Louis Milione, the former principal deputy administrator for the DEA, previously worked for four years as a consultant to large pharmaceutical companies including Perdue Pharma, according to the AP’s reporting.

Perdue Pharma has been heavily associated with the nation's opioids epidemic as it launched the drug OxyContin, which has been linked to the start of the crisis itself. 

Milione’s work for Perdue involved a $600-per-hour payment to help the company navigate legal challenges from states like Ohio and Oklahoma because of their marketing of OxyContin.

He also worked for the U.S.’s fourth-largest wholesale drug distributor, Morris & Dickson, testifying for them during the company’s attempts to continue to supply painkillers to hospitals and pharmacies after a federal judge found it had not flagged thousands of suspicious orders during the opioid crisis, not wanting to lose its license to do so.  

Milione began serving as DEA Administrator Anne Milgram’s foremost deputy in 2021 and previously worked at the agency for 21 years until 2017.

In his time away from the agency, he began a career as a consultant to some companies that he had previous regulating authority over. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The poll, published Wednesday, found that 30 percent of respondents believe the U.S. has recovered better from the COVID-19 pandemic than other countries, while 32 percent of those surveyed said the U.S. has fared worse post-pandemic. 

Thirty-three percent of respondents said that the country’s post-pandemic recovery has been about the same as other countries. 

Along political party lines, 50 percent of Democrat respondents believe that the U.S. has recovered better from the COVID-19 pandemic than other countries, and 24 percent of  Independent respondents and 17 percent of Republican respondents also agreed with the sentiment, according to the poll.

Thirty-two percent of male respondents believe that the country’s post-pandemic recovery fared better than other countries, while 28 percent of female respondents also expressed the same viewpoint. 

Among age groups, 38 percent of respondents who are 55 years or older said that the U.S. has recovered better from the COVID-19 pandemic than other countries, while 26 percent of respondents aged 18 to 34 and 23 percent of respondents between the ages of 35 to 54 years said the same thing. 

Among racial groups, 28 percent of white respondents believe that the U.S. has recovered better from the COVID-19 pandemic than other countries, while 34 percent of non-white respondents have the same sentiment, the poll said. 

The poll comes three months after President Biden signed into law ​​a GOP-led resolution to end a national emergency over the COVID-19 pandemic, and as the Biden administration has pushed messaging surrounding "Bidenomics," a slogan highlighting the work his administration has done to turn the economy.

The Monmouth University Poll was conducted from July 12 to July 17 with a total of 910 respondents participating in the survey. The poll’s margin of error was 4.9 percentage points.

President Biden’s video featuring clips from a Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) speech to tout his legislative accomplishments reached more than 30 million views in 12 hours after it was posted Tuesday evening, according to statistics first shared with The Hill.

The video received the second-highest impressions on a Biden video since he was inaugurated, only behind his reelection campaign launch video that dropped in April.

The video received more than 34 million views as of Wednesday around 10:30 a.m. and more than 10 million of those were in the first three hours since it dropped. It also received more than 200,000 shares and more than 2 million engagements as of Wednesday morning.

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Greene’s speech at Turning Point USA was intended to attack the president on policy issues. But, the Biden campaign video set the speech to uplifting music as she lists the president’s agenda and legislative priorities and compares him to former Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“I approve this message,” Biden said on Twitter, sharing the video Tuesday evening.

When it was first posted, other Democrats rallied around the video and shared it, including Gov. Gavin Newsom (Calif.) and Reps. Ilhan Omar (Minn.) and Adam Schiff (Calif.).

“Joe Biden had the largest public investment in social infrastructure and environmental programs, that is actually finishing what FDR started, that LBJ expanded on, and Joe Biden is attempting to complete,” Greene said in her speech this weekend.

“Programs to address education, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, transportation, Medicare, Medicaid, labor unions, and he still is working on it,” she added.

The memo from an HHS official said the facility has repeatedly refused to provide documents and answer questions from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) about safety and security. HHS also told the lab it’s seeking to cut off funding permanently.

The memo, dated Monday, was first reported by Bloomberg.

The Wuhan Institute “likely violated protocols of the NIH regarding biosafety is undisputed,” wrote the official, whose name was redacted. "As such, there is risk that WIV not only previously violated, but is currently violating, and will continue to violate, protocols of the NIH on biosafety."

The institute, which has not received any federal money since 2020, now has 30 days to respond to the notice. 

“Therefore, I have determined that the immediate suspension of WIV is necessary to mitigate any potential public health risk,” the HHS official wrote. 

The document was made public by the House Oversight Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, which has been probing the administration's grants to the Wuhan Institute. Republican members of the panel have insisted the virus was manufactured in the Chinese facility with the aid of U.S. funding and spread worldwide because of a lab leak.

Much of the attention has been focused on EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based organization that received a 2014 grant from NIH that was partly sub-granted to the Wuhan Institute.

The U.S. intelligence community has yet to reach a conclusion about where the virus originated. At the same time, China has blocked international scientists from exploring all possibilities about the virus's origin.

NIH officials have asserted that no taxpayer funds were used for research that could have supercharged a coronavirus and caused the pandemic, but they have also admitted they don't know the full extent of research being conducted in Wuhan.

President Biden is using clips from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) Turning Point USA speech — intended to attack the president on policy issues — to tout his legislative accomplishments in a video released Tuesday.

The video features Greene's speech set to uplifting music as she lists Biden’s agenda and legislative achievements and compares him to Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“Joe Biden had the largest public investment in social infrastructure and environmental programs, that is actually finishing what FDR started, that LBJ expanded on, and Joe Biden is attempting to complete,” Greene said in her speech over the weekend.

“Programs to address education, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, transportation, Medicare, Medicaid, labor unions, and he still is working on it,” Greene said.

Biden’s policy positions have been largely popular throughout the country, but he has struggled to communicate his agenda and legislative achievements to voters, who often say Biden has not accomplished much. His overall approval rating also has not reflected the approval that many of his policies receive.

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Many have shared Greene's speech at the conservative conference and described it as a gift to Biden’s campaign.

Biden tweeted the video and wrote, “I approve this message.”

But psilocybin — the active compound derived from magic mushrooms — can help these patients find relief, a group of Texas-based scientists wrote in the International Journal of Gynecological Cancer on Tuesday.

That’s part of a new openness in Texas — and the medical community as a whole — to ever-broader applications for the mind-expanding substances.

Next year the signatories of Tuesday’s letter — a group of researchers at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston — will begin a study investigating whether psilocybin can help restore the mental health of the increasing number of patients living with advanced cancers.

That group of long-haulers is a cadre that largely didn’t exist a decade ago, said Amit Moran, a cancer biologist at MD Anderson.

“Ten years ago, you were cured, or you died,” Moran told The Hill.

But a rise of targeted cancer treatments has created a new group of patients living on the expanding frontiers of cancer treatment.

“More and more patients survive longer with cancer — they can live two years, five years, even 10 years,” Moran said.

Many of these patients, Moran said, “experience anxiety, depression and existential crisis.”

In particular, women facing late-stage ovarian cancer face overwhelming anxiety and “existential distress” as they stare down the prospect of a painful death and leaving their families behind, Moran and his coauthors wrote.

“These people know that one day they’ll do scan and see progression [in their tumors],” he said. “And they don’t know if that will be 6 months or 10 years.” 

Moran and his colleagues are looking into whether psilocybin could help, as this compound has been shown to offer considerable relief to those dying of terminal cancer — but has never been tested on those living with it.

“Our goal is to alleviate those symptoms to allow them to go back to functioning,” Moran said.

Both the journal letter and MD Anderson study are part of a new renaissance in the medical applications of “psychedelics” — an umbrella category that lumps together such pharmacologically distant compounds as psilocybin, MDMA and ketamine.

While these have very different structures and work on different parts of the brain, they share a common ability to help a patient radically — and often rapidly — reframe their relationship to previously intolerable life circumstances.

A 2021 meta-analysis of terminally ill patients who had received psychedelics for existential distress found that  both classical psychedelics like psilocybin and LSD and “atypical” ones such as MDMA and ketamine left the dying with “positive effects on existential and spiritual well-being, quality of life, acceptance, and reduction of anxiety and depression.”

Another study of psilocybin specifically found that a single dose could leave even healthy individuals with “long-lasting increases in mindfulness.”

These findings have been persuasive enough to convince even Texas’ highly conservative legislature — partly because of the state’s disproportionate number of veterans of U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of whom returned emotionally and mentally scarred.

In 2021, the Texas legislature passed a bipartisan law authorizing the state’s Department of Health to begin studying the use of MDMA, ketamine and psilocybin for a wide range of physical and emotional ailments.

“To me, this may be one of the most hopeful pieces of legislation that members of the Legislature have the opportunity to consider this session,” former Gov. Rick Perry (R) told reporters in 2021.

By November of 2021, the first study was underway: a joint state, federal and university effort to understand whether psilocybin could help alleviate post-traumatic stress disorders in veterans.

The prevalence of psychological suffering has blunted the partisan nature around psychedelics, one researcher on that study suggested to Houston Public Media.

“I think many people are at the point of ‘I will try anything,' whether they're conservative, anti-drug, whatever it is,” said Lynette Averill of the Texas-based Baylor College of Medicine.

Psychedelic research remains in its infancy, Moran noted. Of the more than 140,000 active clinical trials in the country, only 79 are looking into psychedelics. Of those, only a dozen are looking at cancer — and those are all focused on those who are dying. 

While cancer treatments can keep tumors in check for a long time, Moran hopes that psychedelic treatments can “bring them back to the job market, get out of bed, regain their functionality,” he said.

“The goal is not just to give them life — but a life worth living,” he added.

Sánchez referred to the growing population of Americans more than 65 years old as a “gray tsunami” during The Hill’s More than Memory Loss: Caring for those with Alzheimer’s event, sponsored by Otsuka. Bob Cusack, The Hill’s editor in chief, moderated the event. 

Despite Medicare making up just under 16% of the federal budget, the maturing demographic of the U.S. population threatens to destabilize the program.  

“We have to find bipartisan support for tough decisions on how do we ensure that these programs that have existed for 50 years continue to exist for the next 100 years,” Sánchez said.  

With two parents affected by Alzheimer’s, Sánchez was more aware of the expanding population of aging people and how it would mean a greater number of people will be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. They’ll require resources like Medicare, which will put a growing strain on the system. 

The CHANGE Act, sponsored by Sánchez, aims to modify Medicare requirements for Alzheimer’s care in the hope that patients can receive their diagnosis and treatment sooner. The bill is set to be reintroduced Wednesday.  

The "gray tsunami" poses another issue, Sánchez said. The U.S.’s birth rate does not reach replacement rate, meaning there isn’t a high enough birth rate to replace the older generations in the workforce.  

One solution she proposed was immigration policy reform.  

“We’re going to need workers, and our birth rate doesn’t support that,” Sanchez said. “It’s going to have to be immigration.”  

The California Democrat also noted how the U.S.’s Latino population is quite young in comparison to other demographics, which could help with the growing workforce shortage.  

Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) proposed a different solution to preserving Medicare when he spoke, drawing back on his aim to prioritize limiting federal spending.  

Buchanan has had a longstanding goal to balance the federal budget. In every Congress since 2007, he has proposed a constitutional amendment that limits federal expenditures exceeding the fiscal year’s receipts unless approved by Congress.  

“Without dealing with entitlements on a bipartisan basis, I don’t know where this goes, but it’s not going to end good,” Buchanan replied, when Cusack asked him how Congress could help solve the impending Medicare issue. 

Entitlement programs, which make up almost half of the federal budget, have become a battleground topic between Democrats and Republicans amid the recent debt ceiling controversy.

Buchanan’s comment about entitlement programs comes as some GOP Congress members threaten to withhold their support of appropriation bills with federal spending provisions that mirror the debt ceiling agreement.  

Sánchez also spoke briefly about this year’s appropriations bills as she looks ahead toward how to get the CHANGE Act through both chambers. 

“We’ll look at any potential vehicle,” Sánchez said about incorporating funding for her bill into Congress’s federal spending plan. “The goal is to get it into something that can move.”  

The 16th annual American Fitness Index is a collaboration between the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) and the Elevance Health Foundation. The index uses census and city-provided data surrounding 34 fitness indicators to rank the 100 largest U.S. cities. 

Here’s the top 10 and bottom 10 on this year’s index.

1. Arlington, Va.
2. Washington, D.C.
3. Seattle, Wash.
4. Minneapolis, Minn.
5. Irvine, Calif.
6. Madison, Wis.
7. San Francisco, Calif.
8. St. Paul, Minn.
9. Denver, Colo.
10. Oakland, Calif.

90. San Antonio, Texas 
91. Kansas City, Mo.
92. Lubbock, Texas
93. Indianapolis, Ind.
94. Tulsa, Okla. 
95. Memphis, Tenn.
96. North Las Vegas, Nev.
97. Louisville, Ky.
98. Bakersfield, Calif.
99. Wichita, Kan. 
100. Oklahoma City, Okla.

By providing data and expert analysis to increase awareness of each city's health metrics, the groups behind the index hope to encourage meaningful discussion and action to address what the data reveals.

“We want City Council folks to hopefully look at this and think, ‘Okay, if we're at the bottom, we have places to grow. What could we do even small that will help the people in our city move more and be healthier?” said ACSM president-elect Dr. Stella Volpe.

The index pulls together census data about health behaviors and outcomes, as well as the city’s built environment, recreational facilities and funding for certain policies. The health outcome indicators specifically refer to chronic diseases and their prevalence across the country.

The 2023 index found that over 30 percent of those residing in these cities — or 20 million people — report having high blood pressure. That same number reported obesity.

Cities that tend to have high rates of chronic disease often score low in personal health and community metrics. Typically, residents in these cities may not have access to recreational facilities, walkable or bikeable streets, or other community assets that promote physical activity. 

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, sufficient physical activity has the potential to prevent one in 12 cases of diabetes, one in 15 cases of heart disease and one in 10 premature deaths. 

Though the ACSM and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend 150 minutes per week — or approximately 22 minutes per day — of moderate intensity aerobic and muscle-strengthening activities two times per week, only 23.7 percent of adults surveyed met both guidelines.

“We have years of data that have well established the fact that physical activity and exercise... can help prevent chronic disease, things like obesity, cancer, diabetes, hypertension and stroke,” Volpe said. 

“Being active every day, even if it's not as high as some people think it ‘should be,’ helps people physiologically to prevent chronic disease, and that also includes mental health.”

Though Washington, D.C. is considered the second fittest city in America, almost 50 percent of residents reported poor mental health in the previous month.

While it will take years to fully understand the impacts of the pandemic, Volpe said that these numbers are likely due in part to a lack of social interaction that comes with working remotely. Again, she said, physical activity could reduce symptoms of mental illness, especially when done with others. 

Volpe hopes that the Index encourages cities to make the healthy choice the easy choice. 

This could be as simple as providing residents with city bikes, opening up fenced off areas to create more parks, or investing in safer sidewalks so people are more likely to walk to grab lunch, she said. 

However, physical activity also relies on individual choice as well.

“You don't have to go out and run a marathon every day,” Volpe added. “I always try to tell people that 10 minute bouts throughout the day, even if you're just walking, add up.”

In a letter sent Tuesday to the Department of Health and Human Services, the Democrats called on the White House to strengthen a proposed rule regarding protected personal health data. 

The letter was led in the Senate by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash) and in the House by Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.)

The proposal in question would strengthen the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to prevent information about whether an individual sought, obtained, provided, or facilitated an abortion from being used by law enforcement in red states where abortion is banned.

Following the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision, the administration said it was more likely that individuals' protected health information (PHI) could be disclosed as part of a red state's investigation and/or prosecution of a health provider or even an individual patient.

The proposed rule, issued in April, was meant to counter those concerns by barring state officials from forcing providers and insurers to turn over information about whether someone sought or provided an abortion. 

A public comment period on the proposal closed last month. 

"The threat that PHI will be obtained and used in such an investigation or proceeding is likely to chill individuals' willingness to seek lawful treatment or to provide full information to their health care providers when obtaining that treatment," the administration said in the proposal. 

Yet the rule as proposed would require officials to obtain an "attestation" that the health information won't be shared for a prohibited purpose. It also would not protect that information from a subpoena, discovery request, or other administrative request. 

Among their demands, the lawmakers said the rule needs a much higher bar to overcome. Law enforcement agencies should be required to obtain a warrant before forcing doctors, pharmacists, and other health care providers to turn over their patients’ health information, they said.

The Democrats also said warrants must prohibit sharing those records with other law enforcement agencies, except to further the particular investigation identified in the relevant warrant application.

"Americans should be able to trust that the information they share in confidence with their doctors when seeking care will receive the highest protections under the law, regardless of the specific medical issue. But current legal protections for PHI are woefully insufficient," the lawmakers wrote. 

They also said HHS should apply the warrant protection broadly.

"Instead of limiting this higher standard to narrow categories of records, HHS should apply this protection across the board, regardless of the illness, disease, or medical issue," the Democrats said. 

J&J joins fellow pharmaceutical companies Merck & Co., Bristol Myers Squibb as well as two trade organizations in seeking to block the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program. As with the other complaints that have been filed, the company argues the program would stifle medical innovation.

"The IRA breaks the agreement at the heart of the patent and regulatory laws: when companies invest and succeed at developing innovative new treatments, they are awarded time-limited and constitutionally protected rights in their innovation," J&J said in its release.

The complaint, filed in the District Court of New Jersey, appeared to imply the pharmaceutical company did not view the process established by the IRA as being a "real" negotiation, accusing the federal government of coercion. Other plaintiffs have stated that while they are open to negotiating drug prices, they take issue with how the government plans to carry out talks.

Participation in drug price negotiations is voluntary, though there are costs to not negotiating. Companies who do not want to engage have the option of either facing excise taxes or terminating their relationships with Medicaid, which would mean giving up a highly lucrative income stream.

As with previous suits, J&J argued its constitutional rights were violated by the HHS program, arguing the negotiations would amount to compelled speech. The company asks the court to declare the program to be a violation of constitutional rights and for agreements signed under the program to be declared null and void.

HHS recently revised its guidelines on how it plans to carry out the negotiations in apparent response to the deluge of lawsuits, clarifying what steps will be taken during talks and how companies can avoid excise taxes if they don't want to discuss drug prices.

Organizations suing to stop negotiations were not reassured by the revisions. One of the plaintiffs, the Chamber of Commerce, filed a motion last week to block the drug price negotiation program from being implemented while it is being hashed out in court.

Negotiations will take place over 2023 and 2024, but the new prices won't go into effect until 2026. The first 10 drugs eligible for negotiation are set to be announced in September, in less than two months.

The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP) released a report Tuesday detailing the elevated dangers for patients who travel for abortions or gender-affirming care.  

“Surveillance doesn’t stop at the state line,” said Albert Fox Cahn, the executive director of STOP. “Even as progressive states seek to protect abortion and gender affirming care within our borders, anti-choice states are continuing to expand the threat that they will prosecute residents who leave the state to find evidence-based medical treatment.”  

Cahn emphasized that it’s crucial for patients to understand how they can be tracked by law enforcement even when outside of the state, writing, “Every hotel reservation and bridge toll will be just one subpoena away from being used against a patient in court.”  

The report comes a little over a year after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, which eliminated the 1973 precedent granting the constitutional right to abortion. The Supreme Court granted states the authority to limit or ban the procedure.  

In the months that followed, several Republican-led states moved against residents' access to abortions.

The report found law enforcement and state officials can use license plate readers, ticket information and street cameras to track and identify residents “seeking, facilitating, or providing out-of-state care.” Furthermore, the report claims law enforcement agencies can “weaponize data,” that is already commercially available to them, while being able to buy more data from hotels and smartphones.  

STOP research director Eleni Manis said while “there’s no such thing as an open road anymore,” there are “relatively safer travel methods.” The report found mass public transportation is preferable, as prosecutors and state officials are “unlikely to leverage knowledge,” about where a patient took a specific subway or bus stop.  

Mass public transportation still does have surveillance concerns however, with some cities increasing tracking of public buses or subways and others forcing riders to pay with phone or credit card instead of cash, according to the report.  

The report found using private cars, Uber or Lyft present the risk of collecting the rider’s data including email addresses, phone numbers, payment information, app location service and destination data, while also having a camera in the vehicle. The report noted taking taxi rides could lower the risk in some cities that don’t collect ridership data.  

“Although this database is anonymized, taxi trip data can be combined with street camera footage to track an individual passenger, mitigating the anonymizing effects of paying for a tax using cash,” the report stated.

Researchers went on to detail the differing surveillance risks associated with scooter and bike share programs, airplanes, long haul buses and Amtrak.

The report also examined the risks connected with hotels and motels, which it found both volunteer or sell information to law enforcement. In comparison, the report found the U.S. Civil Code prohibits law enforcement from having access to short-term rental data, without an administrative subpoena. The report stated staying at the home "of a trusted person" is a safe option, but noted those in public housing have limited privacy from law enforcement.

In a STOP report published last year, researchers determined abortion seekers were being tracked even before Roe v. Wade was overturned.

“E-cigarettes deliver numerous substances into the body that are potentially harmful, including chemicals and other compounds that are likely not known to or understood by the user,” volunteer chair of the AHA scientific statement writing committee Jason Rose said in a new scientific statement released Monday.

“There is research indicating that nicotine-containing e-cigarettes are associated with acute changes in several hemodynamic measures, including increases in blood pressure and heart rate,” he added.

The statement pointed to research that found there was a “significant association” between e-cigarette use and the development of incident respiratory disease over two years, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease/COPD, chronic bronchitis, emphysema or asthma. The statement also said that the ingredients of e-cigarettes — even in those without nicotine — can pose health risks.

“There has also been research indicating that even when nicotine is not present, ingredients in e-cigarettes, particularly flavoring agents, independently carry risks associated with heart and lung diseases in animals,” Rose said. “Negative effects of e-cigarettes have been shown through in vitro studies and in studies of individuals exposed to chemicals in commercially available products.”

The statement noted that vitamin E acetate is the ingredient that is likely causing E-cigarette, or Vaping, product use Associated Lung Injury (EVALI) hospitalizations. The statement added that more research is needed to determine the health impacts it can have on heart attacks and strokes.

The statement also pointed out that e-cigarettes are the most commonly used tobacco product among high school and missle age students. Rose said that this is “equally concerning” because there is also a correlation between e-cigarette use and substance use disorders.

“Because e-cigarettes and other vaping systems have only been in the U.S. for about 15 years, we do not yet have enough information on their long-term health effects, so we must rely on shorter term studies, molecular experiments and research in animals to try to assess the true risk of using e-cigarettes,” Rose added.

“It is necessary for us to expand this type of research since the adoption of e-cigarettes has grown exponentially, especially in young people, many of whom may have never used combustible cigarettes,” he said.

Just before, her mother had found her sitting in her car, halfway unconscious with blood dripping down her legs. 

As she sat in a wheelchair in the Missouri hospital, all Holt could think of was avoiding jail time. 

Holt knew she was having an abortion; her blood and tissue loss was the result of a medication abortion. But sharing that information with doctors could implicate her in criminal activity because Missouri had banned abortions except in life saving situations. 

“I almost lost my life that day,” Holt said. “I would have left my children – my Black children – alone in this world to navigate it alone. Nobody to protect them.” 

Holt, the community engagement director at Pro-Choice Missouri, shared her story at a roundtable discussion with House Oversight Democrats on Monday, highlighting why access to abortion can be life-saving.

Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) led the discussion with Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) and ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.).

The roundtable highlighted the consequences of attempts to restrict abortion access as part of Republican-led efforts to impose a national abortion ban. 

Mifepristone was approved by the Food and Drug administration in 2000, but since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, which overturned the federal right to an abortion, anti-abortion legislation has targeted the use of the pills with the same veracity as medical abortions.

“The Dobbs decision is a death sentence for thousands of Black women and birthing women,” said Holt.

More than half of all U.S. abortions in 2020 were medication abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

Mifepristone, in combination with misoprostol, was the most commonly used pill in these abortions, accounting for 98 percent of medication abortions.

During her opening remarks, Bush held up a pack of abortion pills and said, “This is what an abortion looks like.”

“Medication abortion is a lifeline,” Bush added. “It's a lifeline for the person working multiple jobs who can't afford to take the day off work because wages are too low or they don't have paid sick leave. It’s a lifeline for the mom of two who can't afford childcare or who can't find that affordable childcare. It's a lifeline for the person who lives hundreds of miles away from the nearest clinic and does not have reliable transportation. It's a lifeline for the trans folks who face transphobia and bigotry because of anti-LGBT+ laws and outrageous bans on gender affirming care."

Nationwide, Black women are three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy or childbirth than white women. These disparities persist regardless of education or income. 

“In restrictive states like mine,” Bush said, “medication abortion quite literally saves lives. Forced birth can be deadly. Every person should be able to decide for themselves whether to carry a pregnancy to term or to seek abortion care.”

While abortion rates have been on the decline for some time, according to the Guttmacher Institute, Black women seek abortions at almost five times the rate as white women. But with abortion no longer federally protected, advocates have expressed concern that Black mortality rates will increase, as well as incarceration rates for Black women. 

Though some prosecutors have pledged to avoid enforcing abortion bans, lawmakers are looking to find ways to skirt these challenges with legislation that could circumvent the local prosecutor. 

In Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina and Texas, lawmakers this year have introduced bills allowing state officials to bypass the local prosecutors or even dismiss them if abortion-related enforcement is determined to be too lenient. 

Meanwhile, challenges to the abortion pill continue, with one lawsuit looking to outlaw the medication. The lawsuit, brought by five doctors, argues against the drug’s safety and FDA approval.

In April, the Supreme Court blocked decisions that would have banned the abortion pill, but it left the substance of the case with the Fifth Circuit of Appeals.

Dr. Jamilla Perritt, president and CEO of Physicians for Reproductive Health, said restrictions to abortion access can open people up to criminalization and surveillance. She warned against googling or even texting others about seeking abortion care. 

“All of those things have been used to criminalize people for taking care of themselves,” said Perritt. “The prosecution of people for self managing their own care is discriminatory, it is discretionary and it is circumstantial. If people are suspected of doing something … they are most likely to look like me. And so we see that these prosecutions universally are people living on low incomes, almost always they are people of color, almost always they are young people.”

Bush in February reintroduced the Protecting Access to Medication Abortion Act with Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.)

The act defends access to medication abortion by protecting women’s access to mifepristone through telehealth and certified pharmacies, including mail-order services. The law would only apply in states where abortion remains legal. 

Twenty-one states currently allow for medication abortion, while the mifepristone-misoprostol combination is currently legal in 36 states and Washington, D.C. ​​

In January, the FDA finalized a rule to allow pharmacies to fill prescriptions for medication abortions.

Polk County District Court Judge Joseph Seidlin ruled that a lawsuit by abortion providers is likely to succeed, and the temporary injunction will remain in place for the duration of the lawsuit.

"The court will grant the temporary injunction requested here," Seidlin wrote. "In doing so, it recognizes that there are good, honorable and intelligent people - morally, politically and legally - on both sides of this upsetting societal and constitutional dilemma."

"The court believes it must follow current Iowa Supreme Court precedent and preserve the status quo ante while this litigation … moves forward," Seidlin wrote.

The lawsuit was filed by Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, the Emma Goldman Clinic, and the ACLU of Iowa. They argued that the abortion ban was not constitutional under Iowa law.

Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) signed the sweeping legislation into law Friday at the Family Leadership Summit, an evangelical conference attended by several Republican presidential candidates.

The law would ban almost all abortions after the detection of fetal cardiac activity, which is usually six weeks into a pregnancy and before many women know they are pregnant. There are some exceptions for rape, incest and fetal abnormalities.

Prior to the law, abortion was legal in the state up to 22 weeks of pregnancy.

The state passed a nearly identical version of the law in 2018, but it was halted by a court because Roe v. Wade was still in effect. After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe last summer, Reynolds asked a district court to allow that law to take effect.

When the court declined, she appealed to the state Supreme Court, which deadlocked 3-3, leaving the 22-week limit in place.

Reynolds then called the GOP-led state legislature into a special session last week for the sole purpose of passing the ban.

The prevalence of Alzeheimer's in those regions is closely tied to demographics and age.

Researchers are hoping that a better understanding of the geographic breakdown of the prevalence of the disease, however, can help officials make better decisions about allocating funds and make more targeted treatment plans to care for patients.

“Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias possess tremendous health, social, and economic burdens worldwide,” the report’s introduction said, noting that the cost of caring for people with Alzheimer’s disease was estimated to be at $321 billion in 2022 – which is about $50,000 per person – including $206 billion for Medicare and Medicaid.

“Therefore, to better plan the financial costs of caring for people with AD dementia across the United States, it is necessary to provide state-specific estimates of the number of people with AD dementia, that is, the disease’s prevalence,” the introduction read. 

The researchers used a dementia likelihood score to estimate the prevalence of the disease, using data from the U.S. Census data in combination with data from the thousands of participants in the Chicago Health and Aging Project, a population-based study. 

They mapped their likelihood score across demographic data for each of the 50 states and for 3,142 counties. They relied on statistics that showed the risk of Alzheimer’s increased “exponentially” with age; women had a risk 1.13 times higher than men; Black individuals were 2.5 times more at risk than white people; and Hispanic people were 1.73 times more at risk than white people; more years of schooling was also associated with lower odds of dementia.

The results indicated that the states with the highest estimated prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease were Maryland, (12.9 percent), New York (12.7 percent), Mississippi (12.5 percent), and Florida (12.5 percent). California and Illinois each had a high estimated prevalence of 12 percent. The study explained that Maryland’s high estimated prevalence is explained by its high population share of people more than 85 years old and by its high share of Black residents. 

The study noted that while demographics are important in determining the prevalence of dementia, other factors including lifestyle, diabetes and hypertension are important as well and can change the prevalence.