Free Republic

Democratic National Committee Vice Chair David Hogg said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that the Trump administration was showing it did “not care about the rule of law.” Partial transcript as follows: FORMER RNC CHAIR REINCE PRIEBUS: They’ve got no — well, he said they’ve got no message. They’ve got no movement. They’ve got no leader. I mean, it doesn’t get any worse than that. I mean, you’re defending Harvard. You’re traveling to El Salvador for MS-13 gang members. But here’s the point. KARL: Alleged. PRIEBUS: You’re taking $20 million, if I’m looking at someone, my vice chair, the RNC...

Everyone is talking about Republicans’ proposed Medicaid cuts, but hardly anyone is calling this what it really is: the strategy by Elon Musk, President Trump, and the Republican Party to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, one piece at a time. The ACA, a historic piece of legislation that extended health coverage to millions of Americans, celebrated its 15th anniversary on March 23. Signed by President Barack Obama in 2010, the ACA expanded Medicaid and provided subsidies so that more working and middle-class Americans could have access to our expensive and complicated health care system. The law also made it illegal...

Rest easy, everyone — Obamacare has completely taken care of the American health care system. It's done. It's completely fixed. In fact, it's so fixed that Americans had to borrow $74 billion last year to get the medical care they needed. From CBS News: Health care is so expensive that 31 million U.S. adults, or 12%, had to borrow a total of $74 billion last year to obtain medical care, new data shows. That includes people with health insurance, making such numbers even more troubling. Yes, even health insurance isn't enough to keep people from going into debt.

Researchers have created a unique hydrogel that’s both tough and self-healing, thanks to nanosheet-enhanced polymer entanglement. The material repairs itself in hours and could revolutionize artificial skin, robotics, and medical applications. The Challenge of Mimicking Skin Gels are everywhere in daily life, from hair products to the jelly-like textures in food. While human skin shares some gel-like qualities, it is uniquely difficult to replicate. Skin is both stiff and flexible, and it has an extraordinary ability to heal itself — often repairing completely within 24 hours after an injury. Until now, artificial gels could either mimic skin’s stiffness or its...

Two sick patients suspected to be infected with Ebola were taken from an Upper East Side urgent care to the hospital by first responders in hazmat suits Sunday morning, law enforcement sources told The Post. The patients were transported from a City MD on East 125th Street and Lexington Avenue by first responders wearing hazmat suits, the sources said. According to the sources, the patients are suspected to be infected with Ebola because they traveled from Uganda and had symptoms of the disease but there had been no tests to confirm the presence of the disease.

he health commissioner has asked the state’s Attorney General and lobbyist watchdog to launch a ‘formal inquiry.’ Prompted by a New York Focus article last week, Governor Kathy Hochul’s administration is seeking investigations into the mysterious funding behind a $10 million campaign targeting the governor’s plan to remake New York’s home care industry. As first reported by Gothamist, State Health Commissioner James McDonald sent a letter on Friday to Attorney General Letitia James and Sanford Berland, executive director of the state Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government, urging a formal inquiry into “what appears to be a concerted effort...

CBS News spent time with Barbara Goodfriend during the final 24 hours of her life after she chose "Medical Aid in Dying." The 83-year-old widow, who was diagnosed with ALS, explained her decision to die with medical assistance.

During an interview with “CBS Evening News” that took place on Thursday and was released on Friday, LAFD Chief Kristin Crowley denied that diversity initiatives have harmed the department’s ability to respond to emergencies like the recent fires and stated, “my number one priority is making sure that we can take care of the community that we took an oath to take care of, and with that is our ability to respond to emergencies.” Crowley stated, “My top three priorities since day one [have] been this, I want to clearly articulate that: The number one priority from day one is...

Already bracing for funding cuts under a new Trump administration, U.S. Treasury officials are calling on Congress to unlock $20 billion in IRS enforcement money that is tied up in legislative language that has effectively rendered the money frozen.Hoping to unlock the funds in upcoming budget negotiations, Treasury officials are rushing for action before President Joe Biden's term ends.The $20 billion in question is separate from another $20 billion rescinded from the agency last year. However, the legislative mechanism keeping the government afloat inadvertently duplicated the one-time cut.There would be 6,000 fewer audits of wealthy individuals and 2,000 fewer...

Barking mad or brilliant? New York City lawmakers are proposing a bill to let Big Apple workers take time off to care for their sick furry family members. The proposal, sponsored by city council member Shaun Abreu, would amend and expand the Earned Safe and Sick Time Act — which requires companies to give employees paid sick leave to care for themselves or family members — to include pets and service animals. Abreu touted mental health as a reason to incentivize pet ownership with the amended bill, citing research that owning pets can reduce cortisol, a stress-related hormone, and force...

The USS Hornet may be a decommissioned aircraft carrier, yet it has nevertheless become the launch-site for a controversial new war in the skies. The Marine Cloud Brightening Program's Coastal Atmospheric Aerosol Research and Engagement project, led by researchers from the University of Washington, took to the deck of the Hornet Tuesday to launch streams of particles into the sky above the San Francisco Bay. Their ultimate objective is apparently to block and reflect sunlight in hopes of limiting "global warming." CAARE researchers behind the geoengineering scheme opted not to announce their experiment, reportedly citing concerns that there might be...

Last month, former President Jimmy Carter marked one year in hospice. After entering end-of-life care in February 2023, he celebrated his 99th birthday and grieved the death of his wife of 77 years and former first lady, Rosalynn Carter. Even then, Carter was able — with help — to attend her funeral. Even at the end of life, the nation’s longest-living president — someone who “practically no one ever thought” would be elected president, writes the New York Times’ Peter Baker — is defying the odds. According to the National Institutes of Health, more than 90% of patients who enter...

More than half of U.S. adults have a favorable view of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), as the health care measure used by millions of Americans continues to gain popularity, according to a poll released Wednesday. The survey, released by health policy research group KFF, found that 59 percent of U.S. adults had a favorable view of the ACA, though respondents differed along party lines on what they would like to see done with the law. More than three-quarters of Democratic voters — 77 percent — want the next presidential administration and Congress to expand the law, while 39 percent...

KFF Health News — The Covid-19 pandemic would be a wake-up call for America, advocates for the elderly predicted: incontrovertible proof that the nation wasn’t doing enough to care for vulnerable older adults. The death toll was shocking, as were reports of chaos in nursing homes and seniors suffering from isolation, depression, untreated illness, and neglect. Around 900,000 older adults have died of Covid-19 to date, accounting for 3 of every 4 Americans who have perished in the pandemic. But decisive actions that advocates had hoped for haven’t materialized. Today, most people — and government officials — appear to accept...

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said Wednesday night on MSNBC’s “All In” that “undocumented Americans” were the people Democrats cared about most. Anchor Chris Hayes asked, “From my 20 years covering this issue, the trade is this, They want more border security enhancement, Democrats want a path to citizenship. This time around, the negotiation didn’t have a path to citizenship. It was entirely on their terms in order to get Ukraine funding, right.”

A new set of rules from the Biden administration seeks to rein in private health insurance companies’ use of prior authorization – a byzantine practice that requires people to seek insurance company permission before obtaining medication or having a procedure. The cost-containment strategy often delays care and forces patients, or their doctors, to navigate opaque and labyrinthine appeals. The administration’s newly finalized rules will require insurance companies who work in federal programs to speed up the approval process and make decisions within 72 hours for urgent requests. The regulations will also require companies to give a specific reason as to...

The White House is reporting strong enrollment numbers through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) one week after enrollment began, with 300,000 new customers signing up for plans already. President Biden on Thursday wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, “In the first week of Open Enrollment, 1.6 million people have signed up for a plan at HealthCare.gov, including 301,000 new consumers — that’s a 50% increase from last year.”

Montana state Rep. Zooey Zephyr (D) was named in Time magazine’s 2023 “TIME100 Next” list for her opposition against bills that restrict gender-affirming care, which gained her national recognition. In April, Zephyr was outspoken against a bill prohibiting gender-affirming medical and surgical care for minors in Montana, saying the bill’s supporters would have “blood on your hands.” The bill was one of a record-breaking number of anti-LGBTQ bills across the country in 2023, Time reported.

Retiring Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said in an interview that too many politicians in Washington “don’t care” about the country, only about their “political ambitions.” In an interview with The Associated Press published Wednesday, Leahy said when he first joined the Senate in 1975, senators found ways to get things done regardless of differing views. Leahy, 82, the Senate Appropriations Committee chairman, has spent the last 48 years in the Senate and serves as the chamber’s president pro tempore and is third in line to the presidency. “I think then, most of [the senators] knew there were basic things the...

A convicted felon accused by the US government of supporting “the cause of violent jihad” — and promoting 9/11 mastermind Osama Bin Laden — donated to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign and a host of progressive Democrats following his release from prison, records show. Emadeddin Muntasser, 57, and two of his associates were convicted in January 2008 on counts of conspiring to defraud the United States government, lying to the FBI and engaging in a scheme to conceal evidence. The charges stemmed from their operation of an Islamic charity that acted as a front to finance Islamic jihad abroad and lying...