News – Page 1851 – 105.7 WDNY

Missouri lawmakers move forward with bills targeting transgender youth health care, sports

April 27, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(JEFFERSON CITY, Mo.) — Missouri has become the latest state to advance bills that target transgender youth.

The Republican-led House voted to push forward in a committee this week with HB 2649 or the “Missouri Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act,” which bars physicians and health care professionals employed by state and local governments from providing “gender transition procedures” to anyone under the age of 18. It also prohibits state or locally-run facilities from performing the procedure on minors.

The legislature also voted for an amendment to HB 1973, which would require transgender students in high school to play on the sports teams of the same biological sex listed on their birth certificate.

Any physician or health care professional who performs gender transitioning procedures or refers anyone to any health care professional that can could be “subject of civil and administrative actions,” according to the proposed bill.

The SAFE Act also states that any health carrier or health benefit plan on or after Jan. 1, 2023, will not include reimbursement for gender transition procedures for an individual under 18 years of age, nor will it be required to provide coverage for gender transition procedures.

Republican Rep. Suzie Pollock, who sponsored the SAFE Act, said when presenting it at a hearing on Thursday that the SAFE Act “helps kids struggling to embrace their biological sex by protecting them from harmful drugs and surgery.”

“The SAFE Act is providing a standard of informed consent for children by not violating the Hippocratic Oath of ‘Do no harm,’” she said. “Giving children puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and even irreversible surgery violates the first duty of medicine, which is ‘Do no harm.’”

PROMO, a Missouri statewide organization advocating for LGBTQ equality, tweeted against the SAFE Act.

“Testifying in front of HB 2649 this morning. Rep. Pollock’s extreme attack on banning access to life-saving affirming health care for trans kids. We’re here to protect trans youth in our state,” PROMO said. “Don’t be fooled, there’s nothing ‘SAFE’ about this act. Call Rep. Pollock now and express how offensive her misunderstanding of science and medicine really is.”

Republican Rep. Ron Copeland said he offered the amendment to HB 1973 to protect his daughter.

“I know this is a controversial issue in this body, and when it comes right down to it, I come up here and I’m going to fight for my daughter and all the daughters in the state,” Copeland said at the hearing. “I want everybody to know that I’m here as a father, and if I can’t fight for my daughter’s rights, I can’t expect anyone else to do that.”

Copeland said he is okay with biological women playing male sports due to the biological differences.

Republican Rep. Mary Elizabeth Coleman was in agreement with Copeland’s amendment.

“Conflating who can and cannot participate in [sports] is really going to hurt the outcome for our daughters, so as someone who has really benefited from participation in women’s sports, I would ask everyone to stand up for our daughters and for the girls of the state and support this amendment,” she said.

Missouri Democrat Rep. Ian Mackey went viral on Apr. 14 for his speech condemning a different bill that would ban transgender girls from competing on girls’ sports teams. Mackey spoke up about the same issue again at Monday’s hearing.

“I just want to remind my colleagues — colleagues that I have had conversations with over the last few days about this legislation — that your vote on the record will last forever,” Mackey said. “Do the right thing.”

Democratic Rep. Peter Merideth also spoke out against the amendment.

“I’ve got three daughters. I want to protect my three daughters. This stuff is not how we do it … This is not about protecting our daughters. It’s about ignorance and fear,” Merideth said at the hearing on the bill. “It’s about bullying the most vulnerable group of kids in our state to score political points.”

Both bills will move forward and await to be heard on the floor in front of the full chambers.

No Americans should die of COVID-19 with treatments available, experts argue

April 27, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — As mask mandates are lifted, and mitigation measures are increasingly dropped across the nation, a stark reality continues to hinder the nation’s return to a pre-pandemic sense of normality. Hundreds of Americans are still losing their lives to COVID-19 every day.

However, with the growing availability of coronavirus vaccines and antiviral treatments, many health experts assert that, given the United States’ tremendous medical advancements in the fight against the virus at this point in time, few Americans should still be dying of COVID-19.

“It should be pretty close to ‘no one,” Dr. Shira Doron, an infectious disease physician and hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center, told ABC News.

Infectious disease experts say that the vast majority of those still dying are the unvaccinated. In February, unvaccinated adults were 10 times more likely to die of COVID-19 compared to vaccinated individuals and five times more likely to require hospitalization.

When compared to fully vaccinated and boosted adults, unvaccinated people were about 20 times more likely to die of COVID-19 and seven times more likely to require hospitalization.

“We have vaccines that, for people with normal immune systems, are about 90% effective at preventing hospitalization, and, for those who get COVID-19 and have even a single risk factor for progression to severe disease, we have treatments, like Paxlovid and Bebtelovimab, that are 90% effective at preventing progression to hospitalization,” Doron said. “Add those together and not only should no one be dying, but no one should be getting hospitalized, if we are using those tools as we should.”

Despite widespread medical approval of the drugs, federal officials say that many of those resources, in more than ample supply, are not being used as widely as they should be, and as a result, thousands of lives are being unnecessarily lost.

On Tuesday, the White House announced that it would take new actions to increase access to Paxlovid, Pfizer’s antiviral COVID-19 pill.

“We now have more tools than ever before to protect people from the virus, including highly effective treatments,” the Biden administration said in a statement Tuesday.

Paxlovid, which reduces the risk of hospitalization and death by 90%, currently gets prescribed to about 55,000 Americans a week, which is about 2.5 times more than a month ago. But over the past week, the U.S. has seen an average of 44,000 new infections each day.

The administration’s plan is to double the number of pharmacies that stock the drug to 40,000 sites nationwide in the coming weeks, as it was previously limited to 20,000 due to insufficient supply.

Officials will also work to provide physicians with more guidance and tools to understand and prescribe the treatments.

Despite the plan to increase the availability of critical drugs to combat COVID-19, some health experts are concerned that it will still not be enough to save lives, given the many barriers that stand in the way of ensuring that those drugs and treatments are widely accessible to all those who need them.

Issues of access remain critical

Although therapeutics and vaccines will be important tools to prevent serious illness and deaths, experts say decreasing the number of daily COVID-19 fatalities will also be a function of equitably increasing access to these preventive measures and treatments.

“Equitable access is a huge barrier at this point in time, especially to effective treatments such as Paxlovid,” Colleen Kelley, an associate professor in the division of infectious diseases at Emory University School of Medicine, told ABC News.

Lack of access to transportation to proper pharmacies can have major consequences for public health.

According to ABC News’ analysis last summer of pharmacy locations across the country, there are 150 counties where there is no pharmacy, and nearly 4.8 million people live in a county where there’s only one pharmacy for every 10,000 residents or more.

Based on Census data, there are far fewer pharmacies per person — especially chain pharmacies — in rural parts of the country compared to urban areas.

In addition, the access inequities underscore the racial gap prevalent throughout the country in both rural and urban areas, with more pharmacies per person in whiter and wealthier neighborhoods than in poorer, predominantly nonwhite neighborhoods.

Persisting disparities throughout the pandemic have also resulted in a higher likelihood of death from COVID-19 for Black and brown Americans.

According to federal data, adjusted for age and population, the likelihood of death because of COVID-19 for Black, Asian, Latino and Native American people is about one to two times higher, compared to white Americans.

Although some minority communities initially lagged behind in the nation’s vaccination efforts, the rates of Black and brown Americans have significantly caught up proportionally to their respective populations.

A recent report, produced by the Poor People’s Campaign in collaboration with the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network, also revealed the “devastating and disproportionate” impact of the virus on low-income communities in the U.S.

The report found that death rates in the lowest income group were double the death rates of those in the highest income group

“Widespread equitable access would drive hospitalization and death rates way down,” Doron said, adding that not enough individuals know that treatments are available and end up in the hospital.

“Those who are more medically literate and do their own research know how important it is to suspect COVID at the first sign of symptoms, have easier access to testing, and know to call their doctor for a prescription for an antiviral or for an infusion of monoclonal antibody or remdesivir,” Doron said.

Education pertaining to treatments as well as widespread, equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, tests and effective treatments are critical to boosting our way out of the pandemic by ultimately driving down hospitalizations and death rates, Dr. Jay Bhatt, an internist and adjunct faculty at the UIC School of Public Health, told ABC News.

“This would likely reduce spread and cases of chronic disease triggered by COVID-19 infection and likely hospitalizations and death,” Bhatt said.

COVID-19 funding will play an important role in treatment access

Equitable access to drugs also remains critical for the millions of Americans who are moderately or severely immunocompromised and thus have a weakened immune system, putting them at increased risk of severe COVID-19 illness and death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

According to physicians, a large proportion of the few fully vaccinated Americans who are getting breakthrough infections and dying are those with underlying conditions or those who are being treated with immunosuppressive drugs.

“There may be a small number of individuals with chronic disease and those that are immunocompromised infected with COVID-19 that may not survive infection even though they have had appropriate treatments and be vaccinated. It is also possible that COVID-19 flares chronic conditions that may lead to complications and death,” Bhatt said.

Matthew Cortland, a disability rights advocate, stressed the importance of getting those drugs to those at higher risk.

“If you are at higher risk, having a reduced viral load can only benefit you,” Cortland said. “There’s still a shortage and a scarcity mindset. Paxlovid has to be readily available basically everywhere.”

The push to make treatments more widely available only further underscores the need for COVID-19 funding, Cortland added.

“Congress will need to fund more purchases” of these treatments, Cortland said. “That’s the only way that we get to as few COVID deaths as possible.”

For many American families a living wage is out of reach: Report

April 27, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — A new report diving into the data on vital measures of health and social determinants of health finds that women, and particularly women of color, continue to experience steep pay gaps, that many Americans cannot afford child care and many school districts may be underfunded.

The 2022 County Health Rankings report, shared in advance with ABC News, offers a unique snapshot of whether and how Americans are thriving — or as it may be, surviving.

Metrics like these are meaningful as the nation emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic and contends with the “intertwined crises of structural racism and economic exclusion” to examine how living wages or lack thereof “can impact a just recovery,” the report said.

“The data reinforces what we’ve known for some time. People in both rural and urban communities face long-standing barriers, systemic barriers — avoidable barriers — that get in the way of groups of people and places in our country from being able to live long and well,” Sheri Johnson, co-director of County Health Rankings & Roadmaps and director of the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, told ABC News.

The rankings find “troubling issues” affecting women and families with children regarding economic security and family support, underscoring what the pandemic has repeatedly laid bare: “glaring failures” within the infrastructures of wage equity, child care costs and school funding.

Equal pay is not just a ‘women’s issue’

Women earn little more than 80 cents for every dollar men earn, on average, for the same work, the rankings find. But that’s not all.

To earn the $61,807 average salary of a white man, an Asian woman must work an extra 34 days, the report said.

A white woman must work 103 more days to earn that same $62,000 salary.

The report said a Black woman must work 223 days to make up that difference, while an American Indian/Alaska Native woman would have to work 266 days.

A Hispanic woman would have to work 299 days to make up that salary difference.

COVID’s prolonged toll “exposed the labor force barriers that prevent full participation of women and caregivers” and “places an additional burden on women with low incomes and women of color, who are the least likely to have employer-provided benefits,” the study said.

An economic security infrastructure that is inequitable for some weakens the entire system, Johnson said.

“There are consequences when we haven’t constructed community conditions for everyone to thrive,” Johnson said.

Child care costs exceed what many Americans can afford

Across counties, a family with two children spends, on average, a quarter of its household income on child care, the report said.

For those making the hourly $7.25 federal minimum wage, child care costs would take up nearly 90% of their annual income.

By that math, the average child care provider likely cannot afford their own services, which would consume more than half their average $25,460 annual income if they had two children.

“That’s pretty striking,” Johnson said — especially when contrasted with the government’s suggestion that families not spend more than 7% of their income on child care.

The rankings find that during the pandemic, the lack of affordable child care forced parents — especially mothers — out of the workforce and also hit child care providers, who were disproportionately women, which harmed families’ and communities’ well-being.

Stark differences in school funding across rural, urban and suburban communities

Half of all counties included in this analysis had school districts operating at a deficit, the rankings find. Among those districts, per-pupil spending, on average, was $3,000 below the annual estimated amount needed to support average test scores.

While schools in large urban metro counties, on average, operated under large deficits, schools in rural counties — the majority of all U.S. counties — were overrepresented among counties with inadequate school funding.

There are “patterns of disinvestment” reflected by the disproportionate geographic spread of school funding deficits, Johnson said.

Many counties in the western and southern U.S. operate with funding deficits. School districts in these counties, on average, spend less than what is estimated to be necessary to achieve national average test scores.

Counties with higher proportions of Black, Hispanic and American Indian & Alaska Native populations experience funding deficits notably greater than most U.S. counties, the report found. Funding deficits are especially high in the Southern Black Belt region.

A solution: relieving the “stress pathways” that exacerbate poor health among those who were already hurting, Johnson said, such as “ensuring equal pay for equal work through policies such as paid family leave, paid sick leave, universal basic income, living wage laws, Child Tax Credit expansion, and the Earned Income Tax Credit,” the report says.

“We can expect more of the same if we do nothing,” Johnson said. “And the same is not fair. It’s not just, and it’s not necessary.”

Antisemitic incidents in US reached all-time high in 2021, report finds

April 27, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Antisemitic incidents in the U.S. reached an all-time high in 2021, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s latest annual report.

The organization recorded 2,717 incidents of assault, harassment and vandalism — the highest number of incidents on record since the ADL began tracking these attacks in 1979.

This averages to more than seven incidents per day and represents a 34% increase year over year.

“In 2021, the world still wasn’t fully reopened yet,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a Tuesday press conference on the findings. “People were still socially distancing. Businesses are still shuttered. Campuses are still closed and yet, 2021, far and away, the highest total we have ever seen.”

Oren Segal, the vice president of the ADL Center on Extremism, said that these audits typically represent an undercount of the reality due to lack of reporting and other barriers to data collection.

The majority of the incidents were categorized as harassment, which increased more than 40% from last year.

The ADL also recorded a major increase in incidents at Jewish institutions such as synagogues, community centers and schools — from 327 in 2020 to 525 in 2021, an increase of 61%.

“The findings come at a time where Jews are feeling particularly vulnerable because of the violent, antisemitic incidents that have targeted our community over the past several years, but also because of how they’ve targeted the Jewish community in the last several months,” Segal said.

He pointed to recent attacks, including the Colleyville, Texas, synagogue hostage crisis in January.

Three-quarters of American Jews believe there is more antisemitism in the U.S. today than there was five years ago, according to a 2020 Pew Research Center survey.

About 53% say that, as a Jewish person in the U.S., they feel less safe than they did five years ago.

Jewish Americans continue to be the most targeted religious group, FBI hate crime statistics show.

“This should be a warning call to all Americans — antisemitism isn’t just a Jewish problem. It’s an American problem that demonstrates or indicates the decay of our society,” Greenblatt said at the conference.

Funeral for Madeleine Albright, first female secretary of state, to be held Wednesday

April 27, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — A funeral for former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the first woman to ever serve in that role, will be held Wednesday at the Washington National Cathedral in the nation’s capital.

The funeral is set to begin at 11 a.m. and will be streamed on ABC News Live.

Albright, who had cancer, died in March at the age of 84.

She served as secretary of state from 1997 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton after serving as the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. from 1993 to 1997.

During her tenure as secretary of state, she focused on promoting the eastward expansion of NATO and pushed for NATO intervention in the 1999 war in Kosovo, according to the historical office of the Department of State.

Her approach to diplomacy and statecraft was colored by her own experiences as a refugee who fled what was then Czechoslovakia with her family in the aftermath of World War II.

She remained engaged with both American and international affairs until the end of her life, writing a book in 2018 warning about a resurgence of fascism and sounding an alarm about Russian President Vladimir Putin in a New York Times op-ed published just before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“In early 2000, I became the first senior U.S. official to meet with Vladimir Putin in his new capacity as acting president of Russia… Flying home, I recorded my impressions. ‘Putin is small and pale,’ I wrote, ‘so cold as to be almost reptilian,'” Albright wrote in the Times.

She added that “should he invade [Ukraine], it will be a historic error.”

Both former President Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will speak at the funeral, according to the Washington National Cathedral.

“Few leaders have been so perfectly suited for the times in which they served… Because she knew firsthand that America’s policy decisions had the power to make a difference in people’s lives around the world, she saw her jobs as both an obligation and an opportunity,” the former president wrote in a statement the day Albright died.

President Joe Biden will eulogize Albright at the funeral, and her daughters, Anne, Alice and Katie, will also speak.

DHS secretary to face grilling on Title 42, border security in front of Congress

April 27, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Wednesday is expected to get grilled by lawmakers about how the Biden administration is handling the growing problem of immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border.

On Monday, a federal judge in Louisiana briefly paused the rollback of Title 42 — the Trump-era policy that allowed migrants seeking asylum along the southern border to be expelled under the public health emergency authority of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — in order to stop the spread of COVID-19.

The CDC rescinded the policy earlier this month, and it was expected to be phased out by May 23.

Judge Robert Summerhays said he intends to issue a temporary restraining order in the case if the Justice Department and Arizona, Missouri and Louisiana, the three states that sued to pause the rollback, can come to an agreement.

A senior administration official told reporters the administration intends to comply with the temporary restraining order the judge intends to issue, but the administration disagrees with the premise.

“When the Title 42 public health order is lifted, we anticipate migration levels will increase, as smugglers will seek to take advantage of and profit from vulnerable migrants,” Mayorkas wrote in a memo titled, “DHS Plan for Southwest Border Security and Preparedness.”

DHS officials told reporters in March they could expect to see at least 18,000 migrants along the southern border per day, when Title 42 gets lifted.

Mayorkas has stressed Title 42 is not an immigration policy, but rather born out of the public health crisis.

Part of the border plan outlined in the memo, obtained by ABC News, is surging resources to the border, increasing processing efficiency and increasing non-government organizations to receive non-citizens after they’ve been processed by CBP.

“We inherited an immigration system from the prior administration that had been studiously dismantled and so was unprepared to meet the challenges posed by the high numbers of non citizens arriving at our borders today,” according to a Senior Administration official who briefed reporters on Tuesday.

In addition to the two hearings on Wednesday, Mayorkas will go in front of the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday.

Last week, Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, wrote to Mayorkas in anticipation of his hearing.

“The Biden Administration’s radical immigration policies have caused a humanitarian and security crisis along our southwest border,” Jordan wrote. “The American people deserve answers and accountability for the Biden Administration’s lawlessness along the southwest border.”

Some GOP lawmakers criticize McCarthy over Jan. 6 recordings

April 27, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy was mum Tuesday night when questioned by reporters about being heard on tape saying some Republicans incited violence around the Jan. 6 Capitol attack — and that others could be kicked off social media platforms.

But lawmakers told ABC News they expect the California Republican to explain his reported remarks behind closed doors Wednesday morning when House Republicans gather for their first meeting of the week.

In a new report Tuesday, New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns released recordings of McCarthy and other GOP leaders made in January 2021 after the riot, discussing comments made before and after the Capitol attack by far-right lawmakers and their concerns over how those comments could potentially provoke violence against other legislators.

“He’s putting people in jeopardy,” McCarthy said of Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., a Trump loyalist who criticized other Republicans for being insufficiently supportive of Trump, according to the recording of the Jan. 10 call published by The Times. “And he doesn’t need to be doing this. We saw what people would do in the Capitol, you know, and these people came prepared with rope, with everything else.”

McCarthy declined to answer multiple questions from reporters as he walked from his office to the House floor for votes Tuesday evening. But when asked by ABC News if he was worried about the comments jeopardizing his bid for speaker if Republicans retake the House in the upcoming midterm elections, he had a simple answer.

“Nope,” he said.

In the meantime, McCarthy’s colleagues are weighing the impact of his newly reported comments.

“He’s going to explain it, and we’ll go from there,” said Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Ariz. “Let’s see what he says.”

“Trust is not a thing to be measured by one incident,” Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., told ABC News.

Asked if he would support McCarthy for speaker if Republicans retake the House, Higgins said, “I certainly have a vote and we shall see.”

Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., one of Trump’s first supporters in Congress, said “Oh my God, yes,” when asked if he trusted McCarthy.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., one of McCarthy’s loudest critics on Capitol Hill, said he “obviously showed an utter lack of leadership,” and “continues to defend people pushing false narratives, and that’s wrong.”

Gaetz tweeted out a statement blasting McCarthy and Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., the GOP whip who suggested Gaetz’s comments were “potentially illegal,” according to the recording published by The Times.

“Rep. McCarthy and Rep. Scalise held views about President Trump and me that they shared on sniveling calls with Liz Cheney, not us,” Gaetz said.

“This is the behavior of weak men, not leaders,” he wrote. “While I was protecting President Trump from impeachment, they were protecting Liz Cheney from criticism.”

Earlier Tuesday, Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., a senior member of the House Freedom Caucus, told the conservative One America News Network that McCarthy’s recorded comments regarding social media accounts were “problematic” and “the most serious thing.”

“If he had just been honest and truthful with us way back then, this would not be an issue for us today,” Biggs said. “We don’t want it to be an issue because we don’t want it to be a distraction.”

Fox News host Tucker Carlson also criticized McCarthy on Tuesday, saying on his show, “Those are the tape-recorded words of Congressman Kevin McCarthy, a man who, in private, turns out, sounds like an MSNBC contributor.”

“And yet unless conservatives get their act together right away, Kevin McCarthy or one of his highly liberal allies … is very likely to be speaker of the House in January. That will mean we will have a Republican Congress led by a puppet of the Democratic Party,” Carlson said.

Biden pardons three people, reduces sentences for 75 non-violent drug offenders

April 27, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden announced Tuesday that he pardoned three people who have “demonstrated a commitment to rehabilitation,” including 86-year-old Abraham W. Bolden Sr., who was the first Black Secret Service agent to serve on a presidential detail.

The president also commuted the sentences of 75 people who are currently serving long sentences for non-violent drug offenses.

“America is a nation of laws and second chances, redemption, and rehabilitation. Elected officials on both sides of the aisle, faith leaders, civil rights advocates, and law enforcement leaders agree that our criminal justice system can and should reflect these core values that enable safer and stronger communities,” Biden said in a statement.

Tuesday’s action was the first time Biden used his clemency powers during his presidency and came after advocates and progressive Democrats urged the president to fulfill his long-awaited campaign promise to use his executive authority to address mass incarceration and racial disparities in the criminal justice system, a crisis that was accelerated through policies like the 1994 crime bill, sweeping legislation authored by then-Sen. Biden that experts now say disproportionately impacted people of color.

Biden touted his clemency executive action as “important progress.”

“My administration will continue to review clemency petitions and deliver reforms that advance equity and justice, provide second chances, and enhance the wellbeing and safety of all Americans,” the president said.

While advocates and criminal justice experts have praised Biden’s clemency actions, some experts told ABC News the measures fall short of ensuring a streamlined process to address the backlog of petitions requesting clemency grants to nonviolent offenders.

“It’s great that 78 people received clemency in some form today, but it fades into the background of 18,000 petitions pending on the President’s desk,” said Ames Grawert, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School. “The President needs to come up with a system for ensuring that those thousands of petitions receive a careful and thorough review and the attention they deserve. It’s not clear to me that the current process is up to the task.”

In addition to the clemency actions, the Biden administration released plans to expand economic opportunities and ease reentry for formerly incarcerated individuals.

The myriad of new measures include a $145 million investment in job training programs for convicted felons in Bureau of Prison facilities, which will be done through collaboration between the Department of Justice and the Department of Labor. The administration also plans to expand employment opportunities post release, access to small business loan investments, as well as higher education.

Analysis from a 2017 report from the National Reentry Resource Center reveals that evidence-based reentry policies and programs have been shown to improve the outcomes of formerly incarcerated individuals.

“The actions we’re taking today will have a real impact for someone trying to land a job, find a safe and affordable place to live with their children and get back on their feet,” Susan Rice, Domestic Policy Advisor for the Biden administration, said while praising the new measures during a White House Roundtable with formerly incarcerated Americans.

Texas residents sue county for removing books on race, sex education

April 27, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — A group of residents in Llano County, Texas, is suing county officials for removing books from public libraries because officials “disagree with the ideas within them.”

The residents say the county is violating their first amendment rights by removing award-winning books from shelves due to their content and terminating “access to over 17,000 digital books” from the local library system.

“Public libraries are not places of government indoctrination,” the lawsuit filed Monday reads.

It continued, “They are not places where the people in power can dictate what their citizens are permitted to read about and learn. When government actors target public library books because they disagree with and intend to suppress the ideas contained within them, it jeopardizes the freedoms of everyone.”

Several of the books listed in the lawsuit that have been removed from libraries include adult works about oppression and racism like Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, by journalist Isabel Wilkerson, and They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group by Susan Campbell Bartoletti.

The lawsuit also listed some of the children’s books that have been removed: Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen is about a boy’s dream of making a cake, and Robie H. Harris’ It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health is a sex education book about the biology of the human body.

“Though Plaintiffs differ in their ages, professions, and individual religious and political beliefs, they are fiercely united in their love for reading public library books and in their belief that the government cannot dictate which books they can and cannot read,” the lawsuit read.

The complaint states that the library system’s policy claims that “in no case should any book be excluded because of race or nationality or the political or religious views of the writer.”

The local fight over book bans has been ongoing.

In December 2021, the Llano County Library shut down for several days to review the children’s books in the library. The move followed a directive from Matt Krause, the chairman of the Texas House Committee on General Investigating.

He asked districts to provide insight into library material that discussed human sexuality “or contain[ed] material that might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex or convey that a student, by virtue of their race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”

Shortly after, in January 2022, the court voted to dissolve the existing library board and appointed a new board of residents advocating for the removal of the aforementioned books, according to the lawsuit.

Several plaintiffs wanted to join the new board but say they were refused due to their “public stances against ongoing censorship efforts in the County.”

One plaintiff, according to the lawsuit, “holds a master’s degree in Library and Information Science, previously managed the rare books collection at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, and formerly served on a library board in Wichita Falls.” He says he was refused a position on the new board.

Other plaintiffs say they were fired from the previous library board or would not be considered for a position on the new board.

The lawsuit also claims that one librarian was fired after refusing to remove books from the shelf.

Llano County declined to comment to ABC News about the lawsuit.

In a past statement, County Judge Ron Cunningham told The Washington Post that the county was “cognizant of the concerns of our citizens pertaining to our library system.”

He claimed that “a portion of the public and media have chosen to propagate disinformation that Llano County (and other rural communities) are operating with political or phobic motivations,” and said that such was not the case.

Llano County is just one of many nationwide fired up about the restriction of subjects in public libraries and schools.

Republican-backed efforts across the country, including what critics call the “Don’t Say Gay” law in Florida or the anti-race education legislation, aim to limit speech and/or content on race, gender and sexual orientation.

The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) has tracked a record-breaking number of book challenges, or attempts to ban or remove books, in 2021.

“In 2021, libraries found themselves at the center of attacks orchestrated by conservative parent groups and right-wing media that targeted books about race, gender, and LGBTQIA+ issues for removal from public and school library shelves and, in some cases, included threats of book burning,” the organization stated in its “State of America’s Libraries” study.

Military families testify about dangerous housing conditions

April 26, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — Capt. Samuel Choe, a former resident of Fort Gordon in Georgia, flew 17 hours from his deployment in South Korea to testify before a Senate subcommittee Tuesday about the mold exposure he said his family endured in private military housing and the chronic health issues suffered by his 8-year-old daughter, including a skin condition called severe atopic dermatitis — or severe eczema.

The degree of her condition, which he described as “potentially fatal,” had caused her to wake up in the middle of the night to parts of her body caked in blood from minor scratches or irritation, he said, adding that it would “haunt” his daughter “for the rest of our lives.”

“I do not recall ever seeing the type [of] conditions that we have lived under while we were at Fort Gordon,” said Choe, who has served in the military for 12 years and grew up in military housing with his parents.

Choe was among the family members and advocates who testified Tuesday at the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations about what they said was mismanagement, neglect and abuse they suffered in private military housing paid for using defense appropriations funds for service members’ on-base accommodations.

Their concerns — focused on one of the Army, Air Force and Navy’s largest private housing providers, Balfour Beatty — ranged from environmental hazards, including unaddressed mold, to logistical failures leading to delayed repairs. In total, Balfour provides housing on 55 separate Army, Navy and Air Force bases across 26 states, with a total of over 43,000 on-base homes occupied by roughly 150,000 residents, according to the company.

The hearing was held hours after the subcommittee released a bipartisan “Mistreatment of Military Families in Privatized Housing” report detailing alleged negligent responses and deceitful practices by Balfour Beatty.

The same company pleaded guilty last year to fraud after a Department of Justice investigation that uncovered instances of falsified data in Balfour’s internal data management software. Artificially augmenting the number of resolved work orders allowed Balfour employees to receive larger bonuses — which at the time was part of the company’s financial compensation policy, the probe found.

The plea deal included a $65 million fine and three-year probation during which an independent compliance body monitors the company’s activity.

The report released Tuesday specifically examines conditions at Balfour housing units on Georgia’s Fort Gordon Army Base and Sheppard Air Force Base in Texas between late 2019 and early 2022.

Tech. Sgt. Jack Fe Torres, who said his wife and children also suffered a host of medical problems after being exposed to mold in a Balfour home at Sheppard Air Force Base also testified. The family’s issues began with an insufficient water heater repair, he said, which led to a flood and then to mold.

While trying to address this issue, Torres said he noticed that work orders submitted to Balfour on his family’s behalf were doctored to minimize the severity of the situation.

“At one point, we were told that a large spot of mold in our mechanical room wall was just a burn mark,” he said.

The hearing included interviews with over a dozen military families and former Balfour employees. Two Balfour executives, including President of Facility Operations, Renovation and Construction Richard Taylor, testified as well.

“I reject the suggestion that it’s a systemic failure,” he said in response to Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., detailing a host of concerns flagged by residents. Taylor suggested Choe’s daughter, for example, could have contracted her illness outside the home.

Paula Cook, Balfour’s vice president of military community management, said the company did all it could for its residents.

Both insisted they were not aware of the data manipulation that had occurred, insisted there was no longer fraudulent activity going on at Balfour and said the issues the company was accused of were isolated and unrelated. An unnamed third party now fields Balfour military housing complaint calls, they testified, and the company has a new system to keep Balfour on-site employees from editing work order histories.

At one point, Ossoff bluntly asked, “Did your senior executives know that for six years, the company was engaging in fraud?”

Taylor said that “no,” he did not.

Ossoff followed up: “Would you know now if your company was continuing to engage in fraud?”

“Yes,” Taylor responded.

+ More