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How one Ohio city is tackling the 'uniquely American problem' of medical debt

As lawmakers were being elected and constituents were voting on key ballot measures this month, one Ohio city council passed a measure with the potential to make an enormous financial impact on its community: buying out and relieving the medical debt of its residents.

The Toledo City Council voted 7-5 in early November to use $800,000 of funds from the American Rescue Plan to buy out medical debt for qualifying residents. 

The Board of County Commissioners for Lucas County, for which Toledo is the county seat, also agreed to match this pledge, raising the funds to $1.6 million.

This measure was spearheaded by Toledo City Councilwoman Michele Grim (D), a longtime public health advocate who was recently elected to the Ohio House of Representatives. Around $240 million worth of debt is expected to be erased.

“An estimated 41 percent of Americans have some kind of medical debt and it’s the No. 1 reason for bankruptcy,” Grim said. 

“And Toledo has been hard hit by the pandemic. It’s also been hard hit by inflation, also rising housing prices and rising rents. Our poverty rate is higher than the national average … and our wages are stagnant.”

Under the measure, Toledo and Lucas County will enter into contract with RIP Medical Debt, a nonprofit founded in 2014 with the aim of buying out and abolishing medical debt. The organization will work with hospitals in the area to buy out patients’ debt using the funds put forward by the city and county.

Grim was inspired to pursue the measure after seeing a similar one passed in Cooke County, Illinois, which also partnered with RIP Medical Debt. Toledo’s local government will be the second the organization has partnered with.

Since its inception, the organization says it has eliminated more than $7 billion worth of debt for more than 4 million people.

“The reason why we’re able to do that is because there is a for-profit debt market that exists that we sort of take advantage of,” Allison Sesso, president and CEO of RIP Medical Debt, said.

Sesso’s organization operates a proprietary method that it refers to as a “debt engine.” It buys out existing debt from participating hospitals for pennies on the dollar and analyzes the debt files to determine who is eligible for debt relief.

Patients are eligible if their income is 400 percent of the national poverty level or if they have medical debt which totals more than 5 percent of their annual income.

According to Sesso, about 80 to 90 percent of the patients the organization sees in the debt files qualify for its debt relief.

Individuals cannot apply to RIP Medical Debt for relief. Eligible patients are unaware that they are being considered and simply receive a letter in the mail informing them that their debt has been bought out and will never be collected.

Among her constituents, Grim said about 41,000 are estimated to be eligible for debt relief.

“Medical debt is a uniquely American problem,” Grim said. “And I really can’t think of another better way to use our American Rescue dollars than to aid in the economic recovery of our constituents.”

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) stated in a report released earlier this year that medical debt is the most common collection type on credit reports. Though this does not necessarily mean that medical debt is the most common in collections, it is disproportionately represented in credit reports when compared to other common forms of debt.

“As of 2021, 58 percent of all third-party debt collection tradelines were for medical debt, making medical debt the most common debt collection tradeline on credit records. The next most common collections tradeline was telecommunications debt, at only 15 percent of tradelines,” the agency said in the report.

According to the CFPB, the amount of U.S. medical debt currently in collections ranges from $81 billion to $140 billion. The exact amount is difficult to ascertain, as not all medical debt collections are made available to consumer reporting companies.

As the agency noted, collection tactics for such debt have long been criticized for being aggressive and convoluted, with some patients facing legal action from hospitals or others being erroneously contacted by collection agencies despite not actually having any outstanding fees.

Since the Toledo City Council voted to pass the measure, both Grim and Sesso say they have been contacted by lawmakers around the country interested in possibly doing the same thing for their own constituents.

Sesso said RIP Medical Debt is actively speaking to a handful of other local governments, though her organization likely won’t move forward with all of them. According to Sesso, partnerships are partly dependent on medical providers actually being interested in having a conversation about buying out patients’ medical debt.

As Grim heads to the Ohio state legislature, she says she would like to introduce a similar measure at the state level, though she acknowledges that what was passed in Toledo is only a small step toward addressing a much larger issue.

“As a local legislator or even as a state legislator, I can’t fix our broken health care system. It’s a national problem,” Grim said. “This is just the first step. This is something small and simple that we can do to help aid in economic recovery of Toledoans and Lucas County residents. And, you know, Washington, D.C., doesn’t have a plan to eliminate medical debt, but Toledo, Ohio, does.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Kanye West says he asked Trump to be his 2024 running mate

Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, said he asked former President Trump to be his running mate in 2024.

The rapper, in a Twitter video posted on Thursday evening, said he mentioned a campaign during a recent meeting with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida, also tweeting a series of “Ye 24” graphics.

“I think the thing that Trump was most perturbed about, me asking him to be my vice president,” Ye said in the video in the Twitter post. “I think that was like lower on the list of things that caught him off-guard.”

Ye went on to say Trump screamed at him during the meeting about a run.

“When Trump started basically screaming at me at the table telling me I was going to lose — I mean has that ever worked for anyone in history,” Ye said in the video. “I’m like hold on, hold on, hold on, Trump, you’re talking to Ye.”

The Hill has reached out to a Trump spokesperson for comment.

The rap mogul made a long-shot bid for the White House in 2020, but has been a past supporter of Trump, meeting with him in the Oval Office in 2018.

One day after the 2020 presidential election, the rapper tweeted a photo of him in front of a state map of the U.S. with the caption, “KANYE 2024.”

In a September interview with ABC, Ye indicated he has future political aspirations.

“Yes, absolutely,” Ye told the network’s Linsey Davis.

In his newest series of videos, Ye said he believed Trump should have freed Jan. 6, 2021, prisoners when he “had the chance.”

Trump has called the treatment of the Jan. 6 prisoners “very unfair” and in September called into a rally just outside the D.C. jail held to support them.

Prosecutors have charged hundreds of defendants in connection with the attack, including more than 275 individuals charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement.

Source: TEST FEED1

White House resists declaring emergency as flu, viruses surge in children

The White House is resisting calls from pediatric health groups to declare a national emergency due to the early surge in respiratory illness in children. 

As seasonal flu, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), coronavirus and other respiratory viruses swarm the country, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association argue an emergency declaration, which would grant providers additional funding and more flexibility from regulations, is the best and fastest way to help the overburdened health system.

In a letter sent to President Biden and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra last week, the two organizations said the “unprecedented levels” of RSV and rising flu infections warrant a dual declaration of a national emergency along with a public health emergency. 

“We need emergency funding support and flexibilities along the same lines of what was provided to respond to COVID surges,” the organizations wrote.  

But the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) indicated a national emergency isn’t needed at this time. 

“We have offered jurisdictions support confronting the impact of RSV and influenza and stand ready to provide assistance to communities who are in need of help on a case-by-case basis,” an HHS spokeswoman said.  

“We encourage people to follow everyday preventive actions, including avoiding close contact with people who are sick, staying home when sick, covering coughs and sneezes, and staying up to date on their flu and COVID-19 vaccines to prevent the spread of infectious diseases. National public health emergencies are determined based on nationwide data, science trends, and the insight of public health experts,” she added.

In a call with reporters earlier this month, administration health officials said the federal government is working with state and local partners to ease capacity issues at hospitals as respiratory illnesses surge. 

When the demand on a jurisdiction exceeds its capabilities and available resources, the federal government could step in and help with staffing and supplies, said Dawn O’Connell, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response.

Supplies like ventilators and personal protective equipment are available through the Strategic National Stockpile, O’Connell said, but no state has requested that level of support yet.

The offers of support — and calls for more — come as hospitals are at capacity, beds are scarce and staffing shortages are pushing the workforce to the breaking point. In some cases, even if hospitals have beds available, there aren’t enough doctors, nurses or respiratory therapists to staff them.

According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, the hospitalization rate in all kids for the week of Nov. 12 peaked at 17.5 out of every 100,000, a rate that was twice as high as any other season on record.

Capacity constraints at children’s hospitals and pediatric offices are resulting in more children being cared for in community and adult hospitals, which may have limited or no capacity to care for children.  

Amy Knight, president of the Children’s Hospital Association, said an emergency declaration makes it easier for hospitals to add pediatric beds in places that aren’t typically used for inpatients, like a treatment room or a playroom.

“From a regulatory standpoint, that is not an okay thing. When you have a public health emergency you are allowed to … make those kinds of decisions,” Knight said. “It ultimately creates a lot of avenues for children’s hospitals to do the right thing for patients regardless of the typical regulatory bureaucratic constraints.”

Oregon last week became the first state to declare an emergency in response to the RSV surge. 

With only two hospitals in the state with a pediatric ICU, Gov. Kate Brown (D) said the order will give hospitals additional flexibility to staff beds for children and allow them to draw on a pool of medical volunteer nurses and doctors and take other steps to provide care to pediatric patients.

The U.S. has been under a public health emergency for COVID-19 since 2020, and it’s been renewed every 90 days. Other emergencies in recent years include the opioid epidemic, monkeypox, Zika and the H1N1 swine flu.

Public health experts said the U.S. has been judicious about declaring emergencies outside of specific instances like natural disasters, but the ongoing COVID-19 emergency has brought more attention to the process.

“COVID has led to more awareness of this possibility and potentially more desire to try to use it on the part of advocacy groups and others,” said Jen Kates, a vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation. 

“And I think that speaks to the fact that you know, it’s very hard to get attention to public health crises, and resources are limited. The letter from pediatric groups is really a call to alarm that there’s a public health emergency that they feel they’re facing, and there’s just not enough resources,” Kates said.

Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said the waivers and flexibilities that occur during a public health emergency should become the status quo. 

“I think that’s the issue. Not so much that they’re asking for this, but why do they have to keep asking for this?” Adalja said.

 “This threshold to call an emergency declaration, I think it really speaks to the fact that our health care system, our public health system, isn’t able to adequately respond fast enough to an infectious disease emergency on its own.”

Source: TEST FEED1

WHIP LIST: McCarthy searches for 218 GOP Speakership votes

A narrower-than-anticipated House Republican majority and a growing number of House Republicans expressing opposition to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) are threatening to derail his bid to be Speaker of the House.

McCarthy won his party’s nomination for Speaker this month but needs to secure a majority of all those casting a vote for a specific candidate in a Jan. 3 House floor vote in order to officially be elected Speaker.

Support from 218 House Republicans, marking a majority of the House, would shore up his position. 

A Speaker can be elected with fewer than 218 votes if there are absences, vacancies or some members vote “present,” but McCarthy does not have much wiggle room. Democrats will have around 213 seats, and all are expected to vote for a Democratic Speaker nominee. Republicans will have around 222 seats. 

McCarthy maintains confidence that he will win the Speakership, but around five House Republicans have already signaled they will not support McCarthy’s Speakership bid on the floor, likely already putting him under 218 and throwing his position into dangerous territory. Several others are withholding support, too, without necessarily saying they will vote against McCarthy on Jan. 3.

Opposition to McCarthy

Rep. Andy Biggs (Ariz.)

Biggs, a former chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, mounted a last-minute challenge to McCarthy for the House GOP’s Speakership nomination, when he got 31 votes to McCarthy’s 188, and five others voted for other candidates. After the nomination, Biggs said he will not vote for McCarthy to be Speaker.

“I do not believe he will ever get to 218 votes, and I refuse to assist him in his effort to get those votes,” Biggs tweeted.

He cited McCarthy’s not promising to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas as one reason for withholding support. On Tuesday, McCarthy called on Mayorkas to resign, saying House Republicans will investigate and consider opening an impeachment inquiry if he does not.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (Fla.) 

“Kevin McCarthy will revert to his establishment mean the moment he gets power, and that’s why there are enough of us now, a critical mass, standing as a bulwark against his ascension to the Speakership,” Gaetz said on former Trump adviser Stephen Bannon’s “War Room” show on Tuesday.

Gaetz additionally told reporters on Nov. 15 that he would vote for someone other than McCarthy on the House floor on Jan. 3.

Rep. Bob Good (Va.)

“I will not be supporting him on Jan. 3,” Good said on “John Fredericks Radio Show” on Tuesday. He added that he thinks there are “more than enough” members who are “resolved not to support him” and deny McCarthy the Speakership.

The freshman Virginia congressman, who ousted former Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-Va.) in a 2020 primary, previously said on the same radio show that he had confronted McCarthy about his tactics during a House GOP conference meeting before the Speaker nomination vote. Good took issue with a McCarthy-aligned PAC spending millions to support certain Republicans in primaries over others, and noted that McCarthy had endorsed Riggleman in his 2020 primary.

“He admitted there at the mic, though, that he spent money in these races based on who would support him for Speaker,” Good said.

Good has also said that he believes there are a “dozen or so” House Republicans who will oppose McCarthy on the House floor.

Rep. Ralph Norman (S.C.)

Norman’s opposition to McCarthy centers around the budget. Norman said he asked McCarthy to adopt a model seven-year budget crafted by the Republican Study Committee, which included $16.6 trillion in cuts over 10 years. 

“Just a solid ‘no’ led me to believe he’s really not serious about it,” Norman said on Bannon’s “War Room” on Tuesday.

The slim House GOP majority, he added, provides an opportunity for hard-line conservative members to pressure McCarthy and push for their priorities.

Norman first revealed his opposition to McCarthy to Just the News, and clarified to Politico that he will vote for someone other than McCarthy to be Speaker – and will not vote “present.”

Rep. Matt Rosendale (Mont.) 

Rosendale, a freshman, has signaled opposition to McCarthy for Speaker.

“He wants to maintain the status quo, which consolidates power into his hands and a small group of individuals he personally selects. We need a leader who can stand up to a Democrat-controlled Senate and President Biden, and unfortunately, that isn’t Kevin McCarthy,” Rosendale said in a tweet after McCarthy was nominated to be Speaker. 

Additional McCarthy skeptics and unknowns

Several other conservative members have indicated that McCarthy has not yet earned their support, or declined to answer questions about McCarthy’s Speakership altogether. 

Rep. Scott Perry (Pa.)

Perry, the current chair of the House Freedom Caucus, has repeatedly said that McCarthy does not have support from 218 members.

“It’s becoming increasingly perilous as we move forward,” Perry said of McCarthy’s position in an interview last week.

Perry has been pushing McCarthy and House GOP leadership to implement rules changes that, on the whole, would give more power to rank-and-file members and lessen that of leaders. But he is not committing to vote against McCarthy at this time. 

“I’m not making my position known,” Perry said in an interview last week. “I do have an open mind, but I also see what’s happening.”

Rep. Chip Roy (Texas)

Roy has similarly said that McCarthy does not have majority support for Speaker, but has not said how he intends to vote on the House floor on Jan. 3.

“Nobody has 218, and someone’s going to have to earn 218,” Roy said last week.

In addition to also pushing for a more open process, Roy has expressed that he does not think House GOP leadership’s commitments to investigate the Biden administration are aggressive enough. He is also a supporter of withholding funding unless the Biden administration ends COVID-19 vaccine mandates for the military.

Rep. Dan Bishop (N.C.)

Bishop said that his vote for Speaker hinges on more than rules changes.

“What it is about more now is whether somebody can seize the initiative to come up with a creative approach to sort of recalibrate how this place works in hopes of moving off the status quo and making it effective for the American people,” Bishop said in a brief interview last week.

“At this moment, I’m open to anyone seizing the initiative in the way that I described,” Bishop said.

Rep. Andrew Clyde (Ga.)

“Well, I will tell you that you’ll know that on January the third,” Clyde said on “John Fredericks Radio Show” on Monday when asked whether he would vote for McCarthy. “We’re still having negotiations.”

Rep. Barry Moore (Ala.)

Moore said in a brief interview last week that he is waiting to see how negotiations on rules changes go, but he was not necessarily a hard “no” on McCarthy.

“We won’t really know until Jan. 3 how things shake out,” he said.

Hard-line members supporting McCarthy

Not all members of the House Freedom Caucus or the more confrontational wing are united in their antagonism of McCarthy. In fact, some are strong supporters.

Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio)

Some conservatives have suggested Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a founding Freedom Caucus member who challenged McCarthy for GOP leader in 2018, as an alternative Speaker candidate. But Jordan, who is likely to chair the House Judiciary Committee, has thrown his support behind McCarthy.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.)

The firebrand Georgia congresswoman was once a doubter of McCarthy’s ability to become Speaker, but has now become one of his most vocal supporters for the post. Greene, who has said McCarthy will have to “give me a lot of power” to make the GOP base happy, said she is working to convince her fellow conservative members to vote for McCarthy.

Greene has warned that moderate Republicans could join Democrats and elect a compromise moderate Speaker, but McCarthy skeptics have dismissed that prospect as a red herring.

Rep. Randy Weber (Texas)

Weber, a House Freedom Caucus member, said he is pro-McCarthy for Speaker.

“He’s poured his heart and guts and soul out into building this conference,” Weber told The Hill last week. “I’ve been here 10 years. … I’ve never seen the conference in better shape than it is now.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Biden mulls 2024 plans as Democrats weigh generational shift

President Biden plans to use some time over the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays to decide whether he wants to run for reelection, surrounding himself with family as he assesses his political future while giving himself a deadline of early next year to officially announce.

Biden, who just turned 80, remains in many Democrats’ minds the party’s best shot at retaining the White House in 2024. Still, he’s weighing his next steps at a time when several contemporaries in the party have stepped down from top roles to make room for a new generation of leaders.

For Biden, coming off a stronger-than-expected midterm result for Democrats is sure to factor heavily in the decision, along with the potential for a rematch against former President Trump. And while the White House has insisted for months Biden plans to run again, the president has left the door open to making a final decision after discussing with family during the holidays.

“He plans to run. He said himself … that he’s going to have a private conversation with his family,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Tuesday.

“I’m certainly not going to lay out what that conversation could look like or potentially be,” she added. “That is the president’s, clearly, prerogative to have that conversation with his family, to make that decision.”

An early 2023 announcement from Biden would align with new and younger faces taking on positions in Democratic leadership. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), 82, and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), 83, said this month they would not run again for leadership posts, clearing the way for younger Democrats to helm the party’s efforts in a new House minority.

Allan Lichtman, distinguished professor of history at American University, said Pelosi and Hoyer stepping aside when the House flipped this month won’t stop Biden from running for another term.

“They are no longer in charge of the House. This was the perfect moment for them to step aside. I don’t think there’s any correlation between Hoyer and Pelosi stepping down on any decisionmaking for Biden,” he said. “Presidents have almost invariably sought reelection regardless of their age.”

For Democrats, Lichtman said, “The last thing you would want is Biden to step down and have an open seat.”

Since 1920, there have been eight open seats during presidential elections and only once did the party controlling the White House win — in 1988, when then-Vice President George H.W. Bush was elected to replace President Reagan after Reagan’s second term.

“Democrats do not want an open seat and don’t want a party fight for the nomination,” Lichtman said.

The favorite in the running to become the next House Democratic leader is Rep. Hakeem Jeffries. At 52, the New York lawmaker is substantially younger than current leadership, though political watchers don’t think it would be an issue for the president to work with him.

Jeffries was a prominent campaign surrogate for Biden in the 2020 election, and Biden typically takes on a mentorship role with younger Democrats and works well with them, like with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, some pointed out.

Still, Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton, said younger Democratic leaders will heighten the conversations about Biden’s age. 

“It means that his age will be amplified, the contrast with younger Democrats more pronounced, all of which will fuel the conversations about what should he do in 2024,” Zelizer said. “That said, he can use the moment to position himself as a voice of experience, wisdom and reason —someone with the best chops to handle reelection and the challenges of a second term.”

While critics say Biden’s age is increasingly important, the president’s supporters consider attacks against him based on his age to be unfair.

Democrats are largely in favor of Biden running again, not seeing a good alternative for him even considering his age. And that sentiment was boosted by the Democrats’ performance in the midterms.

Biden also still has plenty of prominent contemporaries in politics.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who will stay in his role, is the same age as Biden at 80. And Trump, who launched another bid for the White House this month, is 76.

While many say Trump’s campaign won’t play a huge factor in Biden’s decision to run again, Timothy Naftali, presidential historian at New York University, argued that part of the reason Biden may want to run for a second term is to take on Trump again.

“Does the country still need him to prevent another Trump presidency? I think that’s why Joe Biden ran, was to stop Trump, and I suspect that if you ask President Biden, besides [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, what are the great concerns he has for our republic, it’s going to be Donald Trump’s return,” he said.

Without Trump running, Biden could be compelled to step aside, he added. And he noted that Biden has had significant accomplishments during just one term, especially through his work uniting global allies during the war in Ukraine.

“If Trump is no longer a major political player in 2024 and Europe is still united in defense of Ukrainian oversight — and perhaps even if the war is over by 2024 — then Joe Biden will have achieved some great things,” Naftali said.

American University’s Lichtman argued though that Biden’s accomplishments, on top of the Democrats holding on to control of the Senate, makes Biden even more appealing to run for another term.

“Certainly, the appeal of the announcement by Joe Biden is enhanced by the Democrats’ better-than-expected performance,” he said. “Joe Biden has not gotten nearly the credit than he should for his administration.”

Amie Parnes contributed to this report.

Source: TEST FEED1

Just two House races remain undeclared, and Republicans lead in both

Just two House races remain undeclared as of Thanksgiving Day, with Republicans leading in both races and looking to add to their majority.

Democrats were able to hold on to the Senate and keep control of a number of key House seats after the “red wave” failed to materialize on Election Day, but Republicans last week narrowly crossed the 218-seat threshold to take the House.

Now, more than two weeks after the midterms, two House races in California and Colorado are officially still up in the air — though the Democrat has conceded in Colorado. If the current GOP leads hold, Republicans will secure 222 House seats, while Democrats would hold 213. 

The 222-213 breakdown would notably be the exact reverse of the results in the 2020 election cycle, when the House split in the Democrats’ favor. 

In California’s 13th Congressional District, Republican John Duarte is ahead of Democratic former State Assemblyman Adam Gray by less than 600 votes, with 99 percent of the vote counted, according to The Associated Press. 

The race was seen as a toss-up heading into Election Day in the recently redrawn California district.  

The 13th Congressional District is currently represented by Rep. Barbara Lee (D), who decided to run in, and win, the new 12th District. Gray was endorsed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and both of California’s Democratic senators, Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla, but the redrawn lines made a blue win uncertain.

In Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, the vote count is similarly slim. 

With 99 percent of ballots tallied, sitting Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert is up by around 550 votes over Democratic challenger Adam Frisch, a razor-thin margin that kickstarted a recount under Colorado’s election rules. 

Frisch at one point was leading Trump-backed Boebert by 64 votes in the reliably red district Boebert had been expected to win easily. 

The Democrat conceded the race last week, saying he didn’t think a recount would reverse Boebert’s victory, but the race hasn’t been formally called.

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Biden says he will try to move on gun control during lame-duck session

President Biden on Thursday said he would try to pass a bill banning assault rifles during the lame-duck session before the next Congress forms, despite long odds due to Republican opposition.

Biden spoke to reporters Thanksgiving morning, coming after a week that saw three mass shootings in the U.S.

Biden said it was “ridiculous” that red flag laws — in which law enforcement officers can seize firearms from individuals deemed a threat to themselves or others — were not being enforced across the country.

“No. 2, the idea … we still allow semi-automatic weapons to be purchased is sick. It’s just sick. It has no, no social redeeming value. Zero. None. Not a single, solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturers,” he said.

Biden said he was “going to try to get rid of assault weapons” during the lame-duck session, but it would depend on whether he has the votes to pass a bill.

“I’m going to do it whenever I — I got to make that assessment as I get in and start counting the votes,” he said.

The House introduced a bill to ban assault weapons earlier this year, but it was doomed with Democrats holding a slim majority in the Senate and most Republicans united against such legislation, making overcoming a filibuster impossible.

The lift for any gun control bill will be even more difficult when the next Congress forms in January, with Republicans taking control of the House.

It has been another dark week for gun violence in America.

On Tuesday night, a gunman opened fire with a handgun inside a break room at a Walmart in Chesapeake, Va., killing six people and injuring at least six others.

Three days before that, a shooter opened fire inside an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colo., killing five people and injuring at least 25 others.

And less than a week before the Colorado shooting, a student at the University of Virginia shot and killed three other students after they returned from a class field trip.

The violence has rocked the nation once again, just months after a May massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 children and two teachers dead.

After Uvalde, lawmakers in Congress passed a bipartisan gun control bill that expanded background checks for those ages 18 to 21, among other measures.

It was the most significant piece of gun control legislation in about three decades, but it fell short of more comprehensive gun control reforms many activists and Democrats had called for.

Biden, who was a senator when Congress passed a temporary assault weapons ban in 1994, called for another prohibition on assault weapons after Uvalde.

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Arizona becomes epicenter of GOP challenges to 2022 election

Arizona is now ground zero for GOP efforts to challenge the 2022 midterm results as the party seizes on allegations of voter disenfranchisement. 

On Tuesday, Republican attorney general candidate Abe Hamadeh took the latest step by filing a lawsuit challenging the results of his race, in which his Democratic rival leads by 510 votes out of more than 2.5 million ballots ahead of an expected recount.

That comes after two GOP-led counties in the Grand Canyon State voted to delay certifying the election results. Meanwhile, a battle is growing in the most populous jurisdiction of Maricopa County, where election officials acknowledge printer mishaps but insist affected voters still had multiple options to cast a ballot.

The efforts come after former President Trump and his allies tried to stop the certification of President Biden’s victory in 2020, fueling concerns over election denialism within the Republican Party.

“This is really a small group of folks who are acting outside of their authority,” said Jenny Gimian, senior policy counsel at election education nonprofit Informing Democracy. “The normal process in Arizona has really a lot of checks on accuracy. It’s very thorough, very systemic and includes the participation and involvement of both the major parties at all the steps along the road.”

Kari Lake, a Trump ally who lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs in Arizona’s gubernatorial race earlier this month, refused to concede and called for an election redo. Trump himself took things further by claiming without evidence that officials deliberately “took the election away” from Lake.

“Whether done accidentally or intentionally, it is clear that this election was a debacle that destroyed any trust in our elections,” Lake said on Monday.

But the sentiment isn’t shared by all Republicans in the state. Gov. Doug Ducey (R), who drew Trump’s ire after refusing to overturn the 2020 election results, on Wednesday broke with Lake and publicly congratulated Hobbs on her victory.

Republican Senate nominee Blake Masters conceded to Sen. Mark Kelly (D) last week, but Masters still demanded Maricopa’s Board of Supervisors resign, calling them at best “grossly negligent.”

Officials in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, acknowledge that printers at 70 of the county’s 223 vote centers on Election Day used ink too light for tabulation machines to read, but they say voters could wait in line until the issue was solved, cast a ballot at another vote center or deposit their ballot in a separate box for tabulation later.

Hamadeh’s lawsuit, which the Republican National Committee joined, makes clear it does not allege “any fraud, manipulation or other intentional wrongdoing.”

But among other allegations, the suit claims Maricopa officials failed to properly check out more than 400 affected voters who later cast ballots at another vote center or in a drop box, suggesting the issues will result in their ballots not being counted and shift the outcome of the extremely close attorney general race.

“Maricopa County’s election failures disenfranchised Arizonans. We’re going to court to get the answers voters deserve,” Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel wrote on Twitter.

The suit requests a state judge order officials to amend their tabulations to include the affected voters and certify Hamadeh as the winner.

Maricopa County Communications Manager Jason Berry declined to comment on the lawsuit but said, “Everyone had the opportunity to cast a ballot and all legal ballots are counted.”

“This race is scheduled to go to a recount, where they will look at some of those processes again and review to again ensure in a close race that they have not missed any errors that happened throughout,” said Gimian, of Informing Democracy. “So it really feels unlikely that this is substantive enough to change the outcome.”

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R) separately demanded Maricopa officials answer questions about the mishaps, and the county has promised to respond ahead of a Monday meeting to certify its election canvass.

Meanwhile, protesters at times have shown up near the county’s central election facility. On Friday, a vehicle convoy circled the area in a strategy drawn from the “Freedom Convoy” earlier this year, which protested Canadian pandemic restrictions.

“Threats have become a sadly normal occurrence for our election officials and election staff since the November 2020 election,” Berry said, adding that he did not yet know how many threats were received after the midterms.

Outside of Maricopa, citizens in rural parts of the state have convinced GOP officials in two counties to delay certification. 

In Cochise County, which comprises Arizona’s southeastern corner, three conspiracy theorists claimed without evidence that vote machines there weren’t properly certified, convincing the two Republicans on the county’s three-person board to support a delay.

That included Supervisor Peggy Judd (R), who attended Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021, rally and promoted unfounded claims of mass election fraud in 2020, although she told the Tucson Sentinel that she never entered the Capitol.

Following the vote, both Arizona’s state elections director and Elias Law Group, which represents clients in a number of high-profile election cases, sent separate letters to the county threatening legal action if it does not certify by Monday’s statutory deadline.

“The board is sort of turning this ministerial act into an act of political theater,” said Jared Davidson, an attorney with Protect Democracy. “They should follow the will of the voters of Cochise County and certify the results, that’s their duty. Refusing to certify the results will nullify or effectively disenfranchise those voters, the majority of whom are Republican.”

In the opposite corner of Arizona, Mohave County’s GOP-controlled board praised election officials there as it delayed certifying its canvass on Monday, describing it as a political statement in the wake of the Maricopa issues.

“Mohave County has become, their votes have been worth less than they were prior to this vote due to the mismanagement and the dysfunction of the Maricopa County Elections Department,” Mohave County GOP Chairwoman Jeanne Kentch said at the meeting.

Supervisor Hildy Angius (R) said in an email on Wednesday that “many groups and individuals” had approached the county to delay certification, and she vowed to certify this coming Monday.

“I will not put Mohave County into any legal or financial jeopardy over Maricopa’s mishandling,” Angius wrote. “This vote was just to delay the certification so those who are investigating and possibly litigating have more time to do what they need to do.”

Source: TEST FEED1

These are the states where Thanksgiving dinner will be most and least expensive this year

If you are hosting Thanksgiving in Kansas, rejoice: There’s nowhere cheaper to buy a turkey and trimmings in 2022. 

A new Thanksgiving meal dashboard assembled by researchers at Purdue University finds Kansas the most affordable state in the union to procure ingredients for a Thanksgiving meal this year. A 12-person spread costs $70.89, on average, in the Sunflower State. 

Inflation has pushed the average cost of a 12-person Thanksgiving meal nationwide to $80.06, according to Purdue’s Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability. 

Researchers estimated prices by visiting online supermarkets across the nation. The national average assumes a holiday meal will include a 16-pound turkey, at $33.31; five pounds of potatoes, at $9.93; two pounds of green beans, at $7.38; and a gallon of milk, at $4.54, among other expenses. The tab does not include bottles of wine or more extravagant sides.  

The remote states of Hawaii and Alaska rank highest in average price for turkey and trimmings for 12, at $97.07 and $87.57, respectively. The balance of the top 10: South Dakota ($86.06), Nebraska ($85.43), California ($84.57), Oregon ($83.89), Colorado ($83.82), Nevada ($83.61), New York ($83.45) and Maryland ($83.33). 

“It’s shipping,” said the manager of New Sagaya City Market in Anchorage, Alaska, who gave his name as Mike B. “We ship everything up by barge. And fuel costs are up, of course, so shipping costs are up.” 

The most affordable states for Thanksgiving dining are mostly Southern. A meal for 12 costs less than $75 on average in Kansas, Georgia, Alabama, Missouri, Florida, South Carolina and Tennessee. Arkansas, Mississippi and Montana round out the bottom 10. 

Organic ingredients push the meal cost to a national average of $98.89. Vegetarian options lower it to $64, with tofu subbing for turkey.  

The new dashboard provides an alternative to the American Farm Bureau Federation, which has tabulated Thanksgiving costs for 37 years. Using slightly different methods and math, the Farm Bureau reported that a slightly downsized Thanksgiving meal for 10 will cost $64.05 this year, up from $53.31 in 2021. 

Turkey prices are running as much as 20 percent higher this year, said Jayson Lusk, a Purdue economist who maintains the Thanksgiving dashboard. 

“Why are prices higher this year?” he writes on his blog. “A potential answer is avian influenza (aka ‘bird flu’).” According to federal data, the disease has felled nearly 8 million turkeys this year.  

Is this the most expensive Thanksgiving ever? The quick answer: No. Prices keep rising, but after adjusting for inflation, Thanksgiving dinner cost more in 1980 or 1990 than it does now.  

Turkey consumption is in decline, down by roughly 1 pound per capita (from 16.5 pounds to 15.3 pounds) since 2017, Lusk reports. Demand for the meat seems to be dipping, possibly because of the pandemic, or perhaps as a matter of changing tastes.  

“This downward shift in demand, coupled with higher prices, likely means fewer turkeys on the Thanksgiving table this year,” Lusk writes. 

Source: TEST FEED1