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Washington, Oregon and California governors form a health alliance
Court Issues |
2025/09/03 20:00
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The Democratic governors of Washington, Oregon and California announced Wednesday that they created an alliance to safeguard health policies, believing the Trump administration is putting Americans’ health and safety at risk by politicizing the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The move comes with COVID-19 cases rising and as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has restructured and downsized the CDC and attempted to advance anti-vaccine policies that are contradicted by decades of scientific research. Concerns about staffing and budget cuts were heightened after the White House sought to oust the agency’s director and some top CDC leaders resigned in protest.
“The CDC has become a political tool that increasingly peddles ideology instead of science, ideology that will lead to severe health consequences,” the governors said in a joint statement.
“The dismantling of public health and dismissal of experienced and respected health leaders and advisers, along with the lack of using science, data, and evidence to improve our nation’s health are placing lives at risk,” California State Health Officer Erica Pan said in the news release.
Washington state Health Secretary Dennis Worsham said public health is about prevention — “preventing illness, preventing the spread of disease, and preventing early, avoidable deaths.”
“Vaccines are among the most powerful tools in modern medicine; they have indisputably saved millions of lives,” Oregon Health Director Sejal Hathi said. “But when guidance about their use becomes inconsistent or politicized, it undermines public trust at precisely the moment we need it most.”
Partnership seeks expert medical advice
The partnership plans to coordinate health guidelines by aligning immunization plans based on recommendations from respected national medical organizations, said a joint statement from Gov. Bob Ferguson of Washington, Gov. Tina Kotek of Oregon and Gov. Gavin Newsom of California.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew G. Nixon shot back in a statement Wednesday that “Democrat-run states that pushed unscientific school lockdowns, toddler mask mandates, and draconian vaccine passports during the COVID era completely eroded the American people’s trust in public health agencies.”
He said the administration’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices “remains the scientific body guiding immunization recommendations in this country, and HHS will ensure policy is based on rigorous evidence and Gold Standard Science, not the failed politics of the pandemic.”
Florida announced Wednesday that it plans to phase out all childhood vaccine mandates as Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis plans to curb vaccine requirements and other health mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Meanwhile, public health agencies across the country have started taking steps to ensure their states have access to vaccines after U.S. regulators came out with new policies that limited access to COVID-19 shots.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s health department said last week it is seeking advice from medical experts and its own Immunization Advisory Committee on COVID-19 vaccines and other immunizations for the fall respiratory season.
The health department plans to provide citizens “with specific guidance by the end of September to help Illinois health care providers and residents make informed decisions about vaccination and protecting themselves and their loved ones,” Health Director Sameer Vohra said in a statement.
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‘Ketamine Queen’ pleads guilty to selling fatal dose to Matthew Perry
Court Issues |
2025/08/28 20:00
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A woman branded as the “Ketamine Queen” pleaded guilty Wednesday to selling Matthew Perry the drug that killed him, becoming the fifth and final defendant charged in Perry’s overdose death to admit guilt.
Jasveen Sangha pleaded guilty to five federal charges, including providing the ketamine that led to Perry’s death. Her trial had been planned to start later this month.
Perry’s mother, Suzanne Perry, and his stepfather, “Dateline” reporter Keith Morrison, sat in the audience. It was their first time attending court proceedings since the announcement of the indictments one year ago.
Wearing tan jail garb, Sangha stood in court Wednesday next to her attorney Mark Geragos as she repeated “guilty” five times when U.S. District Court Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett asked for her pleas.
Before that, she answered “yes, your honor” to dozens of procedural questions, hedging slightly when the judge asked if she knew the drugs she was giving to co-defendant and middleman Erik Fleming were going to Perry.
“There was no way I could tell 100%,” she said. She later added, to a similar question on vials of ketamine she gave to Fleming, that “I didn’t know if all of them or some of them” were bound for Perry. The comments didn’t affect her plea agreement.
Prosecutors had cast Sangha, a 42-year-old citizen of the U.S. and the U.K., as a prolific drug dealer who was known to her customers as the “Ketamine Queen,” using the term often in press releases and court documents.
Making good on a deal she signed on Aug. 18, Sangha pleaded guilty to one count of maintaining a drug-involved premises, three counts of distribution of ketamine, and one count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death.
“She feels horrible about all of this. Nobody wants to be in the chain of causation for lack of a better term,” Geragos said outside the federal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles. “She feels horrible and she’s felt horrible since day one.”
Sangha admitted to selling drugs directly to 33-year-old Cody McLaury, who died from an overdose in 2019. McLaury had no connection to Perry.
Prosecutors agreed to drop three other counts.
Geragos, whose other clients have included Michael Jackson, Chris Brown and the Menendez brothers, told the judge that the deal was reached “after a robust back-and-forth with the government.”
The final plea deal came a year after federal prosecutors announced the indictments in Perry’s Oct. 28, 2023 death after a sweeping investigation.
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Texas GOP Set to Trigger National Redistricting Battle With Map Vote
Court Issues |
2025/08/18 14:41
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The first domino in a growing national redistricting battle is likely to fall Wednesday as the Republican-controlled Texas legislature is expected to pass a new congressional map creating five new winnable seats for the GOP.
The vote follows prodding by President Donald Trump, eager to stave off a midterm defeat that would deprive his party of control of the House of Representatives, and weeks of delays after dozens of Texas Democratic state lawmakers fled the state in protest. Some Democrats returned Monday, only to be assigned round-the-clock police escorts to ensure their attendance at Wednesday’s session. Those who refused to be monitored were confined to the House floor, where they protested on a livestream Tuesday night.
Furious national Democrats have vowed payback for the Texas map, with California’s legislature poised to approve new maps adding more Democratic-friendly seats later this week. The map would still need to be approved by that state’s voters in November.
Normally, states redraw maps once a decade with new census figures. But Trump is lobbying other conservative-controlled states like Indiana and Missouri to also try to squeeze new GOP-friendly seats out of their maps as his party prepares for a difficult midterm election next year.
In Texas, Democrats spent the day before the vote continuing to draw attention to the extraordinary lengths the Republicans who run the legislature were going to ensure it takes place. Democratic state Rep. Nicole Collier started it when she refused to sign what Democrats called the “permission slip” needed to leave the House chamber, a half-page form allowing Department of Public Safety troopers to follow them. She spent Monday night and Tuesday on the House floor, where she set up a livestream while her Democratic colleagues outside had plainclothes officers following them to their offices and homes.
Dallas-area Rep. Linda Garcia said she drove three hours home from Austin with an officer following her. When she went grocery shopping, he went down every aisle with her, pretending to shop, she said. As she spoke to The Associated Press by phone, two unmarked cars with officers inside were parked outside her home.
“It’s a weird feeling,” she said. “The only way to explain the entire process is: It’s like I’m in a movie.”
The trooper assignments, ordered by Republican House Speaker Dustin Burrows, was another escalation of a redistricting battle that has widened across the country. Trump is pushing GOP state officials to tilt the map for the 2026 midterms more in his favor to preserve the GOP’s slim House majority, and Democrats nationally have rallied around efforts to retaliate.
House Minority Leader Gene Wu, from Houston, and state Rep. Vince Perez, of El Paso, stayed overnight with Collier, who represents a minority-majority district in Fort Worth.
On Tuesday, more Democrats returned to the Capitol to tear up the slips they had signed and stay on the House floor, which has a lounge and restrooms for members.
Dallas-area Rep. Cassandra Garcia Hernandez called their protest a “slumber party for democracy,” and she said Democrats were holding strategy sessions on the floor.
“We are not criminals,” Houston Rep. Penny Morales Shaw said.
Collier said having officers shadow her was an attack on her dignity and an attempt to control her movements.
Burrows brushed off Collier’s protest, saying he was focused on important issues, such as providing property tax relief and responding to last month’s deadly floods. His statement Tuesday morning did not mention redistricting, and his office did not immediately respond to other Democrats joining Collier.
“Rep. Collier’s choice to stay and not sign the permission slip is well within her rights under the House Rules,” Burrows said.
Under those rules, until Wednesday’s scheduled vote, the chamber’s doors are locked, and no member can leave “without the written permission of the speaker.”
To do business Wednesday, 100 of 150 House members must be present. The GOP plan is designed to send five additional Republicans from Texas to the U.S. House. Texas Democrats returned to Austin after Democrats in California launched an effort to redraw their state’s districts to take five seats from Republicans.
Democrats also said they were returning because they expect to challenge the new maps in court.
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Trump executive order gives politicians control over all federal grants
Court Issues |
2025/08/09 18:07
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An executive order signed by President Donald Trump late Thursday aims to give political appointees power over the billions of dollars in grants awarded by federal agencies. Scientists say it threatens to undermine the process that has helped make the U.S. the world leader in research and development.
The order requires all federal agencies, including FEMA, the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, to appoint officials responsible for reviewing federal funding opportunities and grants, so that they “are consistent with agency priorities and the national interest.”
It also requires agencies to make it so that current and future federal grants can be terminated at any time — including during the grant period itself.
Agencies cannot announce new funding opportunities until the new protocols are in place, according to the order. The Trump administration said these changes are part of an effort to “strengthen oversight” and “streamline agency grantmaking.” Scientists say the order will cripple America’s scientific engine by placing control over federal research funds in the hands of people who are influenced by politics and lack relevant expertise.
“This is taking political control of a once politically neutral mechanism for funding science in the U.S.,” said Joseph Bak-Coleman, a scientist studying group decision-making at the University of Washington.
The changes will delay grant review and approval, slowing “progress for cures and treatments that patients and families across the country urgently need,” said the Association of American Medical Colleges in a statement.
The administration has already terminated thousands of research grants at agencies like the NSF and NIH, including on topics like transgender health, vaccine hesitancy, misinformation and diversity, equity and inclusion.
The order could affect emergency relief grants doled out by FEMA, public safety initiatives funded by the Department of Justice and public health efforts supported by the Centers for Disease Control. Experts say the order is likely to be challenged in court.
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