Tag Archives : Build House

Are these Lego-style houses the solution to the housing crisis?

Cover is a Los Angeles based prefab home building company that utilizes a modular manufacturing process to produce custom, luxury homes.

“The home is probably the most important product in people’s lives,” says Alexis Rivas, co-founder and CEO of Cover, a Los Angeles based prefab home building company. “It has a huge impact on your physical and mental well-being and it’s had the least amount of attention and investment put into it over the last 100 years.”

Rivas, a Toronto transplant, started Cover with his co-founder Jemuel Joseph in 2014 after working at a prefab company and seeing an opportunity to improve upon some of the inefficiencies of their workflow.

“They were basically building homes in a factory the same way as conventional construction,” says Rivas. “They were still building with two by fours, hammers and nails, and drywall. There were some efficiency gains by building in a factory, but it wasn’t automotive level production.”

But unlike cars, which benefit from a repeatable and templatized manufacturing process, every home requires a level of unique customization to fit the home to its surroundings like trees or power lines. So Rivas and Joseph came up with the idea of focusing on a software that designs panels meant to be flat shipped and clicked together on the construction site.

“There is a lot of flexibility because it’s just wall panels, floor panels and ceiling panels that connect kind of like life-sized Legos,” says Rivas.

The flexibility of the modular panels allow Cover homes to be remodeled by simply adding or removing panels. This cuts down on waste and remodeling time. Precision is also a key value-add of their product. Rivas boasts that the hyper-efficient software accurately calculates the resources required for each Cover home down to a single bolt.

The combination of their precise software and controlled manufacturing environment makes high-end, luxury details much more accessible. Frameless windows, for example, that are flush with the floor, wall, and ceiling, usually can be found only in very upscale properties. But this feature comes standard with any Cover home.

Cover is starting small, and focusing on building accessory dwelling units (ADUs) in the backyards of Los Angeles homes.

Patricia Galea, a Cover customer, says, “I’ve worked with a lot of traditional contactors in the past who renovate buildings and homes and the one big challenge or frustration with that approach is just all the risks and unknowns of that process. What’s phenomenal about my experience with Cover is that they handle everything from the design to the permits and plans, to the construction. It’s all seamless. And the price up front is exactly the price, to the penny, of what the finished product will be. And that’s unheard of when you build a project,” she continues. “The old adage is that it takes twice as long and twice as much cost. There’s none of those issues with Cover. I really think it’s the future of how we build.”

Cover chose to first focus on ADUs to take advantage of California Senate Bill 1069, which was signed into law by former California Governor Jerry Brown in 2016. SB 1069 was introduced to ease the housing shortage by removing excessive regulatory obstacles to building backyard dwelling units on existing properties.

It will take more than just ADUs to address the housing shortage in California. On March 2, 2022, the California Department of Housing and Community Development stated that at least 2.5 million more homes must be built by the year 2030 to keep up with demand and accommodate lower-income families.

2.5 million is an ambitious number, given that over the previous eight-year planning phase, less than half of the CDHCD’s 1.2 million proposed California homes were built.

But Cover is trying to help close that gap. “Our mission at Cover is to make thoughtfully designed and well-built homes for everyone. And when we say everyone we really mean that,” says Rivas. “That’s going to be not just single-family homes but entire apartment buildings and communities. That’s where we’re going with this.”

Cover units start at $93,000 for an office space and go up to $335,000 for a two-bedroom home. Their website allows prospective customers to enter their address and see if their backyard is eligible for a Cover home. With the backing of renowned investment groups like Founders Fund and Gigafund, Cover is actively hiring and poised to grow quickly. Although today Cover is selling their homes exclusively in Los Angeles, they’ve got their gaze fixed on nationwide expansion.

Equilibrium/Sustainability — Harlem leaders demand environmental equality

Community activists in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan are calling on New York City to do more to make sure that they aren’t left out of climate adaptation plans.

Such solutions developed in the neighborhood would echo across the African diaspora, the head of the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce told a panel discussion kicking off Harlem Week, local newspaper AM New York Metro reported.  

“What we do in Harlem translates to Cicero, Illinois, to Roxbury, Massachusetts, to Kingston Jamaica, to Southside Chicago, to Nigeria and to South Africa,” the chamber’s CEO Lloyd Williams said.

Harlem residents already suffer from widespread environmental injustice, speakers told the event.

Temperatures across New York reflect the city’s already stark inequalities. Last August, a New York Times investigation found that a street on Manhattan’s upper West side measured 84 degrees. Meanwhile a street in East Harlem — less than three miles away across Central Park — measured 115 degrees.

Those discrepancies layer atop others — like high rates of asthma among children in Harlem compared to the rest of the country.

Redressing these sorts of environmental inequalities is key to the climate resilience of the city as a whole, environmental activist Peggy Shepard said at the event. 

Doing so requires not just policy but measurement and enforcement, according to Shepard.  

“There really should be no surprise that scientists tell us the most vulnerable places will be the first and worst hit by climate change and extreme weather events,” she said.

Welcome to Equilibrium, a newsletter that tracks the growing global battle over the future of sustainability. We’re Saul Elbein and Sharon Udasin. Send us tips and feedback. Subscribe here.

Today we’ll head way-south to survey why Antarctica’s massive ice sheets may be melting faster than expected. Then we’ll examine one state’s new climate law and look at “zombie coal plants” and how they’re impacted by Dems’ reconciliation bill.

Antarctica’s rapidly melting ice shelves

Antarctica’s ice shelves may be melting much faster than scientists previously anticipated — a phenomenon that could ultimately accelerate sea level rise, a new study has found. 

Warm water gets trapped: Researchers at the California Institute of Technology and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory deployed a new model showing how dense, warm ocean water can get trapped along Antarctica’s icy coast and speed up melting.

• Their model, detailed in Science Advances on Friday, homes in on a “narrow ocean current” adjacent to the coast that the authors described as “often-overlooked.”
• The authors simulated how rapidly flowing freshwater — melted from the ice shelves — can trap that warm ocean current at the base of the ice and hasten the melting process.  

Surpassing current models: “If this mechanism that we’ve been studying is active in the real world, it may mean that ice shelf melt rates are 20 to 40 percent higher than the predictions in global climate models,” co-author Andy Thompson, a professor at Caltech, said in a statement.  

What are ice shelves? They are outcroppings of the Antarctic ice sheet, located where ice juts out from the land and floats on top of the ocean, the authors explained.  

• Ice shelves serve as a protective buffer for mainland ice — preventing the entire ice sheet from flowing into the ocean.
• As the climate warms and melts the ice shelves, these buffers could lose their ability to block the flow of the ice sheet into the ocean.  

Both poles are melting: The study’s release comes amid a high-traffic week for research on the Earth’s poles.  

• Scientists showed on Thursday that the Arctic, too, is warming at a more rapid pace than previously assumed, as The Hill reported.
• Another research team revealed on Wednesday how humans could potentially thwart the worst impacts of climate change on the East Antarctic Ice Sheet.  

West Antarctic especially at risk: The Caltech-NASA researchers, however, focused their study on the West Antarctic Peninsula.  

Because this icy mass protrudes out of higher polar latitudes into lower, warmer altitudes, it has undergone the most dramatic changes due to climate change, they explained. 

To read the full story, please click here.  

Massachusetts enacts pivotal climate law

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R) on Thursday signed into law a major climate bill aimed at accelerating the state’s clean energy transition.

• The legislation will expand offshore wind and solar, as well as allow some cities to ban the use of fossil fuels in new and renovated buildings, according to The Boston Globe.
• Baker signed off on the bill after weeks of speculation that he was considering a veto, due to his disapproval for the fossil fuel bans, the Globe reported. He backed the bill after changes, including over offshore wind procurement.
• “I continue to want us to be a pretty big player in that space because it’s a sustainable way to create a lot of jobs, for a very long time,” he told the Globe.  

What’s in the bill? A main focus of the law is to expand the offshore wind industry — and to do so in a way that equitably distributes environmental and financial benefits, NPR affiliate WBUR reported.

• The bill eliminates a “price cap” that required every new wind project to deliver cheaper power than previous ventures.
• Investor-owned utilities will no longer play a role in bid selection, which will be in the hands of the Department of Energy Resources.
• Also in the bill are provisions for wind energy job training. 

Solar gets some updates too: The biggest shift for solar energy is the elimination of a rule that allowed only one solar facility per property to benefit from net metering, according to WBUR.

• Net metering is a billing tool that allows consumers to offset consumption by selling excess electricity generated from their own solar panels back to the grid.
• The legislation also more than doubles the amount of electricity for which homeowners can get paid. 

Among the bill’s other provisions are mechanisms for improving energy storage, investments in the electricity grid and a determination that wood-burning biomass is not a renewable energy source, WBUR reported. 

Dems hope climate bill kills off ‘zombie coal plants’

Democrats’ sweeping climate, health care and tax bill contains a powerful climate-saving measure that helps get rid of so-called “zombie coal plants,” Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) told Equilibrium. 

Casten said the bill, which House Democrats passed on Friday, aims to fix the issue of “coal plants on the grid right now that are out of money and uneconomic but cannot be shut down.”

“Now we have the tool to do that,” he said. 

What’s a ‘zombie coal plant’? The term is used by critics to describe coal plants that would no longer be economically profitable in a competitive market, where wind and solar energy could underprice them, according to IEEE Spectrum, the magazine of the world’s largest engineering organization.

• Some plants have resisted closure in the face of competition from cheaper sources by signing deals with crypto firms, which require massive amounts of power to mine digital currency, the nonprofit Ohio Valley Institute reported.
• But others, Casten noted, are still open because they can’t be shut down without charging utilities — and their customers — huge penalties. 

In areas where a single company controls the entire electricity supply chain, prior deals can keep coal plants running long past the point of profitability, critics say.

“There’s lots of parts of the country where the free market would shut that plant,” Casten said.

How the reconciliation bill factors in: The Inflation Reduction Act includes funding for an office to oversee loans enabling the buyout and closure of these plants, according to the Congressional Research Service.

• These programs would allows the Department of Energy to issue loans paying off the coal plants’ contracts — and to secure those loans with bonds to be paid back by ratepayers.
• Under this plan, ratepayers still pay to buy out coal plants — but they do so “over a longer period of time that will allow you to shut down the whole plant, not have a sudden spike in the price of power,” Casten said.

Not everyone is pleased: Senators across the aisle criticized the loan measure as part of a “partisan reckless tax and spend spree would raise taxes in a recession, exacerbate the Biden inflation spiral, and kill jobs,” according to a statement from the Republican Policy Committee.

JUDGE HALTS COAL LEASES

A federal judge in Montana ruled Friday that coal leases on federal land must be halted pending environmental review.

• The ruling reinstates an Obama-era rule overturned by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke under the Trump administration.
• The case pitted the Northern Cheyenne Tribe and the nonprofit Citizens for Clean Energy against the Department of the Interior and the state of Wyoming. 

Permitted but not mandatory: “Coal mining represents a potentially allowable use of public lands, but BLM is not required to lease public lands,” District Judge Brian Morris said in a statement last week, according to The Associated Press. 

Cheyenne Tribe is triumphant: “We are thrilled that the court is requiring what we have always asked for: serious consideration of the impacts of the federal coal leasing program on the Tribe and our way of life,” President Serena Wetherelt of the Northern Cheyenne said in a statement. 

Follow-up Friday

In which we revisit some of the subjects we’ve covered this week.  

South Korea to outlaw ‘Parasite’ apartments

• Record rains in South Korea’s capital of Seoul killed three this week as floodwaters poured into semi-basement apartments, highlighting the city’s yawning hydraulic gap between rich and poor. The government has now announced that it would phase out the apartments — a national symbol of inequality made internationally famous by Oscar-winning film “Parasite,” The Guardian reported. 

Catholic Church touts Inflation Reduction Act for addressing climate change 

• We explored how the religious nonprofits stand to benefit from the Inflation Reduction Act. On Friday, the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development welcomed the legislation, praising its ability to cut greenhouse gas emissions and address environmental concerns, Vatican News reported.  

European Space Agency head warns of economic damage from heatwaves, drought  

• This summer, Europe has battled a dangerous combination of heat and drought. The head of the European Space Agency warned on Friday that the economic fallout from these conditions could dwarf the continent’s looming energy crisis, Reuters reported. 

Please visit The Hill’s Sustainability section online for the web version of this newsletter and more stories. We’ll see you next week.

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When will Americans feel the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act?

The House moved Friday to pass a sweeping climate and health care bill, delivering a long-awaited legislative win to President Biden’s desk for his signature. 

The White House is preparing to deploy officials across the country to promote the historic action on climate change and lowering prescription drug costs contained in the bill, pitching it as a solution to ease the pain of consumers grappling with high inflation. 

However, while some of the provisions will take effect immediately or in early 2023, others will take years. Here are some answers on the timeline of the bill’s impact. 

A long road to reducing health care costs

On health care, some provisions take effect next year. Others, like most of the drug pricing provisions, won’t kick in for years. 

The enhanced subsidies for ObamaCare plans are already in effect, and the legislation will extend them for another three years. If the House doesn’t pass the bill, those subsidies will expire on Dec. 31, putting Americans on the hook for major premium increases.  

A provision capping insulin costs at $35 per month for diabetic Medicare patients takes effect in 2023. So too will a requirement that drug companies pay the government a rebate if they raise the price of a drug used by Medicare patients more than inflation.

A $2,000 cap on annual drug costs for people enrolled in Medicare’s prescription drug benefit won’t begin until 2025. And the most well-known aspect of the bill, letting Medicare negotiate the costs of select drugs, won’t start until 2026. Even then, the start will be limited to just 10 drugs; it will be expanded to 20 drugs by 2029.

Nearer gains on climate

The climate provisions of the bill will be felt soon, with some taking effect immediately and others at the beginning of next year. 

Most of the new residential clean energy credits will take effect immediately and apply to purchases made this calendar year. 

An existing credit of up to $7,500 for new clean vehicles will be extended through 2032, and the legislation adds a new credit of up to $4,000 for used clean vehicles that will apply to cars purchased next year. 

Still, there are complicating factors. Whether a vehicle qualifies for a full or partial $7,500 credit depends on it getting battery components for countries where the U.S. has a free trade agreement starting in 2024. It could take longer than that for most automakers to shore up their supply chains, meaning there could be a period of time where not all people can take advantage of the credit.

Credits for companies producing clean energy sources, like clean hydrogen, will also take effect in 2023. And credits for companies investing in clean energy manufacturing and energy security will be available at the start of next year. 

Josh Freed, who leads the climate and energy program at the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way, said that anticipation of the bill’s passage is already spurring investment in clean energy and would steadily reduce the cost of clean energy overtime. 

“Month on month, year on year, consumers are going to be able to have more and more affordable and cleaner energy that is less expensive,” he said. 

New taxes on the horizon

The law also has some significant tax provisions that will go into effect in relatively short order. 

The bill directs $80 billion to the Internal Revenue Service to beef up enforcement, funding that will flow immediately once the legislation is signed into law. 

The new 15-percent minimum tax on corporations will take effect in the tax year beginning in January 2023, as will the 1 percent excise tax on stock buybacks. 

Dems gear up to sell the bill

The bill’s passage comes just in time for Democrats to promote it as a major accomplishment with less than three months until the November midterm elections that will decide the balance of power in Washington. 

The White House made clear in a new memo this week that Biden and his Cabinet intend to make the case to voters that Democrats delivered for American families despite an onslaught of opposition from special interests and Republicans. 

But it may ultimately be difficult to convince some voters of the bill’s impact when many of the provisions do not take effect until after the midterm elections. 

Still, a senior White House official expressed optimism that Americans would feel at least some impacts of the bill quickly after Biden signs it into law. 

“A lot of these pieces are going to move very quickly and are going to be felt in people’s lives immediately. Others are going to follow soon after,” the official told reporters on a call Thursday.

During a press briefing on Friday, House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) seemed to preview a midterm message, arguing that voters need to keep Democrats in power so that the programs created by the law cannot be stripped down by Republicans if they regain control of Congress. 

“In November, it could very well be that you elect a group that will cut this bill off before we ever get started. So the question is very clear. Do you want to see this legislation in place in 2023? Or do you want to see it repealed in 2023?” Clyburn said. 

Rachel Frazin contributed. 

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Defense & National Security — Trump probed over potential Espionage Act violations

Federal agents who searched Mar-a-Lago this week suspected former President Trump potentially violated the Espionage Act, amid other laws.

Meanwhile, different tones are emerging from GOP lawmakers about the FBI raid and lawmakers are going about travel to Ukraine on their own terms.

This is Defense & National Security, your nightly guide to the latest developments at the Pentagon, on Capitol Hill and beyond. For The Hill, I’m Ellen Mitchell. Subscribe here.

Trump suspected of violating Espionage Act: warrant

Federal law enforcement suspected former President Trump had violated the Espionage Act and other laws when it sought and obtained a search warrant for his Mar-a-Lago estate, according to court records unsealed Friday.

The unsealed warrant shows that investigators were authorized to seize any documents or records with classified markings or related to the “transmission of national defense information or classified material.”

The warrant also authorized the seizure of “any evidence of the knowing alteration, destruction, or concealment of any government and/or Presidential Records, or of any documents with classification markings.”

Investigators listed 33 items that they had seized from the property, including the executive order of clemency for longtime Trump ally Roger Stone and information regarding the “President of France.” The receipt also included entries such as “Miscellaneous Top Secret Documents,” binders of photos and a handwritten note.

The inventory of documents seized during the search lays out 11 different sets of classified items seized during the search, including one set of documents as “various classified/TS/CSI documents,” meaning top secret/sensitive compartmentalized information. 

Read more here.

Also from The Hill: 

• Read: DOJ’s warrant against Trump
• FBI agents found dozens of classified documents in Mar-a-Lago search: sources
• Trump pushes back on report FBI sought nuclear weapons documents 

GOP displays split in tone on FBI’s Trump search

Republicans are starting to showcase different tones when it comes to the FBI’s search of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate on Monday. 

The differences were on display Friday during a press conference by House Intelligence Committee Republicans. 

Ranking member Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), a former FBI agent, raised concerns with the FBI’s tactics and asked for answers from the Department of Justice about the rationale for conducting the search, saying that oversight is necessary to ensure that the agency wasn’t politicized. 

More ‘parity’ from one side: “Because many other options were available to them, we are very concerned about the method that was used in raiding Mar-a-Lago and the nine hours that transpired while they were in the president’s home,” Turner said. 

• Fitzpatrick said that the committee needs to look at “parity” in the enforcement of the law.
• “We’ve seen many cases involving national security information – Sandy Berger, Hillary Clinton and the like. The public needs to know that the law is being enforced equally when the circumstances dictate,” Fitzpatrick said. He added that he is concerned about “perpetual distrust across a lot of these institutions,” which hinders the FBI from being able to do its job. 

More confrontational: Others took a much more confrontational tone. 

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), chair of the House GOP Conference, said that Republicans will investigate President “Joe Biden and his administration’s weaponization of the Department of Justice and FBI against Joe Biden’s political opponent,” calling it “brazen politicization” and adding that Trump is Biden’s “most likeliest political opponent in 2024.” 

• “President Trump has been targeted from day one of his presidency by the FBI,” said Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), who is running for Senate. “[Attorney General Merrick] Garland goes out and says that no one is above the law. I agree with that statement. No one is. That includes you, Attorney General Garland. That includes you, [FBI] Director [Christopher] Wray.” 

A new intensity While GOP trust in the FBI plummeted along with Trump’s rise to power and his claims of a “witch hunt” against him, hostility toward the agency reached a new intensity in wake of the search warrant being executed at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home on Monday. Some Republicans, such as Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), have called to defund or dismantle the FBI. 

Read the full story here.

Lawmakers shed formal WH approval to visit Ukraine

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) didn’t give the Biden administration a chance to reject his request to travel to Ukraine when he visited Kyiv and Odesa in May.    

The former FBI agent, who helped stand up Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau in 2015, traveled with Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), relying on a network of personal contacts and the Ukrainian government to ensure his safety. 

“Me and Dan just decided to go, because we were told that [trips] were not being approved,” Fitzpatrick told The Hill in an interview in his office in late July. “So that’s why we chose that course. Dan’s a Navy SEAL, I’m an FBI agent, so we can handle ourselves.” 

A first-hand look: A member of the House committees on Intelligence and on Foreign Affairs, Fitzpatrick was intent on seeing for himself what impact U.S. assistance in the country was having following the passage of a $40 billion aid package earlier that month.  

“A lot of people wanted, and still want to, go to Ukraine, a lot,” Fitzpatrick said.    

A no go: Before he went, he said he’d already got the word his trip was unlikely to be approved for support from the Biden administration. But he wasn’t going to let that stop him. 

• At least one Democrat and six Republican lawmakers, including Fitzpatrick, have traveled to Ukraine independently between April and July. 
• The lawmakers have made the trips without bothering to get permission from the Biden administration, which has warned of security risks.   

Security risk fears: The administration began withholding approval over fears that security provided by the U.S. military risked a direct confrontation with Russia if American service members were wounded or killed.   

Support for Ukraine remains strong among both parties in Congress, and many members want to visit the country.   

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who traveled independently to Kyiv in July, said approval for his trip was denied because the State Department didn’t feel that it had “the footprint on the ground to take care of us.” 

Read the full story here 

ON TAP FOR MONDAY

The American Enterprise Institute will hold an in-person event on “A New Approach to US-China Relations,” at 4 p.m. 

WHAT WE’RE READING

• WaPo: FBI looked for documents related to nuclear weapons at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago 
• These figures in Trump’s orbit have pleaded the 5th Amendment 
• State Dept. offers $10 million for information on Russian hackers 
• FBI pushes back against attacks over Trump search amid worries about violence 
• Trump calls for ‘immediate release’ of Mar-a-Lago search warrant, says lawyers won’t oppose DOJ move 

That’s it for today! Check out The Hill’s Defense and National Security pages for the latest coverage. See you next week!

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Democrat calls for standalone vote on permitting deal, saying he doesn’t feel ‘obligation’ to vote for it

Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) told The Hill on Friday that he will push for the permitting deal between Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Democratic leadership to be a standalone vote — rather than attached to another vehicle that may incentivize more of his colleagues to vote for it. 

Grijalva said that he and a handful of colleagues planned to make a request on Friday that the vote — on an agreement he fears will weaken environmental standards — be a standalone.

He said he hopes the reforms are not attached to must-pass legislation such as a continuing resolution, which keeps the government funded temporarily in the absence of an appropriations bill. 

“We’re going to start early to urge a separate vote,” said Grijalva, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee and former co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

“I’m going to make my request…and I hope that they understand. This is not trying to torpedo anything, this is saying the [continuing resolution] and the budget is critical, yes, but let’s do this other one where everybody is accountable,” he added.

He particularly referenced uncertainty as to whether Republicans will vote in favor of the Manchin-Schumer deal given its ties to the Inflation Reduction Act agreement. 

“Why should Democrats deliver the Republican agenda on these issues when they’re unified in voting against everything?” he said. 

He acknowledged that there is a deal between Manchin and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to advance the permitting reform deal, but said he doesn’t feel an “obligation” to uphold a deal that he did not help negotiate. 

“I don’t feel an obligation…to support the deal,” Grijalva said. “I didn’t shake hands, I wasn’t part of the negotiations.”

When Manchin and Majority Leader Schumer announced they had reached a deal on the climate and tax legislation, they also agreed to take up reforms to the environmental reviews that are required in order to permit energy or other construction projects. 

They said that they reached an agreement with President Biden and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to pass the changes before the end of the fiscal year in October.

Grijalva, meanwhile, echoed concerns from environmentalists that expediting these reviews could harm vulnerable groups, as the reviews are typically meant to prevent harm to nearby communities. 

“One of my prerogatives is that if I’m opposed to it — to vote against it,” he said. 

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Biden administration rebrands, pushes chemical abortions at cost of women’s health care

The U.S. Supreme Court, by overruling Roe v. Wade, sought to “return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.” Following the court’s decision, skirmishes have been fought in state courts over whether state pro-life laws are valid under state constitutions. What is emerging now, however, is an effort by the federal government, in league with states that support abortion and the abortion industry, to cynically rebrand abortion as “health care” and to knit together a national pill-based abortion market that renders state pro-life laws ineffective. This approach is both dishonest and dangerous to women.

According to the federal government, abortion is no longer a regrettable procedure that should be “safe, legal, and rare” — it’s “health care.” The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently released an online bulletin advising women that abortion “is an essential part of your health and well-being.” The U.S. Department of Justice vowed to “protect healthcare providers and individuals seeking reproductive health services.” Even President Biden joined the rebranding campaign, issuing an executive order defining “reproductive healthcare services” as “services relating to pregnancy or the termination of pregnancy.”

Calling abortion “health care” is deeply dishonest. Abortion does not treat a disease; it disrupts a normal and healthy biological process by killing an unborn human. As the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine puts it, abortion “is an action whose sole intent is to end” a human life, and as such it “clearly violates the basic tenets of medical ethics.”

Having rebranded abortion, its advocates are determined to deliver their new version of health care to women in the form of abortion pills prescribed online and sent through the mail. On July 8, President Biden issued Executive Order 14,076 calling on HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra to identify potential actions to, “protect and expand access to abortion care, including medication abortion.” “Medication abortion,” of course, is a euphemism for pill-induced chemical abortions, typically via mifepristone (RU-486).

In announcing this move, the White House stated that its action would “build on the steps the Secretary of HHS has already taken at the President’s direction following the decision to ensure that medication abortion is as widely accessible as possible.” The “steps already taken” include stripping away the in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone previously in place under Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) drug safety program for medications with recognized serious safety concerns. As a result, HHS has assured that federal regulations permit chemical abortion drugs “to be dispensed by telehealth and sent by mail via certified prescribers and pharmacies.”

In response to Biden’s executive order, HHS issued a guidance document on July 13, advising pharmacies that federal law prohibits them from discriminating against pregnant women, which “includes their ability to access reproductive health care, including prescription medicine from their pharmacy.” Among the medications specifically mentioned in the guidance is mifepristone. Attorney General Merrick Garland followed this with a declaration that “States may not ban Mifepristone based on disagreement with the FDA’s expert judgment.”

The upshot of these moves is that the Biden administration has made it federal policy to make chemical abortions as widely available as possible by stripping away in-person dispensing requirements for mifepristone and telling pharmacies they could face liability for refusing to distribute it.

Chemical abortion “health care” is deadly to unborn babies, of course. But abortion advocates’ reckless goal to rebrand and rapidly expand chemical abortion on demand also threatens to harm thousands of women. Research has shown that chemical abortions have a complication rate four times that of first trimester surgical abortions.

Moreover, potentially life-threatening complications become more common when mifepristone is used more than 10 weeks into pregnancy.Yet many women misestimate the stage of their pregnancies. And use of mifepristone can be particularly hazardous with ectopic pregnancies. For those reasons, the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists warns that an “in-person visit is medically necessary and sound medical practice because it ensures that every woman receives a full evaluation for any contraindications to a medication abortion.”

This leads to the Biden administration’s most cynical move of all: reinterpreting the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) (the federal “antidumping” statute that requires emergency rooms not to refuse care to uninsured patients experiencing “emergency medical conditions” ) to require abortions. The EMTALA guidance was framed as necessary to prevent doctors from refusing to treat true emergencies, like ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages. But doctors have long treated those emergency conditions and pro-life laws don’t change that. Texas law, for instance, excludes miscarriage and removal of an ectopic pregnancy from its definition of abortion. So did Planned Parenthood — until it edited its website shortly after the EMTALA guidance was released.

The true contribution of the EMTALA guidance to the emerging chemical abortion economy comes in its requirement that emergency rooms treat an “incomplete medical abortion” as within its scope. That requirement provides a dark backstop for the thousands of women who will seek mifepristone through telehealth, online or via mail order, and who inevitably will experience botched chemical abortions. The guidance tells emergency room doctors to “finish the job.” Tragically, even in cases where the unborn baby likely could be saved.

Each component of the federal government’s effort – from rebranding abortion to interpreting federal law to force a national chemical abortion market into existence – rests on shaky logical and legal grounds. Parts of it already are being contested in court, including by my firm, Alliance Defending Freedom. Opposing those efforts is imperative if women’s health (not misnamed and deadly federal “health care”) truly is to be protected and the people’s elected representatives are finally to have a voice.

Ryan Bangert is senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom (@ADFLegal).

Source: TEST FEED1

House approves sweeping climate, tax, health care package

House Democrats passed their sweeping tax, climate and health care bill on Friday, sending the $740 billion legislation to President Biden’s desk and securing a significant victory for Democrats less than three months before the midterm elections.

The bill, titled the Inflation Reduction Act, passed the House in a 220-207, party-line vote. Four Republicans did not vote, while every Democrat voted in support.

House passage came four days after the Senate approved the bill in a party-line vote, with Vice President Harris casting the tiebreaking vote.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) touted the bill on the House floor during debate on Friday, arguing that it “saves the planet while keeping more money in your pockets.”

“This bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, a package for the people, increases the leverage of the public interest over the special interests, and expands health and financial security now and for generations to come,” she added.

Passage through Congress marks the culmination of more than a year of negotiations among Senate Democrats on a spending package.

The legislation will increase taxes on corporations, address climate change and bring down the prices of prescription drugs, all while lowering the deficit.

The package specifically includes $369 billion in energy security and climate investments and $64 billion to expand Affordable Care Act subsidies for two years.

The bill offers incentives to businesses and consumers to make cleaner energy choices, including utilizing lower-carbon and carbon-free energy, and it creates new programs that will bolster investments in climate.

On the health care end, the measure will allow Medicare to negotiate lower prices for 10 high-cost drugs starting in 2026. By 2029, that number is expected to grow to 20 drugs. Additionally, the measure allows caps to be placed on some drug costs, but mainly for Medicare.

To pay for the legislation, Democrats have written in a 15 percent minimum tax on income that large corporations report to their shareholders. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, only about 150 firms would be affected.

The bill also allocates $80 billion to increase enforcement at the Internal Revenue Service and ensure that wealthy individuals and corporations are not evading taxes. Additionally, a 1 percent excise tax on stock buybacks is included in the bill.

Passage of the bill caps off more than a year of negotiations among Senate Democrats, who had been working to come to a consensus on a spending package but failed on a number of occasions due to intraparty disagreements.

The Senate, however, finally hit a breakthrough late last month when Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) announced a deal for the tax and spending package. The Senate ultimately approved that bill on Sunday through budget reconciliation, a process that allowed Democrats to pass the measure with a simple majority, bypassing what would have likely been a Republican filibuster.

Every House Democrat backed the bill, including Rep. Jared Golden (Maine), the only member of his party to oppose an earlier, larger measure approved by the House that was blocked by Manchin in the Senate.

Golden called the final Inflation Reduction Act “common-sense legislation” and “fiscally responsible” in a statement prior to the vote.

Some progressive lawmakers had grumbled about the bill not being as expansive as they had hoped, but the entire caucus ultimately came together to support the measure.

House lawmakers interrupted their summer break to return to Washington to complete work on the bill and send it to Biden.

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) started whipping against the bill on Tuesday, slamming the bill — which his office described as “the Inflation, Recession, and IRS Army Act — in a memo to House GOP offices.

In a roughly 50-minute speech on the House floor Friday, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) called the legislation a “misguided, tone-dead bill,” slamming it for inflationary concerns and bringing attention to elevated prices in the U.S.

Republicans during debate also took issue with the provision that allocates $80 billion to the IRS to bolster enforcement.

“Democrats more than any other majority in history are addicted to spending other people’s money, regardless of what we as a country can afford,” McCarthy said on the House floor.

“Today, now they are choosing to end the session by spending half-a-trillion dollars more of your money, raising taxes on the middle class, and giving handouts to their liberal allies,” he added.

Source: TEST FEED1

Failure to extend Child Tax Credit in reconciliation leaves millions of families on their own

Congress’s passage of a reconciliation bill this week marks a tremendous missed opportunity to support families with children and continue one of the most effective programs of the pandemic: the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC). 

Last year, U.S. families experienced what it was like to live in a society that actively demonstrates its commitment to supporting families with children. The expanded CTC, made available for six months by the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), provided $250- $300 per child every month to families. The impact was immediate: dramatically reducing food insufficiency and child poverty, while promoting economic security and well-being.

The CTC also accomplished something profound. As Michael, a father in Michigan told us, the CTC made families in his community “feel like, ‘Okay, now we’re getting a part of what it means to be an American.’”

Accustomed to their children being denied opportunities, from underfunded schools to limited enrichment activities, the expanded CTC made families, “feel like they’re part of the American system… it was extra money in their account for whatever they might need, for resources that was denied because they just couldn’t afford it,” Michael explained.

From last fall through this spring, including after the monthly payments ended, we interviewed 45 parents and caregivers of color like Michael from across the United States. We spoke primarily to Black and Latinx parents because before ARPA’s temporary changes, they had been disproportionately excluded from the CTC due to income thresholds that punish those with the lowest incomes, and because of how racism has shaped policies to lead to caregivers of color being historically underserved by cash benefits.

Our interviews illustrated how the CTC changed families’ everyday lives, as well as how it made them feel—about themselves, their communities, and their country. These conversations made it clear that the very structure of the expanded CTC as a relatively easy to access, nearly universal benefit—akin to Social Security but for families with children—conferred a sense of dignity, respect, and inclusion.

The families we spoke to, like the families captured in numerous national surveys over the last year, used their CTC checks to pay bills and invest in their children—buying groceries, signing their children up for extracurriculars, paying for utilities, and so much more.

By creating room in families’ budgets, the payments helped reduce stress among parents and caregivers. Cory, a father of two in Mississippi who works three jobs to support his family as his wife finishes her undergraduate degree, is all too familiar with the stress that comes with struggling to pay the bills. He told us that his four-year-old daughter is the “first person” to notice “if daddy’s got pressure on him,” and often “pray[s] to God about provisions for groceries and school.” Cory explained that the expanded CTC “help[s] ease the pressure on me and my wife.”

The unrestricted cash benefit allowed families a degree of self-determination— empowering them to make decisions about how to spend the money to meet their family’s changing needs. Amara, who lives with her husband and three children in North Carolina, appreciated how she could use it to pay for child care one month and gas the next. “Not having a restriction and being able to gauge what our family needed that month without worries was super beneficial,” she explained.

And it helped families meet their evolving needs without being asked invasive questions or being required to meet with caseworkers, complete paperwork, or jump through hoops like so many other means-tested benefits.

Cindy, a mother of three in Mississippi who had difficulty accessing supports in the past, noted how she received the CTC automatically: “We didn’t have to do anything. It just was deposited to my bank account. So that was awesome.”

The result was that the CTC strengthened families and entire communities during its six-month expansion. Rachelle, a mother of a five-year-old in North Carolina who works in early education, explained, “You could see [the effect of the CTC] in the parents and the children, the confidence and actually not feel[ing] ashamed.” She continued, “We were getting along easier, we were happier to talk and greet each other in the hall.” 

By offering flexible and meaningful support to families, the expanded CTC showed families that they were valued, and gave parents the opportunity to imagine a more secure future. But as Congress has failed to extend this vital program, families are once again left on their own. Congress has a moral obligation to swiftly reinstate the expanded CTC so that all children and families can experience “what it means to be an American.”

Elisa Minoff is a senior policy analyst at the Center for the Study of Social Policy and Ellie Kaverman is a policy analyst at the Center for the Study of Social Policy.

Source: TEST FEED1

Missouri school districts removing library books that may be found ‘explicit’ under new law

Some Missouri school districts have begun removing books from their libraries that could potentially be flagged as “sexually explicit” under a new law taking effect at the end of the month that may charge school officials with supplying sexual content to minors.

Under a law signed by Missouri Gov. Mike Parson (R) in June, public school administrators, faculty and staff that provide “explicit sexual material” to a minor student will be charged with a class A misdemeanor – carrying a maximum penalty of one year in jail and a $2,000 fine.

The law, which will take effect Aug. 28, defines “explicit sexual material” as any images or written descriptions of sexual acts or nudity, but qualifies that such restrictions do not apply to learning materials with diagrams about human anatomy or content relating to classical works of art.

“School library collections contain both works of art and informational texts, and school library books, whether fiction or non-fiction, meet both of those requirements,” the Missouri Association of School Librarians (MASL) wrote Tuesday in a statement. “Therefore, school districts should refrain from pre-emptively removing school library materials” to comply with the new law.

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MASL said it was aware that some Missouri school districts have been removing library books considered vulnerable to challenges from parents once the law officially takes effect.

“This is concerning on many levels,” MASL wrote in the statement, adding that the group understands “the immense impact of facing a challenge and will support our librarians in solidarity to preserve intellectual freedom.”

Similar measures to restrict sexualized content in schools has drawn criticism from free speech and civil rights advocates who say such policies target books about LGBTQ+ issues or identities and titles written by authors of color.

In February, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Missouri filed a lawsuit against the Wentzville School District after it removed seven books from school libraries that dealt with issues surrounding race, sexual orientation and gender identity. In February, the Wentzville Board of Education backtracked on its decision to permanently ban Toni Morrison’s  “The Bluest Eye,” but six other books – most of which center on LGBTQ+ characters – remain banned.

On Monday, a Wentzville School District administrator sent an email to district librarians instructing them to immediately remove titles that may violate the new law from school libraries, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

“Starting now we need you to review your libraries for materials matching the language in this state statute,” the administrator reportedly wrote. “If you come across a text that needs to be removed … pull the book from the shelf.”

Nationwide, close to 1,600 individual instances of books being banned were reported between January and March this year, according to the nonprofit PEN America. More than 40 percent of those bans were tied to directives from state officials or elected lawmakers to investigate or remove books in schools.

Source: TEST FEED1

Jeffrey Toobin leaving CNN

Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin is leaving CNN.

The pundit made the announcement Friday afternoon, and the news was confirmed by a CNN spokesperson soon after.

“Friends, I’ve decided that, after 20 years, I’m leaving CNN after my vacation,” Toobin wrote in a Twitter post.

“Was great to spend my last day on air with pals Wolf, Anderson and Don. Love all my former colleagues,” he added, referring to CNN anchors Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon.

In a statement, a spokesperson said CNN is “grateful for Jeffrey’s contributions to the network over the years and wish him all the best in his future endeavors.”

Toobin returned to CNN in the summer of last year after being placed on leave since the previous October following an incident during which he exposed himself on a Zoom call with fellow staffers at The New Yorker last year.

He was subsequently fired by The New Yorker, where he had worked for more than two decades.

“I’ve got a lot to rebuild,” Toobin said upon returning to CNN’s airwaves in June 2021. “But I feel very privileged and lucky that I’m going to be able to try and do that.”

Source: TEST FEED1