For Democrats especially but additionally Republicans, the COVID-19 pandemic is over except when it is politically easy to state that it's not. It's over except when it comes to justifying programs that they like and do not otherwise possess the support or authority to enact.
For the Biden administration, this means suspending the necessity that student loans must be repaid. Legal challenges have halted Biden's plan to totally wipe out lots of education loan debt, something his administration is cynically portraying as some sort of cruel obstacle to their benevolence, rather than the way our democratic process works. Therefore the administration has once again extended a moratorium on education loan payment collection which was first issued at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The payment moratorium-which has now been extended nine times, including six times under President Biden-was set to run out on January 1, 2023. It will certainly be extended until Two months after court cases regarding the debt forgiveness plan are resolved or, if they are not resolved by the end of next June, Two months after that.
For Republicans, this means fighting to keep in place an immigrant expulsion measure known as Title 42-also invoked in the early days from the coronavirus pandemic to justify an extraordinary policy. Part of the Public Health Service Act, it says the us government may take emergency steps to prevent multiplication of disease. The Trump administration cited it as being cause for the immediate expulsion of migrants caught crossing U.S. borders as well as for denying these migrants the opportunity to make an application for asylum.
\”Between March 2022 and August 2022, U.S. border officials completed over 2 million Title 42 migrant expulsions,\” noted Reason's Fiona Harrigan recently. \”Former CDC Director Robert Redfield extended the Title 42 order for just one month and then indefinitely. The Biden administration sometimes fought to keep an order in place after which tried to rescind it, only to be challenged by a federal judge.\”
Earlier this month, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia vacated the order. Under the ruling, it might cease to apply on December 21.
Now, 15 states-all but one led by Republicans-filed a motion to intervene in the case, which may allow them to battle to keep the immigrant expulsion order in position. The motion was filed by the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
Even as Republican leaders have largely opposed extending public health measures according to pandemic concerns, these states are still citing COVID-19 as justification for keeping immigrants out. States are interested in \”excluding persons carrying communicable diseases,\” states their motion.
\”The states mistakenly believe Title 42 can be used for general border enforcement,\” Lee Gelernt from the American Civil Liberties Union told The brand new York Times. \”But it's a limited public health provision, and these states have not remotely shown they need Title 42 for public health reasons.\”
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\”Legislatures in most states, including Massachusetts, have responded to the rapid acceleration of autism diagnoses by mandating insurance coverage of ABA,\” notes Summers. \”Early Intervention, a federally funded program serving children from birth to 3 years, steers children diagnosed with autism into ABA programs.\”
And yet there's little data on whether ABA programs are in fact effective as well as in Summer's own experience with an autistic son, it has not been. \”To my knowledge, only one large-scale outcomes analysis continues to be undertaken by government,\” writes Summers:
That is the US Department of Defense's ongoing \”Autism Care Demonstration,\” a multiyear assessment of claims made in the military's insurance program. \”The Department remains very concerned,\” the 2022 report concluded, as \”almost 1 / 2 of the participants have no change or worsening symptoms after 2 yrs of ABA services.\” The data showed no correlation between treatment intensity and outcomes. Of the improvements that were imputed to ABA, the Pentagon's report questioned whether they were \”clinically significant.\” ABA's own research standards, the report said, \”do not meet our hierarchy of evidence standard for medical and proven care.\”
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o Seven everyone was killed after a gunman opened fire at a Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia.
o The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit says the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, developed by Congress in 2022, is unconstitutional, representing the \”vesting government power in a private entity not accountable to the people.\”
o Mandatory life sentences for minors convicted of certain crimes are unconstitutional, says the Tennessee Supreme Court.
o Ohioan Dean Gillispie was awarded $45 million in a wrongful imprisonment lawsuit. Gillispie \”sued Miami Township police and former detective Scott Moore for suppressing evidence and tainting eyewitness identifications within the 1991 rape and kidnapping case against Gillispie,\” notes USA Today. Moore's moves sent Gillispie to prison in excess of Two decades.
o Ny just enacted a two-year moratorium on cryptocurrency mining.
o \”Britain's Top court has ruled that Scotland's government cannot unilaterally hold a second referendum on whether to secede in the United Kingdom, inside a blow to independence campaigners that will be welcomed by Westminster's pro-union establishment,\” reports CNN.
