February, 10 2020, 11:00pm EDT
ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and Consumers Challenge Trump Administration Rule That Threatens Insurance Coverage for Abortion
The rule imposes more than $1 billion in unnecessary costs in an effort to coerce insurance companies to stop offering coverage for abortion, affecting more than 3 million consumers.
WASHINGTON
Planned Parenthood of Maryland, Inc., and several consumers around the country filed a lawsuit today challenging the Trump administration's new rule designed to make insurance companies stop offering coverage for abortion. They are represented by attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc., and Brown Goldstein & Levy, LLP.
In December 2019, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released a new rule that, if implemented, would force insurance companies that sell plans in the Affordable Care Act individual marketplaces to send two separate bills to customers -- one for the coverage of abortion care, and another for coverage of other health care. Insurers will also have to instruct their customers to pay the bills using two checks, two money orders, or two electronic transactions every month.
As the administration acknowledged in finalizing the rule, the extensive administrative burdens will lead to higher premiums for consumers and will cause some insurers to drop insurance coverage for abortion altogether. As the administration also acknowledged, confusion about these new requirements will lead some people to miss payments and risk losing their health insurance coverage entirely.
"If this rule takes effect, I face the terrifying risk of losing not only my insurance coverage for abortion, but my insurance coverage entirely, which would be devastating for me given my pre-existing condition," said Rebecca, a resident of Washington, D.C. and plaintiff in the case. "That's why I'm joining the ACLU and Planned Parenthood to fight back. It is cruel and unacceptable that the Trump administration is interfering in my health care and trying to interfere with how health insurance companies do business, just because they want to make it more difficult for me to access my right to abortion."
"The Trump administration's new insurance rule is another attack on abortion care, designed solely to push safe, legal abortion further out of reach," said Meagan Burrows, staff attorney with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. "And yet again, its actions will have the most devastating effect on already marginalized communities, including low-income people, people with limited English proficiency, and people with disabilities. Abortion is health care, and our government should be making it easier -- not harder -- for people to get the health care they need."
More than 3 million consumers would be affected by the rule's onerous restrictions, including the individual plaintiffs in the lawsuit from Maryland, the District of Columbia, New Jersey, and Maine.The rule would also affect one-third of the individual market exchange plans nationwide, including every individual plan offered on the marketplaces in Maryland. A fact sheet on the impact of the rule can be found here.
"Abortion opponents are waging everything they've got as part of their massive war on our access to health care," said Karen Nelson, President and CEO, Planned Parenthood of Maryland, Inc. "The attacks and deceptions continue, but here's the truth: Abortion care is health care, and it should not be separated, "carved out", or treated differently from any other medical service. We will always fight to eliminate barriers and protect access to safe, legal abortion care and we will continue to provide people with the health care they need."
"This rule exists for one reason: to make it more difficult for people to access safe, legal abortion," said Alexis McGill Johnson, Acting President and CEO, Planned Parenthood Federation of America. "The administration itself admits this rule has no quantifiable benefit -- its sole purpose is to create extra red tape for millions of people across the country. We will not stand for this administration's attempt to shame people and keep them from accessing health care. All people deserve to be able to access abortion in this country, and to have their health insurance cover this safe, legal medical procedure. Planned Parenthood Federation of America is proud to stand with Planned Parenthood of Maryland, the ACLU and these brave individual consumers to fight back against this harmful rule in court. We will never stop fighting for our patients, or for the right of all people to access sexual and reproductive health care, including abortion, without shame or needless hurdles."
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.
The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 and is our nation's guardian of liberty. The ACLU works in the courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to all people in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
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Trump Rally in Waco Called Not a Dog Whistle, But a 'Blaring Air Horn' to Far-Right
"There's not really another place in the U.S. that you could pick that would tap into these deep veins of anti-government hatred—Christian nationalist skepticism of the government," said one extremism expert.
Mar 24, 2023
While former U.S. President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign insists it is purely coincidental that his planned Saturday rally in Waco, Texas falls during the 30th anniversary of a deadly 51-day siege targeting a religious cult, some Texans and extremism experts aren't buying it.
Since law enforcement—including Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents—carried out the botched operation at a Branch Davidian compound near Waco from February 28 to April 19 in 1993, the event has been a source of anti-government sentiment for the likes of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and U.S. militia movement members.
"When Donald Trump flies into Waco on Saturday evening for the first major campaign event of his 2024 reelection quest, dog ears won't be the only ones twitching," the Houston Chronicle editorial board argued Thursday. "Trump doesn't do subtle; dog-whistle messages are not his style. The more apt metaphor is the blaring air horn of a Mack 18-wheeler barreling down I-10."
"'Waco' has become an Alamo of sorts, a shrine for the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, the Oath Keepers, and other anti-government extremists and conspiracists."
"The GOP-friendly city of Waco—Trump won McLennan County by more than 20 percentage points in 2020—has every right, of course, to host a former president, the leading contender for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, but 'Waco,' the symbol... means something else entirely," the board stressed. "'Waco' has become an Alamo of sorts, a shrine for the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, the Oath Keepers, and other anti-government extremists and conspiracists."
The twice-impeached former president faces potential legal trouble in multiple states and at the federal level for everything from a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels to trying to overturn his 2020 electoral loss and inciting the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Trump, a documented serial liar, took to his Truth Social platform last weekend to say that he would be arrested Tuesday—as part of a New York grand jury investigation into the hush money—and call for protests. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said Thursday that Trump "created a false expectation that he would be arrested."
In a Truth Social post on Friday, Trump
warned of "death and destruction" if he is indicted—which led the watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) to charge that "he's not being subtle, he's threatening prosecutors with violence."
The Chronicle board tied Trump's legal problems to his Waco trip:
Thirty years later, the anti-government paramilitary groups feeding off lies about the "deep state" and a stolen election periodically visit the modest, little chapel on the site of the sprawling, ramshackle building that burned to the ground. Although the Branch Davidians had nothing to do with anti-government conspiracists, chapel construction was funded by loud-mouthed conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
Militia members and conspiracists know exactly what Trump's Waco visit symbolizes. They have heard him castigate the FBI and the "deep state," particularly after agents searched for classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. How they'll respond to his remarks, particularly if he shows up as the first former president in American history to face criminal charges, has law enforcement in Waco and beyond taking every precaution. What he says will likely set the tone for the presidential campaign to come. Every American should be concerned.
Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung wrote Friday in an email to The New York Times that Waco was chosen "because it is centrally located and close to all four of Texas' biggest metropolitan areas—Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio—while providing the necessary infrastructure to hold a rally of this magnitude."
The Chronicle board noted other local options, writing that "the Waco Regional Airport and an expected crowd of 10,000 or so fit the bill. Of course, Temple or Belton or Killeen (home to Fort Hood) would have fit the bill, as well—without the weight of symbolism."
The Texas newspaper was far from alone in sounding the alarm about Trump's upcoming trip to Waco.
"Waco is hugely symbolic on the far right," Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, toldUSA TODAY. "There's not really another place in the U.S. that you could pick that would tap into these deep veins of anti-government hatred—Christian nationalist skepticism of the government—and I find it hard to believe that Trump doesn't know that Waco represents all of these things."
"Waco has a sense of grievance among people that I know he's got to be trying to tap into," Beirich added. "He's being unjustly accused, like the Branch Davidians were unjustly accused—and the deep state is out to get them all."
The newspaper pointed out that "though Trump has held more than 100 campaign rallies and similar events, and mounted a near-daily schedule of them during his campaigns, this week's appears to be the first one ever held in Waco."
Megan Squire, deputy director for data analytics at the Southern Poverty Law Center, also rejected the Trump campaign's suggestion that the trip isn't connected to the 1993 standoff and what means to many members of the far-right.
"Give me a break! There's no reason to go to Waco, Texas, other than one thing," Squire told USA TODAY. "I can't even fathom what that's about other than just a complete dog whistle—actually forget dog whistle, that is just a train whistle to the folks who still remember that event and are still mad about it."
Even some right-wing figures are openly making the connection, as TIMEreported: "Posting on the messaging app Telegram, far-right activist and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer called the rally in Waco 'very symbolic!' A few MAGA influencers on social media noted the choice of location, with one calling it 'a meaningful shot across the brow of the deep state.'"
Nicole Hemmer, a Vanderbilt University associate professor of history and author of Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics and Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s, wrote in a Friday opinion piece for CNNthat Trump's trip is "a provocation of historic significance."
"When Trump became president in 2016, rather than becoming synonymous with the federal government as previous chief executives had done, he styled himself as both its victim and its adversary, promoting conspiracies about the deep state and encouraging supporters to keep him in power by any means necessary," Hemmer highlighted. "In choosing Waco as the kickoff site for his campaign rallies, he has signaled that his courtship of extremist groups will continue, and that he sees his role as a pivotal figure in the far-right mythos as central to his efforts to retake the presidency."
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'No One's... Having Fun': Surveys Show Soaring US Economic Pessimism
"An overwhelming share of Americans aren't confident their children's lives will be better than their own."
Mar 24, 2023
A pair of polls published Friday revealed that the rising cost of living is causing financial strain for most Americans—especially people with lower incomes—and that pessimism about the state and future of the country's economy is pervasive and spreading.
A
Wall Street Journal/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found that 80% of 1,019 respondents said the nation's economy is in "poor" or "not so good" condition. Asked about the future of the economy, 47% of those polled said they believe it will be worse in a year, while just 15% said they think it improve. Thirty-eight percent of respondents said the economy will be in about the same shape a year from now.
The pessimistic economic outlook can be summed up in one survey question: Asked if they felt confident that life for their children's generation "will be better than it has been for us," only 21% of respondents answered affirmatively.
The Hillnoted that 42% of people who took a similar survey in 2001 said they didn't think their children would enjoy better lives than theirs. Today, that figure has soared to 78%.
Other survey findings include:
- 92% said that rising costs of living is creating some degree of financial strain in their lives, or will cause problems if prices keep rising;
- 52% said it would be difficult to find a job with another employer with approximately the same income and fringe benefits they have now;
- 56% said a four-year undergraduate degree isn't worth the cost because people often graduate without specific job skills and with a large amount of debt; and
- 44% said their personal finances are in worse shape than they imagined for themselves at this stage of life.
Despite the respondents' economic pessimism, 68% of people polled said they were "pretty happy" or "very happy" in life.
The Associated Pressand NORC—the University of Chicago's research arm—published a separate poll Friday that found "about half of U.S. adults in households earning less than $60,000 annually and about 4 in 10 of those in households earning $60,000 to $100,000 say they're very stressed by their personal finances."
According to the AP:
About three-quarters of adults across income groups say their household expenses are higher now than they were a year ago, but those in households earning less than $100,000 a year are more likely than those in higher-income households to say they also have higher debt. Those facing a combination of rising debt and expenses overwhelmingly say their financial situation is a major source of stress.
One 76-year-old woman interviewed by the APsaid that "there's no comfort zone in their finances—no vacation" for people like her, who are " just getting by."
"Medications are expensive. Groceries. No one's living large or having fun," she added. "They should be having fun."
A 28-year-old single mother who works at an Alabama Walmart told the AP: "I used to do three grocery trips a month. Now it's one-and-a-half at the most."
"We're just gonna have to cut back on a lot of things," she added.
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'Scorched-Earth Politics': Indian MP Ousted, Sentenced to 2 Years Over Modi Insult
"The metamorphosis of BJP's vindictive politics into autocracy is happening at an alarming pace," one Indian state's chief minister said in response to the parliamentary expulsion and criminal sentencing of Rahul Gandhi.
Mar 24, 2023
Democracy defenders sounded the alarm Friday after senior Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi was ousted from his parliamentary seat a day after being sentenced to two years in prison in a dubious defamation case involving an insult against the surname of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
India's lower house of Parliament announced Friday that Gandhi—a former president of the Indian National Congress party (called Congress for short) who until Thursday represented the constituency of Wayanad in the southern state of Kerala—was disqualified to serve in office due to his conviction for defaming the Modi name.
The case involved Gandhi allegedly asking during a 2019 campaign rally in Kolar, Karnataka, "How come all the thieves have Modi as the common surname?"
The Times of Indiareports Surat Chief Judicial Magistrate H. H. Varma convicted Gandhi for defamation under the Indian Penal Code. Varma granted Gandhi bail on a bond of ₹15,000 (approx. $180) and suspended the sentence for 30 days so he may appeal.
While convicting Gandhi, Varma said that the defendant could have limited his insult to the prime minister, but by disparaging all people with the name, the defendant "intentionally" defamed them.
The Modi surname comes from the Modh Ghanchi or Teli Ghanchi community primarily inhabiting western states like Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Rajashtan, and traditionally employed in the oil pressing and trading business. Although officially designated an Other Backward Caste, Gujaratis do not view the widely successful group as such.
Gandhi
tweeted Friday that he is "fighting for the voice of India" and is "ready to pay any cost."
Congress called Gandhi's conviction an "infirm, erroneous, and unsustainable" judgment.
Party spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said the government's "efforts to create a chilling effect, a throttling effect, strangulating effect on open, fearless speech relating to public interest, will not stop either Rahul Gandhi or the Congress party."
"There are some disturbing aspects of this judgment which of course will be subject to challenge immediately, but firstly, the heart of the law of criminal defamation is that persons who are complainants should be those who must be able to demonstrate how they personally have been defamed, or prejudiced," Singhvi continued.
"Now," he added, "the admitted position is that no one who is the subject matter of the statement which is found to be offending has filed a criminal complaint."
M.K. Stalin, the leftist chief minister of Tamil Nadu state, tweeted that "the metamorphosis of BJP's vindictive politics into autocracy is happening at an alarming pace," a reference to Modi's right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The prime minister is also a member of the Hindu supremacist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) paramilitary group.
"The disqualification of Rahul Gandhi is an onslaught on all the progressive-democratic forces of our country," Stalin said in a statement Friday. "All the political parties in India shall realize this and we should oppose unitedly."
In the United States, Democratic California Congressman Ro Khanna—whose parents immigrated from Punjab state— called Gandhi's ouster a "deep betrayal of Gandhian philosophy and India's deepest values."
"This is not what my grandfather sacrificed years in jail for," Khanna added, referring to former Congress parliamentarian and independence movement figure Amarnath Vidyalankar. "Narendra Modi, you have the power to reverse this decision for the sake of Indian democracy."
Arundhati Roy, the renowned Indian writer, said during a Wednesday lecture at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm that "India's democracy is being systematically disassembled. Only the rituals remain."
Mentioning the persecution of religious minorities—especially Muslims—the brutal military occupation of Kashmir, and the imprisonment of journalists, Roy added that "India for all practical purposes has become a corporate, theocratic Hindu state, a highly policed state, a fearsome state [seething] with Hindu supremacist fervor."
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