This Week in Congress

House and Senate

Both Houses of Congress were in session this week and began work on appropriations bills.

Appropriations

House

The House is in chaos this week. The Republican leadership attempted take up the FY’24 Defense appropriations on the floor, but because members of the Freedom caucus and other conservative Republicans stated they would not support the bill, the Speaker was forced to postpone the vote.

Speaker McCarthy

Republican Hardliners have said they may use a parliamentary procedure to remove Speaker McCarthy from office if their demands aren’t met.

Senate

The Senate was hoping to pass a three-bill FY’24 appropriations minibus early next week that includes: Agriculture, Military/VA, and Transportation/Housing. However, the package is now being held up over a Republican objection to move each bill separately, rather than in a minibus.

Continuing Resolution

House conservatives are floating a continuing resolution package that would include the FY’24 appropriations for Defense and Homeland Security; a 1% across-the-board cut to most federal programs, a border security bill, and some funding for disaster assistance (fires, hurricanes, flooding, etc.) but no additional aid to Ukraine. This plan will more than likely not have the votes to pass the House and no chance of passing the Senate. With only a few weeks before the fiscal year ends on September 30, there is no clear path forward to keep the government funded. Unless cooler heads prevail, a government shutdown is possible.

Federal Happenings

Abortion

Policy Riders

House GOP leaders have abandoned efforts to pass an agriculture funding bill amid an intraparty fight over abortion policy. House GOP leaders had hoped that inserting abortion provisions into every FY’24 appropriations bill would help win votes from conservative members and placate influential outside groups hoping for stricter abortion policies. But so far, the move has backfired and has drawn fierce and pushback from more than a dozen moderate Republicans, leaving the House without the votes to pass the funding bills.

Department of Defense Policy

The Pentagon won’t yield to demands from Senator Tommy Tuberville to scrap its travel policy for service members seeking an abortion in exchange for lifting his blockade on more than 300 military promotions, Defense Department spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said: “We are not changing our policy.”

Biden Administration Takes Abortion-Pill Dispute To US Supreme Court

President Biden’s administration took its battle to preserve broad access to the abortion pill mifepristone to the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday as it appealed a lower court’s ruling that would curb how the drug is delivered and distributed. The Justice Department said it filed its appeal of an August decision by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that would bar telemedicine prescriptions and shipments of mifepristone by mail. The drug’s manufacturer, Danco Laboratories, also filed its appeal.

PEPFAR

Reauthorization

Pressure is mounting on the GOP-majority House to pass a reauthorization of the U.S.’s long-term global HIV initiative, but the lawmaker holding up the legislation, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), is showing no signs of moving. Former President George W. Bush, who launched the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in 2003, called on Congress to pass a five-year reauthorization in an op-ed published by The Washington Post this week, saying it would become a source of national shame if the program’s authorization was allowed to expire.

Protests at Speaker McCarthy’s Office over HIV Program

Seven people were arrested after occupying the office of House Speaker McCarthy on Capitol Hill and demanding that Congress reauthorize the PEPFAR global initiative to fight HIV and AIDS. The provisions of  PEPFAR — which stands for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief — are set to expire Sept. 30. The program has been credited with saving more than 25 million lives.

Senate Gender Legislation

Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio introduced legislation that would ban government agencies and federally funded hospitals from forcing employees to partake in programs that “promote radical gender ideology.” “It is deeply disturbing to see the progressive left infiltrate the American healthcare system and compromise the quality of patient care in the process. I am introducing the Protecting Conscience in Healthcare Act to stop this harmful, radical gender ideology in American hospitals and healthcare facilities,” Rubio said in comment on the legislation. The legislation, more than likely, will never be taken up by the Senate.

Other Happenings from Around the Nation

Syphilis Cases in Texas

Syphilis rages through Texas, causing newborn cases to climb amid treatment shortage. About twice a week, a pregnant patient turns up in Dr. Irene Stafford’s obstetrics office in Houston with syphilis, an STI that affects more newborns in Texas than anywhere else in the country. For a seasoned professional like Stafford, the sheer numbers are startling. She’s been treating congenital syphilis with increasing frequency in recent years in a city that has the state’s highest newborn infection rates. The article can be found here

Michigan STD Funding

The fastest growing county in Michigan has seen its local government transformed in the wake of backlash to pandemic restrictions, and the new commissioners — claiming COVID is over — are threatening to cut millions of dollars from the county’s health department. Local public health officials say the potential loss of funding could severely impact several essential services, including vaccines, cancer screening and testing for sexually transmitted infections. These proposed cuts also come after the board attempted to replace the county’s top health official, sparking a months-long legal battle.

Abortion

Florida

Florida Governor DeSantis (R) said that he does not support criminalizing abortion in his state. “We have no criminal penalty,” he said. “The penalties are for the physician.” Florida’s six-week abortion ban is not in effect, pending a lawsuit, but would enable the state to pursue felony charges against “any person who willfully performs or actively participates in a termination of pregnancy,” it reads.

Idaho/Tennessee/Oklahoma

Eight women in Idaho and Tennessee are asking state courts to place holds on their states’ abortion laws after being denied access to the procedure while facing harrowing pregnancy complications that they say endangered their lives. Four physicians have also joined the lawsuits, saying the state laws have wrongly forced medical experts to weigh the health of a patient against the threat of legal liability. A woman in Oklahoma who said she had a dangerous and nonviable pregnancy also filed a federal lawsuit asserting that she was denied an abortion despite a U.S. law that requires doctors to perform the procedure when it’s medically necessary.

Missouri

Abortion-rights advocates asked a judge to rewrite what they call misleading descriptions of several constitutional amendments on abortion that voters could see on Missouri’s 2024 ballot. Missouri is among several states, including Ohio, where abortion opponents are fighting efforts to ensure or restore access to the procedure following the fall of Roe v. Wade last year.

North Carolina

North Carolina remained the South’s destination for abortions in the first six months of this year, as state lawmakers debated how far to go in restricting the procedure. Patients are proving highly motivated to travel to get the care in the face of state bans, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights.

South Carolina

Abortion providers urged South Carolina’s highest court to lengthen the narrow window when a pregnancy can be legally terminated under the state’s strict new ban. The conservative state’s all-male Supreme Court last month upheld a so-called “fetal heartbeat” law commonly understood to restrict access after about six weeks of pregnancy, which is before most women know they’re pregnant.

Wisconsin

Wisconsin’s largest provider of abortions announced it was resuming services after a judge signaled in July she did not believe the state’s abortion law actually bans consensual procedures like those performed at Planned Parenthood. The move comes after abortions have been unavailable in Wisconsin for more than a year after the Roe v. Wade decision.

LBGTQ

Alabama

Alabama families with transgender children asked a full appellate court this week to review a decision that will let the state enforce a ban on treating minors with gender-affirming hormones and puberty blockers. The families asked all of the judges of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to review a three-judge panel decision issued last month. The panel lifted a judge’s temporary injunction that had blocked Alabama from enforcing the law while a lawsuit over the ban goes forward.

Florida

A new Florida law restricting health care for transgender people can still be applied to adults while it is being challenged in court, a federal judge ruled. Judge Hinkle, who previously blocked the law’s enforcement on behalf of minors, ruled that adults seeking to expand his injunction haven’t proven they would be irreparably harmed until the case is resolved.

Massachusetts

A federal appeals court wrestled with whether to revive a lawsuit by two parents challenging a Massachusetts’ school district policy to not disclose students’ gender identities expressed at school to their families without their consent. The parents’ lawyer told the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that staff at a school in Ludlow, Massachusetts, withheld from them that their two children had begun using different names or pronouns during class hours, in violation of the parents’ constitutional rights to direct the care of their children.

Missouri

Washington University in St. Louis will stop prescribing gender medications to minors, the school said, citing “unacceptable” legal liability under a new Missouri law banning such treatments. The change comes seven months after a former employee of the university’s youth gender clinic claimed that doctors there were hastily prescribing the treatments, throwing the center into the cross hairs of politicians trying to outlaw so-called gender affirming care for adolescents.

North Dakota

Families and a pediatrician are challenging North Dakota’s law criminalizing gender-affirming care for minors. The lawsuit against the state attorney general and state’s attorneys of three counties seeks to immediately block the ban, which took effect in April, and to have a judge find it unconstitutional and stop the state from enforcing it.

Ohio

Some Northeast Ohio residents fear that a formal policy from the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland will increase the risk of suicide and self-harm among young people who identify as LGBTQ. The policy, which went into effect earlier this month, bars students and staff from undergoing gender-affirming care and using pronouns different than those affiliated with a person’s biological sex. It also requires church or school staff members to tell the parents of a child who might be transgender.

340(b)

As federal lawmakers look to reform aspects of the 340B drug discount program to improve its transparency and oversight, Jazz Pharmaceuticals announced on Sept. 11 it will restrict the eligibility of certain contract pharmacies to receive prescription drugs at 340B discounted prices. Jazz Pharmaceuticals, now the 25th drug maker to restrict how many contract pharmacies can be used by hospitals to dispense 340B drugs, will no longer bill or ship orders of its childhood epilepsy medication Epidolex at 340B prices to hospitals using more than one in-house pharmacy to distribute the drug, beginning Oct. 9. Hospitals without an in-house pharmacy capable of dispensing 340B drugs will need to designate one single contract pharmacy location for the company to facilitate orders of the drugs at the 340B discount price. The new policy resembles that established by drug maker Astellas for its prostate cancer drug Xtandi, which went into effect this month. Jazz Pharmaceuticals now joins AbbVie, Amgen, Astellas, AstraZeneca, Bausch Health, Bayer, Biogen, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, EMD Serono, Exelixis, Gilead, GlaxoSmithKline, Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Organon, Pfizer, Sanofi, Teva, UCB and United Therapeutics in implementing policies aimed at curbing the duplication or alleged diversion of 340B discounts. Federal grantee clinics will be exempt from having to adhere to the policy.

COVID-19

CDC has approved the new COVID-19 booster and recommended that all Americans should get the updated shot. CDC Director Cohen stated, “CDC is now recommending updated COVID-19 vaccination for everyone 6 months and older to better protect you and your loved one.” The new shots could become available as soon as this week in some parts of the country. They’re not technically free anymore, but for most people insurance will pay for them. The federal government will make the shots available for the uninsured at no cost. The new COVID shots, made by Pfizer and Moderna, target a subvariant of omicron, called XBB.1.5. More than 90% of the COVID viruses circulating now are closely related to that strain, the CDC said.

Timing

Doctors say that people who did not get the previous coronavirus booster should get the new shot now. The same goes for older people who might be especially vulnerable to a bad case of COVID. Some doctors say healthy younger people might want to wait a bit so that protection is high around the winter holidays, when cases have risen in the last three years.

Florida

This week Florida Governor DeSantis and the Florida Surgeon General Ladapo are directly contradicting federal health recommendations and warning residents against getting a new COVID-19 booster, saying there’s not enough evidence it provides benefits that outweigh risks.

RSV and Seasonal Flu Shots

Health experts are saying that infants and adults 60 and older should get the seasonal flu shots and RSV immunizations by the end of October.