ending Sept. 17 rose by 5,000 to 213,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Last week’s number was revised down by 5,000 to 208,000, the lowest figure since May.

First-time applications generally reflect layoffs.

The four-week average for claims, which evens out some of the weekly volatility, fell by 6,000 to 216,750.

On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark short-term borrowing rate by another three-quarters of a point in an effort to bring down persistent, decades-high inflation. Though gas prices have steadily retreated since summer, prices for food and other essentials remain elevated enough that the Fed has indicated it will keep raising its benchmark interest rate until prices come back down to normal levels.

Fed officials have pointed to the remarkably resilient U.S. labor market as added justification for raising rates five times this year, including three 75-basis point hikes in a row.

The Fed’s move boosted its benchmark short-term rate, which affects many consumer and business loans, to a range of 3% to 3.25%, the highest level since early 2008. The officials also forecast that they will further raise their benchmark rate to roughly 4.4% by year’s end, a full point higher than they had envisioned as recently as June.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell said that before Fed officials would consider halting their rate hikes, they want to be confident that inflation is retreating to their 2% target. He noted that the strength of the job market is fueling pay gains that are helping drive up inflation.

He emphasized his belief that curbing inflation is vital to ensuring the long-term health of the job market.

Earlier this month, the Labor Department reported that employers added still-strong 315,000 jobs in August, though less than the average 487,000 a month over the past year. The unemployment rate ticked up to 3.7%, largely because hundreds of thousands of people returned to the job market. Some didn’t find work right away, so the government’s count of unemployed people rose.

The U.S. economy has been a mixed bag this year, with economic growth declining in the first half of 2022. Investors and economist worry that the Fed’s aggressive rate hikes could force companies to cut jobs and tip the economy into a recession.

Online real estate companies RedFin and Compass recently announced job cuts as rising interest rates have cooled the housing market. The National Association of Realtors reported Wednesday that sales of existing homes fell again in August, the seventh straight monthly decline.

Other high-profile layoffs announced in recent months include The Gap, Tesla, Netflix, Carvana and Coinbase.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

: newsy.com

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Virginia Thomas Agrees To Interview With Jan. 6 Panel

By Associated Press
September 21, 2022

The wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, conservative activist Virginia Thomas, has agreed to participate in a voluntary interview.

Conservative activist Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has agreed to participate in a voluntary interview with the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, her lawyer said Wednesday.

Attorney Mark Paoletta said Thomas is “eager to answer the committee’s questions to clear up any misconceptions about her work relating to the 2020 election.”

The committee has sought an interview with Thomas in an effort to know more about her role in trying to help former President Donald Trump overturn his election defeat. She texted with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and contacted lawmakers in Arizona and Wisconsin in the weeks after the election and before the insurrection.

Thomas’s willingness to testify comes as the committee is preparing to wrap up its work before the end of the year and is writing a final report laying out its findings about the U.S. Capitol insurrection. The panel announced Wednesday that it will reconvene for a hearing on Sept. 28, likely the last in a series of hearings that began this summer.

The testimony from Thomas — known as Ginni — was one of the remaining items for the panel as it eyes the completion of its work. The panel has already interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses and shown some of that video testimony in its eight hearings over the summer.

The extent of Thomas’ involvement ahead of the Capitol attack is unknown. She has said in interviews that she attended the initial pro-Trump rally the morning of Jan. 6 but left before Trump spoke and the crowds headed for the Capitol.

Thomas, a Trump supporter long active in conservative causes, has repeatedly maintained that her political activities posed no conflict of interest with the work of her husband. Justice Thomas was the lone dissenting voice when the Supreme Court ruled in January to allow a congressional committee access to presidential diaries, visitor logs, speech drafts and handwritten notes relating to the events of Jan. 6.

It’s unclear if the hearing next week will provide a general overview of what the panel has learned or if it will focus on new information and evidence, such as any evidence provided by Thomas. The committee conducted several interviews at the end of July and into August with Trump’s Cabinet secretaries, some of whom had discussed invoking the constitutional process in the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office after the insurrection.

Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the committee’s Republican vice chairwoman, said at the panel’s most recent hearing in July that the committee “has far more evidence to share with the American people and more to gather.”

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

: newsy.com

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House To Vote On Election Law Overhaul In Response To Jan. 6

The bill would set new parameters around the Electoral Count Act and make it harder for lawmakers to object to a state’s electoral votes.

The House will vote on an overhaul of a centuries-old election law, an effort to prevent future presidential candidates from trying to subvert the popular will.

The legislation under consideration beginning Wednesday is a direct response to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and former President Donald Trump’s efforts to find a way around the Electoral Count Act, an arcane 1800s-era law that governs, along with the U.S. Constitution, how states and Congress certify electors and declare presidential election winners.

While that process has long been routine and ceremonial, Trump and a group of his aides and lawyers tried to exploit loopholes in the law in an attempt to overturn his defeat.

The bill, which the House will start debating on Wednesday, would set new parameters around the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress that happens every four years after a presidential election. The day turned violent last year after hundreds of Trump’s supporters interrupted the proceedings, broke into the building and threatened the lives of then-Vice President Mike Pence and members of Congress. The rioters echoed Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud and wanted Pence to block Democrat Joe Biden’s victory as he presided over the joint session.

The legislation intends to ensure that future Jan. 6 sessions are “as the constitution envisioned, a ministerial day,” said Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, a Republican who co-sponsored the legislation with House Administration Committee Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif. Both Cheney and Lofgren are also members of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.

“The American people are supposed to decide an election, not Congress,” Lofgren said.

The bill, which is similar to legislation moving through the Senate, would clarify in the law that the vice president’s role presiding over the count is only ceremonial and also sets out that each state can only send one certified set of electors. Trump’s allies had unsuccessfully tried to put together alternate slates of illegitimate pro-Trump electors in swing states where President Biden won.

The legislation would increase the threshold for individual lawmakers’ objections to any state’s electoral votes, requiring a third of the House and a third of the Senate to object to trigger votes on the results in both chambers. Currently, only one lawmaker in the House and one lawmaker in the Senate has to object. The House bill would set out very narrow grounds for those objections, an attempt to thwart baseless or politically motivated challenges. The legislation also would require courts to get involved if state or local officials want to delay a presidential vote or refuse to certify the results.

The House vote comes as the Senate is moving on a similar track with enough Republican support to virtually ensure passage before the end of the year. After months of talks, House Democrats introduced the legislation on Monday and are holding a quick vote two days later in order to send the bill across the Capitol and start to resolve differences. A bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation this summer and a Senate committee is expected to vote on it next week.

While the House bill is more expansive than the Senate version, the two bills cover similar ground and members in both chambers are optimistic that they can work out the differences. While few House Republicans are expected to vote for the legislation — most are still allied with Trump — supporters are encouraged by the bipartisan effort in the Senate.

“Both sides have an incentive to want a set of clear rules, and this is an antiquated law that no one understands,” said Benjamin Ginsburg, a longtime GOP lawyer who consulted with lawmakers as they wrote the bill. “All parties benefit from clarity.”

House GOP leaders disagree, and are encouraging their members to vote against the legislation. They say the involvement of courts could drag out elections and that the bill would take rights away from states.

Illinois Rep. Rodney Davis, Lofgren’s GOP counterpart on the House Administration Committee, said Tuesday that the bill would trample on state sovereignty and is “opening the door to mass litigation.”

Democrats are “desperately trying to talk about their favorite topic, and that is former president Donald Trump,” Davis said.

Cheney, a frequent Trump critic who was defeated in Wyoming’s GOP primary last month, says she hopes it receives votes from some of her Republican colleagues.

The bill would “ensure that in the future our election process reflects the will of the people,” she said.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

: newsy.com

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Maryland Quietly Shelves Parts Of Genealogy Privacy Law

Maryland set limits on police access to ancestry websites. But state leaders stopped rolling out some of the new law, a Newsy investigation finds.

State leaders in Maryland quietly stopped implementing key parts of a landmark privacy law meant to protect ancestry data online, a Newsy investigation has discovered.

The law, enacted last year, was seen as a model for other states looking to set standards for when law enforcement can tap into DNA uploaded by Americans researching their heritage.

“States that don’t have a law like ours, it’s kind of the Wild West,” said Natalie Ram, law professor at the University of Maryland.

The state’s law set some of the first limits in the nation on forensic genetic genealogy, a technique used occasionally to help crack the toughest murder and rape cases.

Authorities take DNA from a crime scene, and if they can’t find a match to known offenders in law enforcement databases, they compare the sample to profiles of millions of Americans whose DNA is online from ancestry research.

“Like where I would go to try to find my long-lost relatives, we would use exactly those same publicly available tools to try to find out, whose DNA is this?” said Ray Wickenheiser, director of the New York State Police Crime Lab System.

Forensic genetic genealogy has become a more popular practice after 2018, when it was used to help catch Joseph DeAngelo, the notorious “Golden State Killer.”

But unlike a police search of a home or car, there were virtually no standards for when and how law enforcement could dip into genetic genealogy data online.

Maryland’s law set some of the nation’s first guardrails on the investigative tool.

“It is comprehensive,” Ram said. “It regulates the initiation of forensic genetic genealogy, how it is conducted.”

Newsy’s investigation found, almost a year after the law became active in October 2021, key pieces of it have yet to roll out.

The Maryland Department of Health has yet to publish best practices and minimum qualifications for people using forensic genetic genealogy.

In a required annual report, a branch of the governor’s office failed to disclose how often law enforcement accesses ancestry data, as well as the number of complaints.

The health department also suspended a task force working on the new regulations, without providing an explanation even to members of that task force, including Wickenheiser.

The Maryland Department of Health would not answer Newsy’s detailed questions about the lack of progress.

But emails obtained through state open records requests show by March, a decision had been made to stop implementing major parts of the law.

Dr. Tricia Nay, director of the health department’s Office of Health Care Quality, wrote in a March 16 email, “Unfortunately, OHCQ did not receive any staff or funding for this bill, so we are unable to implement it at this time.”

A health department spokesman confirmed there are no funds to support the law this fiscal year, which runs through June 2023.

That came as news to Ram, who worked with legislators to get the pioneering law on the books.

“That concerns me,” Ram said. “I’d like to see this law implemented, and I hope that resources are available to do so.”

The law has faced other challenges, including concern and opposition from a key health department leader.

In an email dated June 13, 2021, Paul Celli, public˙health administrator for clinical and forensic laboratories, wrote: “I am just not sure how to go about getting started on all of this. The bill tasked OHCQ with all this with zero consultation on it … I don’t even agree with most of what’s in it …”

Emails show that by this summer, communication appeared to break down between the Maryland Department of Health and Maryland State Police, another agency also required to help roll out the law.

“I still don’t know what MDH’s plan is in regard to the regulations. They have gone silent and I’ve tried every avenue available to me to get some resolution without success,” reads a July 13 email from Dan Katz, lab director for Maryland State Police.

Katz declined a request to be interviewed for this story.

Maryland Department of Health spokesman Chase Cook sent a statement responding to Newsy’s findings: “The Maryland Department of Health has actively been working internally and with our partner state agencies on implementation of this law, which we understand has not been implemented anywhere else in the United States. We will provide further updates as they become available.”

For now, ancestry websites are setting their own privacy rules.

User terms of service for ancestry.com and 23andme.com say they won’t voluntarily share data with law enforcement.

There are looser restrictions on GEDmatch.com, a free online ancestry database used to find the Golden State Killer.

The site has 1.8 million profiles.

Users must opt out if they don’t want to share data with police.

“For me, it’s critical that Maryland continue this,” Wickenheiser said. “The sooner we can have these discussions and have these laws put in place, the better it is. We want to prevent and solve crime, and we also want to make sure that we respect people’s rights.”

A major test of how things are going in Maryland is just weeks away: The law requires the health department to establish licensing requirements for labs using forensic genetic genealogy by Oct. 1.

: newsy.com

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How Disability Misunderstandings And Stigma Impact Mental Well-Being

Disability experts say it’s common for doctors to misunderstand bodily autonomy, which can impact a person’s mental health.

CDC data shows about 26% of Americans live with a disability, whether it’s physical or mental.

Conditions like anxiety, spinal injury, ADHD, amputation, depression, cerebral palsy — these are just some examples.

Advocates say there’s a lot of misunderstanding about a person who has a disability. And that stigma not only runs deep — it can also have a huge impact on that individual’s mental health.

Twenty-eight-year-old New Yorker Chloé Valentine Toscano knows beauty, from walking in fashion week to her Instagram reels to publishing in magazines like Allure.

“I’m a writer. I’m someone who likes the color pink. I like butterflies. I like learning a lot about anyone and anything,” she said. “I think we all have differences, and I want to understand differences. … For me, beauty is just being open-minded,” she said.

She also has fought face-to-face with ugly mental health struggles caused by doctors who didn’t understand disability.

“It is a journey,” Valentine Toscano said.

She lost motor function from her elbow down in 2014. She adapted and spent years living with — as she calls it — dead weight. She got into paralypmic swimming and started her career.

Then, after years of researching and soul searching, she chose to amputate her arm.

“I know amputation can be very traumatic because some people, a lot of people,will experience it through trauma,” she said. “But that wasn’t where I was in my case. So, it wasn’t traumatic talking about it, but it was traumatic playing a game with the yeses and the nos.”

Valentine Toscano spent three years fighting to get her procedure. She says some surgeons told her any elective amputation was too risky, even though she was healthy. Other rejections came after her surgery had been approved and scheduled.

“The answer I got from one, he said, ‘Well, some people just need to learn to live with what they’ve got.’ That made me feel like someone else who wasn’t in my body was telling me what was better for me,” she said. “It felt very frustrating to have it and very offensive to have someone say that.”

Bodily autonomy — or the right to control what happens to your body — is a common struggle in the disability community. And disability experts say misunderstanding that is common, and can cause undue stress as well as impact a person’s mental well-being.

In Valentine Toscano’s story, it happened a few times.

She recounted that in one appointment: “I cried, I broke down and I felt like the minute I expressed that emotion, he sent me in for a psych evaluation, which felt like I was being punished for expressing emotion.” And then she described the examination, saying: “She was asking me, she said, ‘Do you find that you’re unattractive because of your arm and that you would be more attractive without it?’ And I was like, ‘It’s not about that at all. It’s never been about that.’ … I felt angry and belittled and just, not heard, because I was asking for one thing and being evaluated for something that wasn’t even remotely there.”

Clinical Psychologist Dr. Linda Mona has spent the past two decades working on disability and how it relates to health care.

“If you haven’t been exposed to it personally — you have not been exposed to it through being a family friend, a lover, whoever that might be — And you’re not called to do it professionally and you don’t see it around you, you don’t think about it.”

She says, unfortunately, Valentine Toscano’s experience is all too common. Mental health experts with lived experience or expertise in disability are rare.

“It can be quite challenging to find somebody,” Mona said. “The other thing to think about is the steps that come before that, which is that it’s very hard for people to access education if they have disability, let alone graduate school. And internship and fellowship…”

Sixty-one million U.S. adults, which is about one in 4, have some type of disability, according to the CDC.

A 2021 anonymous survey of graduating medical students showed 7.6% identified as having a disability. But data collected directly from medical schools show that only about 4% of medical students disclosed their disability.

That stigma against disability —physical or mental — runs deep.

From 1867 to 1974 U.S. cities had laws governing who could be in public. Codes included fining or jailing those deemed “diseased, maimed, mutilated, or anyway deformed.”

Mona says it’s federal bias favoring able-bodied people.

“You’re best at home. You’re best tucked away. Or, you’re best institutionalized out of the way of anybody else who is displeased with the way that you look,” she said.

She adds structural stigmas fueled misconceptions about disabled people’s decision-making about their own bodies.

NEWSY’S LINDSEY THEIS: When we talk about bodily autonomy, what type of impact cannot have long term on someone’s mental well-being?

LINDA MONA: Trying to bring that in and make your choices can have a huge effect on your mental health in the long run. … It also happens a lot with pregnancy and people with disabilities. Right? So, you know, somebody has some kind of cognitive mental difference or physical difference. There’s, you know, constant questioning about, you know, ‘you want to be pregnant? You know what that’s going to do to your body?’ … I don’t think anybody thinks those types of decisions are a simple decision. They’re complex. But you have to trust that somebody has made that made that decision with that context in mind and not assume that they’re uninformed.

In summer 2021, Valentine Toscano had her amputation surgery. She calls it a dream come true.

“I just felt happy,” she said. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ I got this is like a huge step in my life. It just felt like one of those, like, huge dreams. I got there. I got a huge part of my personality back immediately.”

Valentine Toscano uses a prosthetic, as needed. It’s bright pink and purple with a lot of glitter.

“If I could have decided to have been born with an arm with butterflies and sparkles on it, like right out of the womb, I would have picked that,” she said.

Valentine Toscano said her prosthetic cost $13,000.

“It’s something that’s very expensive,” she said. “I was fortunate to have it covered by health insurance. But that’s not something everyone has.”

Valentine Toscano continues to advocate and write, sharing her experience now from two different sides of disability. She’s also writing a book on the side.

She says the ability to share those stories in her voice and having others listen is not only good for her well-being, it’s truly beautiful.

: newsy.com

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