“The House on Friday passed legislation that would create a statutory right for health-care professionals to provide abortions, amid an intensifying legal battle over a Texas law that is the most restrictive in the nation.
H.R. 3755, the Women’s Health Protection Act, was approved by the Democratic-controlled House 218 to 211 but faces tough odds in the evenly divided Senate.
The measure states that health-care providers have a statutory right to provide, and patients have a right to receive, abortion services without any number of limitations that states and opponents of the procedure have sought to impose.
The measure would essentially codify Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision guaranteeing the right to abortion before viability, usually around 22 to 24 weeks.
The new Texas law, which took effect Sept. 1 after the Supreme Court refused to immediately block its enforcement, bans abortions as early as six weeks into pregnancy and makes no exceptions for rape, sexual abuse or incest.” Read more at Washington Post
“President Biden promised Friday that his sweeping domestic agenda package will cost ‘nothing’ because Democrats will pay for it through tax hikes on the wealthy and corporations, a show of confidence despite the struggles of congressional Democrats to bridge internal divisions on myriad issues.
The remarks were an attempt by Biden to assuage some of the cost concerns pointedly expressed by the moderate Democrats about the size of the legislation — composed of significant investments in health care, climate, education and the social safety net — as the bill’s fate teeters on Capitol Hill.
The total spending outlined in the plan is $3.5 trillion, but moderates such as Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) have said they will not support so high a figure. Support from both senators is needed because the Senate’s 50-50 split means every Democrat must back the bill for it to pass.” Read more at Washington Post
“WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced Friday that all migrants have been cleared from the encampment in Del Rio, Tex.
Mayorkas made the announcement at the White House amid widespread criticism of the Biden administration for its handling of the migrants, most of them Haitians, at the US-Mexico border.
Earlier in the day, President Biden decried their treatment and took responsibility for the handling of the estimated 15,000 migrants.
‘Less than one week ago, there were approximately 15,000 migrants in Del Rio, Texas, the great majority of whom were Haitian nationals,’ Mayorkas told reporters Friday. ‘This was the result of an unprecedented movement of a very large number of people traveling to a single point of the border within a matter of a few days. ... As of this morning, there are no longer any migrants in the camp underneath the Del Rio International Bridge.’” Read more at Boston Globe
“President Biden does not plan to invoke executive privilege to block information Congress is seeking about former president Donald Trump or his aides regarding the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the White House said Friday, a move that could provide answers to some of the remaining questions surrounding the insurrection.
Trump has said he will cite ‘executive privilege’ to block information requests from the House select committee investigating the events of that day, banking on a legal theory that has successfully allowed presidents and their aides to avoid or delay congressional scrutiny for decades, including during the Trump administration.
Biden, however, probably plans to share that information with Congress if asked, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Friday.
‘The president has already concluded that it would not be appropriate to assert executive privilege,’ Psaki said. ‘And so we will respond promptly to these questions as they arise and certainly as they come up from Congress.’” Read more at Washington Post
“A day after Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky broke with her agency’s advisory committee to recommend booster shots for adults with high-risk jobs, she pushed back against the notion that she had overruled her experts.
Walensky on Thursday recommended that people whose jobs put them at heightened risk of illness seek a third vaccine dose if they initially got the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. On Friday, she said that the advisory panel had deliberated on the issue for hours and that the decision was a ‘scientific close call.’
‘In that situation, it was my call to make,’ Walensky said at a briefing of the White House coronavirus task force. ‘If I had been in the room, I would have voted yes.’” Read more at Washington Post
“WASHINGTON — State health officials rushed on Friday to roll out campaigns to provide coronavirus booster shots for millions of vulnerable people who got the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and to help a confused public understand who qualifies for the extra shots.
Among their challenges: making sure that recipients of the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines know that they are not yet eligible for boosters, reaching isolated elderly people and informing younger adults with medical conditions or jobs that place them at higher risk that they might be eligible under the broad federal rules.
‘Those of us overseeing vaccine rollouts don’t have a clear idea of what to do,’ said Dr. Clay Marsh, West Virginia’s Covid-19 czar.
In his state, pharmacies sent staff members into the largest nursing homes on Friday to administer booster doses. In Vermont, health officials opened booster shot appointments to people 80 and older on Friday, and said many other eligible people could get them starting next week. But the state said it was waiting for clarity from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on which workers and medical conditions would qualify.” Read more at New York Times
President Biden won Arizona with a margin of just over 10,000 votes.
PHOTO: MATT YORK/ASSOCIATED PRESS
“A GOP-ordered review of Arizona’s 2020 vote count confirmed Biden’s win.
Arizona Senate Republicans commissioned the audit in the state’s most populous county, Maricopa. The report, which was delayed for months, found that President Biden won Arizona with a margin of just over 10,000 votes, affirming an outcome that some GOP leaders including former President Donald Trump have claimed is illegitimate. The report identified what it said were problems with the voting process, though Maricopa County said the audit was full of errors and faulty conclusions. The Florida-based company hired to perform the review, Cyber Ninjas, has no federal accreditation to audit elections. County officials have conducted multiple reviews that confirmed Biden’s victory. Arizona’s senate president, Republican Karen Fann, said the goal was to improve the state’s election system. There is no evidence that there was widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, and Mr. Trump and his allies lost dozens of lawsuits contesting results in several states. On Thursday, Texas officials announced new election audits in some counties after Trump publicly called on the state’s GOP governor to conduct a review.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“A New York state judge ordered the Trump Organization to turn over documents subpoenaed by the state attorney general’s office, indicating that a 2½-year civil-fraud investigation into the former president’s business affairs is still active.
The order by Justice Arthur Engoron, dated Sept. 2 and unsealed Friday, requires the Trump Organization to provide a report by next Thursday of what it had done to preserve, collect and produce documents detailed in the attorney general’s subpoenas. One subpoena under dispute dated back to Dec. 27, 2019, the order said.
Justice Engoron, of the state Supreme Court in Manhattan, said that if the attorney general’s office concludes after Oct. 15 that the Trump Organization hasn’t sufficiently complied, then the company must hire an independent electronic-discovery firm to oversee the collection and review of the information.
The filing comes in a long-running dispute between the Trump Organization and the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James over what evidence the company must provide for a civil-fraud investigation. The dispute is separate from the criminal tax-fraud case filed by the Manhattan district attorney’s office against the company and its longtime chief finance officer, Allen Weisselberg, this summer. The company and Mr. Weisselberg have pleaded not guilty.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Biden’s tax bill would allow some profitable companies to pay no taxes. The Democratic proposal approved this month would increase the top corporate tax rate and remove many benefits of booking profits in low-tax foreign countries, but it wouldn’t affect the main reasons why profitable companies sometimes don’t pay taxes, including accelerated depreciation of investments and tax credits for certain activities.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Evergrande didn’t pay the $83.5 million it owed by its Thursday deadline. China’s most indebted property developer, which could still make the payment belatedly, has kept global markets on edge as it struggles to survive. A missed payment would set the stage for what could be the largest-ever dollar-bond default by a company in Asia.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Britney Spears’s father and the security firm he hired to protect her ran an intense surveillance apparatus that monitored her communications and secretly captured audio recordings from her bedroom, including her interactions and conversations with her boyfriend and children, according to a former employee of the security firm.
Alex Vlasov, the employee, supported his claims with emails, text messages and audio recordings he was privy to in his nine years as an executive assistant and operations and cybersecurity manager for Black Box, the security firm. He came forward for a new documentary by The New York Times, ‘Controlling Britney Spears,’ which was released on Friday.
Recording conversations in a private place and mirroring text messages without the consent of both parties can be a violation of the law. It is unclear if the court overseeing Ms. Spears’s conservatorship was aware of or had approved the surveillance.
Mr. Vlasov’s account, and his trove of materials, create the most detailed portrait yet of what Ms. Spears’s life has been like under the conservatorship for the past 13 years. Mr. Vlasov said the relentless surveillance operation had helped several people linked to the conservatorship — primarily her father, James P. Spears — control nearly every aspect of her life.” Read more at New York Times
“BRUSSELS — For the past few years, Hungary and Poland have repeatedly gone up against the long-established rules and values of the European Union, even though they are members.
They have challenged the supremacy of E.U. law and circumvented rulings from the bloc’s highest court. Brussels has responded with reprimands and warnings, but in Budapest and Warsaw, they have been received as empty threats.
Now, though, Brussels is using another tool at its disposal: money.
At a time when Europe is trying to recover from the pandemic, the European Union has withheld tens of billions of dollars in grants to Hungary and Poland, and Poland is looking at hefty fines for flouting decisions of the bloc’s highest court, the European Court of Justice.
For the European Union, the fight is an existential issue. For the bloc to function properly, all member nations need to obey the same principles. But Hungary and Poland are led by right-wing populist parties for whom defying Brussels has often made for good politics.
The two countries have now been hit by increased financial pressure from the executive arm of the European Union, the European Commission, which has long been frustrated by their repeated stymying of its legal efforts to counter their rule of law violations, particularly with regard to judicial system changes, press freedom and minority rights, over the past six years.
The European Commission acknowledged this month that it was withholding $42 billion in payments to Poland from an $857 billion coronavirus recovery fund because of that country’s challenges to the supremacy of E.U. law. The commission also said that it might cut more funding to Polish regions that have declared themselves ‘L.G.B.T-free zones.’
Payments of $8.4 billion from the virus fund to Hungary have also been frozen after the European Commission said that Budapest had not done enough to address corruption.
And both countries are at risk of losing even more money because of a mechanism agreed upon in December that ties all E.U. funds to rule of law standards like independence of the judiciary and anticorruption measures. The rules are already in force, but Hungary and Poland have challenged the mechanism in the European Court of Justice.” Read more at New York Times
“WASHINGTON — The Justice Department reached an agreement on Friday clearing the way for a senior executive of Huawei Technologies, the Chinese telecommunications giant, to return to China after admitting some wrongdoing in a sanctions violation case, removing one major irritant between the two superpowers.
Within hours, China reciprocated, releasing two Canadians whom it had held since shortly after the executive, Meng Wanzhou, was detained, and who had appeared to be jailed as hostages to Ms. Meng’s case.
The resolution of the criminal charges against Ms. Meng, the daughter of Huawei’s founder, came in the midst of a downward spiral in military, technological and trade competition between Washington and Beijing.
In China, Ms. Meng is considered a member of the new Chinese royalty — technology executives who have used their power to expand China’s influence across the globe. In Washington, she became a symbol of the Cold War-like atmosphere in relations between Beijing and Washington — and the near simultaneous releases also had echoes of that era.” Read more at New York Times
“Prosecutors in Northern California filed criminal charges against Pacific Gas & Electric on Friday in connection with the deaths of four people last year in a wildfire that was linked to the utility’s equipment.
The Shasta County district attorney brought the charges — including manslaughter, along with other felonies and misdemeanors — in connection with the Zogg fire, which burned more than 56,000 acres and destroyed 204 buildings near Redding.
An investigation by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection determined that the fire was caused when a pine tree came into contact with electrical lines owned and operated by PG&E. PG&E said it had cooperated with the investigation.” Read more at New York Times
“The Biden administration is struggling to ease congestion in the nation’s freight system, as mounting backlogs threaten to dash the president’s hopes for a smooth economic recovery with higher prices and spot product shortages.
The worst choke point is in Southern California at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, where 62 container ships carrying toys, electronics, furniture, and other goods lie at anchor waiting for an unloading berth. The floating queue, virtually unknown before the coronavirus pandemic upended global supply chains, has doubled since mid-August.
Onshore, docks and railroad terminals are jammed with shipping containers amid an epic buying spree by companies racing to keep pace with consumer demand. Trucking companies and warehouses complain they can’t find enough workers to keep freight moving, leaving Americans waiting for products such as Honda auto parts, Lands’ End clothing, Fancy Feast cat food, and Peloton exercise gear.” Read more at Boston Globe
“A former ABC news producer has accused CNN’s Chris Cuomo of groping her.
Shelley Ross, a veteran TV journalist, said the anchor touched her inappropriately at a party in 2005 while they were both ABC News employees. Ross alleged in a New York Times opinion essay that Cuomo enveloped her in a strong bear hug ‘while lowering one hand to firmly grab and squeeze the cheek of my buttock.’ Ross said Cuomo had emailed her to apologize after the incident, saying, ‘Now that I think of it … I am ashamed.’ In a statement, Cuomo said the encounter wasn't sexual in nature. ‘I apologized to her then, and I meant it,’ he said. Earlier this year, the CNN anchor drew criticism for joining strategy discussions with advisers for his brother, then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, as the governor responded to allegations of sexual assault. CNN President Jeff Zucker said the journalist’s participation was inappropriate but declined to discipline him.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Starbucks is pushing back against an employee unionization drive. Workers at some Buffalo, N.Y., stores are attempting to become the first company-owned cafes in the U.S. to organize, citing concerns about pay and staffing. The coffee giant says that it is boosting wages and benefits and that a union isn’t needed.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“A former Theranos employee tried to delay the launch of blood-testing devices. Former lab director Adam Rosendorff testified in the trial of Elizabeth Holmes that, in 2013, he alerted the startup chief to the inaccurate results the machines were providing on tests, in an effort to delay their rollout. She pushed the commercial launch despite the lack of validation, saying the company would use conventional analyzers not made by Theranos, Dr. Rosendorff said.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“The U.S. is waiving key sanctions against Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The Treasury Department said it would allow U.S. agencies, aid groups and the private sector to send food and medicine to the country amid a growing humanitarian crisis. Terror sanctions against the Islamist group have restricted trade and finance to the country after the Taliban took control last month.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“2.7% — The share of immunocompromised people in the U.S. population. This group includes cancer patients, transplant recipients and people with autoimmune diseases, many of whom aren’t able to generate high levels of Covid-19 antibodies even when they are vaccinated. Many immunocompromised workers and their loved ones are weighing whether to return to workplaces.
218 — The number of Democrats who voted in favor of a bill the House passed today that would stop states from enacting abortion restrictions before fetal viability. The legislation comes after Texas Republicans banned the procedure after about six weeks of pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant. The bill is unlikely to advance in the evenly divided Senate.
459 — The number of Fortune 500 CEOs who are men. Lauren Hobart took overas chief of Dick’s Sporting Goods earlier this year, and is one of the few dozen women CEOs at the largest U.S. companies. ‘I have felt like being a female leader is a huge asset,’ she says.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Michael K. Williams' cause of death has been revealed.
‘The Wire’ and ‘Boardwalk Empire’ actor died from an accidental overdose of fentanyl-laced heroin and cocaine, the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner confirmed in a statement to USA TODAY on Friday.
The Emmy-nominated actor was found dead Sept. 6 in his Brooklyn penthouse apartment, according to the New York City Police Department. He was 54.
Williams was laid to rest in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 16 during a service at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Cathedral. He was remembered as ‘one of television's most respected and acclaimed actors’ who brought ‘characters to life, often with surprising tenderness.’
He was well known for his portrayal of Omar Little in ‘The Wire,’ which ran from 2002 to 2008. He also appeared on many more HBO series, including ‘Boardwalk Empire,’ ‘The Night Of’ and most recently, ‘Lovecraft Country,’ in which he was nominated for an Emmy for his role as Montrose Freeman.” Read more at USA Today
“HAVEN, Wis. — A snapshot panorama from the first day of the Ryder Cup would start with a crowd of 40,000 — 90 percent of it American fans because of pandemic-related travel restrictions — noisily arriving before sunrise on Friday to roar unabated for 12 hours and through eight matches that concluded in the gloaming. Patriotic costumes were in vogue, though not among the most prominent spectators in the mix: Michael Jordan and Stephen Curry.
Whistling Straits, the topsy-turvy golf fun house designed by Pete Dye along Lake Michigan, almost claimed two competitors as a stumbling Jordan Spieth ended up a hop step from a Great Lakes face plant and Ireland’s Shane Lowry flopped to his backside on an embankment like a toddler on a water slide.
Tiger Woods, still recovering from a devastating car crash in February, was there in spirit on Friday, having sent an inspirational message to the U.S. team on the eve of the event. Bryson DeChambeau, ever the lightning rod for attention, boomed his opening drive of the day off line and off the ankle of a spectator. Later, DeChambeau ripped a towering 417-yard drive and then helped chase down the world’s top-ranked male golfer, Jon Rahm, to earn a pivotal half point.
Ultimately, the big picture would reveal that the Americans had taken control of the event by winning each of the four-match morning and afternoon sessions for a 6-2 lead over the European team. It was the largest first-day lead for the United States at the Ryder Cup since 1975, when it had a five-point lead.” Read more at New York Times
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