John Sciulli/Getty Images for Amnesty International USA
Is Nick Cannon preparing to tie the knot again? It seems that way based on his most recent social media post.
On Thursday night, the Wild ‘n Out host took to Instagram to share a photo of himself with a unidentified woman whose arms were lovingly draped around his neck.
“I said I would never do it again but…Finally doing what the world wants me to do,” Cannon captioned the post, adding the ring emoji. The post also included a close-up of what looked like a stunning diamond ring in a box.
While the post hinted that the Drumline star popped the question, users in the comments were skeptical.
“This must be a musical video,” one wrote, while another questioned, “What movie is this for?”
“I thought you wanted Mariah back lol,” a third commented, seemingly making reference to an interview published just two days ago where Cannon told The Hot Tee Talk Show that if the opportunity presented itself, he’d for sure take another stab at a relationship with ex-wife Mariah Carey.
“It was literally like a fairytale with Mariah. I’d rather it just be that way — I appreciate that fantasy because if I tried to go back and it wasn’t the same …” he said before emphasizing, “But if it could be the way that it was, I’m there!”
Cannon and Carey married in the Bahamas in 2008, welcomed twins in 2011 and were together for eight years. They divorced in 2016.
In addition to his twins with Carey, Cannon shares Golden and Powerful with Brittany Bell; another set of twins, Zion and Zillion, with Abby De La Rosa; son Zen — who died at five months — with Alyssa Scott; and he’s expecting a baby boy with Bre Tiesi this year.
(NEW YORK) — Early cases of COVID-19 are believed to be linked to a live-animal market in Wuhan, China.
Facing yet another COVID-19 variant, this one said to be faster and stealthier than those before it, health officials say the calculus has changed and are urging booster shots even more strongly to buck up the country’s armor.
There is a renewed push for everyone over 5 to go out and get a first booster shot if they haven’t yet. That’s the majority of Americans since despite evidence of significant improvements in protection against hospitalization and death from the third shot since only 48% of Americans have gotten a third shot, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Officials are also urging a second booster shot, about four months after the first booster shot, for people who have received their first boosters but are considered high-risk, including people 50 and older and the immunocompromised.
“For people who are 50 years of age or older, my message is simple. If you have not gotten a vaccine shot in the year 2022 — if you have not gotten one this year, please go get another vaccine shot,” White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha said during a press briefing on Tuesday.
“If you’ve not gotten a vaccine shot this year, go get one now. It could save your life,” he said.
The Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control are also considering widening that eligibility to include all adults in the next few weeks, Jha said.
But the newfound urgency to offer second boosters to younger populations has been met with confusion, particularly after federal officials previously suggested that shots for people who weren’t high risk wouldn’t be necessary until the fall.
And even for those over the age of 50, prior guidance on the CDC’s website stated that if getting a shot now would make you hesitant to get one in the fall, you should wait until fall to get a second booster. The emergence of the omicron subvariant BA.5 appears to have changed that calculus, however.
Why does BA.5 change the urgency of booster shots?
BA.5, which is now estimated to account for 65% of new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. according to CDC data, became dominant earlier this month. It brought with it a surge of cases and hospitalizations, which will likely be followed by deaths.
It seems to be the most immune-evasive variant the world has seen so far, in terms of its ability to get around past protection from bouts with COVID and from the vaccines.
That means people who have already had COVID-19 are still at risk of becoming reinfected.
And that decline in protection, paired with a new variant that’s better at getting around the vaccine, poses a renewed threat.
“The frequency of BA.5 infections are rising across the US, for those that have not been vaccinated in several months, immunity has likely waned,” C. Buddy Creech, director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Research Program and associate professor of pediatric infectious diseases, told ABC News.
So who should get one?
Even if you’ve already had COVID-19 and even if you plan to get a booster this fall, when variant-specific vaccines are expected to be available, experts who spoke with ABC News widely agreed that eligible people should still ensure they are up to date with their COVID-19 vaccinations and booster shots.
“If I had not gotten booster number two already, I would get it today,” Dr. Bob Wachter, chair of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, told ABC News.
“You can get a painless, free, and essentially risk-free intervention that will lower the probability of mortality, hospitalization and, at least for a while, infection, at a time when the virus is absolutely rampant,” Wachter said. “That seems like a pretty easy call to me.”
Wachter said the risks of another booster shot is less than most of the procedures he does daily in his job at the hospital, and carries a big benefit.
“The booster is about as safe as anything we do. So my threshold to give it when I think there might be benefit is pretty low,” he said.
What if you’ve recently had COVID?
Though the CDC recommends waiting about three months after having COVID-19 to get vaccinated, experts watching BA.5 said they thought people should consider getting a shot one or two months after recovering.
“I have shortened up my timeline. If you got infected a month or more ago, and you’re eligible for a booster now, I would go ahead and get it,” Wachter said.
Because BA.5 may better can evade prior infection compared to previous variants, people who got COVID recently shouldn’t consider that to be as strong of protection as it once was.
“For anybody who was infected prior to a month ago, an educated guess would be that it wasn’t BA.5, and therefore, your immunity is not good for as long as it used to be,” Wachter said.
Dr. Anna Durbin, director of Center for Immunization Research at Johns Hopkins University, said she would also wait a month, or perhaps two months for people who are lower risk.
“You want your immune system to cool down a bit before you give another vaccine because once it’s cooled down, then you get the biggest effect from that vaccination,” she told ABC News.
“That recent infection is going to provide you with an immune response that will keep you out of the hospital. It is a better booster than the vaccine because it is more aligned with what’s currently circulating,” added Durbin.
Dr. David Dowdy, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, agreed that the need for a booster shortly after infection is not pressing, as the added value of a booster shot that soon is “relatively small.”
What about the boosters coming this fall?
Even though the U.S. is expecting a new booster campaign this fall with updated, variant-specific vaccines, several experts encouraged getting a booster now, in light of BA.5, and then again in a few months, when the new vaccines arrive.
“There’s this theoretical risk of over-boosting but we’ve been at this now for two years, we have people having gotten two, three, even four shots — and I think it remains a theoretical risk,” he told ABC News. “I don’t think there’s any strong evidence that is true.”
Durbin said she thinks people who get a booster now would also have enough of an interval between shots for another booster this fall or winter to still have a strong impact.
“Because it’s July now, there’s enough of a window between that booster and then the Omicron-specific booster that you should get a really good benefit from that in the fall,” she said.
If health agencies recommend a booster for younger people, should they get one?
For younger people, if the FDA and CDC decide to open up eligibility for second booster shots, experts agreed that it would be worth it to re-up protection in certain cases.
“I would say the benefit outweighs the risk, certainly,” Durbin said.
It won’t eliminate the chance of getting COVID, though, and people shouldn’t expect it to because of how fast the virus has evolved since the original vaccines were created.
“We have to really be careful in our messaging and manage people’s expectations, otherwise they’re not going to want to get boosters in the fall that are more specific for Omicron and may prevent infection far better than the current vaccine does,” Durbin said.
That said, other experts were more conservative in their recommendations for young people.
“While the benefits of vaccination certainly outweigh the risks, I’m not sure that it’s more urgent now than before to get younger people yet another booster,” said Dowdy.
“If anything, hospitalizations in the BA.5 era are increasingly among people 70 and older, so the focus on people under 50 isn’t really following what we see in the data.”
And particularly for young people who have recently had COVID, Wachter, too, said it would be reasonable to wait until the fall.
“I’d say for a truly low-risk person, a healthy young person with three shots and gets COVID now, then I’d be on the fence and I probably wait until the fall,” Wachter said.
Creech added that although some younger Americans may feel hesitant to get the booster now and in the fall, most people will understand the continued threat of COVID-19 and the need to maintain protection.
“I think people recognize that a new COVID variant seems to always be lurking around the corner and vaccines are the best prevention we have,” Creech said.
(BUFFALO, N.Y.) — The supermarket in Buffalo, New York, where a deadly mass shooting occurred in May is officially reopening Friday after extensive renovations.
The Tops Friendly supermarket was closed for months as the site of an active law enforcement investigation into the shooting that killed 10 people and injured three more.
An 18-year-old white male, who has now been indicted on federal hate crime charges, allegedly opened fire in what authorities say was a racially motivated attack. All 10 of those who died were Black.
The store has undergone renovations in the aftermath of the attack, in which the suspected gunman fired more than 60 shots from a high-powered, AR-15-style rifle.
The Tops grocery store on Jefferson Avenue was a lifeline in the predominantly Black community. It served as the area’s lone grocery store, in a neighborhood struggling under years of historic segregation and divestment.
“We understand the important role this store plays in this community and we are committed to reopening our Jefferson avenue location in the right way at the right time, with the best in class amenities that you see in all of our stores,” Tops Friendly Markets stated in a press release in late May.
On Thursday, Tops representatives and community leaders held a prayer service and a moment of silence to honor the victims, store workers and community members affected by the shooting.
Christina Perri‘s new album, a lighter shade of blue, her first since 2014, is out on Friday — and it’s a good thing, too. The singer says she’s “overflowing with stuff I need to sing about.”
Unfortunately, that stuff is sad. Christina suffered postpartum depression after having her daughter in 2018. Then in early 2020, she had a miscarriage. Later that year, after getting pregnant again, her daughter Rosie was stillborn. Christina is now expecting another baby, but says her grief inspired many of the songs on the album.
“We hardly talk about [grief] openly,” she notes. “So I feel a sense of responsibility, having gone through all these things. But I can only say that now, having done all that inner work. So I feel like, ‘OK, I’m ready to really share my experiences.'”
And Christina hopes that detailing what she’s gone through in song will help others.
“These songs feel so important to me that I have to put them out,” she explains. “Like, I don’t know many people singing about postpartum depression, but I gotta share that song with everyone in the world.”
“It’s really the music that’s encouraging me to do it even when I feel like I can’t,” she adds.
Christina’s journey through her grief is reflected in the album’s title, which was inspired by the album’s song “Blue.”
“The lyric has to do with becoming a lighter shade of this darkness I’ve always carried around with me. And as soon as we wrote this song, I saw the entire thing,” she explains. “Every song has some sort of reference to either blue … specifically, or just that moody kind of vibe. And all the songs kind of tell the story of starting in a very dark place and slowly getting lighter.”
The 74th Emmy Awards will be held live Monday, Sept. 12, at 8 p.m. ET on NBC, but so far, two potential hosts have declined.
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was reportedly approached, but the actor, producer, and entrepreneur had to RSVP no.
“It was just schedule,” he told Entertainment TonightThursday nightduring the red carpet premiere of his animated film DC Super Pets. “I was really, truly honored when they came to me and asked, but it was just a scheduling thing…That’s really what it comes down to,” he told ET.
Another rock-related host also replied in the negative: Chris Rock.
“He’s in the middle of his tour and is preparing for the taping of his comedy special, which will be taping this fall,” a source told ET.
As reported, Rock is behind the mic on his Ego Death world tour.
While the comedian and actor has obviously hit the stage since, the Emmys gig would have been the first time the former Oscars host had presenter’s duty since last year’s infamous slap at the hands of Will Smith.
For the Television Academy, the search for a host continues. Stay tuned.
Bernd von Jutrczenka/picture alliance via Getty Images
(RIYADH, Saudi Arabia) — U.S. President Joe Biden has promised to bring up human rights concerns when he meets with Saudi leaders in Jeddah on Friday as part of his first Middle Eastern trip, but the visit has been surrounded by considerable intrigue and controversy.
During his presidential campaign, Biden said he would make Saudi Arabia a “pariah state” over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but he has refused to answer whether he will bring up the case specifically with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of the Kingdom once seen as a reformer, but who now has a reputation for targeting his critics and crushing dissent.
Human rights campaigners have expressed concern that Saudi Arabia’s human rights record once again may be overlooked in favor of cheap oil, especially since the West is in need of alternative energy options following the war in Ukraine.
The awkward nature of the visit is perhaps summed up by the White House’s refusal to even say whether Biden will shake the Crown Prince’s hand.
But for the families of those who killed in a mass execution earlier this year, which saw 81 people executed on March 12 in what human rights groups condemned as a “massacre,” the trip is seen as nothing less than legitimizing the Kingdom’s regime.
Hamza al-Shakhouri’s brother, Mohammad al-Shakhouri, was executed in March after being convicted of crimes relating to various “terrorist” activities. But in a letter in November 2021, UN special rapporteurs said that they had received evidence that al-Shakouri’s confession, relied on by state prosecutors, was based on torture, and they appealed to the Kingdom to overturn his sentence. The reported use of coerced confessions as evidence of guilt, they said, “would constitute a blatant violation of due process and of fair trial guarantees.”
Saudi Arabia’s counter-terrorism laws have been criticized by the UN as being “unacceptably broad” which have been used against “human rights defenders, writers, bloggers, journalists and other peaceful critics.”
The Kingdom’s secretive judicial system has long drawn condemnation from human rights campaigners for failing to meet the basic standards of due process.
“President Biden has attempted to justify his visit to Saudi Arabia and pledged that his government will not tolerate authorities harassing dissidents and activists,” Hamza said in a statement shared with ABC News by the human rights charity Reprieve. “The Saudi regime doesn’t just harass those who speak out against it; it murders them. My brother is just one of the many victims.”
Yasser al-Khayat, the brother of Mustafa al-Khayat who was also executed in March for alleged “terrorist” activities, told ABC News that the family have still not received his body for a proper burial. According to the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights, Mustafa was also tortured into signing a confession having been held in solitary confinement for six months.
“We are still mourning,” he said in a statement shared with ABC News. “This visit legitimizes Mohammed bin Salman’s actions, sending the message that my brother’s life doesn’t matter and that America will continue to support the regime no matter how many of us they kill.”
“Americans often describe their country as the world’s greatest democracy but its president is partnering with a man who has killed countless people like my brother for daring to ask for those same democratic rights,” he said.
Both men are now outside Saudi Arabia, and so were able to provide their testimony without imminent fear of reprisals.
The White House did not respond to a requests for comment from ABC News on whether officials will raise concerns about Saudi Arabia’s use of the death penalty during the visit to Jeddah.
Reprieve’s Director, Maya Foa, described the current climate under the rule of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin-Salman as an “execution crisis.”
“The authorities are on track to execute more people this year than ever before,” Foa told ABC News. “Child defendants, pro-democracy protesters and people convicted of non-violent drug crimes are among those at risk. There are likely thousands of people on death row but the justice system is so secretive that we simply don’t know how many.”
ABC News’ Ben Gittleson contributed to this report
(BUFFALO, N.Y.) — When the Tops Friendly Market on Jefferson Avenue shut down after the Buffalo mass shooting, the community lost its only grocery store — a lifeline in a predominantly Black neighborhood that fought for years to obtain access to affordable and quality fresh food.
Two months after the shooting, the store is opening its doors again to the public on Friday, but the prospect of returning to the site of the massacre has been difficult for the community. With no other grocery store in the area, some have no choice.
Pastor Dwayne Jones was at his church, Mount Aaron Missionary Baptist Church, when the shooting occurred less than half a mile away. Jones, a developer who has spearheaded projects across the city to provide affordable housing to the community, said that the Tops should open only “temporarily” while they build a grocery store at a new location.
“[It] has been very traumatic to the congregation, to the community, to people — seeing those bodies come out of their Tops,” Jones said.
Ten Black people were shot and killed at the Tops by a white teenager in an alleged racially motivated shooting on May 14. The victims included four grocery store employees as well as six customers, several of them regulars at the store, according to the Buffalo Police Department and those who knew them.
Jones leads a congregation of 300 people at his church where one of the shooting victims, 63 year-old Geraldine Talley, was a member and was buried on church grounds.
“There’s a lot of fear,” Jones said. “There’s a lot of questions. Where do we go from here? How do we trust people that don’t look like us in the community? I wouldn’t say it’s healing, but it’s trying to get through the traumatic part before we get to the healing.”
Jamil Crews, a community leader and organizer who grew up in the East Buffalo neighborhood, said he understands why some don’t want to go back to the Tops and if there was another “viable option” in the community, he also wouldn’t want it to reopen.
“I saw the full video of [the shooting] – unedited, just raw, unedited, and it completely broke me,” Crews, who runs a marketing business located a few hundred feet away from the Tops, told ABC News on Wednesday.
But for many people, he said, “this is the only resource they have in that community, so they need it.”
Crews said he and some of his fraternity brothers will be at the reopening Friday to help elderly people with their groceries and send a message that “it’s safe to come back.”
Community members, store workers and Tops executives gathered on Thursday afternoon for a prayer service and a moment of silence to mark the two-month anniversary of the shooting and honor the victims ahead of the store reopening.
The company said in a statement the store “will quietly and respectfully reopen to the public.”
Regular shoppers, a retired police officer: Remembering the victims of the Buffalo shooting
Asked about relocating, Tops Friendly Markets President John Persons said at a press conference in June that it would take two to three years to do so, according to Buffalo ABC affiliate WKBW.
According to Persons, who spoke at the rededication of the store on Thursday, about 75% of the employees who worked at the Jefferson Avenue store at the time of the shooting have returned to work, which he said is “a testament to their resiliency.”
Persons said in June that employees who don’t feel comfortable returning have the option of working at other branches. According to the franchise’s website, Tops Friendly Markets operates 150 stores across Pennsylvania, Vermont and New York, with seven locations in Buffalo.
Persons also said the store will undergo extensive renovations and remodeling and when it reopens, it will have a different look and feel.
The remodeled store “will provide more space for produce, organic options, fresh foods, personal care products and, importantly, community collaborations for nutrition education and health screenings,” Persons said Thursday.
“It will become an ever greater resource to combat local food insecurity and support health and wellness,” he added.
Following the shooting, the closure of the Tops supermarket underscored the long-standing divestment in East Buffalo that led to the predominantly-Black area to become a “food desert.”
Food deserts are when households lack access to a market because they live beyond walking distance and don’t have a personal vehicle, translating to overall food insecurity, Andre Perry, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of the book “Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities,” told ABC News, adding that Black households are more than two times likely to be food insecure than the national average.
Perry attributes practices such as redlining as a key factor that contributed to the lack of food access. Redlining refers to the practice of withholding services — such as providing housing subsidies — from low-income or minority communities.
“We know that in order to get a supermarket there, there are models created largely around density, around buying power and a number of other factors that really punish poor communities, low income communities and rural communities for not having wealth,” Perry said.
He added, “When people look at black communities, there’s a dim view. Corporations don’t see the potential. They don’t see the value in Black communities, by and large. And that is certainly the case in places like Buffalo.”
Community leaders and city officials, including Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown who was a council member at the time of the store’s opening, advocated and lobbied for a supermarket. When Tops Friendly Market opened in 2003, it became a source of pride for the community.
“There was a significant effort to bring a supermarket chain to the community, but markets refused to come in and refused to provide support for the community,” Brown told ABC News, adding that he “reached out directly to supermarket chains and convinced Tops to come to the community.”
Crews said he still remembers what it was like before the Tops opened its doors when the area was a food desert, with the nearest grocery store more than 3 miles away.
Tops’ opening, he said, “was a big deal because it’s like, finally we have something where we can have access to the fresh fruits and vegetables and we don’t have to rely on like the secondhand stuff or the powdered milk.”
Following the shooting, the store was inaccessible as a crime scene in an active investigation.
While the store was closed, community leaders like Crews worked to make sure people still had access to fresh food. Advocates planned food drives across the city, buses provided free transportation to neighboring grocery stores and volunteers worked to distribute donated hot meals and groceries to East Buffalo families.
“The whole community kind of rallied together,” Crews said.
In the aftermath of the shooting, Tops Friendly Markets partnered with the National Compassion Fund to establish the Buffalo 5/14 Survivors Fund to provide direct financial assistance to family members of the deceased and those impacted by the tragedy. As of Thursday morning, the fund received more than $4.26 million in donations, including a $500,000 donation from Tops Markets.
Jones said his mission is to meet with city officials to advocate for a “full-sized” grocery store to be built at a new location because even before the shooting, the Tops “wasn’t good enough.”
According to Jones, the grocery store is smaller than others across the city and having only one option speaks to years of divestment, redlining and systemic racism in the predominantly Black community in East Buffalo.
Pointing to the plan to demolish Robb Elementary School — the site of the mass shooting that left 19 dead in Uvalde, Texas — Jones said he believes the city should demolish the Tops building and the site should become a memorial to those who were killed.
“They’re going to build a new school because they don’t want to send the kids or the community back into somewhere that was traumatized,” Jones said, reflecting on his own trip to Uvalde, where he met with families of the victims.
“I think we need to have that same compassion in Buffalo, New York,” he said.
(WASHINGTON) — Senate Republicans on Thursday blocked a bill that would have both legally shielded the people who travel across states lines to receive an abortion and the providers who care for those patients.
Senate Democrats needed the support of at least 10 Republicans to stop a GOP filibuster of the bill, but no Republicans stood to support the measure.
The Freedom to Travel for Health Care Act of 2022, authored by a trio of Democratic female lawmakers — New York’s Kirsten Gillibrand, Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto and Patty Murray of Washington — made an argument rooted in the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause that, among other things, essentially allows citizens freedom of travel to states while enjoying equal protection under the law.
The blocked bill would codify the ability of people to travel without repercussion from a state where abortion is restricted to another state where it is legal.
The bill would extend those same protections to people or groups who assist in abortion access across states as well as health care providers who offer abortion services to out-of-state patients if they are legally allowed to offer those same services to in-state residents.
A group of Democratic senators attempted to call up their bill for debate on Thursday, but Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., objected.
Senate rules require either the unanimous consent of all 100 senators to start debate on any bill or 60 votes to overcome any filibuster that seeks to block that debate.
Lankford is a longstanding opponent of abortion. In floor remarks opposing the bill — matched by similarly passionate comments by Democrats — he urged colleagues to consider the lives of who he described as unborn babies.
“The conversation today is not just about women. There are two people in this conversation, a child with 10 fingers and 10 toes and a beating heart and DNA that is uniquely different than the mom’s DNA or the dad’s DNA,” Lankford said. “Maybe this body should pay attention to children as well and to wonder what their future could be to travel in the days ahead.”
Lankford also argued that the proposed legislation was unnecessary at this time.
“To be very clear, no state has banned interstate travel for adult women seeking to obtain an abortion — no state has done that,” Lankford said. “Now am I confident there are some people that are out there talking, yes, but there are also in this Senate 5,000 bills that have been filed and how many of them are actually going to move?”
Indeed, some Republican-controlled states are already considering legislation that would bar women from traveling across state lines to receive an abortion. In Missouri, for example, legislation is being considered that would allow private citizens to sue anyone who assists a woman in traveling out of state to receive an abortion. Missouri is one of at least 13 states that have ceased nearly all abortion services.
Democrats warned that other states may soon consider proposals like the Missouri bill that aim to penalize women and those who help them travel across state lines.
“Anyone who tells you this is not a threat is either not paying attention or they are just trying to mislead you,” said Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate health committee.
“We don’t need to conjure up hypotheticals,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said on the Senate floor on Thursday. “We already know what’s happened.”
Klobuchar cited recent reports of a 10-year-old girl in Ohio who had to travel to Indiana to receive an abortion after being impregnated by her rapist. (A suspect has been arrested in that case.)
“Should the next little 10-year-old’s right or 12-year-old’s right or 14-year-old’s right to get the care that she desperately needs be put in jeopardy?” Klobuchar asked. “What about her mom? What about her doctor? Where will this end?”
Colorado Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet spoke of his three daughters as he made a plea for the right-to-travel bill. He called near-total abortion bans being implemented in some states “literally crazy” but said some Republican lawmakers want to go further.
“I can’t believe this is what we are handing over to the next generation of America, I cannot believe it, I cannot believe it,” Bennet said. “This is despicable, especially coming from the same people who can never stop telling us how devoted they are to freedom and liberty.”
Democrats knew their effort Thursday would fail, but they feel it had symbolic value for voters ahead of the crucial midterm elections — as Democrats seek to underline the stakes of abortion access, and highlight GOP opposition, in the wake of the Supreme Court striking down Roe v. Wade last month.
Thursday’s bill was part of a unified strategy among Democrats to have abortion-related votes up to Election Day, when — they and some outside activists hope — the issue may galvanize people to turn out at the ballot box to preserve their fragile majorities in Congress, despite other political headwinds like inflation.
When a draft of the eventual Supreme Court ruling that overturned Row leaked in May, Democrats attempted to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would have codified a women’s right to choose and implemented a variety of other provisions to protect abortion access.
That effort was blocked unanimously by Republicans and by Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who opposed the bill for going further than a basic codifying of Roe.
(AUSTIN, Texas) — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Thursday filed the first legal challenge to President Joe Biden’s executive order on abortion — accusing the administration of turning emergency health care providers into “walk-in abortion clinics” and kicking off what is expected to be a protracted legal battle between the White House and red states.
At issue is Biden’s interpretation of a federal law that requires doctors to treat patients in medical emergencies, even if they do not have insurance, and provide the necessary “stabilizing treatment.”
Under guidance issued Monday, the Health and Human Services Department said the law would require doctors to perform abortions in medical emergencies if their clinical judgement finds such a procedure would help stabilize a pregnant patient.
The guidance was the result of a broader executive order signed by the president earlier this month that called on HHS to to protect reproductive services and expand access to medication abortion in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.
On Thursday, Paxton said the administration went too far and filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.
“This administration has a hard time following the law, and now they are trying to have their appointed bureaucrats mandate that hospitals and emergency medicine physicians perform abortions,” Paxton said in a statement.
The White House responded by calling Paxton’s position “radical.”
“This is yet another example of an extreme and radical Republican elected official. It is unthinkable that this public official would sue to block women from receiving life-saving care in emergency rooms, a right protected under US law,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.
Biden’s order and the subsequent HHS guidance were not expected to have a major impact on abortion access in states that restrict it as life-threatening medical emergencies facing pregnant patients are relatively rare.
Still, the order was aimed at addressing concerns by many medical experts that state laws allowing abortion to “save the life of a mother” were vague. Doctors said they weren’t sure how imminent death must be before a provider could act.
In guidance to hospitals on Monday, Health Secretary Xavier Becerra said the federal law — the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act — should empower doctors to use their best clinical judgement. Becerra noted that because EMTALA is a federal statute, it would take precedence over any state laws restricting abortion.
“As frontline health care providers, the federal EMTALA statute protects your clinical judgment and the action that you take to provide stabilizing medical treatment to your pregnant patients, regardless of the restrictions in the state where you practice,” Becerra wrote.
According to the HHS guidance, emergency medical conditions involving pregnant patients may include “ectopic pregnancy, complications of pregnancy loss, or emergent hypertensive disorders, such as preeclampsia with severe features.”
EMTALA is enforced through complaints. If a hospital is found to violate the law through a federal investigation, it could lose access to the Medicare program or face fines.
A major anti-abortion group, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said Thursday it agreed with Texas on its suit over Biden’s emergency medical guidance.
In a statement provided to ABC News, the organization said the federal law cited by Biden has never specialized a particular method of stabilizing a patient. And if a pregnant person’s health is in danger “every attempt” should be made to stabilize both the mother and child, even if that means premature delivery.
“The new guidance is a complete distortion of [the law] EMTALA and we firmly stand with AG Paxton in Texas,” the group said.
Filmmaker Dean Fleischer Camp, co-creator of Marcel the Shell with ShoesOn, is being tapped by Disney for a live-action take on the 2002 Disney animated film Lilo & Stitch, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The project will be the latest in a series of live-action remakes of Disney theatrical cartoons, including Jon Favreau‘s The Jungle Book and The Lion King, and Guy Ritchie‘s Aladdin. The animated Lilo & Stitch is set in Hawaii and centers on a little girl named Lilo, who befriends a dog-like alien named Stitch. The film spawned DVD sequels and an animated series. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, meanwhile, has a 99% favorable rating on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, and stars co-creator Jenny Slate voicing a tiny shell looking for his family. The character went from a series of viral shorts, to books, before coming to theaters and becoming a smash in limited release…
Greg Berlanti will direct and Channing Tatum is in negotiations to star in the Apple TV+ feature Project Artemis, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Jason Bateman was to direct the film but left in early June due to creative differences, while Tatum replaces Chris Evans, who was originally set to star opposite Scarlet Johansson, but exited the project due to scheduling conflicts. Plot details are being kept under wraps, but Project Artemis is described “as a romantic comedy set against the backdrop of the 1968 Apollo 11 moon launch”…
Hulu on Thursday dropped the first teaser trailer for season five of The Handmaid’s Tale. Here’s what we can expect to see in new season, per the streamer: “June faces consequences for killing Commander Waterford, while struggling to redefine her identity and purpose” as “the widowed Serena attempts to raise her profile in Toronto as Gilead’s influence creeps into Canada.” Meanwhile, “Commander Lawrence … tries to reform Gilead and rise in power” as “June, Luke and Moira fight Gilead from a distance as they continue their mission to save and reunite with Hannah.” The Handmaid’s Tale will return Sept. 14 with two episodes. New episodes will stream Wednesdays on Hulu…
Keanu Reeves is working on a yet-to-be-titled documentary about Formula One racing for Disney+, according to Variety. The docuseries “will focus on Formula 1 managing director Ross Brawn, who in 2009 bought the Honda team, renamed it Brawn GP and took it to two unprecedented championship victories,” sources tell the outlet. Reeves will host the documentary as well. Reeves, a racing enthusiast with an extensive motorcycle collection, founded his own motorcycle manufacturer, Arch Motorcycle, with Gard Hollinger…
