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A Democratic challenger to Speaker Paul RyanPaul Davis RyanBush, Romney won’t support Trump reelection: NYT Twitter joins Democrats to boost mail-in voting — here’s why Lobbying world MORE (R-Wis.) has raised more than $150,000 after Ryan deleted a controversial tweet highlighting a Pennsylvania woman’s $1.50 per week paycheck increase due to the new tax law.
The campaign for Democratic candidate Randy Bryce said it has raised that amount in the 48 hours since the tweet was deleted Saturday afternoon.
Bryce, a union ironworker, encouraged supporters to donate $1.50, and about 5,800 of the contributions were of that amount. The campaign said it received donations from all 50 states and that the average contribution amount was $12.39.
“Speaker Ryan believes this tax bill will help him and other Republicans get reelected in November, but the overwhelming support we received shows that people across the country are unsurprisingly opposed to giving millions in tax breaks to billionaires,” said Bryce campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt said in a statement.
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Ryan was widely criticized by Democrats on social media after he tweeted on Saturday morning a link to an Associated Press article about taxpayers seeing bigger paychecks because of the tax law.
He focused the tweet on the story of Julia Ketchum, a high school secretary from Pennsylvania who told the AP that she was pleasantly surprised to see an increase of $1.50 per week in her paycheck, which would “more than cover her Costco membership.”
Democrats attacked Ryan for the tweet, arguing that it shows that the middle class will get a much smaller benefit than the windfall corporations and wealthy individuals will receive. Ryan deleted the tweet later in the day on Saturday.
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Bryce faces long odds in defeating Ryan, and the Speaker still has a sizable fundraising advantage in the race.
As of Dec. 31, Ryan had about $9.65 million in cash on hand, while Bryce had about $1.3 million on hand, according to Federal Election Commission data.
Politico first reported on Bryce’s fundraising numbers.
Updated at 2:50 p.m.
A federal judge in Hawaii late Thursday dealt a blow to the Trump administration, weakening the so-called Muslim Ban 2.0.
That travel ban, aimed at people from six Muslim-majority countries, cannot be used to bar entry from grandparents, grandchildren, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and cousins, said U.S. District Court Judge Derrick Watson. His ruling was in response to Hawaii’s renewed attempt to challenge the ban’s scope.
The U.S. Supreme Court, as Reuters explains,
But Watson shot back against that interpretation. He wrote: “[T]he Government’s definition represents the antithesis of common sense. Common sense, for instance, dictates that close family members be defined to include grandparents. Indeed, grandparents are the epitome of close family members. The Government’s definition excludes them. That simply cannot be.”
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Politico notes that Watson’s order “also prohibited the administration from blocking refugees with a commitment from a resettlement agency in the U.S., a move that could revive the flow of refugee admissions this year.”
According to Naureen Shah, Amnesty International USA senior director of campaigns, “This decision is another rejection of the Trump administration’s cruel and discriminatory policy.”
“It is welcome but temporary relief for the thousands of refugees and family members who remain uncertain of their future. They cannot wait for another drawn-out legal battle; Congress must step in now and end this cruel and discriminatory ban once and for all,” Shah continued.
The International Rescue Committee (IRC) also welcomed the ruling.
“We are pleased that the U.S. District Court in Hawaii has further clarified the ‘bona fide relationship’ interpretation, recognizing how important grandparents or remaining extended families may be for refugees—as well as the resettlement agencies who prepare extensively for their smooth arrival,” said Jennifer Sime, senior vice president of U.S. programs at the humanitarian organiation.
“The IRC is heartened, and continues to believe that this gold-standard resettlement program can and should continue to save lives while the administration conducts its review,” she said.
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On the heels of what appeared to be Trumpcare’s final collapse on Monday and in the midst of growing grassroots demands for Democratic lawmakers to embrace a “bold” agenda, former Vice President Al Gore said at an event on Tuesday that he believes the United States should move toward a single-payer system that guarantees healthcare for every American.
“I believe we ought to have single-payer healthcare.”
—Al Gore”The private sector has not shown any ability to provide good, affordable healthcare for all,” Gore said at Borough of Manhattan Community College, where he was promoting his new climate change documentary. “I believe we ought to have single-payer healthcare.”
As the Huffington Post‘s Alexander Kaufman notes, Gore has in the past unenthusiastically expressed support for single-payer.
“I think we’ve reached a point where the entire healthcare system is in impending crisis,” Gore said in 2002. “I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that we should begin drafting a single-payer national health insurance plan.”
Gore is one of the most prominent Democrats to speak publicly in support of a Medicare-for-All type system as Republicans attempt to move ahead with their long-shot effort to repeal Obamacare without a replacement. Others who have recently endorsed single-payer include Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.).
In recent months, public support for Medicare for All has surged, leading some commentators to argue that it is the “inevitable” successor to the prevailing for-profit healthcare model.
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Progressive groups leading the resistance against Trumpcare have repeatedly emphasized that it is not enough to defend Obamacare. An ambitious alternative, activists have argued, must be the end goal, given the deep flaws within the current healthcare system that make it one of the worst-performing in the industrialized world.
As Sandro Galea, dean of the Boston University School of Public Health, argues in an analysis for the Harvard Business Review, “there is no reason to think that the status quo is immutable.”
“It did not, after all, come about organically; it is the product of years of influence strategically wielded by powerful stakeholders in business, medicine, and politics,” Galea continues. “These stakeholders were able to advance their agenda in large part because Americans had not come to view healthcare as an essential collective right. This is changing.”
As Common Dreams reported on Tuesday, a coalition of more than a dozen progressive groups is seeking to pressure Democratic lawmakers to change along with this surge in public support. Backing Medicare for All, these groups argue, would build a firm and extremely popular foundation for Democrats to run on in 2018.
“Simply put, the Democratic Party is a strong midterm wave and a little inter-party soul-searching away from a chance at finally fulfilling the left’s greatest healthcare dream, and unlike the GOP’s healthcare dream, it would actually help millions rather than hurt them,” concludes Bustle‘s Chris Tognotti. “While it might not be easy, or entirely without risk, it’s at the very least an issue worth fighting for.”
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The last-ditch effort by Senate Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act was defeated in the early hours of Friday morning, dealing a “humiliating” blow to President Donald Trump and the GOP and sparking jubilant celebration among those who have marched, called their representatives, and risked arrest for months to ensure Trumpcare’s demise.
“The failure of Trumpcare provides the perfect opportunity for Democrats to go on offense by fighting for Medicare for All.”
—Murshed Zaheed, CREDO
“You killed Trumpcare, at least for tonight,” declared Indivisible following the vote. “This is your victory. Celebrate it.”
In the end, Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), and John McCain (R-Ariz.) defected from their party to vote down the so-called “skinny repeal” effort, which the Congressional Budget Office estimated would leave 16 million more Americans uninsured.
As Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) delivered a dejected speech announcing the death of the repeal effort he spearheaded, demonstrators outside the Capitol building expressed excitement and relief that, at least for now, the GOP’s efforts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, defund Planned Parenthood, and gut Medicaid have fallen short.
“If millions of Americans had not raised their voices at town hall meetings, made phone calls to their senators, posted on social media, and resisted in other ways, this bill might already be law,” Anna Galland, executive director of MoveOn.org, said in a statement.
But, Galland emphasized, the threat has not been entirely eliminated.
“Republicans in Congress will not give up,” she concluded. “Neither can we.”
This sentiment was echoed on social media and in speeches at the Capitol in response to Trumpcare’s defeat; many concluded that the struggle will continue until healthcare is guaranteed to all Americans as a right.
“To the thousands of citizen leaders who gave their all to this struggle: This is your victory. Thank you,” Our Revolution said on Friday. “We fight on for Medicare for All.”
“Our goal must be to join the rest of the industrialized world and guarantee healthcare to every man, woman, and child in this country.”
—Sen. Bernie SandersIn a statement following the Senate’s vote, Murshed Zaheed, the political director of CREDO, argued that “the failure of Trumpcare provides the perfect opportunity for Democrats to go on offense by fighting for Medicare for All.”
“Medicare already covers 40 million Americans over the age of 65, providing quality care at prices that are much lower than the private market,” he added. “It is time to take decisive steps toward a national healthcare system that puts people over profits.”
As Common Dreams has reported, grassroots support for federally funded universal healthcare has peaked during the Trumpcare fight, and organizations throughout the country are mobilizing to pressure lawmakers into siding with popular sentiment.
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“Tonight is just a start,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in a speech outside the Capitol. “We’ve got a long way to go. And our goal must be to join the rest of the industrialized world and guarantee healthcare to every man, woman, and child in this country.”
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In a development civil rights groups characterized as “deeply disturbing,” the New York Times reported on Tuesday that the Trump Justice Department is looking to begin “investigating and suing universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants.”
“Throughout his career, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has pushed efforts to end affirmative action programs and he has a clear record of hostility to racial diversity.”
—Kristen Clarke, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
The plan is detailed in an internal Justice Department document obtained by the Times. The memo makes clear that the “new project” will be run not by career civil servants, who are usually tasked with handling school-related matters, but by Trump’s political appointees.
“Supporters and critics of the project said [the document] was clearly targeting admissions programs that can give members of generally disadvantaged groups, like black and Latino students, an edge over other applicants with comparable or higher test scores,” the Times notes.
Rights groups immediately expressed alarm, portraying the department’s memo as part of the Trump administration’s broad effort to roll back central civil rights provisions in crucial areas of American society, from schools to the workplace to the voting booth.
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Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said in a statement on Monday that the Justice Department’s move to “challenge efforts that colleges and universities have undertaken to expand educational opportunity is an affront to our values as a country.”
“Longstanding Supreme Court precedent has upheld the constitutionality and compelling state interest of these policies,” Gutpta noted, “and generations of Americans have benefited from richer, more inclusive institutions of higher education.”
Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, observed in an interview with the Times that the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division was “created and launched to deal with the unique problem of discrimination faced by our nation’s most oppressed minority groups.” The plan outlined in the department’s internal memo represents a “disturbing” diversion from this mission, Clarke argues.
“Everything they are doing is making it clear that they want to defang and weaken the federal government’s tools to protect the civil rights and safety of people across the country.”
—Sen. Patty Murray”Throughout his career, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has pushed efforts to end affirmative action programs and he has a clear record of hostility to racial diversity,” Clarke added in a statement, referring to his record as a federal prosecutor. “We will not stand by idly as this administration continues to hijack and obstruct this division’s core civil rights mission.”
As Common Dreams has reported, numerous key figures within the Trump administration—namely Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos—have come under fire in recent weeks for what civil rights groups have deemed their “repeated refusal” to commit to enforcing federal civil rights protections.
In response to a recent Department of Education directive aimed at scaling back civil rights investigations at public schools, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said: “President Trump and his administration can claim to oppose discrimination all they want, but actions speak louder than words,” she said. “Everything they are doing is making it clear that they want to defang and weaken the federal government’s tools to protect the civil rights and safety of people across the country.”
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“Not good enough.” “Insufficient.” “Too little, too late.”
“It is a sad state of affairs when it’s a news story that the president of the United States condemns racism and white supremacy.”
—Vanita Gupta, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
These were just some of the words used to describe President Donald Trump’s speech on Monday, in which he “finally did the absolute bare minimum” by denouncing white supremacists for the deadly violence they perpetrated over the weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia—and even then, he did so in a speech that started with a boast about the state of the economy.
It took Trump two days and “overwhelming pressure” to denounce white supremacists explicitly. In his first comments regarding the neo-Nazi rally in Virginia—an event also known as “Unite the Right”—the president suggested the violence came from “many sides.” These remarks were met with applause by neo-Nazis on the Internet, who celebrated Trump’s refusal to condemn them by name. Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle were quick to label the comments as evasive and unacceptable.
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Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, expressed a sentiment many echoed following the president’s televised speech on Monday, saying: “It is a sad state of affairs when it’s a news story that the president of the United States condemns racism and white supremacy.”
Gupta continued:
Others heaped on the criticism, arguing that it should not have taken days of external pressure and shoves from his own cabinet to convince Trump to speak out against white supremacy.
Following the president’s remarks on Monday, reports emerged that Trump is “seriously considering a pardon” for former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was found guilty of criminal contempt of court last month after failing to adhere to a court order demanding that he stop racially profiling Latinos.
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Following Heather Heyer death on Saturday—killed when a suspected Nazi sympathizer allegedly drove his car into a crowd of people counter-protesting violent white supremacist gatherings in Charlottesville, Virginia—Republican lawmakers have doubled down on proposals that critics say offer immunity from liability to drivers who run down protestors.
Largely in response to mass demonstrations by Black Lives Matter activists and water protectors protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline, this year state legislators in Florida, North Carolina, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Texas introduced bills designed to protect motorists who strike people demonstrating on roads.
On Sunday, Texas State Rep. Pat Fallon defended his proposal (pdf)—which was recently referred to committee—and accused critics of not knowing “the difference between lawfully protesting in a street and illegally blocking a [highway],” according to a screenshot published by The Intercept (his original posts on Twitter and Facebook have been deleted).
Fallon’s proposal states:
North Carolina’s measure passed the state’s House in April, in light of Heyer’s death in Charlottesville, the chairman of the state Senate’s rules and operations committee told News & Observer in a statement on Monday, “there are no plans to move it forward.”
Even so, the bill’s co-sponsors, state Reps. Justin Burr and Chris Millis, defended their legislation in a statement to The Intercept Monday:
Although legal experts have also said it appears unlikely that the North Carolina measure would enable drivers who intentionally strike protestors to evade prosecution, critics, including Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper—who has promised to veto the proposal if it reaches his desk—say it “sends the wrong message and opens the door to potentially serious consequences.”
Pointing to incidents in Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, and South Carolina, Henry Grabar argues in a Slate piece published Monday that there exists “a long-running right-wing fantasy of running over protesters, especially members of Black Lives Matter who have blocked intersections and highways during rallies.”
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Earlier this week, FOX News and the Daily Caller came under fire for featuring a video that celebrated running over demonstrators. The Daily Caller included the caption: “Here’s a compilation of liberal protesters getting pushed out of the way by cars and trucks. Study the technique; it may prove useful in the next four years.”
The legislative trend to protect drivers who hit protesters started in January, when lawmakers in North Dakota introduced House Bill 1203 (pdf), which was defeated by a slim margin the next month.
The bill stated:
Despite its defeat, the other five states soon followed suit.
“It’s not clear if all of these bills were part of some coordinated effort by a larger group or if legislators are simply cribbing ideas from each other, but either way, it’s not a coincidence,” Paul Blest wrote for The Outline, noting that the original versions of the bills in Tennessee, Rhode Island, and North Carolina “were strikingly similar, even down to the language used” and all were introduced by Republicans, with two Rhode Island Democrats signing on as co-sponsors.
The measures in Tennessee (pdf) and Florida (pdf) died in committee, while the Rhode Island bill has been held for “further study.”
Although half of the driver protection measures have been defeated, they come as part of a broader wave of state-level anti-protest bills, including efforts in five states to criminalize peaceful protest.
By February, the Washington Post had documented Republican lawmakers’ efforts to curb protester rights in 18 states. The ACLU mapped developments with anti-protest legislative measures through late June:
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As millions of Houston residents faced life-threatening flooding on Monday with the saturated remnants of Hurricane Harvey expected to bring even more heavy rains in the days ahead, journalist Naomi Klein warned against the notion, already being pushed by some on the right, that the disaster shouldn’t be “politicized.”
“The window for providing meaningful context and drawing important conclusions is short. We can’t afford to blow it.”
—Naomi Klein”Now is exactly the time to talk about climate change, and all the other systemic injustices — from racial profiling to economic austerity — that turn disasters like Harvey into human catastrophes,” Klein wrote at The Intercept on Monday.
In her piece, Klein warns that the absence of journalists, lawmakers, or experts on the cable news shows and in major papers connecting the dots between human-caused global warming and the severe destruction now underway in Texas is itself a “highly political decision.” And the wrong one.
“The window for providing meaningful context and drawing important conclusions is short. We can’t afford to blow it,” she writes. “Talking honestly about what is fueling this era of serial disasters — even while they’re playing out in real time—isn’t disrespectful to the people on the front lines. In fact, it is the only way to truly honor their losses, and our last hope for preventing a future littered with countless more victims.”
On Sunday, Trump ally Sheriff David Clarke accused progressives of politicizing the storm by discussing President Donald Trump’s response to the massive floods and damage to the nation’s fourth-largest city.
In a Washington Post column, conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt chimed in: “Some advice for my colleagues in the media: Be very slow to politicize this storm. It looks to be quite awful in its impacts. The pull of domestic politics generally and the president specifically on every story is so strong these days that it takes great intentionality to not make this an occasion for another round of Trump trashing or boosterism.”
In pair of tweets earlier on Monday, Klein cautioned against dismissing concerns about climate change and its impact on natural disasters like Harvey, as well as questions about economic inequality and how low-income neighborhoods and communities have been historically left behind by the federal government both in terms of how cities prepare for disasters and how they respond to them.
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Several news reports have shown the impact of Harvey on Southeast Texas’s low-income residents. In Rockport, a coastal city 225 miles southwest of Houston, the BBC reported many residents were unable to evacuate ahead of the storm. One woman stayed “because she had no means to leave and no place to go,” telling the news outlet:
Also commenting on the unequal impacts of the storm was Andy Horowitz, professor of history at Tulane University.
Klein has also written extensively about the impact of “disaster capitalism” in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and other catastrophic events—the exploitation of crises for corporate gain, often under the guise of relief or reconstruction efforts. Last month, she wrote in the Guardian about a list of “Pro-Free-Market Ideas for Responding to Hurricane Katrina and High Gas Prices,” compiled by the Republican Study Committee (RSC) in September 2005—weeks after Katrina and the failure of the city’s levees had turned New Orleans into a disaster zone.
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The group, then headed by Vice President Mike Pence, saw the severe flooding as an opportunity to “make the entire affected area a flat tax free-enterprise zone,” “give school-choice vouchers for displaced children,” and “make the entire region an economic competitiveness zone (comprehensive tax incentives and waiving of regulations).”
On Twitter, Klein made clear that Houston should be wary of similar responses by for-profit industries as the area recovers from Harvey.
Update: This post has been updated from its original version to include excerpts from Klein’s new column.
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On Wednesday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved a new cancer therapy developed by the pharmaceutical company Novartis that experts hope may revolutionize the way doctors treat cancer—but the half-million dollar price tag has sparked a national conversation the costs of life-saving treatments.
In a clinical trial of this CAR-T cell therapy—which will hit the market as “Kymriah”—83 percent of children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia were cancer free after just three months and one dose.
“This is an amazing therapy, but there has to be a limit at which point companies can no longer charge desperate patients, or taxpayers, enormous sums.”
—Dr. Walid Gellad, University of Pittsburgh
“The therapy,” STAT reports, “is made by harvesting patients’ white blood cells and rewiring them to home in on tumors. Novartis’s product is the first CAR-T therapy to come before the FDA, leading a pack of novel treatments that promise to change the standard of care for certain aggressive blood cancers.”
“We’re entering a new frontier in medical innovation with the ability to reprogram a patient’s own cells to attack a deadly cancer,” said FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb. “New technologies such as gene and cell therapies hold out the potential to transform medicine.”
But at what cost?
The price for one treatment set of Kymriah is at $475,000, which does not include any doctors’ fees or additional bills for time spent at the hospital, meaning the end cost could be much higher. That is actually lower than anticipated—Wall Street analyst predicted as high as $750,000 per dose, and U.K. regulators said $700,000 “would be fair,” STAT reports—but priced at nearly half a million dollars, the treatment has provoked a fierce debate about notoriously high costs for necessary, life-saving healthcare.
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Despite Kymriah’s success in the clinical trial, Walid Gellad, a doctor and professor at the University of Pittsburgh, suggested to Axios that treatments with undetermined effectiveness—even if they have the potential to save lives—shouldn’t cost more than proven measures such as bone marrow or kidney transplants, adding: “This is an amazing therapy, but there has to be a limit at which point companies can no longer charge desperate patients, or taxpayers, enormous sums.”
“While Novartis’ decision to set a price at $475,000 per treatment may be seen by some as restraint, we believe it is excessive,” said David Mitchell, founder and president of the advocacy group Patients For Affordable Drugs, and a cancer patient himself. “The drug pricing system in America is completely broken. Until policy in this country changes, the vicious cycle of patients struggling under high drug prices will continue.”
Mitchell’s group calculated that over $200 million in federal funding has been allocated to research related to the treatment, and Mitchell said, “Novartis has not acknowledged the significance of taxpayers’ investment,” but Novartis chief executive Joseph Jimenez insisted to Forbes‘ Matthew Herper that his company’s undisclosed investments “dwarf anything the government has invested through NIH grants.”
The pharma exec also told Herper he hopes the discussion about Kymriah’s cost could lead to a change in the way patients are charged for life-saving treatments. Writing for Forbes, Herper reports:
Journalists who cover the pharmaceutical industry noted that Jimenez’s endorsement of response-based payments is a big deal in the debate about healthcare treatment pricing, but even if the government negotiates a deal for those who rely on Medicare and Medicaid, for cancer patients with private insurance or no insurance at all, this and other life-saving treatments could still remain out-of-reach.
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High costs are already impacting cancer patients across the U.S. Recent analysis by Kaiser Health News found that because of continuously increasing costs for cancer treatments, “hundreds of thousands of cancer patients are delaying care, cutting their pills in half, or skipping drug treatment entirely.”
And although there are more than 600 gene and cell therapies in clinical trials today, according to Bloomberg Technology, future treatments that resemble Kymriah, for different types of cancer and other diseases, are expected to come at similar or even higher costs.
Peter Bach, the director of Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Center for Health Policy and Outcomes, who studies drug prices, told Bloomberg he see the industry’s prices increasing with no end in sight.
“We have gotten so comfortable with these numbers that are just beyond belief for these agents,” Bach said. “And this is a highly profitable sector…. They just continue to move the goal posts” for how much companies can charge.
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U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who ran for president in 2016 and is a favorite of the Christian right, will be fighting a public relations battle on Tuesday as he faces tough questions about why his official Twitter account “liked” a pornographic video on Monday night.
As the New York Post reports:
The internet, of course, quickly sprung into action, capturing screenshots and prepping the senator for the torrent of criticism and jabs to come.
Many felt it necessary to note in the context of his Twitter activity that Cruz “once argued that Americans have no ‘due process’ right to masturbate.”
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Craig Mazin, a screenwriter who was Cruz’s Princeton roommate, reacted to the “Twitter porn controversy” Monday night, writing: “Sadly, the fact that Ted Cruz jacks off to mediocre porn spam is the most human thing we can say about him. This is actually his high point.”
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“Now imagine Ted Cruz is doing this four feet below you in the bottom bunk bed,” Mazin added. “Yes, my misery very much appreciates your company.”
Others continued to pile it on:
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