The California Air Resources Board voted on Thursday to ban the sale of gas-powered cars starting in 2035.
The state’s Advanced Clean Cars II rule would ratchet up the proportion of electric or non-emitting cars required to be sold in the state annually, until new sales must be 100 percent electric starting in 2035.
The rule is expected to have impacts beyond California’s borders, as other states can also adopt the standards. Officials from New York, Oregon, Washington state and Rhode Island told CNN that they plan to adopt California’s rule.
The measure is aimed at both limiting the state’s contribution to climate change, and also bettering public health by exposing fewer people to pollution like smog.
“California now has a groundbreaking, world-leading plan to achieve 100 percent zero-emission vehicle sales by 2035. It’s ambitious, it’s innovative, it’s the action we must take if we’re serious about leaving this planet better off for future generations,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said in a statement shared with The Hill.
The Air Resources Board found that battery-electric vehicles are likely to be about even cost-wise with gas-powered vehicles by 2030, and estimated that by 2035, consumers are likely to save $7,900 in maintenance and operational costs over the first 10 years of electric vehicle ownership.
John Bozzella, president of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, an auto industry trade group, told The Hill Wednesday that it’s not clear whether the targets are realistic.
“Whether or not these requirements are realistic or achievable is directly linked to external factors like inflation, charging and fuel infrastructure, supply chains, labor, critical mineral availability and pricing, and the ongoing semiconductor shortage,” he said
The ban was also criticized by many high-profile conservatives.
“Ridiculous! Banning gasoline-powered vehicles will hurt all Americans,” tweeted Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R). “No wonder so many people from California have moved to the Lone Star State.”
What if we told you America has an electoral system where politicians got to choose their voters? You’d probably think we had it backwards, since what we were taught in school about basic American democracy was that every citizen has one vote to choose who represents us. The sad truth is that because of a practice called gerrymandering, politicians and political parties have more influence on who gets to represent us than we the voters do.
Following the U.S. Census, which happens every ten years, states redraw their congressional and state legislative voting maps in a process called redistricting. Gerrymandering occurs when political parties are in control of this process. Democrats and Republicans have every incentive to draw district lines that give their political party an advantage in elections for the next decade.
Gerrymandering is one of the root causes of our dysfunctional politics. By minimizing the number of competitive districts, elections are decided in primaries. As a result, Americans have fewer choices, and candidates become more and more extreme. Gerrymandering affects all American voters, but it’s especially bad for voters in non-majority demographic groups.
Rampant gerrymandering continues to happen because it’s legal in most states. There are a couple key strategies politicians use to draw map lines that maximize the votes for candidates of their party and ensure their opponents get as few as possible. One is packing — drawing lines that put as many of their opponent’s registered party members as possible into one district; and cracking — breaking voters of the other party into as many different districts as possible to dilute their vote.
Gerrymandering violates the basic premise that each state and congressional district ought to represent all the people who live there. When successful, the party that draws the lines can more or less guarantee they’ll hold onto power for the next ten years.
So, who wins and loses?
Politicians, party bosses and lobbyists win. The rest of us — the whole country — loses. Because gerrymandering essentially guarantees “safe” seats for a party, our elected representatives have far less incentive to represent all the people in their districts and the collective interest. The less energy that has to be expended to listen to every voter, the more time can be dedicated to the party base and to the lobbyists and special interest groups who contribute to their campaigns. This distorted process serves to increase destructive political polarization and creates gridlock in our legislatures.
What can be done?
First, we must go back to basics and set commonsense redistricting guidelines. Districts should be as compact and competitive as possible, while attempting to keep communities together.
Second, we need to take the power to draw districts away from self-interested partisan legislators and put it in the hands of independent commissions. These commissions work best when they have complete transparency, their members come from across the political spectrum, and they abide by strict criteria to ensure fair and accurate representation for all voters.
Independent redistricting commissions work. Seven states currently use independent commissions to draw congressional and state districts, while two other states use them for state level districts only. This approach has proven to be even handed and tends to avoid the extended time required to fight the process in court or have a judge appoint an impartial mapmaker to draw the lines of constituency.
Third, as citizens, we need to be more involved in our communities. We need to support local efforts to require citizen engagement in the redistricting process, and demand answers to problems we all share, regardless of political affiliation. Each of us has preferred policy solutions, but we all have an interest in making our government work rather than letting politicians rig it.
States are in charge of drawing district lines, not the federal government. That means we can fix this process problem without passing a federal law. We can pass local initiatives ourselves in the states and communities we live in that gives everyone in the neighborhoods the opportunity to be heard.
If we want a fair electoral system, we must insist on the adoption of these reforms. The best way to ensure a fair distribution of power is to build sufficient public momentum that voters cannot be ignored. Call or write your elected representatives and demand reform. Together, we can end gerrymandering.
The Honorable Sean O’Keefe is the 69th Secretary of the Navy, university professor, and co-chair of Count Every Hero, a group of veterans and citizens dedicated to protecting democracy, fighting corruption, and reforming our electoral system.
The Pentagon on Thursday released a long-awaited plan aimed at reducing civilian casualties caused by U.S. military operations and proposed a better way to report and respond to incidents should they occur.
The 36-page Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan, approved by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin earlier this week, directs sweeping changes in military planning, training, doctrine and policy for all future conflicts, the Pentagon’s top spokesperson Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder told reporters.
The idea is to install at all operational levels people “who are trained to have an understanding of civilian harm, the aspects of civilian harm mitigation, and operational planning,” at the start of any mission, Ryder said.
The military’s Center of Excellence will serve as the hub “that will provide expertise at a centralized location, but then that will be dispersed throughout the Department of Defense,” to include some estimated 150-plus individuals that will have special training on the matter, he added.
Ahead of the report’s release, a senior Defense official told reporters the Pentagon envisions an eventual situation where those who are experts in the civilian environment “are sitting next to the operators, the threat-focused intel folks, the lawyers as they are really developing whether it’s an individual operation or a campaign, and building in this component of civilian harm throughout the overall process.”
The plan, which contains 11 major objectives, is meant to be “systemic” and “implementable immediately,” and is expected to cost “tens of millions of dollars” per year to execute, the official said.
The document comes nearly a year after a botched Aug. 29 attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, killed 10 people, including seven children, causing public outcry and significant scrutiny over U.S. drone strikes.
That deadly blunder, coupled with a November investigation by The New York Times detailing a U.S. airstrike that killed 70 civilians prompted Austin in January to order the Defense Department to develop a civilian harm mitigation “action plan.”
The New York Times reported allegations that top officers and civilian officials tried to hide the casualties in the drone strike.
In a memo included in the plan, Austin said the protection of civilians is both a “strategic priority” and a “moral imperative.”
“We will ensure that we are well prepared to prevent, mitigate and respond to civilian harm in current and future conflicts,” Austin wrote, calling the changes “both ambitious and necessary.”
The plan notably does not include any guidance or changes as to punishment should in individual or multiple people inaccurately or inappropriately order a strike that kills civilians.
The Pentagon did not punish any individuals related to the Kabul strike as it found that those involved had followed the correct procedures.
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) mishandled up to 1 in 3 veterans’ claims relating to water contamination at Camp LeJeune, according to a report released Thursday by the department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG).
Some 1 million people may have been exposed to contaminated water at the training facility between August 1953 and December 1987, according to the OIG report. OIG investigators found that the department prematurely denied more than 17,000 of the claims before sending the claimants’ letters asking for further documentation of exposure.
In another 2,300 cases, the department recorded incorrect effective dates for benefit eligibility, according to the report. Not all the mishandled cases would necessarily have resulted in benefit payouts, but veterans were underpaid by at least $13.8 million over a four-year period due to failure to assign the earliest effective date, according to the watchdog.
The contaminants in question are associated with a number of medical conditions and complications, including kidney cancer, liver cancer, Parkinson’s disease and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The VA has also expanded eligibility for disability payments to people who have a different condition than the eight listed that they can prove is connected to exposure to contaminated water.
“The OIG found that errors were less likely to occur at the Louisville Regional Office, which processes most Camp Lejeune-related claims; staff from other VA regional offices lacked experience processing these claims,” the report states. The watchdog recommended the Veterans Benefits Administration either develop a plan to reduce the processing errors at regional offices or centralize Camp Lejeune-related claims at the Louisville office.
Earlier this month, President Biden signed the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act, which included $300 billion for benefits for veterans exposed to burn pits but also includes a provision allowing lawsuits against the federal government in connection with exposure to contaminated water at Camp Lejeune.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) on Thursday became the latest lawmaker to visit Taiwan, landing on the self-governing island after a string of visits by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other U.S. officials that has heightened tensions with China.
The visit by Blackburn, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is likely to further anger Beijing, which views Taiwan as part of its territory and wants to reunify the mainland with the democratic island.
“Taiwan is our strongest partner in the Indo-Pacific Region,” Blackburn said in a statement.
“Regular high-level visits to Taipei are long-standing U.S. policy,” she added. “I will not be bullied by Communist China into turning my back on the island.”
Pelosi led a delegation to Taiwan earlier this month, becoming the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the island in 25 years. China responded by conducting military drills for multiple days near the island after she left.
Douglas Hsu, the director-general for North American affairs in Taiwan’s foreign ministry, greeted Blackburn at the airport. Blackburn arrived in Taiwan after stops in Fiji, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea.
“It’s time we focus on rewarding Taiwan’s commitment to democratic values and ensure they have the necessary resources to combat Communist China and the New Axis of Evil,” Blackburn tweeted after landing on the island.
Under the longstanding “One China” policy, the United States acknowledges — though does not endorse — Beijing’s claim to the island while it also vows to honor the Taiwan Relations Act, which commits the U.S. to providing Taiwan with the means to defend itself.
A federal court on Thursday upheld an injunction that has blocked the enforcement of an Arkansas law banning gender-affirming care for minors for more than a year.
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in its ruling said the lower district court did not abuse its discretion in issuing the injunction.
A judge in October will decide whether to permanently block the law, which prohibits doctors in the state from providing treatments like puberty blockers and hormones to patients under 18.
A federal court has upheld an injunction temporarily blocking an Arkansas law banning gender-affirming health care for transgender youth under 18, ruling that a lower court did not abuse its power in granting the injunction.
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday ruled the preliminary injunction that has blocked the enforcement of Arkansas’ “Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act” for more than a year will remain in place until an ongoing legal battle over its constitutionality is settled.
The measure, passed by the legislature in March 2021, prohibits doctors in the state from providing or recommending gender-affirming medical care including puberty blockers and hormones to minors. Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) vetoed the bill, also referred to as Act 626, last year, calling it a “vast government overreach.”
State lawmakers introduced the measure last February, arguing that Arkansas has a “compelling government interest in protecting the health and safety of its citizens, especially vulnerable children.”
Hutchinson’s veto was quickly overridden by the legislature, but the law was blocked by a district court judge before it could take effect. Lawyers for the state appealed that decision, arguing that District Court Judge James M. Moody Jr. had abused the court’s discretion in issuing the injunction.
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On Thursday, the higher court ruled the judge had not. The court also affirmed arguments made by plaintiffs in the case that transgender youth will suffer “irreparable harm” absent a preliminary injunction and enforcing the law would prohibit “medical treatment that conforms with the recognized standard of care.”
“The district court did not err in concluding Act 626 is not substantially related to Arkansas’s interests in protecting children from experimental medical treatment and regulating medical ethics,” Thursday’s ruling states.
The decision stems from a 2021 lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of four transgender minors, their parents and two Arkansas physicians who argued the law violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and discriminates on the basis of sex.
The Justice Department echoed that argument in a statement of interest in the case last year, claiming that Arkansas was discriminating against transgender youth by prohibiting them from accessing “medically necessary care.”
A trial has been set for October, where a judge will decide whether to permanently block the law.
During oral arguments in June, Chase Strangio, deputy director for Transgender Justice at the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, said lifting the injunction would create unnecessary anxiety and uncertainty for families with transgender children.
“People are relying on this treatment,” he said at the time. “Because of the injunction, the plaintiffs have been able to receive the medical care that they need. If the injunction were lifted now, the families would have to leave their homes, their communities, their jobs, and travel to another state, just to potentially return at a point when the final order would be issued.”
Strangio also referenced testimony from Michele Hutchinson, a doctor who’s a plaintiff in the case, that multiple transgender youth had attempted suicide following the passage of Act 626 in the House.
On Thursday, Holly Dickson, the ACLU of Arkansas’ executive director, said the court’s ruling to uphold the injunction affirms that “no child should be denied medical care they need.”
“We are relieved for trans youth,” she said in a statement. “Transgender people deserve the right to live healthy lives without fear and discrimination. It’s time for the Arkansas Legislature to protect trans kids, not target them.”
Republican Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, one of the defendants in the case, will ask the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals to review the ruling, spokesperson Amanda Priest said Thursday.
“The Attorney General is extremely disappointed in today’s dangerously wrong decision,” she said.
Major medical organizations including the American Medical Association and American Academy of Pediatrics say they support access to gender-affirming health care for transgender young people.
FILE – Voters stand in a line as they wait to vote early on Oct. 19, 2020, in Athens, Ga. Lawyers on Monday, July 18, 2022, asked a federal judge to block Georgia’s 2021 ban on giving gifts including food and water to voters waiting in line. (AP Photo/John Bazemore, File)
Welcome to The Hill’s Campaign Report, tracking all things related to the 2022 midterm elections. You can expect this newsletter in your inbox every Tuesday and Thursday leading up to November’s election.
The 2022 midterm campaign sprint is just beginning.
The primaries in New York and Florida this week were among the last of the year’s big nominating contests. While there are a handful of primaries left — including in New Hampshire, where Republican voters will choose their nominee to take on Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) — the general election matchups are mostly set.
To recap the primaries, Republicans saw high-profile, and often bitter, matchups between former President Trump’s endorsed candidates and other hopefuls, some of whom cast themselves as Trump loyalists and others who hewed more toward traditional conservatism. In the end, Trump’s candidates mostly came out on top. In the Senate primaries in Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, GOP voters sided with the former president and handed his endorsees the nominations.
Trump’s influence over Republican voters was also on display in races where GOP members of Congress who voted last year to impeach him were seeking renomination. Of the six who did not retire and sought reelection this year, only two survived their primaries. In one of the most notable races, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), one of Trump’s most ardent Republican critics, lost in a landslide to Harriet Hageman, whom the former president endorsed last fall.
Democrats, meanwhile, saw an easier path through primary season, especially in key Senate races. In Ohio, Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) largely coasted through his nominating contest. The same was in North Carolina and Florida. Still, it wasn’t all easy for Democrats. The party saw debates between its left and center over which candidates were best suited to win in November, while there are still questions about just how closely Democratic hopefuls should tie themselves to President Biden.
What’s next? Expect a brutal and expensive general election campaign season. Republicans need to pick up only five seats in the House and just one in the Senate to recapture control of Congress, and they believe that they have the political winds at their backs.
But Democrats are also heading into the fall more hopeful than they were just a couple months ago that the November elections won’t be an absolute wipeout. The party is starting to get optimistic about keeping the Senate, benefiting from solid recruits that are outraising their Republican rivals in key swing states.
And while holding the House this year is still unlikely for Democrats, a series of strong special election performances in recent weeks has buoyed the party’s hopes that the political tides may be turning in their favor.
Student debt plan a curveball for vulnerable Dems
Biden’s announcement on Wednesday that the government would forgive $10,000 in student loans for borrowers making less than $125,000 a year — and $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients — spurred largely predictable reactions from progressive Democrats and Republicans.
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel called the move “Biden’s bailout for the wealthy.” Progressives praised the move but some said the forgiveness wasn’t enough.
But Biden’s latest move on student loan debt forgiveness could put one group in an awkward position: vulnerable Democrats, who need to appeal to both voters thrilled with the loan relief and those concerned about its effects on inflation.
The National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee (NRCC) sought to tie Democratic Virginia Reps. Abigail Spanberger, Elaine Luria and Jennifer Wexton to the administration’s move.
“Will Elaine Luria, Abigail Spanberger and Jennifer Wexton condemn this irresponsible plan that will make inflation even worse?” an NRCC press release asked.
The Hill caught up with Spanberger on Tuesday shortly after news of Biden’s impending broke.
“One of the things I think we need to be talking about is the overall expense related to higher education,” Spanberger said. “While there’s many opinions about loan forgiveness, how much it should be, how much it shouldn’t be, minimums, maximums, all of the rest, the bottom line is that we continue to see education prices go up year by year at really exorbitant rates.”
Other center left Democrats have echoed this sentiment, arguing that the message needs to be about tackling education institution’s role in the cost of higher education.
“The Biden administration is taking this action, it’s not being voted on by the front-liners who have to win in these districts,” said Lanae Erickson, senior vice president for social policy, education, and politics at the center left think tank Third Way. “But they can talk about the fact that this has to be the beginning, not the end, and that we need to reform our higher education system so we’re not back here again in five years because this cannot be an every five years problem.”
A new Emerson College Polling survey out on Thursday shows Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman holding a 4 percentage point leader over Republican challenger Mehmet Oz. In the survey, 48 percent of Pennsylvania voters polled said they would vote for Fetterman compared to 44 percent for Oz. When asked about whom voters would back for governor in the state, 47 percent said Democratic candidate Josh Shapiro compared to 44 percent for Republican Doug Mastriano. The latter polling falls within the margin of error, which is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
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Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke is seizing on the issue of abortion in his first TV ads and targeting his opponent Gov. Greg Abbot (R) over the issue.
“From this day forward, August 25th, women all across Texas are no longer free to make decisions about our own body. No longer free to choose if a pregnancy is right for us. Or our families,” different women through the campaign TV narrate in one of the ads. “Not even in cases of rape or incest. And women will die because of it. All because of Greg Abbott’s abortion law. It’s too extreme. So I’m voting for Beto, who will give women our freedom back.”
The ad comes on the same day that Texas abortion ban becomes effective in the state and on the heels of a recent special election in New York’s 19th Congressional District. Democratic candidate Pat Ryan, who focused more on abortion, won against Republican Marc Molinaro, who honed in on the economy. The special election has been viewed as a bellwether of Democrats’ performance ahead of November and how the issue of abortion resonates with voters over issues like inflation or the economy.
A federal magistrate judge on Thursday said he would release a redacted version of the affidavit that convinced him to approve a warrant to search former President Trump’s Florida home.
The decision from Judge Bruce Reinhart comes after he ordered the Justice Department to propose redactions to a document whose full release they argued would compromise their ongoing investigation.
In his order Reinhart found the redactions from DOJ to be sufficiently narrow.
“I find that the Government has met its burden of showing a compelling reason/good cause to seal portions of the Affidavit,” Reinhardt wrote, noting that it could reveal both the identities of witnesses, law enforcement agents, and uncharged parties as well as the investigation’s strategy, direction, scope.
DOJ is ordered to file a public version of its redacted document by noon Friday.
We’ve had Biden’s inflation and Biden’s recession; now we face Biden’s energy crisis. It didn’t have to be this way.
Twenty million Americans are behind on their utility bills, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association.
Who is surprised? Even as real wages tumbled 3.6 percent over the past year, electricity prices increased 16 percent, squeezing consumers. Unhappily, things are about to get worse.
Natural gas, used to create power and to heat almost half of America’s homes, is trading at prices nearly double those of last year, and the winter heating season promises to bring even higher prices.
The price of natural gas today is the highest since 2008, before the fracking revolution unleashed almost unlimited gas deposits trapped in tight formations that were previously inaccessible.
Why should the United States suffer a giant increase in costs if we have so much gas? In part, because President Biden pledged this year to double our exports of liquified natural gas (LNG), which means less natural gas available to American consumers.
Biden made that grand gesture to help our allies, who are increasingly cut off from Russian oil and gas because of the war in Ukraine. But he made that promise to send more U.S. natural gas overseas even though the price was already soaring and inventories were low.
Biden apparently did not discuss the plan with industry leaders, who were caught off guard by the announcement. One executive was quoted in the New York Times saying, “I have no idea how they are going to do this…”
It’s unlikely Biden does either. We are not shocked. The Biden White House has virtually no real-world, private-sector experience or expertise. It imagines that creating new energy resources can be done overnight, by waving a magic wand.
The truth is, we have at least a 100 years’ supply of natural gas; tragically, we do not have the political will to produce it. Climate ideologues, including those directing policy in the Biden White House, are bent on prematurely and recklessly standing in the way of drilling and producing the oil and natural gas we need even as we transition to renewable fuels.
The White House has slow-walked oil and gas leasing and the approval of drilling permits. In addition, it is leaning on banks, pressuring them not to lend to fossil fuel suppliers and pressuring investment firms not to buy their stocks.
It is madness. While Biden is happy to beg Saudi Arabia for more oil, he refuses to meet with energy producers here at home to discuss what it would take to bring on extra production.
Instead, he blames high gasoline prices (and will soon blame high natural gas prices) on a greedy industry, or on Russian President Vladimir Putin; he’ll do anything but admit that his policies have helped drive energy prices sky-high.
Biden takes credit for driving down gasoline prices, and it is true that releasing 1 million barrels of oil per day from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve has helped. But the real reason that gasoline prices have come down in recent weeks is that demand from two key markets has fallen. China’s economy is faltering and oil imports into that country have tumbled to the lowest level in four years. China is the world’s biggest importer of oil, which is a global commodity. When demand falls there or anywhere in the world, the price comes down.
Demand has also dropped here in the U.S. As the price of gasoline soared to an all-time high above $5 per gallon, families canceled their summer road trips and stayed home. The White House insists we are not in recession, but when the economy is contracting and demand for basics like gasoline declines, it sure smells like a recession.
Now we are at that time of year when attention shifts from gasoline to natural gas. Demand for natural gas will climb as we approach the winter months; prices, already at 14-year highs, will climb too.
Demand and supply are out of balance because the industry has backed off drilling in the wake of hostility from the White House, for sure, but also because of misguided efforts in various states to ban fracking and block pipeline construction. It’s all about appeasing the climate warriors.
In 2014, then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo proudly banned fracking in New York State, to the applause of liberal media outlets like the New York Times, which acknowledged that the state has “significant” natural gas resources trapped in the Marcellus Shale formation.
The Times noted the move contradicted Cuomo’s pledge to help economically-depressed upstate regions, where those resources lie, but would “help repair his ties to his party’s left wing.”
Meanwhile, New Yorkers in counties near the border with Pennsylvania were deprived of the income and jobs from the fracking boom that allowed their neighbors to thrive.
Cuomo didn’t just ban fracking. In 2016 he also blocked construction of a key pipeline meant to deliver natural gas to several existing pipelines in New England. Consequently, other local gas projects were dropped. The upshot was that on a cold day this past January, the New England grid was obtaining 20 percent of its electricity from oil and coal, which typically contribute less than 1 percent of the region’s power.
These dirtier fuels were dragged into service because New England’s natural gas system was operating at less than 30 percent of available capacity. The region cannot access gas elsewhere in the country, thanks to a shortage of pipeline capacity.
Remember that using natural gas creates only about half the emissions of competing oil; it is a relatively climate-friendly fuel that has helped the United States lower carbon emissions more than any other developed country. Ergo, blocking the use of natural gas is harming the environment, not helping it.
Democrats, including Joe Biden, risk everything for meaningless climate gestures like blocking pipelines and preventing oil and gas drilling. This winter, as utility bills go through the roof, American consumers will pay the price.
Liz Peek is a former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim & Company. Follow her on Twitter @lizpeek.
A team of researchers has developed a contact lens that can collect tear samples from the eyes.
In a laboratory setting, the lens detected compounds that could potentially indicate the presence of cancer.
The breakthrough could help with early diagnosis, an important factor in fighting cancer.
A team of researchers may have found a way to detect cancer through a pair of special contact lenses – a medical breakthrough that could help with early diagnosis.
In the U.S., there were more than 1.7 million new cancer cases reported in 2019, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The same year, nearly 600,000 people died from cancer. Early diagnosis could help patients get the treatment they need before the cancer progresses to a severe stage – and that could soon come in the form of contact lenses.
In a paper published in Advanced Functional Materials, scientists describe how they made a contact lens with built-in microchambers that collect tears and other fluids. The samples are then analyzed for exosomes, secreted by cells that can be indicators for diseases like cancer. If exosomes are present, they bind to specific antibodies embedded in the contact lens and turn the area red.
The team tested the lens in various liquid solutions, including cell cultures and human tears. They found that the lenses can consistently detect exosomes. The technology can also differentiate exosome surface proteins that are thought to be cancer biomarkers.
Exosomes can be found throughout the body, but other common tests like blood and saliva tests may contain components that could complicate detection. Other areas of cancer research focus on exosomes in blood samples, which may not necessarily be transferrable to studying exosomes in tears.
This high-tech contact lens could be a simpler way to look for exosomes related to cancer and other diseases. It has the potential to be faster and less invasive for patients.
“This is pretty exciting compared to the other current techniques in this field,” says study author Yangzhi Zhu, who is a biomedical engineer at the Terasaki Institute for Biomedical Innovation, to Inverse.
