News
PBS NewsHour – July 29, 2022 (06:00)
For the first time, the U.S. government could have the power to negotiate prices for some of the costliest drugs covered under Medicare. The proposed legislation would also help Medicare recipients by imposing penalties against drug manufacturers who raise prices too quickly and removing some copay requirements. Julie Rovner of Kaiser Health News joins Laura Barrón-López to discuss.
Brooks and Capehart on the Senate’s climate and health care deal
PBS NewsHour – July 30, 2022 (03:55)
In our news wrap Saturday, catastrophic flash floods across eastern Kentucky and wider Appalachia have killed at least 25 people, President Biden tests positive for COVID again in a rare rebound case, protestors storm Iraq’s parliament for the second time this week, Pope Francis contemplates early retirement due to physical ailments, and New York declares a state of emergency over monkeypox.
In an exclusive interview, Attorney General Merrick Garland responded to questions of whether former President Trump’s potential candidacy would impact the Department of Justice’s Jan. 6 investigation. Garland tells NBC News’ Lester Holt, “We pursue justice without fear or favor. We intend to hold everyone, anyone who was criminally responsible for the events surrounding January 6, for any attempt to interfere with the lawful transfer of power from one administration to another, accountable, that’s what we do. We don’t pay any attention to other issues with respect to that.”
“Justice Department investigating Trump’s actions as part of Jan. 6 probe”
The Department of Justice is investigating former President Donald Trump’s actions leading up to the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol as part of its criminal probe of efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, an administration official familiar with the investigation said.
The inquiry is related to the department’s broader probe of efforts overturn the 2020 election results and not a criminal investigation of Trump himself, the official said.
The Washington Post first reported that the Justice Department was investigating Trump’s actions leading up to Jan. 6, citing four people familiar with the matter, whom it did not name. The department declined to comment on the investigation.
- Biden tests positive for COVID again
- Zelensky orders evacuation of Donetsk
- Pelosi begins Indo-Pacific tour amid speculation about Taiwan visit
- Newsom declares state of emergency as wildfires ravage Siskiyou County
- Homemade drone explosive injures 6 at Russian fleet HQ in Sevastopol
- Iraqi protesters storm and occupy parliament in Baghdad
- Manchin to appear on all 5 Sunday shows to discuss climate deal
- U.S. facing monkeypox vaccine shortfall
- Ukrainian grain magnate killed in Russian shelling
- Trump hosts controversial Saudi-backed golf event at Bedminster
In a major boost to Democrats, Manchin and Schumer announce deal for energy and health care bill
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Joe Manchin on Wednesday announced a deal on an energy and health care bill, representing a breakthrough after more than a year of negotiations that have collapsed time and again.
But it will face furious GOP opposition.
The deal is a major reversal for Manchin, and the health and climate bill stands a serious chance of becoming law as soon as August — assuming Democrats can pass the bill in the House and that it passes muster with the Senate parliamentarian to allow it to be approved along straight party lines in the budget process.
While Manchin scuttled President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill, the final deal includes a number of provisions the moderate from West Virginia had privately scoffed at, representing a significant reversal from earlier this month. That includes provisions addressing the climate crisis.
What’s in the Manchin-Schumer deal on climate, health care and taxes
The agreement contains a number of Democrats’ goals. While many details have not been disclosed, the measure would invest $369 billion into energy and climate change programs, with the goal of reducing carbon emissions by 40% by 2030, according to a one-page fact sheet. For the first time, Medicare would be empowered to negotiate the prices of certain medications, and it would cap out-of-pocket costs at $2,000 for those enrolled in Medicare drug plans. It would also extend expiring enhanced subsidies for Affordable Care Act coverage for three years.
The Atlantic, , July 30, 2022 (10:19)
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/
Students onAir introduces Stacey Abrams … Democratic Candidate for Governor of Georgia … by way of this 1-minute bio … drawn from her campaign website.
Go to GA.ONAIR.CC and select the Stacey Abrams post to learn more about her experience, policy positions and much more.
More Learn About videos at the US onAir YouTube Channel.
Guardian nNews, July 28, 2022
WATCH LIVE: Jon Stewart joins lawmakers to talk about PACT Act for veterans exposed to burn pits
A volley of Ukrainian missiles rained down on the Antonivskiy Bridge in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city of Kherson, an indicator that the Ukrainian army is stepping up its attempts to isolate the city.
Seized by genuine panic about the prospect of Republicans winning control of Congress and governors’ mansions across the country, multiple Democratic leaders and candidates in some of the tightest races are calling on party leaders — including President Joe Biden — to focus on calling out Republicans as “extremists.”
They don’t think Biden’s poll numbers are going to go up much or inflation is going to go down much. But in the continuing wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and with hundreds of election deniers on the ballot across the country, many Democratic leaders are looking to reframe the stakes of the midterms around a GOP they say has become a threat to America — arguing that Republican control in states and in Congress would lead to a federal abortion ban, major rights restrictions, and attacks on democracy which could endanger the 2024 presidential election.
“Democrats would be irresponsible, both morally and politically, if we just went with the same poll-tested stuff about delivering infrastructure,” said Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz, who is helping craft some of the strategy in the Senate to press Republicans. “There’s a place for all of that, but these people are out of their minds and are really acting with impunity, and we need to say so.”
- Senators reach bipartisan deal aimed at preventing another Jan. 6
- Russia expands its wartime goals in Ukraine
- Judge orders Giuliani to testify in Georgia election inquiry
- Heat wave spreads to Central Europe
- Memos, emails clarify Trump strategy for census citizenship question
- Biden announces plan to help address extreme heat
- E.U. tells member states to cut gas usage as Nord Stream pipeline reopens
- Uvalde school superintendent recommends firing police chief
- Italy’s prime minister resigns after failing to salvage coalition
- Trump family gathers for Ivana Trump’s New York City funeral
NY Times (ungated), July 21, 2022 – 7:00 pm (ET)
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack will hold its eighth public hearing July 21. The hearing is expected to focus on what then-President Donald Trump was doing during the three plus hours that his supporters were attacking the U.S. Capitol in an effort to stop the certification Joe Biden’s presidential victory on Jan. 6, 2021.
The hearing is scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. ET. To preview the hearing, beginning at 7 p.m. ET, the PBS NewsHour will take a look back at the last seven public hearings and Digital Anchor Nicole Ellis will host a conversation looking ahead at what can be expected to come out of the July 21 primetime hearing.
The hearing comes after the committee on July 12 focused on the role of far-right extremist groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers ahead of the attack and the role that Trump and his allies played in stoking baseless theories of election fraud ahead of the insurrection.
The Atlantic, , July 30, 2022
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/
1 minute Learn About video on Raphael Warnock’s campaign policies… from his ampaign website.
Go to GA. ONAIR.CC to learn more about Warnock and his senate with Herschel Walker.
More Learn About videos at the US onAir YouTube Channel.
What would it have been like to live in Babel in the days after its destruction? In the Book of Genesis, we are told that the descendants of Noah built a great city in the land of Shinar. They built a tower “with its top in the heavens” to “make a name” for themselves. God was offended by the hubris of humanity and said:
Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.
The text does not say that God destroyed the tower, but in many popular renderings of the story he does, so let’s hold that dramatic image in our minds: people wandering amid the ruins, unable to communicate, condemned to mutual incomprehension.
Summary/Overview
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has fired his head of Secret Service (SBU), Ivan Bakanov, and General Prosecutor Iryna Venediktova. Bakanov was a childhood friend and then was Zelensky’s manager during his career as a comedian.
Apparently, SBU was heavily penetrated by Russian intelligence. The SBU directors of the offices in Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava, Sumy, Zakarpattia and Zhytomyr were also relieved of their duties.
Ukraine faces difficulties getting Western weapons to the front lines, the Wall Street Journal reports, explaining that the country has been given multiple complex systems with not much in common.
When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and 50 years of precedent on abortion rights, Justice Thomas suggested the court should also reconsider other cases like the decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. This spurred the U.S. House to vote Tuesday on protecting marriage equality, while some same-sex couples are turning to lawyers with concerns. John Yang reports.
NY Times (ungated),
The antislavery politicians of the 1840s and 1850s did not speak with a single voice.
Some opposed slavery for moral and religious reasons and hoped to wipe its terrible mark from the body politic of the United States. Some opposed slavery but denied that the federal government had any right to interfere with the institution in the 15 states where it persisted. They were committed to “free soil” in the West more than abolition in the South. Still others weren’t concerned with slavery per se as much as they were fiercely opposed to Black migration from the South. They opposed slavery, and supported colonization, because it was the way to ensure that the United States would remain a “white man’s democracy.”
What tied the antislavery factions of American politics to one another wasn’t a single view of slavery or Black Americans but a shared view of the crisis facing the American republic. That crisis, they said in unison, was the “slave power.”
The “slave power” thesis was the belief that a slaveholding oligarchy ran the United States for its own benefit. It had ruled the nation for decades, went the argument, and now intended to expand slavery across the continent and even further into the North.
The Federal Reserve raised interest rates significantly again Wednesday in a bid to put the brakes on inflation. The economy is no longer running nearly as hot as it did last year, but Fed Chair Jerome Powell said it was crucial to tame high prices by raising rates later this year, and said he hopes a recession can be avoided. Economics correspondent Paul Solman reports.
An army of commentators have rightly condemned a belief called “replacement theory,” which a young White man cited before killing 10 people, most of them Black, Saturday at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.
An army of commentators have rightly condemned a belief called “replacement theory,” which a young White man cited before killing 10 people, most of them Black, Saturday at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.
