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Trump-Backed Darline Graham Bashes 'Government-Run Healthcare,' Glorifies Working While Sick
“Government-provided healthcare is a bad idea. I’d rather Americans work long, hard hours, not receive sick leave, and die young," said one critic, "is one hell of a message.”
Aug 26, 2026
The precise point Republican US Sen. Darline Graham was making was unclear Tuesday evening when she attacked her Democratic opponent, Dr. Annie Andrews, for supporting what Graham called "government-run healthcare" and then pivoted to the story of her parents' early deaths.
But some observers wondered whether the lawmaker from South Carolina, who took over the Senate seat of her brother, the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, last month, was arguing for the continuation of a system in which many Americans can't get the healthcare they need.
Graham, who has worked at the state workforce agency and the South Carolina Commission for the Blind, spoke after winning a special runoff election against US Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC). She was endorsed by President Donald Trump and will now face Andrews, a pediatrician, in the November midterm election for a full Senate term.
Speaking to supporters, Graham criticized Andrews for supporting "bad idea after bad idea," including "government-run healthcare." Andrews has spoken out against the Republican Party's cuts to Medicaid and Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies. Her website states support for "policies like a public option that expand access to affordable healthcare for all South Carolinians."
Graham said she has "a different background and vision for our state," describing her childhood growing up "in one room in central South Carolina" before explaining her parents' personal experience with healthcare and working "long, hard hours to make ends meet."
Darline Graham: Government run health care…. bad idea after bad idea. Annie Andrews backs it all. I have a different background. My parents worked long, hard hours. If that were sick, they had to get up and go to work. My mother passed away when I was 11 and my father just over… pic.twitter.com/fvFCrmudhi
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 26, 2026
"We didn't take vacations," she said. "If they were sick, they had to get up and go to work, because if the doors weren't open, we weren't making money."
She then added, "My mother passed away when I was 11, and my father just over a year later," before saying she has "worked hard for the people of South Carolina" and understands "the struggles facing South Carolina families because I've faced them too."
Andrews responded on social media that Graham's "family suffered and died without healthcare and apparently [she] thinks yours should too.
"Call me crazy, but as a doctor, I believe there are few responsibilities more fundamental to government than keeping its citizens healthy and safe," she said. "No family should have to suffer simply because generations before them did."
Other observers were perplexed about the message embedded in Graham's story.
“'Government-provided healthcare is a bad idea. I’d rather Americans work long, hard hours, not receive sick leave, and die young' is one hell of a message," said journalist Ahmed Baba.
A "straightforward reading" of Graham's statement, said Matthew Sitman of the podcast Know Your Enemy, would point to a proposal that "more parents of 11-year-olds die."
Graham's official website does not appear to outline any healthcare proposal. The senator said this week that voters she has met around the state are "talking about the rising cost of healthcare and affordability," but declined to name legislation or describe any proposals for tackling the issues.
The healthcare advocacy group Protect Our Care found last week that the Republican Party's $900 billion in cuts to Medicaid and its decision to slash ACA subsidies have left 8 million people across the country without health coverage so far, affecting Americans in all 50 states.
In South Carolina, Protect Our Care said, 235,000 people have lost their ACA subsidies or coverage under Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program. Premiums have doubled for more than 587,000 South Carolinians in the past year, while 14 hospitals, clinics, and nursing homes have been forced to shut down or are on the verge of closing due to the healthcare cuts.
Healthcare facilities in the state are facing a $1.5 billion loss in funding and have seen a 26.9% spike in care that they are providing without reimbursement from Medicaid or other public programs.
"South Carolinians are dropping coverage they can no longer afford, delaying care, rationing medications, and living with the constant fear that an emergency could push them deeper into debt," said Protect Our Care.
Writer and engineer Hayden Clarkin suggested voters in the state may not be convinced by a "healthcare proposal" that appeared to amount to, "If you’re sick, you have to get up and work."
A 2020 poll by Data for Progress on behalf of the advocacy group Medicare for All NOW found that 77% of Democratic voters in South Carolina supported "expanding Medicare so that it becomes the primary insurer for all Americans."
Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) noted that should Graham win a full Senate term, she will benefit from the "government-provided healthcare" she had attacked as a "bad idea."
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In First 6 Democratic Primary States for 2028, Overwhelming Majorities Demand Weapons Embargo on Israel
"Across the first six states set to vote in the 2028 Democratic presidential primaries, virtually no likely Democratic voters say Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza," noted Drop Site News.
Aug 25, 2026
When the Democratic National Committee selected South Carolina this month as the "first in the nation" state for the 2028 presidential primaries, political journalists and commentators suggested the calendar could give the southern state's moderate voter base a new level of influence in selecting the party's candidate.
But new polling from the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) Policy Project and YouGov on Tuesday showed that on an issue the party and media establishment continue to dismiss as "extreme," overwhelming majorities of voters in the first states that will hold primaries in 2028 agree: The party must elect a presidential candidate who supports ending military aid to Israel.
The IMEU Policy Project and YouGov surveyed 4,000 likely Democratic primary voters across the six states that will vote first in 2028—South Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Michigan, and Virginia—and found an undeniable trend.
"Democrats in the first six states to vote in the 2028 presidential primary overwhelmingly demand sanctions and a total weapons embargo against Israel," said the IMEU Policy Project.
South Carolina and Virginia, which have typically favored more moderate candidates, showed somewhat less support for a weapons embargo on Israel, which, with US backing, has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians in Gaza over the past three years and continues to attack the largely decimated exclave despite a ceasefire deal.
But even the two southern states showed strong support for a dramatic shift in the United States' relationship with Israel, which it provides with nearly $4 billion in military aid annually, in addition to at least $16.3 billion in direct military assistance since it began attacking Gaza in 2023.
Nearly two-thirds of Democratic voters in both South Carolina and Virginia said they would prefer a 2028 presidential candidate who supports cutting off weapons to Israel. Fifty-seven percent of respondents in the former state said they believed Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza, as well as 72% of Virginians.
Drop Site News noted that across the six states, regarding the genocide question, "the 'no' response never rises about 5%."
Prem Thakker of Zeteo News emphasized that the polling was released as "the party was hoping South Carolina would be the moderate saving grace" in the 2028 presidential election, in which a large field of candidates is expected to run.
Potential contenders include Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), a progressive who's committed to opposing all military aid for Israel; former Vice President Kamala Harris, who refused to commit to an arms embargo during her unsuccessful 2024 campaign; California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who said in May that the US should reconsider weapons aid to Israel; and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who said he would support a weapons embargo last year only after facing backlash over comments in which he called the issue "complicated."
Buttigieg visited South Carolina over the weekend, as have several other possible candidates, including Newsom and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), a top recipient of donations from the pro-Israel lobby.
The other states polled by IMEU and YouGov also showed high levels of support for cutting off weapons to Israel and sanctioning its right-wing government, which faces elections in October.
Seventy-eight percent of Nevada voters said they view Israel's US-backed bombardment of Gaza as a genocide, and 74% said the US should end weapons aid.
Three-quarters of voters in New Hampshire, Michigan, and New Mexico said the US should stop providing Israel with weapons. Michigan was home to the largest share of voters who viewed the attacks on Gaza as a genocide—80%—and in both New Hampshire and New Mexico, 70% of voters said the US should sanction Israel.
Left-wing commentator Hasan Piker, whom centrist Democrats, think tanks, and commentators have attacked in recent months for his past comments on September 11 and Hamas, and whom critics have said should be shunned by progressive political campaigns, said the new polling illustrated an inescapable reality for the Democratic Party.
"This is why I said the '28 Democratic nominee will not be pro-Israel," said Piker of the new survey. "Even if I go away, this problem doesn’t."
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Georgia Gov. Calls Special Session to Rig US House Map for GOP, SC Expected to Follow
"We will not sit back and watch while Gov. Kemp takes orders from a felon-in-chief to turn Dr. King's dream into a nightmare," said the head of Common Cause Georgia.
May 13, 2026
Republican state leaders are forging ahead with President Donald Trump's campaign to rig congressional districts for the GOP, with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on Wednesday signing a proclamation for a special legislative session and South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster expected to make a similar announcement soon.
While GOP policymakers facing pressure from Trump have pursued mid-decade redistricting in several states ahead of the November midterm elections—in which Democrats aim to reclaim majorities in both chambers of Congress—Kemp's proclamation explicitly states that any changes in Georgia would be for 2028, which is the next presidential cycle.
Kemp's proclamation cites the US Supreme Court's decision last month that a Louisiana map predating Trump's redistricting push was "an unconstitutional racial gerrymander," which gutted the remnants of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965.
In a statement condemning the proclamation, Common Cause Georgia director Rosario Palacios pointed to the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., a key figure in the movement that led to the VRA as well as the Civil Rights Act the previous year.
"We will not sit back and watch while Gov. Kemp takes orders from a felon-in-chief to turn Dr. King's dream into a nightmare. Too many civil rights leaders have done work in our state for us [to] take this sitting down," Palacios declared. "Common Cause is mobilizing thousands of people to stop state lawmakers from passing any new maps before 2030 that destroy Black voters' power for political gain. Voters should not have to rely on lawsuits to protect their right to fair representation. Congress must end this abuse once and for all so every voter can cast a ballot in free and fair elections, no matter their political party."
US Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), who is up for reelection in 2028, similarly ripped the Georgia redistricting effort on social media Wednesday: "There is an extreme movement in this country that will stop at nothing to hold on to power, even if it means stripping representation away from millions. I will fight this with everything I have."
Republicans in various states have moved to "shamelessly capitalize" on the April ruling from the high court's right-wing supermajority. On Monday, as the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Alabama GOP to rescind the creation of its second Black-majority district, Memphis voters sued over a new map targeting Tennessee's only majority-Black congressional district.
On Tuesday, as the Missouri Supreme Court declined to strike down a new congressional map that state voters are working to challenge with a referendum, five Republican South Carolina senators joined Democrats in blocking a GOP effort to advance Trump's gerrymandering campaign in their state.
However, The Post and Courier's Nick Reynolds reported Wednesday that South Carolina Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey (R-25) believes the governor "will call legislators back into a special session amid the redistricting fight."
Also reporting on the anticipated move Wednesday, Politico's Andrew Howard and Alec Hernandez noted that "McMaster's plan—confirmed by four people familiar with the decision, who were granted anonymity to share private details—is a reversal of his position earlier this month and follows pressure" from the president and his allies.
A redistricting push in South Carolina is expected to target the seat held by Democratic Congressman Jim Clyburn—who last month warned that the Supreme Court ruling on Louisiana's map and the VRA "threatens to send our country deeper into the thicket of never-ending redistricting fights, with repeated aggressive map redraws, protracted legal battles, and relentless partisan tugs-of-war, all of which are destined to result in more regressive court decisions."
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As SC GOP Fails to Advance Trump's Gerrymandering, Missouri Supreme Court Upholds Rigged Map
"MAGA loyalists are using every lever they control, from legislatures to courts, to rig the system and lock voters out of fair representation," said the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.
May 12, 2026
While five Republican South Carolina senators joined Democrats in blocking a GOP effort to advance President Donald Trump's national gerrymandering push in the state on Tuesday, the Missouri Supreme Court handed him a key win, approving a rigged congressional map forced through last year.
"MAGA loyalists are using every lever they control, from legislatures to courts, to rig the system and lock voters out of fair representation," said the National Democratic Redistricting Committee after Missouri's top court rejected multiple challenges to the map that targets the 5th Congressional District, currently represented by Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver.
In one consolidated case, the court found that opponents of the map failed to show that it "clearly and undoubtedly violates the requirements of Article III, Section 45 of the Missouri Constitution."
Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Redistricting Foundation, said in a statement that "the arguments in this case, which were presented before the Missouri Supreme Court just this morning, took less than an hour and elicited zero questions from the court for the lawyers for either the plaintiffs or defendants."
"While one might be inclined to hope that these justices managed to grapple with a highly complex, nuanced, and consequential issue in just six hours, it seems clear the justices were not interested in the day's proceedings and simply had their opinion already finalized even before this morning's argument," Jenkins continued. "With this decision, the Missouri Supreme Court has shown Missourians the lack of seriousness with which it takes cases that pertain to protecting their right to vote—a complete and dangerous abdication of the judiciary's role."
Another case stems from a political group that has collected signatures to force a referendum vote on the state's redistricting. The court found that the filing did not automatically suspend the map under the state constitution.
As KOMU reported Tuesday, People Not Politicians Missouri has submitted over 300,000 signatures to Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, but the Republican has not yet said whether his office will approve or reject its inclusion on the ballot.
"The secretary of state's own data confirms what more than 305,000 Missourians already made clear: This referendum is sufficient, and the people have a right to vote," Richard von Glahn, executive director of People Not Politicians Missouri, said in the statement after the state court's decisions on Tuesday.
"Today's ruling from the Supreme Court confirms this fact. A sufficient petition suspends the law the day it is turned in," he continued. "Unnecessary delays by politicians do not change this fact. If he continues to delay, then he is moving forward under a map that has been suspended by the people."
Missouri Republicans won’t stop trying to illegally rig our maps. We collected 305,968 signatures to put their rigged map to a vote of the people, and they still refuse to do their job.So my name is Laura, and I’m here to bully my government. #FairMaps #Missouri #moleg
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— Laura Burkhardt (@lauraannstl.bsky.social) May 12, 2026 at 12:04 PM
Meanwhile, in South Carolina—a state already known for Republican map-rigging—the state Senate voted 29-17, two votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to move forward on redistricting to help the GOP, despite Trump's public call to "GET IT DONE!"
Welcoming the result, the state's Senate Democrats said that it "sent a clear message that South Carolina should not be dragged into another unnecessary and divisive redistricting battle driven by Washington insiders."
"South Carolina rejected a politically motivated power grab orchestrated by a White House shaped by perpetually online New York City activists with little understanding of South Carolina," the Senate Democrats continued. "The people of this state expect us to focus on the real issues affecting their daily lives, not carry out an outside political agenda."
They pledged that "Senate Democrats will continue fighting for fair representation, transparency, and a government focused on the needs of South Carolina families rather than national political gamesmanship."
While the Republican-led Indiana state Senate similarly rejected a Trump-backed gerrymander last December, GOP legislators in Florida, North Carolina, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas have caved to pressure from the president and enacted new maps ahead of November's midterm elections, in which Democrats hope to claim majorities in both chambers of Congress.
Tennessee's redistricting came after the right-wing US Supreme Court last month found that Louisiana's map was an "unconstitutional racial gerrymander" and gutted what remained of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The nation's top court on Monday also paved a path for Alabama lawmakers to break up their state’s majority-Black district.
In response to GOP attacks on voting rights across the South, "All Roads Lead to the South," the No Kings coalition, community members, faith leaders, and other organizations are planning demonstrations at the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery as well as Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge on Saturday, May 16, with solidarity actions across the country.
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Probe of Fetus at South Carolina Water Plant Highlights Criminalization of Pregnancy Loss
"No one should have to live with the fear that their miscarriage or stillbirth could result in cops showing up at their door," said one researcher.
Feb 17, 2026
The number of people who have faced criminal charges related to their pregnancies has soared since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and now, a sheriff's office in South Carolina is investigating a fetus found at a water treatment plant.
The Sumter County Sheriff's Office announced Friday that deputies were called to the plant on Edgehill Road after workers found the fetus, which was sent to the Medical University of South Carolina, according to The State. County Coroner Robbie Baker said that "it was a small fetus. Probably not more than 6 inches long. It was somewhat developed."
Baker shared the findings from the autopsy on Monday: The fetus was just 13-15 weeks, male, and showed no signs of trauma. ABC News 4 reported that he also said this was being ruled a stillborn death—even though a stillbirth is generally defined as a pregnancy loss after 20 weeks, and a loss before that is a miscarriage.
The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division is "testing tissue samples to determine the race and locate the mother," according to WIS News 10. "The coroner said the race could not be immediately determined due to how long the fetus had been sitting in sewer chemicals."
As Kylie Cheung wrote Monday at Jessica Valenti's newsletter Abortion, Every Day: "Our immediate questions: Why are pregnancy remains being investigated by law enforcement at all? How can 14-week fetal remains be ruled a 'stillborn death'? And why are state authorities trying to determine the race of these pregnancy remains? This is particularly concerning given that women of color are overrepresented among criminal cases involving pregnancy."
Such probes have become "all too routine," Laura Huss, a senior researcher at If/When/How, told Cheung. "Pregnancy losses aren't crimes... No one should have to live with the fear that their miscarriage or stillbirth could result in cops showing up at their door, which is what investigations and media stories like this create."
The advocacy group Pregnancy Justice said last year that "from June 2022 to June 2024—the first two years after the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade—prosecutors initiated at least 412 cases across the country charging individuals with crimes related to their pregnancy, pregnancy loss, or birth."
"So what is the point of this investigation, beyond terrorizing women through control and surveillance of their bodies?"
Since Roe's reversal, far-right politicians and anti-choice organizations have ramped up their push for more state and federal restrictions on reproductive freedom. South Carolina groups that fight for such policies—from abortion bans based on gestational age to fetal personhood legislation—are now using the fetus found there to advocate for new state laws.
One proposal would "require the Department of Environmental Services to conduct testing for urinary metabolites in certain wastewater treatment facilities," Fox Carolina reported. Another would prohibit the "mailing, shipping, or prescribing of abortifacients, including from out-of-state sources," as well as "classify committing or attempting to commit an abortion using an abortifacient on a mother as a felony punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment or a fine of up to $100k."
Almost every action after pregnancy loss has come under scrutiny. Many of these laws, like the crime of “concealing a birth,” date back to the 1600s, used to criminalize unwed women who were thought to be more likely to hide & end their pregnancies, fearing intense societal shame and repercussions.
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— Pregnancy Justice (@pregnancyjust.bsky.social) January 29, 2026 at 11:42 AM
Last month, Pregnancy Justice released a report that "maps the matrix of laws and policies that can be used to criminalize postpartum people for how they respond to their own pregnancy loss in every state." Its section on South Carolina says:
Although South Carolina does not have a broad prenatal personhood law, criminal or otherwise, its state Supreme Court establishes broad criminal prenatal personhood with the harmful proposition that criminal statutes apply to "viable fetuses" unless the Legislature expressly says otherwise. A former attorney general also noted his position that prenatal personhood applies broadly to South Carolina's laws. By extension, an attempt to criminalize the "destruction or desecration" or transportation without a permit of viable fetal remains could be made.
Separately, people are also required to report "stillbirth[s] when unattended by a physician."
Pregnancy Justice legal director Karen Thompson told Cheung that criminal charges shouldn't be applicable in the case of the fetus found in South Carolina, whether it was a miscarriage or an abortion, because of the "viability" requirement in state law. She added, "So what is the point of this investigation, beyond terrorizing women through control and surveillance of their bodies?"
The South Carolina investigation follows last week's arrest of a Kentucky couple, Deann and Charles Bennett, after she was taken to a hospital following a reported miscarriage in November 2024. According to the Lexington Herald-Leader, they were each charged with reckless homicide, and she also faces charges of abuse of a corpse, concealing the birth of an infant, and tampering with physical evidence.
Reporting on that case last week, Valenti and Cheung pointed out that "right now, all of the available information is coming from cops and law enforcement—so take it all with a grain of salt. Again and again, Abortion, Every Day has found police lying about these arrests, or misrepresenting what really happened. Too often, local media will parrot those facts' uncritically and destroy people's lives in the process."
"Already, Deann and Charles' mugshots have been splashed across Kentucky crime pages," the pair added. "Deann is seen sobbing in hers."
According to Pregnancy Justice's January report: "Although Kentucky's broad prenatal personhood law is enjoined, the state Supreme Court provides that a viable fetus is a human being within the meaning of the penal code. By extension, an attempt to criminalize the nonreporting and disposal of viable fetal remains could be made. Separately, Kentucky has a statute that prohibits 'concealing [a] birth' to 'prevent a determination of whether it was born dead or alive.'"
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As RFK Pushes Vaccine Misinformation, Measles Cases Surge in South Carolina
The US is at risk of losing its measles-eradicated status early next year, according to Scientific American.
Dec 12, 2025
US Rep. Pramila Jayapal on Friday demanded that the Trump administration "stop lying and follow the science" as an outbreak of measles in South Carolina grew and officials warned that low vaccination rates in the affected area likely mean the crisis will continue worsening.
Since the outbreak began in October in Spartanburg County, near the state's northern border, the highly infectious disease has sickened at least 129 people. The vast majority of people who have been infected have not been inoculated against measles, which is 97% preventable via the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) shot—which has been erroneously attacked for years by anti-vaccine activists including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
As President Donald Trump and Kennedy "push deadly anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, measles is making a comeback across America," said Jayapal (D-Wash.) on Friday. "People will die because of this."
At least three people, including two children, have already died this year in US measles outbreaks
More than 1,900 measles cases and 47 outbreaks have been reported across the country in 2025, compared with 285 cases across 16 outbreaks last year.
In South Carolina, more than 250 people have been exposed to the disease in schools, a healthcare facility, and a church, forcing dozens of unvaccinated children to quarantine for 21 days; some were exposed twice and had to be isolated for two separate three-week periods.
“That’s a significant amount of time,” Linda Bell, the state's epidemiologist, said at a recent press conference. “Vaccination continues to be the best way to prevent the disruption that measles is causing to people’s education, to employment.”
But Spartanburg County's ongoing outbreak is being driven by “lower-than-hoped-for vaccination coverage,” Bell said.
Public health experts consider a 95% vaccination rate to be the level at which the spread of measles can be eliminated in a community. Only about 90% of students in the county had all required childhood immunizations. South Carolina allows religious exemptions for school immunization requirements. Many of the schools where students have quarantined have vaccination rates "well below 90%," the New York Times reported.
Across South Carolina, MMR vaccination rates among schoolchildren has fallen significantly since 2020, from 96% to 93.5%.
Kennedy has been a longtime denier of vaccine science. In 2019, his anti-vaccine group, Children's Health Defense, tried to sue New York state over its vaccine requirement, which is one of just five in the country that doesn't allow for nonmedical exemptions.
In April, Kennedy visited a Texas community where two unvaccinated children had died of measles and acknowledged in a social media post that "the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine."
“Vaccination continues to be the best way to prevent the disruption that measles is causing to people’s education, to employment.”
But during his visit he also promoted, without evidence, two therapeutic treatments that one vaccine expert told NPR are "valueless" in treating measles. In 2023 Kennedy told podcaster Joe Rogan that the vaccine was not linked to a decline in deaths.
He has recently continued fueling overall skepticism about immunizations, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) panel he assembled advising that newborn babies whose mothers test negative for hepatitis B should not receive a dose of a vaccine for the disease—sparking fear among public health experts that major progress in reducing childhood cases of the disease over the past three decades will be reversed.
In November the CDC website was changed to say a link between vaccines and autism—a theory that has long been debunked—cannot be ruled out. Two months earlier, as measles cases surged in another outbreak around the Utah-Arizona border, Trump called for combination children's vaccines like the MMR to be split up into separate shots—a call made decades ago by Dr. Andrew Wakefield, who lost his medical license over his 1988 study that linked autism to the combination vaccine, which was later retracted.
High vaccine rates allowed the US to declare measles eliminated in 2000, but Scientific American reported Thursday that the current measles outbreaks are bringing the US "toward losing its measles-free status by early next year."
The worsening measles outbreak in South Carolina, said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), "is yet another horrifying consequence of Trump and RFK Jr.'s Make America Sick Agenda."
Republican Gov. Henry McMaster has urged residents to be vaccinated against measles, but said on Thursday, "We are not going to do mandates on people to go get vaccinated."
Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for the US Health and Human Services Department, also continued to suggest that vaccination is principally a matter of personal liberty rather than public health, telling the New York Times that people in the affected community in South Carolina should talk to their doctors about "what is best for them."
On Thursday, Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Ranking Member Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said that along with the Republican Party's vote against extending Affordable Care Act subsidies, the Trump administration is raising questions about its push to "Make America Health Again" as it undermines "lifesaving vaccines and spark[s] disease outbreaks."
"The Trump administration," he said, "is endangering the health of the American people."
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'People Will Die,' Warn Progressives as Supreme Court Lets States Defund Planned Parenthood
"This is a systematic decimation of access to reproductive healthcare and a signifier of what else is likely to come," warned one critic.
Jun 26, 2025
In its latest blow to reproductive healthcare in the United States, the Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority on Thursday blocked Planned Parenthood and one of its patients from suing South Carolina over its defunding of the medical provider because it performs abortions—a decision that critics say will cost lives as more Republican-controlled states follow suit.
At question in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic was whether Medicaid beneficiaries can sue in order to secure healthcare services under a law that allows patients to choose any qualified provider. The high court ruled 6-3 that they cannot, with liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting.
"The decision whether to let private plaintiffs enforce a new statutory right poses delicate questions of public policy. New rights for some mean new duties for others," Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority. "And private enforcement actions, meritorious or not, can force governments to direct money away from public services and spend it instead on litigation."
"The job of resolving how best to weigh those competing costs and benefits belongs to the people's elected representatives, not
unelected judges charged with applying the law as they find it," Gorsuch added.
Concurring with the majority, far-right Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the ruling invites further scrutiny of Section 1983, the federal law empowering individuals to sue state and local government officials for violating their constitutional rights.
And, predictably, in Medina, Justice Thomas isn't content to axe Planned Parenthood from Medicaid. He would go further ... "to reexamine more broadly this Court’s §1983 jurisprudence . . . ."This is an invitation to undermine a major foundation of civil rights litigation.
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— Melissa Murray (@profmmurray.bsky.social) June 26, 2025 at 7:17 AM
In a furious dissent, Jackson wrote that "the court's decision today is not the first to so weaken the landmark civil rights protections that Congress enacted during the Reconstruction era."
"That means we do have a sense of what comes next: As with those past rulings, today's decision is likely to result in tangible harm to real people," she continued. "At a minimum, it will deprive Medicaid recipients in South Carolina of their only meaningful way of enforcing a right that Congress has expressly granted to them."
"And, more concretely, it will strip those South Carolinians—and countless other Medicaid recipients around the country—of a deeply personal freedom: the 'ability to decide who treats us at our most vulnerable,'" Jackson added. "The court today disregards Congress' express desire to prevent that very outcome."
More than 70 million Americans rely upon Medicaid, the federal government's primary health insurance program for lower-income people. The program is facing the prospect of major cuts under a Republican budget proposal that critics warn could cause millions of people to lose their healthcare coverage in service to a massive tax break backed by President Donald Trump that would disproportionately benefit the rich and corporations.
According to Planned Parenthood Federation of America president and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson, "currently, 20% of South Carolinians—over 1 million—receive healthcare services through the Medicaid program, and approximately 5% of those recipients sought sexual and reproductive health care services at Planned Parenthood South Atlantic (PPSAT) so far this year."
Responding to Thursday's ruling, McGill Johnson said that "the consequences are not theoretical in South Carolina or other states with hostile legislatures."
"Patients need access to birth control, cancer screenings, STI testing and treatment, and more. And right now, lawmakers in Congress are trying to 'defund' Planned Parenthood as part of their long-term goal to shut down Planned Parenthood and ban abortion nationwide," she added. "Make no mistake, the attacks are ongoing and Planned Parenthood will continue to do everything possible to show up in communities across the country and provide care."
Under tremendous Republican-led pressure, Planned Parenthood has closed or announced plans to close at least 20 locations across seven states since the beginning of the year.
"Today's decision is a grave injustice that strikes at the very bedrock of American freedom and promises to send South Carolina deeper into a healthcare crisis," PPSAT president and CEO Paige Johnson said following Thursday's decision. "Twice, justices of this court denied to even hear this case because [South Carolina Gov. Henry] McMaster's intent is clear: weaponize anti-abortion sentiment to deprive communities with low incomes of basic healthcare."
"Planned Parenthood South Atlantic will continue to operate and offer care in South Carolina, including for people enrolled in Medicaid," Johnson added. "To our patients, we will do everything in our power to ensure you can get the care you need at low or no cost to you. Know that we are still here for you, and we will never stop fighting for you to reclaim the rights and dignity you deserve."
Destiny Lopez, co-president and CEO of the Guttmacher Institute, called the ruling "a grave injustice."
Lopez continued:
At a time when healthcare is already costly and difficult to access, stripping patients of their right to high-quality, affordable healthcare at the provider of their choosing is a dangerous violation of bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom.
Specifically targeting Planned Parenthood has long been a strategy of the anti-abortion movement. Planned Parenthood health centers are an irreplaceable part of the U.S. healthcare system; Guttmacher data show that among the 4.7 million contraceptive patients served by publicly supported clinics in 2020, one in three received care from Planned Parenthood.
"In the face of attempts to 'defund' Planned Parenthood and attack Medicaid, Title X, and other pillars of reproductive healthcare, the court's actions cannot be considered in a vacuum," Lopez asserted. "This is a systematic decimation of access to reproductive healthcare and a signifier of what else is likely to come. Everyone deserves choice in their healthcare provider and access to the family planning they need."
Progressive groups and individuals also condemned Thursday's ruling, with the Freedom From Religion Foundation lamenting that "Christian nationalists win, women and low-income patients lose."
"This isn't justice," FFRF added. "It's religious favoritism at the highest level."
Planned Parenthood provides affordable:➡ Cancer screening➡ STD testing and treatment➡ Prenatal supportToday's decision from SCOTUS to allow SC to remove Planned Parenthood from Medicaid means that people will be sicker and people will die.www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
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— Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (@jayapal.house.gov) June 26, 2025 at 7:34 AM
Meagan Hatcher-Mays, senior adviser at United for Democracy, said in a statement that "millions of Medicaid patients across the country rely on Planned Parenthood health centers for their primary and reproductive care, and people who face systemic racism and discrimination—Black, Latino, and Indigenous communities, as well as LGBTQ+ people and women—are more likely to be covered by Medicaid."
"It's ironic that the MAGA justices issued this ruling today, almost three years to the day that they overturned Roe v. Wade and threw abortion access into chaos across the country," Hatcher-Mays added. "Today's ruling is a further attack on healthcare, bodily autonomy, and our freedoms. This ruling clearly harms communities in South Carolina, and it's a matter of time before we see that harm expand further into the country."
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South Carolina Abortion Ban Forced Woman to Carry Fetus With No Heartbeat for Weeks
"My baby didn't have a heartbeat, and it still prevented me from getting care" under South Carolina's so-called "fetal hearbeat" law.
May 07, 2025
Weeks after sharing an emotional video on TikTok about her experience being told by doctors that they couldn't provide her with standard miscarriage care under South Carolina's abortion ban, Elisabeth Weber spoke out Tuesday about how she was forced to continue carrying her fetus for weeks after learning it had no heartbeat and had stopped developing.
As Weber told People magazine, "My baby didn't have a heartbeat, and it still prevented me from getting care" under South Carolina's law—ironically called the Fetal Heartbeat and Protection from Abortion Act, so named because it bars residents from getting abortion care after fetal cardiac activity can be detected at about six weeks of pregnancy.
The 31-year-old mother of three found out in late March at nine weeks pregnant that her fetus—already given a name by Weber and her husband, who felt certain they were having a boy—had stopped growing at six weeks and one day.
Weber was sent home from her local ER to allow the miscarriage to be completed naturally, but she returned to the hospital after she continued to have symptoms of hyperemesis gravidarum (HG)—extreme, persistent nausea and vomiting—which she'd had with all of her pregnancies.
"They confirmed that for sure, the baby is dead," Weber said in her TikTok video, which was posted March 31. "No heartbeat, nothing like that. And they were talking about me getting a D&C [dilation and curettage], so that way my body won't have all these pregnancy symptoms... My body still thinks that I'm pregnant, it is not passing the baby the way it is supposed to."
@elisabeth__hope EDIT: I recorded this minutes after finding this information out, so not everything was worded correctly. I was raised in a cult and was forced to stand in front of abortion clinics as a CHILD. I am not conservative and I did NOT vote for trump.
♬ original sound - Elisabeth Hope
But a doctor at her second visit to the ER told her she would have to wait another week—two weeks from when her miscarriage was first detected—and have repeat ultrasounds to continue confirming the pregnancy was not viable before Weber could have a D&C, a standard procedure that is commonly used to remove fetal tissue that has not been naturally expelled after a miscarriage.
She told People that while mourning her loss and caring for her three children, she was "so sick" due to her HG.
"I have three kids, and waiting around to go into a mini-labor is just hard," Weber said.
"I can't believe that I'm being forced to carry around my dead baby," she told People. "They know it's gone, they know it's dead, they know it's stopped developing, and now I'm being forced to carry it... There's really no feeling like when your womb becomes a tomb."
Writer and advocate Jessica Valenti, who covers Republicans' attacks on reproductive rights at her newsletter, Abortion, Every Day, interviewed Weber shortly after she posted her TikTok video.
Valenti noted that while doctors told Weber they could provide her with standard miscarriage care only if she developed sepsis or began hemorrhaging before they were able to perform another ultrasound, HG's "symptoms can mimic those of infection and sepsis."
"How will she know if she's really sick from the retained tissue, she asks, if she's already feeling awful every day?" wrote Valenti in early April, when Weber was still waiting for treatment and carrying her nonviable pregnancy. "Weber also has asthma. She's afraid she won't be able to tell the difference between her usual shortness of breath and the signs of something much worse."
Weber told Valenti that at least one doctor she spoke with expressed regret about South Carolina's abortion ban, one of 19 state bans in the country.
"I could see it was breaking her heart just to say it," Weber said of the doctor, who told her, "I wish it was different. I wish we could help you."
Valenti wrote that "when Weber told her it was okay, the doctor responded, 'It's not okay.'"
Weber told People she was even denied a D&C after going to a different hospital where she found out that her "white blood cell count was super high."
"Everything was showing that I was in an active infection," she said, but she was still required to wait for care.
"Republicans would have us believe that their laws protect women's health, but what would they call what's happening [to] this South Carolina mom right now?" wrote Valenti in April.
In a video update Weber posted on TikTok last week after finally getting care, she shared that she and her husband had decided not to have any more children after their ordeal.
"We just can't chance going through something like that again," said Weber.
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South Carolina Carries Out 'Horrifying and Violent' Firing Squad Execution of Brad Sigmon
"By executing Brad Sigmon, South Carolina has also executed the possibility of redemption," said one critic. "Our state is declaring that no matter what you do to make up for your wrongdoing, we reserve the right to kill you."
Mar 08, 2025
South Carolina executed Brad Keith Sigmon by firing squad on Friday evening, drawing international attention to a method that hasn't been used for 15 years in the United States and prompting renewed calls to abolish capital punishment.
Sigmon, 67—who was convicted of beating his ex-girlfriend's parents, David and Gladys Larke, to death with a baseball bat in 2001—was shot by a firing squad consisting of three volunteers at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia, the state capital, at 6:05 p.m. local time Friday, according to a statement from the South Carolina Department of Corrections. He was pronounced dead by a physician three minutes later.
Gerald "Bo" King, an attorney representing Sigmon, read his client's final statement shortly before his execution.
"I want my closing statement to be one of love and a calling to my fellow Christians to help us end the death penalty," Sigmon wrote. "An eye for an eye was used as justification to the jury for seeking the death penalty."
"At that time, I was too ignorant to know how wrong that was," he added. "Why? Because we no longer live under the Old Testament law but now live under the New Testament. Nowhere does God in the New Testament give man the authority to kill another man."
A hood was then placed over Sigmon's head and a bullseye over his heart. The three volunteers then fired their rifles from an opening in a wall 15 feet (4.5 meters) away.
"There was no warning or countdown," wrote witness and journalist Jeffrey Collins. "The abrupt crack of the rifles startled me. And the white target with the red bullseye that had been on his chest, standing out against his black prison jumpsuit, disappeared instantly as Sigmon's whole body flinched... A jagged red spot about the size of a small fist appeared where Sigmon was shot."
"I've now watched through glass and bars as 11 men were put to death at a South Carolina prison," Collins noted. "None of the previous 10 prepared me for watching the firing squad death of Brad Sigmon on Friday night."
King, who also witnessed Sigmon's killing, described the execution as "horrifying and violent."
"He chose the firing squad knowing that three bullets would shatter his bones and destroy his heart," said King. "But that was the only choice he had, after the state's three executions by lethal injection inflicted prolonged and potentially torturous deaths on men he loved like brothers."
"He chose the firing squad knowing that three bullets would shatter his bones and destroy his heart."
A desire to resume executions during a 10-year pause due to a shortage of lethal injection drugs prompted Republican state lawmakers to pass and GOP South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster in 2021 to sign legislation forcing the state's death row inmates to choose between the electric chair, firing squad, or lethal injection (if available) as their method of execution.
King said state officials failed to provide information about lethal injection drugs.
"Brad only wanted assurances that these drugs were not expired, or diluted, or spoiled—what any of us would want to know about the medication we take, or the food we eat, much less the means of our death," the attorney explained.
Sigmon's legal team had unsuccessfully argued that brain damage and mental illness should have spared him from execution.
Rev. Hillary Taylor, executive director of the advocacy group South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (SCADP), said in a
statement Friday that "by executing Brad Sigmon, South Carolina has also executed the possibility of redemption."
"As Brad's spiritual advisor, I can personally attest to the fact that he is a different man today than the person he was more than 20 years ago, when he harmed the Larke family," she continued. "Our state is declaring that no matter what you do to make up for your wrongdoing, we reserve the right to kill you."
"But the question is not whether Brad deserved to die: The question is whether we deserved to kill," Taylor asserted. "In John 8, Jesus had very pointed instructions about which people can kill other people: 'Only those without sin can cast the first stone."
"The last time I checked, no person on this Earth fits that description, not even Gov. Henry McMaster, whose hardened heart remains the reason why executions continue in the first place," she added.
South Carolina has been executing condemned inmates at a rate described by ACLU of South Carolina communications director Paul Bowers as an "assembly line." The state has put four people to death since last September: Freddie Eugene Owens, killed by lethal injection last September 20; Richard Bernard Moore, killed by lethal injection (after changing his choice from firing squad) last November 1; Marion Bowman Jr., killed by lethal injection on January 31; and Sigmon.
State records show 28 inmates on South Carolina's death row.
Across the United States, there are five more executions scheduled this month, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
This is the first of six executions scheduled in six states this month. From the Death Penalty Information Center, one is scheduled for next week and then a horrifying four the week after that. This appears, however, to be more confluence than some big change. deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions/u...
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— Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner.bsky.social) March 7, 2025 at 3:52 PM
Addressing the issue of capital punishment in South Carolina, SCADP's Taylor said Friday that "despite national and international media news coverage, most South Carolinians will go to bed tonight unaware that we have executed another person—let alone with a firing squad."
"That's how little this issue impacts our citizens," she continued. "South Carolina should be known by other states and countries for its radical care of its citizens. Instead, we are known for our state-sponsored violence."
"If executions made us safer, we would be the 9th-safest state in the country," Taylor argued. "But they don't, and we aren't. It is not the state leaders who will reap the consequences of the death penalty: it is the everyday South Carolina citizens themselves. As long as we have the death penalty, we will fail to address the true causes of violence, including poverty, abuse, and neglect."
South Carolina carries out execution by firing squad, first in USA since 2010. A reminder that these 6 MAGA men also intro'd a bill to codify abortion as murder—enabling the horrific scenario that a woman who gets an abortion could be executed by firing squad. www.qasimrashid.com/p/s-carolina...
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— Qasim Rashid, Esq. (@qasimrashid.com) March 8, 2025 at 5:38 AM
Yet instead of curtailing executions, many South Carolina Republicans want to expand the category of crimes that qualify for capital punishment. In 2023, more than 20 Republican state lawmakers backed a bill to make people who obtain abortion care eligible for execution.
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South Carolina Execution 'Assembly Line' Rolls On With Killing of Richard Moore
"The state is motivated to kill condemned people as quickly as possible, and they do that despite evidence that might change their minds," said one anti-death penalty campaigner.
Nov 01, 2024
Despite pleas from his sentencing judge, jurors in his trial, and the former head of the state Department of Corrections, South Carolina executed Richard Moore by lethal injection Friday evening after Republican Gov. Henry McMaster and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene in the latest in a series of state-sanctioned killings.
The Charleston Post and Courier reported that Moore was pronounced dead at 6:24 pm local time, 21 minutes after the lethal injection was administered.
"Tonight, the state of South Carolina needlessly took the life of Richard Moore—a loving father and grandfather, a loyal friend, and a devoted follower of Christ," the criminal justice reform group Justice 360 said in a statement. "He was not a danger to anyone, and the state eliminated a glowing example of reform and rehabilitation."
Moore, 59, was convicted of the 1999 murder of convenience store clerk James Mahoney. Moore—who was unarmed when he entered the store—argued that he shot Mahoney in self-defense after the clerk pulled out a gun during an argument over correct change. An all-white jury found Moore guilty of murder and armed robbery.
"This is definitely part of my life I wish I could change. I took a life. I took someone's life. I broke the family of the deceased," Moore said in a video accompanying his clemency petition. "I pray for the forgiveness of that particular family."
Death penalty opponents said Moore's case underscores capital punishment's literally fatal flaws.
"Richard Moore's case, like those of so many others on death row, was tainted with racial bias, including as the two prospective Black jurors were peremptorily dismissed, resulting in an all-white jury," Amnesty International USA researcher Justin Mazzola said in a statement after the execution.
"In addition to the racial bias, the crime that Moore committed was not premeditated, which raised serious concerns as to whether it rose to the level for which the death penalty is reserved in U.S. constitutional law," Mazzola added. "It's shameful that racial bias and lack of premeditation were not enough to convince Gov. McMaster to grant clemency to Richard Moore. Gov. McMaster could have used his clemency power instead of overseeing yet another execution in his state."
Moore was initially forced to choose whether he would be killed by electric chair or firing squad following the 2021 passage by South Carolina's Republican-led Legislature of a new capital punishment law amid a shortage of the lethal injection drug pentobarbital. Moore chose the firing squad.
In 2022, the South Carolina Supreme Court temporarily stayed Moore's execution. He subsequently changed his choice of execution method after the state restocked pentobarbital.
Advocates for Moore pointed to his flawless prison behavior and mentorship to other inmates. Among those urging clemency for Moore were Retired Circuit Court Judge Gary Clary, who sentenced Moore to die.
"Over the years I have studied the case of each person who resides on death row in South Carolina," Clary wrote to McMaster on Tuesday. "Richard Bernard Moore's case is unique, and after years of thought and reflection, I humbly ask that you grant executive clemency to Mr. Moore as an act of grace and mercy."
Jon Ozmint, director of the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDC) from 2003 to 2011, wrote, that that Moore "has proven himself to be a reliable, consistent force for good on death row."
However, McMaster informed SCDC Director Bryan Stirling Friday that he had "carefully reviewed and thoroughly considered" Moore's application and "declined to grant executive clemency in this matter."
Moore is the second person executed in South Carolina since it resumed executions. In September, the state killed 46-year-old Freddie Owens. Four more South Carolina death row inmates have exhausted their appeals. They are likely to be executed in the coming months.
"It's like an assembly line," Paul Bowers of the ACLU of South Carolina told The Guardian. "The state is motivated to kill condemned people as quickly as possible, and they do that despite evidence that might change their minds."
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