TV News LIES

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to review New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin’s (D) subpoena seeking donor records from a network of anti-abortion clinics.

In a brief order, the justices said they will examine whether First Choice Women’s Resource Centers can mount a First Amendment challenge in federal court.

Lower judges ruled the group’s free speech claim was not ripe because it could be brought in state court instead, but First Choice said such a holding would create a “Catch-22” that prevents a federal judge from ever reviewing the subpoena’s constitutionality.

“For a century and a half, Congress has provided the targets of a state official’s malfeasance with a federal forum in which to raise their constitutional claims,” the group wrote in its petition. “Yet the Third and Fifth Circuits have eliminated that forum for the targets of state investigative demands.”

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A unanimous Court on June 12 made it easier for families to use the Americans with Disabilities Act to sue schools for damages, ruling a lower court used too tough a standard to dismiss a lawsuit from a student with a rare form of epilepsy.

Writing for the court, Chief Justice John Roberts said the student’s family did not have to show the school acted in “bad faith or gross misjudgment." That’s more difficult to prove than the “deliberate indifference” standard courts often use when weighing other types of disability discrimination claims.

The court also rejected an argument from the school that would have raised the bar for all victims of disability discrimination rather than lowered it for educational instruction claims.

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US lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are raising concerns and seeking investigations in the wake of Guardian reporting on whistleblower claims about practices within UnitedHealth Group’s nursing home partnership programs.

One US senator has announced he is launching an investigation and two US representatives are now calling on the US Department of Justice to expand its reported investigations of the nation’s largest healthcare conglomerate. Others said they are troubled by whistleblower allegations reported by the Guardian – including claims that UnitedHealth paid bonuses to nursing homes to help reduce residents’ hospital transfers and used improper sales tactics to get nursing home residents to sign up for the company’s Medicare Advantage plans.

Two Democratic members of Congress – representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Lloyd Doggett of Texas – filed a letter on Monday that urges the Department of Justice to “thoroughly review new revelations from investigative reporting and whistleblower complaints, which suggest that UnitedHealth may have engaged in illegal activities”.

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Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has fired all 17 members of a committee that advises the federal government on vaccine safety and will replace them with new members, a move that the Trump administration's critics warned would create public distrust around the government's role in promoting public health.

At issue is the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, which makes recommendations on the safety, efficacy, and clinical need of vaccines to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It comprises medical and public health experts who develop recommendations on the use of vaccines in the civilian population of the United States.

“Today we are prioritizing the restoration of public trust above any specific pro- or anti-vaccine agenda,” Kennedy Jr., who has a history of controversial views on vaccines, said on June 9 in announcing the overhaul. “The public must know that unbiased science—evaluated through a transparent process and insulated from conflicts of interest—guides the recommendations of our health agencies.”

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