Keep refusing......

Republican states keep refusing to expand Medicaid — until you ask their voters

Medicaid expansion is 6-for-6 with voters on ballot initiatives. South Dakota could make it seven in a row.

By Dylan Scott

Six times since 2017, voters in a state have weighed in directly on whether to expand Medicaid and make more low-income adults eligible for free public health coverage. Six times, the ballot measure has passed.

That undefeated streak could extend to seven wins in South Dakota this November.

On Election Day, voters will decide on a constitutional amendment that would extend Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act. If it passes, anybody making less than 133 percent of the federal poverty level (about $18,000 for an individual or $36,900 for a family of four) would qualify for Medicaid coverage. Right now, 5 percent of the state is uninsured. Childless adults of working age can not qualify for coverage at all. Pregnant women, children, and the elderly can currently receive Medicaid benefits, but working parents must have a very low income — less than 63 percent of the federal poverty level, about $17,500 for a family of four — to enroll.

An estimated 45,000 South Dakotans would be covered by the expansion, adding to 20.4 million low-income Americans nationwide already insured by the Medicaid expansion since the program took full effect in 2014. Many of those who would qualify for Medicaid in South Dakota — about 14,000 — are Native Americans currently ineligible for coverage. The ballot initiative appears to have a good shot at passing in November: Polling commissioned by the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network found 62 percent of South Dakota voters said they support the measure.

Initially, the Affordable Care Act was meant to expand Medicaid coverage to low-income adults nationwide. The law offered a good deal: expand eligibility and receive a generous federal funding match, 90 percent of the cost in perpetuity. But a 2012 Supreme Court decision made Medicaid expansion optional for states, and a dozen states still have not accepted the expansion a full decade later, leaving 4 million people without Medicaid coverage who would otherwise be eligible.

In the face of that obstruction from Republican state officials, health care advocates have taken the issue directly to voters in largely Republican states, with remarkable success.

Across the six states that have expanded Medicaid through a ballot measure — Idaho, Maine, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Utah — an estimated 811,000 people have either enrolled or become eligible for Medicaid coverage. It’s a new frontier for expanding access to health insurance in America. I asked Paul Starr, a Princeton University sociologist and the preeminent historian of the American health system, whether there was any precedent for direct democracy leading to significant coverage expansions.

“The history of health insurance protection until the Supreme Court’s decision on the ACA in 2012 was almost entirely a history of legislation and administrative decisions,” he told me. “Ballot measures weren’t very significant.”

But ballot initiatives have become, in the last few years, almost exclusively the path for Medicaid expansion to keep advancing. In the first few years after the Supreme Court’s decision, a number of Republican state leaders decided to adopt Medicaid expansion on their own, driven by the financial benefits and lobbying from local health care groups. The Obama administration accepted waivers — including one from future Vice President Mike Pence, then governor of Indiana — to tweak the program to make it more amenable to these GOP politicians.

But by 2017, with Donald Trump entering the White House, the prospects for future action by Republican governors and legislatures looked grim. So the Fairness Project, an offshoot of an SEIU health care workers union in California that was supporting minimum wage ballot initiatives at the time, started coordinating with local organizers to put Medicaid expansion directly on the ballot.

“Direct democracy has been a path for important change and also a path of last resort,” Kelly Hall, a former Obama administration health official who is now the executive director of the Fairness Project, said. “Expanding Medicaid anywhere helps protect it everywhere.”

The last few years have been a revelation of Medicaid’s political potency. Concerns about ending the expansion and cutting Medicaid spending helped doom the Republican plans to repeal and replace the ACA. And these six expansion ballot initiatives have all passed since 2017, with South Dakota poised to become the seventh.

Hall said the campaign’s goal has been “helping to place Medicaid alongside the other third rail public programs like Medicare and Social Security.”

“Medicaid has a much wider base of support than many people appreciate,” Starr told me. “It’s not just the poor who benefit. It’s also people with disabilities and seniors, plus their families and the providers that benefit from Medicaid payment.”

GOP leaders have still tried — unsuccessfully to date — to stop or subvert these ballot initiatives, first in Utah and Missouri, and now in South Dakota. For the primary election in June, the state legislature put up a ballot measure that would have required a 60-percent supermajority for any future ballot initiatives to be adopted, with the intent of making it harder for the Medicaid expansion measure to pass. But it was rejected by two-thirds of South Dakota primary voters.

Why does Medicaid expansion keep finding success with red-state voters, if not their elected representatives? Hall pointed to three successful messages: hearing from neighbors who will benefit, bringing federal tax dollars back to the state, and protecting the solvency of rural hospitals and health clinics. One of the ads running in South Dakota features a farmer who says he wants to keep his family farm running but can’t afford health care right now.

To date, Medicaid expansion ballot initiatives have been an unqualified success. But their usefulness might soon be running out. Only about half of states allow citizen-initiated ballot measures and, of the 12 states that haven’t expanded Medicaid, only four of them permit such initiatives: South Dakota — which is already voting on it this fall — plus Florida, Mississippi, and Wyoming.

Florida is the second biggest state, after Texas, that is still refusing Medicaid expansion. Those two states are home to more than half of the 2.2 million people nationwide who have been left without a viable option for coverage because their state has not expanded Medicaid. But while ballot initiatives are permitted there, they require a 60-percent supermajority and the state legislature has shown a willingness to undermine ballot measures after their passage.

The entire Mississippi ballot initiative process, meanwhile, was upended by a state court decision in 2021; advocates are working to restore the rights of citizens to collect signatures and put issues directly to voters. In Wyoming, there is some hope that the legislature and governor may yet get on board with Medicaid expansion as the state faces budget woes.

So while ballot measures could still make more gains in expanding Medicaid coverage, expansion advocates are running out of opportunities. Texas, for example, is one of the states that does not allow citizen-sponsored ballot initiatives. Neither do Georgia or North Carolina, the next biggest states after Florida not to expand it.

“We’re pretty close to working ourselves out of a job on this topic,” Hall said.

But the work will still be unfinished, until Republicans in these other states come around, Democrats can win in statewide elections, or Congress decides to take action to close the Medicaid expansion gap for good.

Desperate attempt

Putin’s desperate attempt to annex parts of Ukraine

“These are all just gestures made out of weakness because he’s losing on the ground.”

By Jen Kirby

On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin formally declared four regions of Ukraine as part of Russia following sham referendums this week in eastern and southern Ukraine. Putin made the illegal decree as he lobbed even more threats against the United States and its allies, another potential escalation in the war in Ukraine and in Russia’s standoff with the West.

Putin moved to annex four regions of eastern and southern Ukraine — Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia — after officials in Russian-controlled territory staged an illegal vote on joining Russia. The Kremlin does not fully control any of these areas, and pollsters reportedly went door to door with armed soldiers in Russian-controlled zones, but Putin justified the decree by saying that it was done on behalf of the “will of millions of people.”

Ukraine, the United States, its allies, and the United Nations have condemned the bogus referendums and the annexation. In response, Ukraine formally applied for NATO membership. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called it “a decisive step for entire security of free nations.”

Zelenskyy had previously vowed to protect Ukrainians in those Russian-annexed territories, and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Friday that “nothing changes for Ukraine: we continue liberating our land and our people, restoring our territorial integrity.“

Shortly after Putin’s address, the US announced new sanctions against Russia, including against more Russian military officials and against entities that support Russia and Belarus’s military sector. “Make no mistake: these actions have no legitimacy,” President Joe Biden said in a statement. “The United States will always honor Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders.”

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called Putin’s land grab “illegal and illegitimate.” But, he added, that Putin’s move was “the most serious escalation since the start of the war.”

Putin’s move was expected, but it still opens up a new and uncertain phase in the war in Ukraine. A Ukrainian counteroffensive is clawing back Russian-controlled territory and cities in the same areas that Putin just attempted to annex. These decrees are part of Putin’s larger effort to reset Russia’s faltering war effort with a partial military mobilization that prompted protests and sent thousands fleeing the country.

In his speech, Putin also escalated his nuclear threats against the West, warning that if Russia’s “territorial integrity is threatened Russia will use all the means at its disposal.” The annexation of these four Ukrainian territories also raises real questions as to how Putin will treat these contested regions, where Ukrainian forces are battling Russian troops with Western artillery and weapons.

“We will defend our land with all the powers and means at our disposal,” Putin said again on Friday, in a speech that accompanied the annexation ceremony.

And in that speech, Putin reiterated his threats against authorities in Kyiv and “their real masters in the West.” He made sweeping, paranoid proclamations that called Western elites the “enemy” who flouted international law. He also blamed the West for global food and energy crises, and insinuated they were responsible for the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines. “Sanctions were not enough for the Anglo-Saxons: they moved on to sabotage,” Putin said.

Putin’s antagonism and annexation actions are once again an attempt at escalation, although the threats do not necessarily match the realities on the ground, especially as Ukrainian forces partially surround Russian troops in Lyman, in eastern Donbas. “These are all just gestures made out of weakness because he’s losing on the ground,” said Kurt Volker, former US ambassador to NATO and distinguished fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).

He accelerated the referendum, Volker added, “precisely because he knows [Russia] is going to lose more territory. He’s trying to find something to salvage out of this.”

Yet Putin under pressure, and acting from a position of weakness, is also a risk. Since Putin announced Russia’s military mobilization, he has sought to annex territories Russia doesn’t fully control, potentially sabotaged the Nord Stream pipelines, which run underneath the Baltic Sea, and intensified his grievance-filled rhetoric against the West. Putin, again, is trying to raise the stakes of the conflict, another potential attempt to weaken Western resolve and support for Ukraine — all while Russia continues to face setbacks.

Swift and severe costs

US imposing ‘swift and severe costs’ on Russia following Putin’s Ukraine annexation

By Betsy Klein, Phil Mattingly and Jennifer Hansler

The US is imposing what it describes as “swift and severe costs” on Russia, including sanctions on a figure the Biden administration says is key to Russia’s economy, after President Vladimir Putin announced the annexation of regions of Ukraine following what the West casts as “sham referenda.”

Putin signed documents on Friday to formally begin the process of annexing four regions of Ukraine during a ceremony in the Kremlin, a clear violation of international law amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that began seven months ago.

In response, the US is announcing sanctions in coordination with G7 allies.

The US, a Biden administration official said, is “targeting additional Russian government officials and leaders, their family members, Russian and Belarusian military officials, and defense procurement networks, including international suppliers supporting Russia’s military-industrial complex” through announcements from the Departments of Treasury, Commerce, and State.

That includes sanctions from the Treasury Department on a key player in keeping the Russian economy afloat: Elvira Nabiullina, an economist who has been leading Russia’s central bank since 2013.

President Joe Biden sharply condemned Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian territory in a statement Friday.

“The United States condemns Russia’s fraudulent attempt today to annex sovereign Ukrainian territory. Russia is violating international law, trampling on the United Nations Charter, and showing its contempt for peaceful nations everywhere,” Biden said, adding that those actions have “no legitimacy” and will continue to “always honor Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders.”

He also urged “all members of the international community to reject Russia’s illegal attempts at annexation and to stand with the people of Ukraine for as long as it takes.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday that the “United States unequivocally rejects Russia’s fraudulent attempt to change Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders.”

“We will continue the United States’ powerful, coordinated efforts to hold Russia to account, cut Russia’s military off from global commerce and severely limit its ability to sustain its aggression and project power,” he said.

Putin has spent years building up his defenses, amassing hundreds of billions in foreign currency reserves, bringing much of Russia’s industrial base under state control and selling Russia’s vast energy resources to the world. US officials grudgingly acknowledge that Nabiullina has done an effective job managing Russia through this initial phase of the sanctions, just as she did in 2014 after Putin’s Crimea annexation triggered a much less severe round of sanctions from the West.

This time, Nabiullina has deftly raised interest rates, imposed capital controls, and sought holes and workarounds to float an economy under siege.

“A good central banker can do things to buoy the currency,” one senior US official said earlier this year. “They have a very good central banker. We knew that then; we know it now.”

Among Biden administration officials, Nabiullina is seen as perhaps the most effective of all of Putin’s top lieutenants.

The US is also placing sanctions on relatives of members of Russia’s National Security Council, visa restrictions on Ochur-Suge Mongush for human rights violations, sanctions on 14 international suppliers for Russia’s military supply chains, and adding 57 new entities to Commerce’s Entity List for export controls, the officials said. In addition, Blinken announced the State Department is imposing visa restrictions “on 910 individuals, including members of the Russian Federation military, Belarusian military officials, and Russia’s proxies for violating Ukraine’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political independence.”

And the US is warning, the official said, that “there will be costs for any individual, entity, or country that provides political or economic support to Russia as a result of its illegal attempts to change the status of Ukrainian territory,” including “heightened sanctions and export controls risks” for individuals or entities that do so.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan will join press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre to outline additional details on the new moves later Friday afternoon. Jean-Pierre has previously warned that the US will “rally global opposition to Russia’s attempts at annexation, including at the United Nations.”

Farce

Zelensky calls Russia's illegal annexation of Ukrainian territories a "farce"

Mick Krever, Victoria Butenko and Olga Voitovych

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed on Friday that the entire territory of Ukraine would be liberated from Russian control, calling Russian President Vladimir Putin’s illegal declared annexation of some Ukrainian regions a “farce.”

“The entire territory of our country will be liberated from this enemy – the enemy not only of Ukraine, but also of life itself, humanity, law and truth,” Zelensky said in a pre-recorded address released on Friday afternoon.

“Russia already knows this. It feels our power. It sees that it is here, in Ukraine, that we prove the strength of our values. And that is why it is in a hurry, organizes this farce with the attempted annexation, tries to steal something that does not belong to it, wants to rewrite history and redraw borders with murders, torture, blackmail and lies,” he said.

“Ukraine will not allow that,” he added.

He said peace will be restored only by “ousting the occupiers.”

Zelensky added that while Ukraine was ready for dialogue with Russia, negotiation on “equal, honest, decent and fair terms” was impossible with Putin, so talks would only be possible “with another president of Russia.”

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Friday also said that Putin’s claimed annexations of Ukrainian territory change “nothing.”

“Nothing changes for Ukraine: we continue liberating our land and our people, restoring our territorial integrity,” Kuleba said in a statement on Twitter.

“By attempting to annex Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, Putin tries to grab territories he doesn’t even physically control on the ground,” he said.

Unreliable

Inside Anti-Abortion Groups’ Campaign to Sell Women on Unreliable Birth Control “Alternatives”

In a post-Roe world, their misleading messages could have disastrous consequences.

KIERA BUTLER

About five years ago, Kat decided to stop taking her birth control pills. She wanted to give her menstrual cycle a chance to return to normal before trying to get pregnant in the future—and anyway, she was beginning to have some doubts about the Pill. Her friends had been talking about what they saw as the dangers of hormonal birth control—blood clots, for instance. “Maybe I shouldn’t be putting chemicals in my body,” she recalls thinking. So Kat, who lives in England, spent about $100 on Natural Cycles, an app and thermometer that promised she could avoid pregnancy simply by taking her temperature every day.

It seemed so straightforward. The thermometer would send her temperature to the app, which would predict when she would ovulate—the hormones produced during ovulation typically raise body temperature by a little less than half a degree. Based on that information, the app used a color-coded system to tell her when she could safely have sex without getting pregnant. “Red days you abstain, and green days it’s safe to go for it,” Kat explains. It seemed just as easy as taking a pill every day, with none of the uncertainty of how hormonal medication could be affecting her body. Best of all, Natural Cycles assured her that when used correctly it was 98 percent effective—almost the same as the Pill.

Various factors drive women to try birth control methods that rely on observations of physical changes throughout the menstrual cycle to predict fertility. (There are many names for the various types of these methods, but for the purposes of this piece, I’ll refer to them collectively as cycle-tracking methods.) Some women experience unpleasant side effects of hormonal birth control and are frustrated that their doctors don’t take their complaints seriously. For others, their religion forbids the use of contraception. But in the last few years, there has been an explosion of interest in cycle-tracking, thanks in part to Silicon Valley companies that have launched cycle-tracking apps promising birth control by algorithm.

Other powerful forces also have mobilized behind this trend. As I have reported, many wellness influencers leverage women’s legitimate complaints about the side effects of the Pill, selling supplements, herbal remedies, and diets that they say will alleviate symptoms like mood changes, acne, and headaches. Those messages have no basis in science—yet they have moved swiftly through social networks and made their way into the mainstream. Celebrities including Dr. Oz, Gwyneth Paltrow, and podcaster Joe Rogan have all promoted the idea that hormonal birth control is unwholesome and potentially dangerous.

But recently, this tidal wave of backlash against hormonal birth control has made its way into another sphere of influence. Anti-abortion activists—many of whom are morally opposed to the idea of contraception because they consider it a form of abortion or just morally wrong—have found that wellness influencers, many of them pro-choice, are a boon to their cause. While previous generations of activists saw picketing outside abortion clinics as their only option for engaging the public, today’s crusaders are also using social media to win followers, incorporating wellness messages into confessional videos and stylish memes to convince their audience that hormonal contraception is not only sinful but also unhealthy. In a strategy I’ve been reporting on in collaboration with UC Berkeley journalism and law students, they are also promoting the false idea that cycle-tracking methods of birth control are just as effective at preventing pregnancy as hormonal contraception. Some downplay their anti-abortion convictions and religious identity in order to undermine trust in the Pill and IUDs.

On their websites, Instagram, and TikTok, many of these anti-abortion influencers claim that cycle-tracking methods rarely result in an accidental pregnancy—but that’s not true. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the failure rate of these methods ranges widely, from 2-23 percent, depending on how precisely they’re followed. Compare that to the failure rate of other kinds of birth control: hormonal IUDs (less than 1 percent) birth control pills (7 percent with non-perfect use) and male condoms (13 percent with non-perfect use). The misleading messages about the effectiveness of cycle-tracking have taken on new significance in recent months. Now that the US Supreme Court has stripped away guaranteed access to abortion, if a cycle tracking method fails, many American women will now have no choice but to continue with the pregnancy. Yet these important details are eclipsed by the emotional resonance of a message that seems individually empowering: Ditch the pharmaceuticals, trust your body, and seize control.

All of that seemed to be working well for Kat—until one day, about ten months after she went off the pill, her period was late.

Women have long monitored their periods to try to prevent pregnancy by abstaining from sex during the few days of fertility before ovulation occurs. In the 1930s, a Catholic physician developed the Rhythm Method, instructing women to avoid sex for about eight days around the two-week mark of their cycle, when he predicted ovulation would occur. It didn’t work very well because the timing of ovulation can vary widely among women, and even in individuals from month to month. In the 1960s, a German Catholic priest developed slightly more sophisticated methods, which required women to observe changes in their cervical mucus that indicate fertility.

In the next decade, a different kind of group began to promote cycle-tracking methods. Second-wave feminists encouraged women to chart their periods as a way of becoming more connected to and informed about their bodies. Fast forward to 1995, when Toni Weschler, a writer with a background in public health, described how to use subtle fluctuations in body temperature to track ovulation in her landmark book, Taking Charge of Your Fertility. Weschler, who is now in her 60s, told me in a recent email that the idea was for women “not necessarily to use [cycle-tracking] for birth control or pregnancy achievement, but to attain such a high level of body literacy that they would be able to make informed decisions about every facet of their reproductive health, from menarche to menopause.”

Now, there’s an app for that. Actually, there are many. In a 2019 report, the consumer trends firm Grand View Research found that the market for women’s health apps was growing by nearly 18 percent every year, with a predicted value of $3.9 billion in 2026. Cycle-tracking apps made up the largest share of that growth. Millions of users pay for Natural Cycles—$100 a year or $12.99 a month.

Add to that explosive growth, a shifting political and cultural landscape. In 2014, anti-abortion groups were energized by the US Supreme Court decision that allowed the evangelical Christian owners of the craft store chain Hobby Lobby to stop covering the cost of their employees’ birth control. At around the same time, wellness influencers were just beginning to hit their stride. Gwyneth Paltrow’s wellness newsletter Goop had taken off, and copycats took to the new platform of Instagram with pastel-hued memes about the dangers of vaccines, food additives, and hormonal medications, including birth control. They often offered pricey supplements and detox regimens and claimed those would protect the body from the unwholesome trappings of modern life.

“Corporate abortion puts ‘the con’ in contraception, pretending that only what they sell works well, but then also selling abortions when it doesn’t.”

Soon, anti-abortion groups began to capitalize on these wellness messages about contraception to sow distrust in hormonal birth control. Over the last few years, they have launched a complementary campaign to promote cycle-tracking, deftly deploying social media to spread their message. Live Action, an anti-abortion group with more than half a million followers on Instagram, posted a fear-mongering reel about birth control last year: “There are various natural fertility awareness methods that can help families space or postpone having babies without the dangers hormonal birth control can bring,” one slide says. “Swipe up 4 empowering methods.” Kristan Hawkins, the president of the anti-choice group Students For Life Action, posted a similar reel to her 38,000 followers two years ago. “If you are using NFP [natural family planning] and know your body and cycle, you will know when you are fertile (when you can become pregnant),” she says. “NFP’ers are always the first to know if they are pregnant.” In an email, a Students for Life spokesperson said that the group does “not take a position against contraception,” but added, “Corporate abortion puts ‘the con’ in contraception, pretending that only what they sell works well, but then also selling abortions when it doesn’t.” In a separate email, Live Action president Lila Rose wrote, “Pregnancy and fertility are not diseases to be cured. Medical professionals who dole out hormonal birth control without covering the risks and side effects are doing their patients a disservice.”

Some of the popular fertility tracking apps have strong ties to the anti-abortion movement. With more than 400,000 users, one called Femm boasts that it’s “as effective as the pill.” It does not mention that one of its main funders is powerful hedge fund manager and Catholic anti-abortion activist Sean Fieler, as a 2019 Guardian investigation found. But Femm isn’t the only religious cycle-tracking group courting a secular audience.

Consider Guiding Star Project, which is a growing national network of women’s health clinics; currently, there are seven centers in five states where abortion access is limited. Founded in 2011, the group offers gynecological services, prenatal care, childbirth classes, breastfeeding support, and enthusiastic endorsement of cycle-tracking. “We believe women have the right and ability to make an informed choice about whether to achieve or avoid pregnancy—without harmful contraceptives,” its website says. Guiding Star Project instills these methods early: Among its offerings is a tween fertility awareness course, during which 9-13-year-old girls learn about the menstrual cycle through an extended analogy to a hotel. “She learns that with each cycle a new Luxury Suite (lining of the uterus) is prepared for a potential guest (baby) and if the guest doesn’t arrive (and shouldn’t for her until she is older) she will not worry about the loss of the luxury suite, knowing that each month her body prepares a new one because her healthy body can afford it.”

Leah Jacobson, the founder and CEO of Guiding Star, told me in a phone interview that she was inspired to start the nonprofit because of her work as a campus minister in the Diocese of Duluth, Minnesota. She noticed that college women didn’t seem to know much about the biology of the menstrual cycle. While she is a practicing Catholic, she says her faith doesn’t influence Guiding Star’s stance on birth control. Rather, she told me, the group is making a “science-based argument” that “hormonal birth control is really an overcorrection of something that didn’t need to be suppressed and destroyed in that way.” Jacobson believes most medical interventions in women’s health are unnecessary. “We really think that when women’s bodies are allowed to function naturally, 95 percent of the time, it’s going to go exactly as it was created to be,” she told me. This approach extends to childbirth and infant feeding, as well: On its website, the group decries “the sacred experience of birth ripped away from women and babies in many medical facilities” and calls formula “an artificial feeding method for babies who don’t require it.”

When I asked Jacobson about abortion, she told me it “is really not the issue that we’re focused on.” And yet, it appears that Guiding Star is intimately connected to the anti-abortion movement. It lists the “proximity of this community to an abortion facility” as one of its criteria for selecting new locations for clinics. It has partnered with several anti-choice groups, including Obria, a national network of anti-abortion and anti-hormonal-birth-control clinics that, as my colleague Stephanie Mencimer reported, received funds from the Trump administration under a program meant to provide contraception access to low-income women. Most of Guiding Star’s clinics were established at crisis pregnancy centers, which exist to dissuade women from getting abortions. In July, leaders of the Mississippi abortion clinic at the center of the US Supreme Court’s recent decision to overturn Roe v. Wade announced they would relocate their facility to Las Cruces, New Mexico. Guiding Star Project promptly unveiled plans to open one of its centers next door. Speaking to a crowd protesting the abortion clinic, Jacobson bemoaned the loss of women’s “bodily autonomy through devices, pills, drugs, and surgeries,” the AP reported.

Guiding Star Project’s clinics look a lot like boutique natural childbirth and wellness centers that affluent women have flocked to in recent years—and that’s no accident. Its original goal was to attract this clientele in hopes of eventually changing their minds on abortion. In 2012, during a speech at a Guiding Star Project fundraising dinner, Jacobson explained her strategy of setting up clinics in college towns and other liberal enclaves. She told her group of supporters that her team had recognized a general trend toward natural childbirth and breastfeeding. “It’s typically among women who don’t identify as pro-life—a lot of them identify as strongly pro-choice, but they want these resources, and they want to do a water birth, in a birth tub someplace,” she said. “We’d love to get them into our building.” If these women paid to give birth in the birthing suites at Guiding Star Project, their funds could then go to support the organization’s work. “With time,” she continued, “we believe that it’s going to start to soften their heart and change their mind a little bit about the pro-life movement.”

Jacobson maintains that she doesn’t try to hide her belief that, as she put it, “abortion is a poor substitute for women’s health care services.” Today, the Guiding Star Project combines its all-natural approach with a gloss of medical expertise in clinics outfitted with all the features of healthcare facilities: STI testing, ultrasound equipment, postpartum depression screening, and registered nurses on staff. Through its partnership with Obria, Guiding Star benefitted from federal funding, and one of their Minnesota centers receives $350,000 a year from the state health department through a grant program for alternatives to abortion. The group’s clinical approach is increasingly popular among crisis pregnancy centers, as well. As one presenter told a room full of crisis pregnancy center workers at the annual conference of the anti-abortion group Heartbeat International, (which I attended), “The more medical you are, the more respected you will be.”

Other groups are seeking to further legitimize cycle-tracking methods by winning over physicians. A group called FACTS, which stands for Fertility Appreciation Collaborative to Teach the Science, offers courses in cycle-tracking methods for medical students and practicing physicians. By enrolling, doctors can earn the continuing medical education credits that they need to maintain their medical licenses.

The group’s cofounder, Marguerite Duane, seems like a dispassionate authority on the subject. A practicing family medicine physician, an adjunct associate professor of medicine at Georgetown University, and a former member of the board of the American Academy of Family Physicians, Duane regularly presents at medical conferences. In June, she offered a course on cycle-tracking for physicians at the US government-sponsored Title X Family Planning Conference in San Francisco. In 2019, she was a featured expert in a webinar about cycle-tracking methods hosted by the US Department of Health and Human Services. “As a family physician, I care for people of all ages and from all socioeconomic classes, and I’ve used these methods successfully in a wide range of populations,” she said. “So, I can personally attest that these methods can be used effectively for many, many women.” (My colleague Stephanie Mencimer wrote about this webinar shortly after it aired.)

What Duane doesn’t mention in that webinar or in her professional bio is that she is also a member of several anti-abortion organizations, including being a scholar at the anti-choice think tank Charlotte Lozier Institute. She is an instructor with VitaeCME, a group that provides continuing education credits for physicians from a Catholic and anti-abortion perspective. She is a board member of the Pro-Life Partners Foundation, a group that funnels money into legislative efforts to further restrict abortion rights in the United States. She has spoken at many anti-abortion conferences, including the National Pro-life Summit and the conference of the American Association for Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists. When asked why Duane didn’t typically disclose these affiliations in her secular speaking engagements, a FACTS spokesperson said that Duane “welcomes the opportunity to present at conferences where she may share the science of fertility awareness-based methods with medical professionals who provide reproductive health care.” (“Fertility awareness-based methods” is the medical term for cycle-tracking techniques.)

In 2015, Duane moderated a Georgetown University conference about this subject. The list of speakers included several respected experts in the field, recalls attendee Chelsea Polis, an epidemiologist who was then working for the reproductive health think tank Guttmacher Institute. Polis remembers noticing that while some of the speakers gave what she considered to be well-balanced presentations, others seemed to be less rooted in science. Polis was dismayed to hear unsubstantiated claims—for example that hormonal birth control causes lupus and has harmful effects on fetuses.

As the conference wore on, Polis says, it became clear that the conference organizers had hand-picked some speakers who would criticize hormonal birth control. The FACTS spokesperson, who emphasized that Duane’s role in the conference had been limited to moderating, maintained that the speakers “represented a diverse range of viewpoints and delivered research-based presentations.” Yet Polis and some of the speakers I talked to felt the agenda hadn’t been transparent. “This just was clearly not intended for any type of striving towards objectivity or actual scientific progress,” she says. “This felt manipulative.”

When Kat’s period was late, she didn’t think she could be pregnant, but she took a test just to be safe. The test was positive, and she panicked. She wasn’t ready to have a baby yet. “I was just so stressed and upset about it,” she says. Kat had made a point to follow the app’s instructions to the letter. An email exchange with Natural Cycles didn’t yield any answers. (Lauran Hanafin, a Natural Cycles spokesperson, said that while the company couldn’t comment on Kat’s specific case, “It pains me to hear of any unintended pregnancy, and if this user did not feel supported after reaching out to our team I do encourage her to reach out again and we can look into how she became pregnant.”) Kat was curious about other people’s experiences, so she read some online reviews of Natural Cycles. “There’s a ton of stories of this happening to people, all people in similar positions, and then just feeling really stupid,” she says. “When this happens to you, you just feel really naive.”

“When this happens to you, you just feel really naive.”

Yet even experts on cycle tracking say that it can be challenging to figure out how well a particular method works. Even though some of the methods are practically foolproof when they’re used perfectly, that means users must practically never make a mistake in observing and logging their physical signs. But when researchers measure effectiveness with typical use—say, occasionally skipping a step or forgetting to use a chart—the rate declines. Natural Cycles’ Hanafin emphasized that the company requires users to agree to abstain or use condoms on “red days”—those on which the app determines that there is a risk of pregnancy. The company also discloses to all users that while its perfect-use effectiveness rate is 98 percent, the typical use rate is 93 percent.

For other methods, that disparity is more dramatic. In 2018, Polis and her colleagues published a review of 53 efficacy studies on cycle-tracking methods. The team couldn’t find a single high-quality study to date, and 32 of the studies were of low quality, meaning they suffered from poor design or other methodological flaws. In the remaining 21 moderate-quality studies the group evaluated, they found that some methods had perfect-use rates that were starkly different from the typical-use rate. For example, the Billings Ovulation Method involves monitoring the consistency of cervical mucus. It was developed by Catholic healthcare providers and is taught by both the Guiding Star Project and Marguerite Duane’s group for training doctors. When used perfectly, it was 97-99 percent effective—but just 66-89 percent effective with typical use. These discrepancies were very useful information for Polis and her team. “If there’s a big gap between the perfect use pregnancy rate and the typical use pregnancy rate,” she says, “that may well mean that the method is difficult to use perfectly.”

Despite those disappointing statistics, Guiding Star Project’s Leah Jacobson fervently believes that if enough women would try cycle-tracking, the whole concept of accidental pregnancies could virtually cease to exist. “Even the term ‘unplanned pregnancy’ to me is just a sign that we have failed women tremendously in the last generations with their women’s health care, knowledge and education,” she told me. “I think in a world that really embraces education for our daughters and fertility awareness, not a lot of surprises happen.”

Toni Weschler, the author who wrote about cycle-tracking from a secular perspective in the 1990s, isn’t so sure. In an email to me, she emphasized that these methods are “only reliable if women are expertly educated in the methodology, and strictly adhere to the rules.” Yet Marguerite Duane’s group FACTS leverages Weschler’s work to make the case for cycle-tracking, as does Lila Rose, founder of the anti-abortion group Live Action. When I pointed out these and other examples to Weschler, she was saddened to learn that anti-abortion activists were appropriating her work. She strongly supports access to both abortion and hormonal birth control. “I find their claims that women should simply start practicing natural birth control methods naïve at best,” she wrote, “and arguably both dangerous and quite cynical.”

When Kat found out that Natural Cycles had failed her, she knew she wasn’t ready to raise a child. So, she had an abortion and then went back on the Pill. “It was just such a nightmare,” she says. “I was just like, I’m not going through this again.” But Kat was in England, where abortion is widely accessible. Had she become accidentally pregnant in the United States in 2022, her options could have been much more limited—and the outcome could have been very different.

Arrest them.......

Northern California county warns of 'very aggressive' people impersonating elections officials

Eric Ting

"Very aggressive" individuals impersonating elections officials have reportedly been knocking on Shasta County residents' doors and questioning their voter registration status, Shasta County's elections office warned residents this week.

"They’re wearing very distinctive neon vests and some kind of ID badge that says 'voter task force,'" County Clerk Cathy Darling Allen told SFGATE. "We are being told that these people are being very aggressive and intimating that they work in this office when they do not. We want voters to know this isn’t an official effort; we have a whole host of tools we use to verify info. Door knocking is not something we would ever do."

Allen said it is probably a safe assumption that members of the fake "voter task force" are individuals who believe, incorrectly, that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. In the time since that election, her office has become a "dumping ground for frustrations" and has had to deal with things ranging from frivolous copy-pasted public records requests to demands that the office preserve records it is required to destroy by California state law.

"What we've heard is these people aren't going door-to-door," Allen said. "People who contacted us said, 'My house is the only one on the street they went to.'"

Allen is aware of at least three such instances in Anderson, and at least one in Redding. She said there is no discernible pattern for why certain residents were targeted, and referred the matter to local law enforcement. She has yet to receive any updates.

The Redding Police Department told SFGATE that an investigation remains ongoing, and that officers are still dealing with reports of "guys going up to people to ask how they voted" in previous elections. Federal law states that anyone who "intimidates, threatens, coerces, or attempts to intimidate, threaten, or coerce, any other person for the purpose of interfering with the right of such other person to vote or to vote as he may choose" is committing voter intimidation.

The Shasta County Sheriff's Office said it has yet to receive any reports on the matter, and the Anderson Police Department did not return an SFGATE request for comment.

"It's very egregious in my mind," Allen said. "It’s not acceptable to make any voter feel concerned about their personal security."

Fuck Donald Trump.......

Let’s just indict Trump already, shall we?

SFGATE columnist Drew Magary argues that 'It is time, both procedurally and metaphorically, to fuck Donald Trump'

Drew Magary

In case you missed it, and you’re forgiven if you did, former President Donald Trump isn’t happy with the special master he fought so hard for. “Special master” is a fabulous duet of words that should be reserved exclusively for samurai training, BDSM orgies and chess rankings. Alas, “special master” in today’s context gets lumped in with terms such as “Senate parliamentarian” and “Hatch Act” that I have been reluctantly forced to acquaint myself with over the past six years, all because Trump is an asshole who turned America into the No. 1 asshole country in the universe. 

And so we come to said special master, Judge Raymond (British accent) Dearie, whose appointment has not stopped the Department of Justice from poring over some of the most sensitive documents they seized earlier this fall from Mar-a-Lago: documents that Trump definitely accidentally absconded from the White House with after his term as president came to an end.

Dearie has not been kind to Trump’s lawyers and even tried to force Trump to appear in court under oath. These plans were scuttled by a federal judge Thursday, but the special master’s moves are just one of many signs that the walls are closing in around our beloved Don-Don. The Department of Justice is still actively engaged in a criminal investigation of Trump. One of Trump’s most vocal defenders in the past is currently arguing that the former president’s attempts to ward off the probe may in fact be aiding it. I love it, unironically, when Trump hires people who he assumes will protect him and then they’re like, “Actually, f—k this guy.” And there are so many people like this out there! Fantastic.

Meanwhile, the House Jan. 6 committee is still in the process of conducting hearings on Trump’s role in the failed insurrection attempt on the U.S. Capitol, hearings that have already resulted in onetime Trump ally Cassidy Hutchinson testifying that Trump actively ordered security not to prevent armed rioters from reaching the Capitol. Meanwhile meanwhile, New York’s attorney general just filed a massive civil suit against Trump and his awful family for committing flagrant acts of real estate fraud. Meanwhile meanwhile meanwhile, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis is also jumping onto the hogpile, convening a grand jury that may be looking to charge Trump, or at least associates like Rudy Giuliani, with gross election malfeasance in 2020. Any one of these investigations could result in Trump being supremely f—ked, but I’d like to use this space now to demand that the “could” part of this no longer apply. 

It is time, both procedurally and metaphorically, to f—k Donald Trump. After all, if the guy who defended Trump against presumed white knight Robert Mueller thinks that Trump is in a highly f—kable position, let’s go ahead and take advantage of that.

It’s well past time, really. If you disdain Trump as much as I do, you’ve been on a six-year-long catharsis hunt in which every victory — even the 2020 election! — has felt hollow. I thought Trump was finished when he fired James Comey. I thought he was finished when Mueller was drafted to investigate him. I thought he was finished when he got COVID-19. You get the idea. It’s been an agonizing stretch in which all of us have had to live through Donald Trump being president, Donald Trump violently refusing to stop being president and then Donald Trump threatening to become president again. All Americans deserve a break from his bulls—t. We voted Joe Biden into office for this very reason. 

And yet, here Trump remains. Still here. Still not officially f—ked. For six years, I’ve been waiting for a cavalry that always arrives unarmed. I’ve been counting on Democrats to put Trump’s head on the chopping block when that party’s leaders all share a bizarre reticence to prosecute him because they believe that indicting Trump is an indictment of the American Idyll or something. It’s possible that Trumpism is a fad and will die out on its own. Perhaps as soon as November, when a red wave that the dreaded polls supposedly once foretold fails to materialize. But given the damage that Trump and his cohorts have wrought, it feels wrong, IS wrong, to hope nature takes its course with this movement. I’ve done the hope thing. I did it in 2008. It only got me here, so you’ll excuse me if hope and I aren’t on the best of terms right now. 

What I require, and what is there for the taking at last, is action. All of this due diligence has to be for something, and not just for due diligence’s sake. If Democrats want me to have faith in their precious institutions, then what I need is for those institutions to do what the label on the “Institutions” box promises and indict this man. I’m as sick as you are of the “Today would be a good day to charge Donald Trump with high treason” brand tweets that have polluted the internet since his inauguration, but the receipts are flooding in and the excuses have all sunk to the bottom of the sea in a beautiful, idiot boat. Truly, today WOULD be a good day for the hammer to drop.  Don’t wait until after the election, when Republicans will have f—ked with an election that they have already pledged to f—k with. Don’t gimme some bulls—t about how there’ll be another civil war if we dare to prosecute Trump because I already watched the insurrectionists try to start that war and fail miserably. Most of those people thought they were going to a furry convention or something. And don’t put on your law degree and tell me about dangerous precedents and how fluid the definition of “crimedoing” is. I’ve been watching this s—tshow for six years now. I know what I’m looking at. I’m looking at robbery, treason, fraud and awful nutrition habits. Everyone knows what went down, what is going down and what Republicans WANT to go down. And I think I’ve had enough of the down parts. Joe Biden may be an underwhelming replacement, but even he had the stones earlier this month to call all this out for what it is:

“Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal. Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”

That’s accurate as it comes to rhetoric, but it also serves as an implied order … to the DOJ, to the state of New York, to Willis and to Congress: It’s time. Let’s get on with it.

Illegally annexes

Putin illegally annexes Ukrainian regions as part of Russia

JON GAMBRELL and HANNA ARHIROVA

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed treaties Friday for an illegal annexation of occupied Ukrainian territory in a sharp escalation of his seven-month invasion of Ukraine. Its leader immediately countered with a surprise application to join the NATO military alliance.

Putin’s land-grab and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s signing of what he said is an “accelerated” NATO membership application sent the two leaders speeding even faster on a collision course that is cranking up fears of a full-blown conflict between Russia and the West.

Putin vowed to protect newly annexed regions of Ukraine by “all available means," a nuclear-backed threat at a Kremlin signing ceremony where he also railed at the West.

Zelenskyy then held a signing ceremony of his own, releasing video of him putting pen to papers that he said were a formal NATO membership request.

Putin has repeatedly made clear that any prospect of Ukraine joining the world's largest military alliance is one of his red lines and it was among the justifications he has cited for his invasion.

In his speech, Putin urged Ukraine to sit down for peace talks but immediately insisted he won’t discuss handing back occupied regions — keeping him on a collision course with the Ukrainian government and its Western backers that have rejected his land-grab.

In a Kremlin ceremony at the ornate St. George's Hall to herald the annexation of the occupied parts of Ukraine, Putin accused the West of fueling the hostilities as part of what he said is a plan to turn Russia into a “colony” and a “crowds of slaves.” The hardening of his position, in the conflict that that has killed and wounded tens of thousands of people, further cranked up tensions, already at levels unseen since the Cold War.

The European Union responded to Putin’s latest step with a joint statement rejecting and condemning “the illegal annexation” of the four regions: Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

The EU’s 27 member states said they will never recognize the illegal referendums that Russia organized “as a pretext for this further violation of Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Ukraine vowed to continue fighting, and Zelenskyy announced the “accelerated” NATO application, although it wasn’t immediately clear what that would mean, since it requires the unanimous support of the alliance’s members.

“De facto, we have already proven compatibility with alliance standards. They are real for Ukraine -- real on the battlefield and in all aspects of our interaction,” Zelenskyy said. “We trust each other, we help each other, and we protect each other. This is the alliance.”

The Kremlin ceremony came three days after the completion in occupied regions of Moscow-orchestrated “referendums” on joining Russia that were dismissed by Kyiv and the West as a bare-faced land grab held at gunpoint and based on lies.

But Putin, in a fiery speech at the ceremony, insisted that Ukraine must treat the Kremlin-managed votes “with respect.”

After the signing ceremony of treaties to join Russia, Moscow-installed leaders of the occupied regions gathered around Putin and they all linked hands, before then joining chants of “Russia! Russia!” with the audience.

Putin also railed at the West, cutting an angry figure as he accused the United States and its allies of seeking to destroy Russia. He said the West acted “as a parasite” and used its financial and technological strength “to rob the entire world.”

He portrayed Russia as being on a historical mission to reclaim its post-Soviet great power status and counter Western domination that he said is collapsing.

“History has called us to a battlefield to fight for our people, for the grand historic Russia, for future generations,” he said.

The separatist Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine have been backed by Moscow since declaring independence in 2014, weeks after the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. The southern Kherson region and part of neighboring Zaporizhzhia were captured by Russia soon after Putin sent troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24.

Both houses of the Kremlin-controlled Russian parliament will meet next week to rubber-stamp the treaties for the regions to join Russia, sending them to Putin for his approval.

Putin and his lieutenants have bluntly warned Ukraine against pressing an offensive to reclaim the regions, saying Russia would view it as an act of aggression – threats that Moscow can back up with the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear warheads.

The Kremlin-organized votes in Ukraine were an attempt by Putin to avoid more defeats on the battlefields that could threaten his 22-year rule. By setting Russia’s gains in stone, at least on paper, Putin seemingly hopes to scare Ukraine and its Western backers with the prospect of an increasingly escalatory conflict unless they back down — which they show no signs of doing.

Russia controls most of the Luhansk and Kherson regions, about 60% of the Donetsk region and a large chunk of the Zaporizhzhia region where it took control of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.

The push forward with annexation comes with the Kremlin on the verge of another stinging battlefield loss, with reports of the imminent Ukrainian encirclement of the eastern city of Lyman.

Retaking it could open the path for Ukraine to push deep into Luhansk, one of the regions Russia is absorbing.

“It looks quite pathetic. Ukrainians are doing something, taking steps in the real material world, while the Kremlin is building some kind of a virtual reality, incapable of responding in the real world,” former Kremlin speechwriter turned political analyst Abbas Gallyamov said.

“People understand that the politics is now on the battlefield,” he added. “What’s important is who advances and who retreats. In that sense, the Kremlin cannot offer anything сomforting to the Russians.”

Russia on Friday also pounded Ukrainian cities with missiles, rockets and suicide drones, with one strike reported to have killed 25 people. The salvos together amounted to the heaviest barrage that Russia has unleashed for weeks.

They followed analysts’ warnings that Putin was likely to dip more heavily into his dwindling stocks of precision weapons and step up attacks as part of a strategy to escalate the war to an extent that would shatter Western support for Ukraine.

A Ukrainian counteroffensive has deprived Moscow of mastery on the military fields of battle. Its hold of the Luhansk region appears increasingly shaky, as Ukrainian forces make inroads there, with the pincer assault on Lyman. Ukraine also still has a large foothold in the neighboring Donetsk region.

In the Zaporizhzhia region’s capital, anti-aircraft missiles that Russia has repurposed as ground-attack weapons rained down Friday on people who were waiting in cars to cross into Russian-occupied territory so they could bring family members back across front lines, the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, said.

The general prosecutor’s office said 25 people were killed and 50 wounded. The strike left deep impact craters and sent shrapnel tearing through the humanitarian convoy’s lined-up vehicles, killing their passengers. Nearby buildings were demolished. Trash bags, blankets and, for one victim, a blood-soaked towel, were used to cover bodies.

Russian-installed officials in Zaporizhzhia blamed Ukrainian forces for the strike, but provided no evidence.

Russian strikes were also reported in the city of Dnipro. The regional governor, Valentyn Reznichenko, said at least one person was killed and five were wounded.

Ukraine’s air force said the southern cities of Mykolaiv and Odesa were also targeted with Iranian-supplied suicide drones that Russia has increasingly deployed in recent weeks, seemingly to avoid losing more pilots who don’t have control of Ukraine’s skies.

Zelenskyy held an emergency meeting of his National Security and Defense Council on Friday and denounced the latest Russian strikes.

“The enemy rages and seeks revenge for our steadfastness and his failures,” he posted on his Telegram channel. “You will definitely answer. For every lost Ukrainian life!”

With Ukraine vowing to take back all occupied territory and Russia pledging to defend its gains, threatening nuclear-weapon use and mobilizing an additional 300,000 troops despite protests, the two nations are on an increasingly escalatory collision course.

That was underscored by the fighting for Lyman, a key node for Russian military operations in the Donbas and a sought-after prize in the Ukrainian counteroffensive launched in late August.

The Russian-backed separatist leader of Donetsk, Denis Pushilin, said the city is now “half-encircled” by Ukrainian forces. In comments reported by Russian state news agency RIA Novosti, he described the setback as “worrying news.”

”Ukraine’s armed formations,” he said, “are trying very hard to spoil our celebration,”

Europa

NASA’s Juno Shares First Image From Flyby of Jupiter’s Moon Europa

The first picture NASA’s Juno spacecraft took as it flew by Jupiter’s ice-encrusted moon Europa has arrived on Earth. Revealing surface features in a region near the moon’s equator called Annwn Regio, the image was captured during the solar-powered spacecraft’s closest approach, on Thursday, Sept. 29, at 2:36 a.m. PDT (5:36 a.m. EDT), at a distance of about 219 miles (352 kilometers).

This is only the third close pass in history below 310 miles (500 kilometers) altitude and the closest look any spacecraft has provided at Europa since Jan. 3, 2000, when NASA’s Galileo came within 218 miles (351 kilometers) of the surface.

Europa is the sixth-largest moon in the solar system, slightly smaller than Earth’s moon. Scientists think a salty ocean lies below a miles-thick ice shell, sparking questions about potential conditions capable of supporting life underneath Europa’s surface.

This segment of the first image of Europa taken during this flyby by the spacecraft’s JunoCam (a public-engagement camera) zooms in on a swath of Europa’s surface north of the equator. Due to the enhanced contrast between light and shadow seen along the terminator (the nightside boundary), rugged terrain features are easily seen, including tall shadow-casting blocks, while bright and dark ridges and troughs curve across the surface. The oblong pit near the terminator might be a degraded impact crater.

With this additional data about Europa’s geology, Juno’s observations will benefit future missions to the Jovian moon, including the agency’s Europa Clipper. Set to launch in 2024, Europa Clipper will study the moon’s atmosphere, surface, and interior, with its main science goal being to determine whether there are places below Europa’s surface that could support life.

As exciting as Juno’s data will be, the spacecraft had only a two-hour window to collect it, racing past the moon with a relative velocity of about 14.7 miles per second (23.6 kilometers per second).

“It’s very early in the process, but by all indications Juno’s flyby of Europa was a great success,” said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “This first picture is just a glimpse of the remarkable new science to come from Juno’s entire suite of instruments and sensors that acquired data as we skimmed over the moon’s icy crust.”

During the flyby, the mission collected what will be some of the highest-resolution images of the moon (0.6 miles, or 1 kilometer, per pixel) and obtained valuable data on Europa’s ice shell structure, interior, surface composition, and ionosphere, in addition to the moon’s interaction with Jupiter’s magnetosphere.

“The science team will be comparing the full set of images obtained by Juno with images from previous missions, looking to see if Europa’s surface features have changed over the past two decades,” said Candy Hansen, a Juno co-investigator who leads planning for the camera at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona. “The JunoCam images will fill in the current geologic map, replacing existing low-resolution coverage of the area.”

Juno’s close-up views and data from its Microwave Radiometer (MWR) instrument will provide new details on how the structure of Europa’s ice varies beneath its crust. Scientists can use all this information to generate new insights into the moon, including data in the search for regions where liquid water may exist in shallow subsurface pockets.

Building on Juno’s observations and previous missions such as Voyager 2 and Galileo, NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, slated to arrive at Europa in 2030, will study the moon’s atmosphere, surface, and interior – with a goal to investigate habitability and better understand its global subsurface ocean, the thickness of its ice crust, and search for possible plumes that may be venting subsurface water into space.

The close flyby modified Juno’s trajectory, reducing the time it takes to orbit Jupiter from 43 to 38 days. The flyby also marks the second encounter with a Galilean moon during Juno’s extended mission. The mission explored Ganymede in June 2021 and is scheduled to make close flybys of Io, the most volcanic body in the solar system, in 2023 and 2024.

Funding bill

Senate passes funding bill to likely thwart weekend shutdown

The House could pass the short-term funding bill as early as Thursday, though a vote will likely slip to Friday.

By CAITLIN EMMA and MARIANNE LEVINE

The Senate approved a stopgap spending bill on Thursday afternoon that funds the government through mid-December, sending it to the House and likely averting a government shutdown that would hit in less than 48 hours.

The stopgap would fund the government through Dec. 16, granting congressional appropriators more time for talks on a broader funding package before the end of the year. After passing the Senate 72-25 the measure now heads to the House, where top Democrats told members Thursday morning that they could pass the bill as soon as Thursday evening. A vote could easily spill into Friday, however, sending it to President Joe Biden’s desk before the midnight deadline.

Senate leaders reached an agreement to speed passage of the short-term funding fix on Thursday after Biden signed off on a temporary 100 percent federal cost-share waiver for typhoon aid in Alaska, appeasing the state’s GOP senators. Republican Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana also backed off an effort to delay the vote after he secured floor time to expound on the benefits of balanced budgets.

Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said her disaster relief request, which would allow the federal government to shoulder more of the cost burden for typhoon recovery in the state for the next 30 days, was resolved by Biden’s decision to amend the state’s disaster declaration.

“So we’re in a better position,” she told reporters.

Braun also said digging in on his budget-related amendment to hold up a vote on the stopgap would be “counterproductive.”

“I’m reasonable as a rule. That’s why I got 10 minutes of floor time to talk about it,” he said.

The relatively smooth path to final passage comes after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) pulled his controversial proposal to ease energy permitting from the bill, amid broad opposition from Senate Republicans and a handful of Senate Democrats.

The temporary funding patch, Congress’ last major to-do item before the midterm elections, provides more than $12 billion in emergency military and economic funding to respond to the war in Ukraine. It also includes $1 billion in heating assistance for low-income families, $20 million for the water crisis in Jackson, Miss., billions in disaster aid and more than $112 million for federal court security.

The measure also includes a five-year reauthorization of the user fee programs that fund much of the FDA’s work, and it would allow FEMA to spend billions of dollars through the Disaster Relief Fund at a higher rate, while federal officials rush to respond to devastating hurricanes that have slammed into Florida and Puerto Rico.

Members of Congress are eager to return home ahead of the midterms, particularly in the House, where lawmakers are not scheduled to return until November. House Democrats’ top appropriator confirmed Thursday morning that they were waiting on Senate passage before setting any votes in the lower chamber.

“So much depends on when they’re going to get this over to us. That’s what we’re waiting for,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said, adding: “We could do this tomorrow, it’s gonna get done.”

Not Funny

 

From now on when you want to call someone absolutely stupid, call them a "Ginni".....

Ginni Thomas tells Jan. 6 panel she still believes false election fraud claims, chair says

Rep. Bennie Thompson said the select committee may incorporate her testimony in their rescheduled hearing “if there's something of merit.”

By NICHOLAS WU and KYLE CHENEY

Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, told the Jan. 6 panel during lengthy testimony Thursday that she still believes false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump, according to the panel’s chair.

“The information was typical of a lot of information we received from other people who were involved in this effort around Jan. 6. A lot of: ‘Well, I believed something was wrong,’” select committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), told reporters Thursday of Thomas’ testimony. “She was one of those people we wanted to talk to and, ultimately, we eventually got there.”

Thompson also told reporters Thomas had answered “some questions” Thursday during her interview.

Thomas, also known as Ginni, sat with the panel behind closed doors for over four hours in a congressional office building where they have conducted many of their interviews. She is one of the select committee’s major outstanding witnesses as investigators start to wind down their probe, and they’ve wanted to ask her questions about her connections to John Eastman, a legal architect of Trump’s last-ditch plan to subvert the 2020 election.

“She had conversations [with] and was messaging John Eastman. We have questions about that,” said panel member Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.).

Thomas had invited Eastman to speak to an activist group in the aftermath of the election, though Eastman has denied ever discussing Supreme Court-related matters with Thomas. CBS and the Washington Post had also published text messages from her to top Trump allies, in which she urged them to investigate debunked claims of election fraud and to fight harder to overturn the election results. The select panel had been trying to talk to her for months, finally reaching an agreement with her last week.

A select panel spokesperson declined to comment on Thomas’ appearance. Her attorney, Mark Paoletta, said in a statement she was “happy to cooperate” Thursday to clear up “misconceptions about her activities about her activities surrounding the 2020 elections.”

“She answered all of the Committee’s questions,” he said. He added that she told the committee her election-related activity “focused on ensuring that reports of fraud and irregularities were investigated” and that she played no role in post-election events beyond her push for investigations.

Meanwhile, the select panel is currently searching for a new date for its likely final hearing, which they postponed due to Hurricane Ian. The House plans to leave D.C. Friday and are not scheduled to return until November due to midterm campaigns, possibly complicating efforts to reschedule the hearing.

“They’re canvassing everybody for their schedules [and] travel,” panel member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) told reporters Wednesday evening. He summed up the issue: “We were all set to go. And then the hurricane laid waste to the best laid plans.”

Some of Thomas’ testimony could be incorporated into the rescheduled hearing “if there’s something of merit,” Thompson said Thursday.

What's the dirt???

Judge again sides with Trump in Mar-a-Lago documents fight

The order Thursday is Cannon’s first significant move in the process since last week, when a federal appeals court sharply rejected her decision to initially include about 100 documents with national-security classification markings in Dearie’s review.

By JOSH GERSTEIN and KYLE CHENEY

The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s challenge to the FBI’s seizure of documents from his Florida estate again sided with the former president Thursday in the ongoing showdown with the Justice Department.

U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon issued an order extending the timeline of an outside review Trump demanded of the documents and other materials the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach on Aug. 8 as part of an investigation into alleged unlawful retention of classified materials and other government records as well as obstruction of justice. She also overruled some of the procedures proposed by the independent reviewer, senior U.S. District Court Judge Raymond Dearie, whom she appointed to the role at Trump’s request.

Cannon, a Trump appointee based in Fort Pierce, Fla., essentially adopted a slower timeline proposed by Trump’s attorney for the document review to be conducted by Dearie, who is based in Brooklyn. Under Cannon’s new order, the review and her handling of any objections to Dearie’s rulings will almost certainly stretch into the new year.

In addition, Cannon rejected Dearie’s plan to require Trump to say at the outset of the review whether he believes the FBI’s inventory of seized materials is faulty, either by omitting items that were seized, including items that were not seized or both. Trump has repeatedly suggested, without offering evidence, that the FBI planted evidence at his home during the court-ordered search.

“There shall be no separate requirement on Plaintiff at this stage, prior to the review of any of the Seized Materials, to lodge ex ante final objections to the accuracy of Defendant’s Inventory, its descriptions, or its contents,” Cannon wrote.

Under Cannon’s ruling, Trump will be allowed to raise such concerns later in the process. Cannon also wiped out Dearie’s plan to break the documents into sets and handle objections on a rolling basis. Instead, there will be one deadline — which is likely to arrive in early November — by which Trump’s side must state which specific documents it believes are subject to attorney-client privilege or executive privilege as well as which he believes qualify as presidential records or personal records under the terms of the Presidential Records Act.

Prosecutors had initially asked for the review to be completed by mid-October, while Trump had proposed a mid-December timeline. Cannon’s ruling aligns with Trump’s preferred schedule, contemplating Dearie finishing his work by December 16. She would then take up objections by either side to the special master’s rulings in a process that seems destined to spill over into 2023.

The order Thursday is Cannon’s first significant move in the process since last week, when a federal appeals court sharply rejected her decision to initially include about 100 documents with national-security classification markings in Dearie’s review. DOJ had argued that Trump had no legitimate claim to those records and that withholding them from DOJ during the review would harm efforts to probe whether the documents had been improperly accessed by unauthorized recipients.

The appeals court overrode Cannon’s refusal to restore DOJ’s access to those documents and made clear it viewed her reasoning as deeply flawed.

The back-and-forth over the mechanics of the process over the past couple of weeks has also surfaced some disagreements and apparent friction between Cannon, who has spent less than two years on the bench, and Dearie, who has spent more than 36 years as a federal judge and was appointed by President Ronald Reagan.

Trump’s side offered up Dearie as one of two preferred picks for the special master job. The government proposed two other choices, but acceded to Dearie.

The volume of materials involved in the review remains murky. Cannon earlier referenced about 11,000 documents, but Trump’s lawyers said in a court filing Wednesday that during a discussion about digitizing and organizing the documents prosecutors said that up to 200,000 pages of materials may be involved.

Predatory Nuclear-Weapon States

The Age of Predatory Nuclear-Weapon States Has Arrived

Putin’s nuclear threat marks the start of a new era.

Opinion by STEPHEN YOUNG

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine makes at least one thing clear: It’s time for us to update how we think about nuclear weapons. For the first time in the nuclear era, one country used loudly issued nuclear threats — repeated just last week — to deter other countries from intervening in a large-scale conventional war of aggression. We have entered the age of “predatory nuclear-weapon states.”

For political analysts and military officials, this is not an unexpected phenomenon. On the contrary, the concept falls under the so-called stability-instability paradox. Because the threat of nuclear war is so terrifying and the risk of annihilation so real, lower-level conflict actually becomes more feasible. One nuclear-armed country can undertake major conventional military action, expecting that its nuclear capability will prevent outside intervention. That is what’s happening in Ukraine.

This is deeply problematic for international security. First, it is profoundly unjust. The world should not tolerate a status quo in which any nuclear-armed country can conduct conventional wars with impunity, slaughter tens of thousands and seize and annex territory, simply because its nuclear arsenal inhibits a strong military response. The international security system should not work that way.

Second, the fight for Ukraine significantly increases the likelihood of nuclear war. Many experts asserted that Russia would not invade Ukraine, yet it did, highlighting the very real risk that Russian President Vladimir Putin still could use nuclear weapons, particularly if Moscow continues to lose the war. President Joe Biden recently urged Putin not to use nuclear weapons — a move that would end an invaluable 77-year-long taboo and alter the course of history, with potentially horrific costs.

Third, the idea that nuclear deterrence plainly allows naked conventional aggression is not how most people think nuclear deterrence operates, nor how it should work. Most observers understand that deterrence is founded on the terrifying threat of nuclear annihilation, the ever-present risk of imminent death. Most wish the system was not in place, but they had become desensitized to the risk.

Ukraine changed that. Early on, nearly 70 percent of U.S. adults feared the invasion would lead to nuclear war — a reasonable, terrifying fear. It turns out nuclear weapons don’t “keep the peace.” Quite the contrary, they enable conventional conflicts where escalation to the “ultimate weapon” is entirely too possible.

Deterrence does work. Russian nuclear capabilities and threats are deterring the United States. The Pentagon even delayed the flight test of a nuclear-armed missile, concerned it could heighten tensions. This is the strongest argument for nuclear deterrence: It prevents wider conflicts like the two world wars that killed tens of millions.

But at what risk? The Ukraine war shows nuclear deterrence does not work as most imagined it, and the world is now a much more dangerous place than we thought. The risk of nuclear war leading to hundreds of millions of deaths is at its highest point in decades.

This fact could and should stimulate a shift in thinking about the value of nuclear weapons.

With that in mind, there are four paths the world could possibly take.

The first — and sadly most likely — is continuing the status quo, but that would be deeply dissatisfying. Prior to the Ukraine invasion, Russia, China and the United States were already improving or expanding their nuclear arsenals. Now some U.S. policymakers argue the United States needs more nuclear weapons, although their rationale is weak and counterproductive. The United States already has the most capable nuclear arsenal in the world, yet that did not stop Russia from invading Ukraine. How would more weapons help?

Another path could have countries like Brazil, Iran, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Turkey acquiring nuclear weapons, leading to the collapse of the international nonproliferation regime and more countries following suit. With more countries armed, a nuclear war would happen sooner rather than later, with disastrous consequences.

A third option is to try to rid the world of the “problem states” that possess nuclear weapons. Supporters of this approach would promote regime change in China, North Korea and Russia to avoid wars like the one in Ukraine. That also would be a recipe for disaster. Despite Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine, many nations have not joined the West in condemning it. China, meanwhile, is integrated into the global economy, and North Korea is paranoid and on alert. It is not feasible to eliminate any of those governments.

That leaves a fourth possibility, the most promising and the most secure. Recognize that nuclear weapons are the problem, and rather than creating a more nuclear-armed world or ousting rogue governments that have nuclear weapons, the world needs to eliminate nuclear weapons. It will not happen quickly, and the world would have to develop a new, truly stabilizing security regime to replace the current system built upon nuclear deterrence, but that effort should be the focus of international efforts moving forward.

One place to start should be reforming the United Nations Security Council, where currently the five original nuclear-armed countries — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States — have permanent veto power over efforts to end conflicts around the world. There cannot be a new security system until that arrangement ends.

A second is returning to arms control. That includes reaching bilateral U.S.-Russian agreements to cut nuclear arsenals (which will have to include limits on long-range missile defenses among other challenges); concluding two international agreements, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (two steps that would sharply hamper China’s nuclear program); and building support for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the only emerging success in the nuclear field.

Seventy-seven years ago, just two nuclear bombs ended World War II. Yet today nuclear-armed countries have more than 12,000 weapons, most of them far more destructive that the ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It’s now clear the risk of continued reliance on nuclear weapons for security is even more dangerous than anyone imagined. It is time to move beyond nuclear deterrence. That is the best hope for the future of humanity.

Destruction

‘Total destruction’: Florida residents live through night of terror

The region was left with 2 million people without power and a fear that a huge death count awaits.

By MATT DIXON and AREK SARKISSIAN

Karen Baughman sat in her Fort Myers home darkened by storm shutters as Hurricane Ian roared around her, eventually leaving complete and total destruction in its wake.

The storm, which is one of the worst to ever hit Florida, seemed to go on forever for the 81-year-old Baughman. Fort Myers, in Lee County, was hit especially hard by the storm, which caused catastrophic flooding throughout the city, turning streets into makeshift rivers.

“It was a feeling of helplessness,” she said over the phone. “It was just waiting and praying that it got over in a hurry, and it did not. It just parked next to us.”

She is among the millions of people in southwest Florida who endured a terrifying 24 hours and are now realizing their homes and cities will be forever altered by Ian. The massive storm brought near Category 5 winds, devastating rains and storm surges that exceeded 10 feet. The storm’s wrath and its massive rainfall will be felt in most corners of Florida, even as it leaves the state and heads out into the Atlantic Ocean.

No place, however, was harder hit than Lee County, where the storm made landfall Wednesday. It wiped out bridges, left the vast majority of the county without power, 1,300 hospital patients needing to be evacuated from local hospitals and a growing fear that search and rescue missions will yield frightening death counts.

“I lost everything I own,” said state Rep. Spencer Roach, a Republican whose district represents a portion of Lee County. “I have two pairs of jeans, four shirts and a pair of shoes to my name. Everything is gone.”

Roach made the last-minute decision at 11 p.m. Tuesday night to make the “white knuckle” drive to his brother’s house on Florida’s Atlantic Coast as the weather quickly deteriorated. But he said he stayed in contact with his neighbors throughout the night as Ian destroyed his Waterway Estates neighborhood.

Many who stayed behind huddled on the upper floor of his street’s only two-story home, just hoping the rising flood waters would not reach them.

“I lost everything I own. I have two pairs of jeans, four shirts and a pair of shoes to my name. Everything is gone.”

State Rep. Spencer Roach, a Republican whose district represents a portion of Lee County.

“As of last night, the last communication I had with them is people from the neighborhood were huddled on the second floor just watching the water rise around them,” Roach said. “Everything is flooded out. Everything. All the houses are flooded.”

The region endured Hurricane Irma in 2017 and Hurricane Charley in 2004, widely regarded as the area’s worst in recent memory. But early assessments make clear that Hurricane Ian is the new answer to the question: “What was Lee County’s most devastating hurricane?”

“I have been in Lee county for nearly 30 years and been through a number of hurricanes, and this was unique because it just took forever,” said state Sen. Ray Rodrigues, a Republican who represents the coastal portions of Lee County’s hardest hit areas. “[Hurricane] Charley rolled through, but it moved quickly. This one hovered over us for hours causing devastation everywhere.”

Pictures and videos from places in and near Fort Myers show those areas nearly completely wiped out, but officials have not yet tallied things like injuries or fatalities. President Joe Biden on Thursday said early reports indicate “a substantial loss of life” from the storm, though by late Thursday there was initial reporting of five fatalities in Lee County, six in Charlotte County and one in Volusia County.

“We won’t know the total number of fatalities until folks can get on the ground and have a better sense of who stayed and who evacuated,” Rodrigues said. “We have two confirmed right now, and based on what I’m seeing, that number will rise and probably significantly.”

Early Thursday morning, Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that he thinks the death toll in his county could be in the hundreds — though he conceded he didn’t have confirmed numbers.

“This will be a life-changing event for the men and women who are responding,” he said. “They’re going to see things they’ve never seen before.”

During a briefing Thursday morning in the state Emergency Operations Center in Tallahassee, Gov. Ron DeSantis said fatality figures in the hundreds are not yet confirmed, and crews are just beginning to assess the damage.

Determining who is trapped in their homes and doing search and rescue missions is the immediate goal of counties throughout the region, most of which also sustained severe damage from the storm, especially in coastal areas besieged by record storm surge.

Brian Gleason, the communications coordinator for neighboring Charlotte County, said there was a backup of roughly 900 calls waiting for emergency workers when the storm started to subside, and they were able to start assessing damage.

“There were a lot of people still in town,” he said. “I think we had good compliance [with evacuation orders] based on traffic we saw, but there were people who thought their structures were in good shape and decided to hang out.”

Though much of the worst damage was centered on Lee and Charlotte counties, the entire Gulf Coast in southwest Florida was hit hard and is facing a massive cleanup effort ahead.

“I looked around and saw nothing but total destruction,” said Barry Gordon, who rode out Hurricane Ian inside his Venice home in Sarasota County. “Things are awful here — terrible — almost impassable roads.”

Gordon wrapped parts of his home in blankets of Kevlar that he said protected much of it from flying debris. He said Ian’s powerful eye sat over his community for seven hours before the slow-moving storm finally moved on. He watched the high winds and rain from behind one of the large protective blankets draped over the birdcage of his swimming pool.

“Just the power of nature is un-freaking believable,” Gordon said. “Pretty much everyone has stuff off of their roofs.”