December 14, 2023

Thursday,December 14, 2023. Annette’s News Roundup.

I think the Roundup makes people feel not so alone.

To read an article excerpted in this Roundup, click on its blue title. Each “blue” article is hyperlinked so you can read the whole article.

Please feel free to share.

Invite at least one other person to subscribe today! https://buttondown.email/AnnettesNewsRoundup

___________________________

Joe is always busy.

The President issued a statement on the impeachment proceedings begun against him by House Republicans.

On how the economy is doing. Bidenomics.

The market climbed 500 points. The Dow Jones Industrial Average breached 37000 for the first time, settling at an all-time high of 37090. 

Fed Leaves Rates Unchanged and Signals Three Cuts Next Year.

Federal Reserve policymakers left rates unchanged and projected three quarter-point rate cuts in 2024 as their inflation outlook improved.

Markets cheered as Fed policymakers painted an optimistic vision of a lower-rate future. The S&P 500 index shot higher following the Fed’s policy decision and continued to climb as Mr. Powell spoke, yields on key government bonds fell, and investors increasingly bet the the Fed could cut rates as soon as March.

“Inflation has eased from its highs, and this has come without a significant increase in unemployment — that’s very good news,” [ Fed Chairman] …Powell said, even as he emphasized that “the path forward is uncertain.”

Republicans continue to block money for Ukraine but still, Biden had a big win yesterday, a bill that included a 5.2% pay raise for the military.

Senate Passes Defense Bill, Steering Clear of Far-Right Policy Dictates.

The $886 billion legislation is the product of bipartisan negotiations between the House and Senate in which right-wing restrictions on abortion, transgender care and diversity initiatives were jettisoned.

The vote was 87 to 13 to approve the legislation, which would expand the Defense Department’s ability to compete with China and Russia in hypersonic and nuclear weapons, implement components of a key Indo-Pacific security partnership with Britain and Australia, and direct hundreds of millions of dollars in military assistance to Ukraine and Israel. The Ukraine and Israel programs authorized by the bill are distinct from a $111 billion spending bill to send additional weapons to those countries, among other expenditures, that is currently stalled in Congress.

The House is expected to vote on the legislation on Thursday under fast-track procedures that offer opponents fewer chances to scuttle it, but which will require a two-thirds majority for passage. Leaders expect that it will pass with support from a coalition of Republicans and Democrats.

Earlier this week, Speaker Mike Johnson’s plan to have the House vote on two competing bills to overhaul the surveillance program fell apart amid fierce Republican infighting, punting any resolution on how or whether to change the program into the new year. (New York Times).
___________________________

Antisemitism is their excuse.

It has been quite a week and a half. We learned that there have been mad dogs sitting on the sidelines, preparing to pounce on our universities.

These include MAGA Republicans, as exemplified by the #3 House Republican Elise Stefanik whose rabid cross-examinations defined the GOP at last week’s December Congressional Hearing.

Others ready to pounce too are university mega-Donors, Billionaire financial guys who think that they are always the smartest guys in the room.

Wednesday’s Roundup focused on two such donors, Mark Rowan, alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania‘s Wharton School, and Bill Ackman, a Harvard alum.

As the Penn chapter of the American Association of University Professors wrote on the day President Magill of Penn was forced to resign:

“Today, unelected trustees with no academic expertise are evidently attempting a hostile takeover of the core academic functions of the University of Pennsylvania — functions related to curriculum, research, and the hiring and evaluation of faculty. The questions being considered by the trustees represent an assault on the principle of academic freedom, which was first articulated a century ago to safeguard the educational mission of universities.”

Scott L. Bok, Chair of the University of Pennsylvania’s Board of Trustees until last Saturday night when he resigned with Dr. Magill, weighed in on this issue in yesterday’s Philadelphia Inquirer:

Donors should not decide campus policies or determine what is taught.

The former chair of Penn's board of trustees, who resigned Saturday along with president Liz Magill, cautions that universities need to be very careful of the influence of money.

In recent months, America’s elite universities have been at the center of a firestorm. None more so than my alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, where I served as chair of the board of trustees until I resigned last Saturday evening.

My devotion to Penn is understandable. I first came to campus 43 years ago as a scholarship kid from rural Michigan, the first in my family to go to college. I met my wife in a campus dormitory and earned degrees from three of Penn’s schools.

Before I speak to recent events on our campus (now that I am unconstrained by university affiliation), let me make clear a few preliminary points.

I unequivocally denounce the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel. I fully recognize Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself.

I mourn the loss of innocent lives throughout that region and hope for peace.

I deplore increased incidents of antisemitism on campuses across our country and around the world.

I advocate for free expression and the right to demonstrate, but I am deeply troubled by the hurtful rhetoric sometimes used at demonstrations.

I despair at the ability of social media to mislead, distort, and amplify such rhetoric.

But there are limits to what universities can do to address such matters. Physical safety concerns must come first, so at Penn, we dramatically stepped up our police presence — that campus has never been more closely watched. And if you walked across campus as I did numerous times this semester, most often you would have been struck by how normal life seemed.

Students are walking to classrooms and labs, hoping to win a place at a law or medical school or a job at Google or J.P. Morgan or Teach for America. On weekends they are going to fraternity parties and basketball games, just like I did.

There have been a handful of loud but otherwise peaceful protests where hateful things have been said, but it’s been a long way from the unrest of the 1960s, when the civil rights movement and Vietnam War inspired violent protests on a grand scale.

And yes, there have been some well-publicized acts of deplorable antisemitism.

Penn has repeatedly condemned hateful speech and appropriately investigated all acts of antisemitism, pursuing every remedy within its power. In particular, it has acted aggressively in response to any vandalism, theft, violence, or threats of violence on the campus.

The challenge all universities face — and always have faced — is how to balance the desire to allow free speech with the desire to maintain order and allow all students to flourish free from bias or harassment.

Chaos and violence are bad, but so are McCarthyism and martial law.

To strike the right balance, one needs first to put the problem in perspective. If one were an all-seeing, all-knowing dictator determined to maintain rigid order, one would want to kick some students off campus for what they have said or done in recent weeks.

But I am confident that number would be a small fraction of 1% of the student body at Penn. The rest are busy being college students, although I recognize that many are feeling increased uncertainty and fear even when campus is quiet.

Likewise, faculty are not trying to brainwash students. First of all, the vast majority are teaching subjects like math, chemistry, accounting, or engineering, where politics is irrelevant.

Yes, most of those teaching history or political science are probably more politically liberal than your typical alumnus, but that has been the case since Ronald Reagan ran for president when I was there. And any purported attempts to indoctrinate students with liberal bias are obviously failing, as most — certainly at Penn — grow up to be good capitalists and taxpayers.

A refrain I have heard repeatedly in recent weeks is that Penn and all elite universities are “too woke.” And there’s constant talk of some people being allowed to say the most outrageous things while others are punished for “microaggressions.” But real-life examples of discipline for such offenses are almost as uncommon as Eagles Super Bowl appearances.

Sure, if you look hard enough across the country you can find a case or two of faculty being punished for misgendering someone, and, of course, conservative speakers are sometimes not exactly embraced on campuses — ‘twas ever thus.

But the first-floor freshman dorm in the Quadrangle where I started my Penn journey had not a single African American, Latino, or person of Asian or Indian descent among its 25 residents. What shows how far we have come is that, at the time, none of us seemed to think that was peculiar. We should not turn back toward that world.

The fact is that, for decades, most universities have imposed no meaningful restrictions when it comes to speech. In fact, I don’t know of any cases in my decades of Penn involvement where a student was disciplined for speech alone.

That’s consistent with the official student code of conduct at Penn and most of its peers, which says that students may not be subject to discipline for speech alone. And that, in turn, is what set the three esteemed presidents up for a cringeworthy moment in front of Congress last week. They mishandled a question focused on the issue of student discipline for speech, in part because they had likely never seen a case of such discipline being enforced.

From left: Harvard president Claudine Gay, former University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology president Sally Kornbluth.

If universities were to impose restrictions on speech much tighter than the Constitution provides, then there will arise innumerable cases to adjudicate — all much more complex than the simple one Rep. Elise Stefanik posited.

Can we trust a university bureaucracy to judge those fairly? And will the ensuing punishments and reactions bring down the temperature on campuses or turn it up?

On all these issues, universities need to be very careful of the influence of money, especially one like Penn, which has a business school with a brand larger than that of the university itself. And I say that as both a Wharton graduate and someone who understands that contributions play a critical role in everything from lifesaving medical research to scholarships for kids like I once was.

But donors should not be able to decide campus policies or determine what is taught, and for sure there should not be a hidden quota system that ensures privileged children a coveted place at elite schools.

For nearly all of the 19 years I served on Penn’s board, I felt like there was a very broad, largely unspoken consensus on the roles of the various university constituencies: the board, donors, alumni, faculty, and administration.

Once I concluded that this longtime consensus had evaporated, I determined that I should step off the board and leave it to others to find a new path forward.

The culture wars can be brutal.

I am not complaining, but in full disclosure, I’ve received violent threats, been confronted on the street, had a mobile billboard of Israeli hostage pictures posted by my workplace, withstood an attempt to thwart an important business deal, been pelted by robot-generated emails, and been the subject of ridiculously false “news” stories sourced by unnamed informants.

The low point was when the university mysteriously got access to a slick, Hollywood-quality video featuring Penn’s president and me along with images of Adolf Hitler, marching Nazi troops, and the World Trade Center in flames on 9/11. Fortunately, that turned out to be so outrageous that it never got broadly distributed.

It’s ironic that someone whose moderate political outlook was formed during a childhood in Gerald Ford’s congressional district now finds himself entangled in the culture wars. But sometimes, while you are standing in place, the spectrum is moving around you. We should all be watchful as to where that spectrum might move now.

A New Playbook for College Donors: Power Politics.

Donations to U.S. universities reached $59.5 billion last year, and they come increasingly from a smaller group of wealthy donors. Many of them expect their money to buy a voice in university affairs.

Major college donors used to expect their name on a building or the ability to call in a favor with the admissions office. They often gave money toward the end of their life, as a bookend to a successful career. And if they wanted to sway school policy, they typically worked behind the scenes to get their way.

The turmoil at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard, however, illustrates a new playbook for how the wealthiest Americans are exerting influence in higher education.

There is a new class of donors who are often in the prime of their career, having amassed fortunes in finance or tech, who are more outspoken about politics and willing to wage war on social media to effect change.

Their pressure campaigns have resembled winner-take-all Wall Street investment strategies, threatening to pull their money from schools that have become increasingly beholden to their largest donors.

In the past, influential donors would certainly have threatened to withhold donations over issues like a losing football team or a controversial professor. But big donors increasingly are engaging with expectations of a wider role in university life, according to academics, former college presidents and people involved in philanthropy.

Last year, private donations to U.S. colleges and universities totaled $59.5 billion, up from about $14.8 billion during the 1980-81 school year, adjusting for inflation, according to the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, which tracks donations. And in 2022, more than 80 percent of the donations came from 1 percent of the donors.

“The most novel part about this is the public nature of pushback,” said Benjamin Soskis, senior research associate at the Urban Institute’s Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy. “The donor class is modeling social media campaigns or even movement activism that we haven’t really seen a lot of in the past.”

At the University of Pennsylvania, Marc Rowan, chief executive of the giant investment firm Apollo Global Management and chair of the advisory board at Wharton, Penn’s business school, called publicly this fall for fellow alumni to give only $1 unless President M. Elizabeth Magill was ousted. Ms. Magill resigned as president on Saturday, but that was not enough for Mr. Rowan: On Tuesday, he emailed trustees with a call to change the school’s “culture” and improve its governance, complete with a list of 18 questions on the size of the board, faculty, admissions, affirmative action and “viewpoint diversity.”

It was the same day, incidentally, that The Philadelphia Inquirer published an opinion essay by Scott L. Bok, the former chair of Penn’s board of trustees, who resigned on the same day as Ms. Magill, which read as a rebuttal to Mr. Rowan’s hardball tactics: “Universities need to be very careful of the influence of money, especially one like Penn, which has a business school with a brand larger than that of the university itself,” Mr. Bok wrote, adding that “donors should not be able to decide campus policies or determine what is taught.”

An organization representing some Penn faculty members said Mr. Rowan was pursuing an attempted “hostile takeover of the core academic functions of the University of Pennsylvania.”

“Unelected billionaires without scholarly qualifications are now seeking to control academic decisions that must remain within the purview of faculty in order for research and teaching to have legitimacy and autonomy from private and partisan interests,” the American Association of University Professors Penn Executive Committee said in a statement.

The group declined to make any Penn faculty available for comment, saying professors who had spoken publicly on academic freedom and open expression had received death threats. Mr. Bok wrote that he also had received “violent threats” and “withstood an attempt to thwart an important business deal.”

Around the country, tension with big donors was brewing well before the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas and Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. Many older alumni tend to be out of step politically with many of the faculty and students at elite schools, which have moved to the left on issues of identity, economics and world affairs.

“Very large donors tend to be white, older and male,” said David Callahan, author of “The Givers: Wealth, Power and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age.”

“These are the people in revolt.”

At Harvard, the critiques leveled by one notable graduate, William A. Ackman, the billionaire investor, against Claudine Gay, the university’s president, went beyond her handling of antisemitism on campus.

Using the social media platform X, where he has nearly one million followers, Mr. Ackman suggested Dr. Gay, who is Black, got her job because of Harvard’s efforts to promote diversity among its leadership. Mr. Ackman said he was told that Harvard would consider candidates only if they met its criteria for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

“It is also not good for those awarded the office of president who find themselves in a role that they would likely not have obtained were it not for a fat finger on the scale,” Mr. Ackman wrote.

had its backing to remain as president.

Adam F. Falk, a former president of Williams College, who is now president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, said that there had been a cultural shift among major donors, especially those who made their fortunes in hedge funds or technology start-ups.

“Some of them might bring a much more transactional lens to what they might see as investing in an institution rather than the way you think of as giving,” said Dr. Falk, who oversaw an increase of $1 billion to Williams’s endowment during his tenure. “There can be a kind of mismatch between habits of mind that people in tech and finance have used to be successful, and the habits that make a university successful.”

For each of the past four years, there have been between seven and nine gifts of $100 million or more to U.S. colleges, according to the CASE group.

While such mega gifts made up less than 5 percent of the total support for schools annually, these big donors hold enormous sway not just inside the schools but among other alumni, as was shown by Mr. Rowan, who gave $50 million to Wharton in 2018.

Generous donors are also fueling an increase in the size of many elite university boards. (Penn’s board has 49 trustees.) “The desire to include more wealthy people who are major donors or potential major donors is an important contributing factor in the growth of the boards,” said Bruce Kimball, a co-author of “Wealth, Cost, & Price in American Higher Education.”

Dr. Falk said that large gifts are “overwhelmingly doing good things” for universities. But he warned that some donors can have “an inappropriately expansive notion of the influence they ought to have over other aspects of the university unrelated to their gift.”

Even as donations have risen, the number of donors has declined over a three-decade period — and particularly those who give smaller gifts, according to a 2020 study published by two professors at Indiana University with expertise in philanthropy and higher education.

The study found that “as the number of donors sinks and there are fewer smaller- and medium-sized gifts, nonprofits and commentators are troubled by the disengagement of regular, entry-level donors from philanthropy.”

All of this has made the job of being a college president even more difficult. With presidents functioning as the public face of their institutions, there are nonstop demands to raise funds and constant pressure to weigh in on contentious issues, and not just on campus.

“All kinds of people have new megaphones and audiences,” said Mariko Silver, a former president of Bennington College in Vermont, who is now president and chief executive of the Henry Luce Foundation. “Therefore presidents have to listen differently, and they have to pay attention to a wide range of public conversations.”

While Penn and Harvard are the most prominent examples of what has been described as “the dangers of donor revolt,” there is no shortage of examples of tensions with donors.

In the mid-1990s, a member of the Bass family, Texas oil billionaires, gave Yale $20 million to expand its Western civilization curriculum, as long as he was able to approve faculty hires. But Yale struggled to meet his demands, and the money was returned.

At the University of California at Santa Barbara, Charles T. Munger, the billionaire business partner of Warren E. Buffett, offered $200 million for a new dormitory, as long as he designed it. But after fierce criticism that the design, dubbed “Dormzilla,” deprived students of natural light, the university abandoned the plan this year, and Mr. Munger, who died last month, withdrew the pledge.

To be sure, schools like Harvard (with a $50 billion endowment), M.I.T. ($23.5 billion) and Penn ($21 billion) are not affected appreciably by any individual donation, even one that may total hundreds of millions of dollars. But while splashy donations can help finance new buildings or academic programs or theaters, they also can create an arms race mentality, reminiscent of baseball teams signing free agents to ever-more-exorbitant contracts.

Donors have also increasingly earmarked their contributions for specific operational purposes, such as research or faculty, according to the 2020 Indiana University study.

More of that money is also being given with politics and ideology in mind, as donor intent, said Lawson R. Bader, president and chief executive of DonorsTrust, which advises conservative and libertarian donors on charitable giving. Sometimes, it is specific campus programming or scholarships; sometimes, it is a new school, like the School of Civic Life and Leadership, proposed as a center of conservative study at the University of North Carolina.

“I think conservatives and universities have been on a collision course for a while,” Mr. Bader said. “But what has begun to change, I think, is you now have liberal Jewish donors.”

Mr. Bader said he worried about smaller colleges with modest endowments, which are more susceptible to the whims of unhappy donors.

“I think we’re going to lose some lower-tier colleges,” he predicted.

One college facing that predicament in 2015 was Paul Smith’s College in New York’s Adirondack Park.

Sanford I. Weill, a Wall Street billionaire, and his wife, Joan, had offered $20 million, as long as the college changed its name to Joan Weill-Paul Smith’s College. College officials were willing, saying the money was vital to the institution’s survival. But alumni objected, and a judge ruled that a name change would violate the will of the school’s founder.

So the Weills withdrew.

The college’s endowment has slowly grown to $35 million, and the school just launched a culinary programin New York City.

“They were not dying,” said Mark Schneider, a lawyer who represented the alumni opposed to the change. “They’re still in business.” (New York Times).

___________________________

Our colleges are hot beds of controversy.

Food fight in a Yale dining hall: couscous or ‘Israeli couscous’?

A stew over naming rights for Middle Eastern food bubbles up on campus — and leads to expressions of real pain and anger online.

Long before the Israel-Hamas war, food fights were boiling over between diners, chefs and restaurateurs about the provenance of Middle Eastern food. 

An appearance by an Israeli chef at a hip wine bar in LA in August prompted social media comments like this: ​​“What will they be serving? Colonized hummus and apartheid falafel?” 

The Israeli-British celebrity chef Yotam Ottolenghi has said Israeli food is “deeply rooted” in Palestinian cooking. Israel-born Jewish chef Ora Wise also takes the “hummus wars” seriously: “We’re not talking about some just trivial squabble over ownership. What we’re talking about is one people dominating another people.”

So a stew at Yale University over whether Israel gets credit for couscous became a veritable food fight when it bubbled up on social media. 

It started Sunday, when Yale student Sahar Tartak wrote on the social media platform X that the “years-old, popular ‘Israeli couscous salad with spinach and tomatoes,’ has been renamed in our dining halls as the same exact dish but without the word ‘Israeli.’” 

12 million views on X

The post got more than 12 million views and thousands of retweets and likes.

Suggesting that the word ‘Israeli’ was removed in capitulation to anti-Israeli sentiment related to the war, Tartak wrote: “It’s the subtle changes and redactions that are the most pernicious.”

Tartak also tagged President Joe Biden, Elon Musk, CNN, The New York Times and other media outlets, celebrities and politicians, including Rep. Elise Stefanik, who made headlines last week grilling the presidents of MIT, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania in Congress.

Then on Tuesday, another Yale student, Viktor Kagan, posted a photo of a sign for the salad from one Yale dining hall showing that the sign actually did include the term “Israeli.”

“My tweet is to ensure that we don’t use provocative stories to stir the pot on hatred — I am a Jewish student who hears ab small cases of Antisemitism & other hate that don’t receive any attention cuz of false outrage on issues like ‘canceling’ food,” he said. “Facts matter.”

Tartak followed up by saying that the dining hall “changed it back after being called out and contacted by Jewish students.” She also posted before and after photos showing the sign with and without the term “Israeli” over a steel tray of salad.

“Here’s the before/after, so that no one is misled,” she wrote. “The change was made, then undone upon outreach from Jewish students. Dining administrators emailed me this: ‘Considering it is the main ingredient, it is appropriate to remain in the title, and we will correct this oversight.’” 

A spokesperson for Yale, Karen Peart, confirmed the comment from Yale hospitality administrators quoted by Tartak, adding that “principles of diversity, inclusion, equity, and belonging are values that we are and continue to be committed to.

In fact, couscous and Israeli couscous are two different foods. Regular couscous originated in North Africa and consists of tiny pellets of semolina. Israeli couscous, sometimes called pearled couscous, has bigger granules and is a type of pasta, originally called p’titim when it was first developed and marketed in Israel in the 1950s.

Angry responses about the war

While the controversy might seem like nothing more than a tempest in a teapot — or a salad in a steel tray? — it comes amid a surge in antisemitism and antiwar activism at universities nationwide. Officials in New Haven, Connecticut, are also investigating the draping of a Palestinian flag over a menorah in a public square not far from the Yale campus. 

Tartuk’s post also unleashed a torrent of anger, sarcasm and emotional responses related to Israel’s war in Gaza, which Gaza officials say has killed more than 18,000 people. 

“1- I’m so sorry. I hope you can survive this, it sounds worse than bombs killing children. 2- Who names a salad after an apartheid state,” wrote one commenter.

“Imagine caring this much about salad while thousands of children are being murdered,” wrote another. 

“Yikes, that’s horrible,” said another. “Now imagine losing 23 members of your family in one Israeli airstrike.”

Next up.

The attack on the first 3 Presidents went well for the GOP - they persuaded the Public this was all about antisemitism. They won the popular messaging because the Presidents were so legalistic, not leaderly.They hope this will give them support, voters, contributions, and even more power on campuses. So they will do this again.

I promise this time the University Presidents - this time from the West - will not walk into the GOP trap.

Education Dept. Is Investigating Six More Colleges Over Campus Discrimination

Stanford, Rutgers and U.C.L.A. were among those being looked into as accusations of hateful rhetoric on campuses have led to a spike in inquiries by the agency.

Elise Stefanik should have been more careful.

Congressman Dan Goldman responded as well.

___________________________

What is happening in the Supreme Court and when.

Supreme Court to hear abortion pill case : NPR

The U.S. Supreme Court reentered the abortion debate Wednesday, agreeing to review a lower court decision that would make mifepristone, the commonly used abortion pill, less accessible.

The court's action sets up a collision between the Food and Drug Administration's 23-year study and supervision of the abortion pill, and the circumstances under which it can be prescribed. Mifepristone was first approved by the FDA in 2000; the agency required the drug to be prescribed in person, over three visits to a doctor. Since 2016, however, the FDA has eased that regimen, allowing patients to obtain prescriptions through telemedicine appointments, and to get the drug by mail.

The clash over the abortion pill began April 7 in Texas when U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a onetime anti-abortion activist, imposed a nationwide ban on mifepristone, declaring that the FDA had improperly approved the drug 23 years ago. Within minutes of that decision, U.S. District Judge Thomas O. Rice in Washington state issued a contrary ruling. In a case brought by 17 states and the District of Columbia seeking to expand the use of mifepristone, Rice declared that the current FDA rules must remain in place, and noted that in 2015 the agency had approved a change in the dosing regimen that allowed the drug to be used for up to 10 weeks of pregnancy, instead of the earlier seven weeks.

While the case ricocheted around the lower courts, the Supreme Court, over two noted dissents, put the lower court decisions on hold, allowing the abortion pill to continue on the market as it had been.

While the court considers the case, the medication will remain available as it has been.

The Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine argues they have the authority to bring the case because "FDA always envisioned that emergency room doctors...would be a crucial component of the mifepristone regimen." Because they would suffer if they have to treat patients who have taken medication abortion, they argue they should have the right to challenge the medication's safety.

The Biden administration counters that the group failed to show "any evidence of injury from the availability" of the medication.

Danco, the maker of abortion pill Mifeprex, is on the government's side. It says the key question in the case is whether courts can "overrule an agency decision they dislike." The antiabortion doctors, Danco argues, have no authority to bring the case. They "do not prescribe or use the drug" and their only "real disagreement with FDA is that they oppose all forms of abortion," Danco writes.

The group challenging the FDA claims that when the agency made the drugs more accessible, they exceeded their power and regulatory safeguards.

On the other hand, the government says that the drug has been deemed "safe and effective" since 2000. In its brief, the government says the FDA has "maintained that scientific judgment across five presidential administrations, while updating the drug's approved conditions of use based on additional evidence and experience," including the over five million patients who have taken it.

The Fifth Circuit's decision "threatens to undermine the FDA's scientific, independent judgment and would reimpose outdated restrictions on access to safe and effective medication abortion," White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement. "This Administration will continue to stand by FDA's independent approval and regulation of mifepristone as safe and effective."

The case will be heard this term, with a decision likely by summer. (NPR).

—

Supreme Court will hear a case that could undo Capitol riot charge against hundreds, including Trump.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday said it will hear an appeal that could upend hundreds of charges stemming from the Capitol riot, including against former President Donald Trump.

The justices will review a charge of obstruction of an official proceeding that has been brought against more than 300 people. The charge refers to the disruption of Congress' certification of Joe Biden's 2020 presidential election victory over Trump.

That's among four counts brought against Trump in special counsel Jack Smith's case that accuses the 2024 Republican presidential primary front-runner of conspiring to overturn the results of his election loss. Trump is also charged with conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.

The court's decision to weigh in on the obstruction charge could threaten the start of Trump's trial, currently scheduled for March 4. The justices separately are considering whether to rule quickly on Trump's claim that he can't be prosecuted for actions taken within his role as president. A federal judge already has rejected that argument.

A lawyer for Trump didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment on the Supreme Court’s decision to review the charge.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments in March or April, with a decision expected by early summer.

The obstruction charge, which carries up to 20 years behind bars, is among the most widely used felony charges brought in the massive federal prosecution following the deadly insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in a bid to keep Biden, a Democrat, from taking the White House.

At least 152 people have been convicted at trial or pleaded guilty to obstructing an official proceeding, and at least 108 of them have been sentenced, according to an Associated Press review of court records.

A lower court judge had dismissed the charge against Joseph Fischer, a former Pennsylvania police officer, and two other defendants, ruling it didn’t cover their conduct. The justices agreed to hear the appeal filed by lawyers for Fischer, who is facing a seven-count indictment for his actions on Jan. 6, including the obstruction charge.

The other defendants are Edward Jacob Lang, of New York’s Hudson Valley, and Garret Miller, who has since pleaded guilty to other charges and was sentenced to 38 months in prison. Miller, who’s from the Dallas area, could still face prosecution on the obstruction charge.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols found that prosecutors stretched the law beyond its scope to inappropriately apply it in these cases. Nichols ruled that a defendant must have taken “some action with respect to a document, record or other object” to obstruct an official proceeding under the law.

The Justice Department challenged that ruling, and the appeals court in Washington agreed with prosecutors in April that Nichols’ interpretation of the law was too limited.

Other defendants, including Trump, are separately challenging the use of the charge.

Defense attorney Kira Anne West, who has represented several Jan. 6 defendants charged with obstruction of an official proceeding, said the courts will have to “undo a whole bunch of cases” and adjust many sentences if the Supreme Court rules in their favor.

“This is a watershed day,” she said. “In our world — defense lawyer world — this is huge.”

West represents a man scheduled to be tried in early January on charges including the obstruction count. She doesn’t yet know if she will seek a delay until the Supreme Court resolves the challenge.

More than 1,200 people have been charged with federal crimes stemming from the riot, and more than 700 defendants have pleaded guilty. (Associated Press).

—

Last week, Jack Smith asked SCOTUS to weigh in on whether Trump has immunity or can be prosecuted for criminal actions committed as president.

The special counsel asked the Supreme Court to rule on Trump’s attempts to have the election subversion charges dismissed on a sweeping claim of executive immunity before a lower appeals court even has the chance to consider the issue.

At the same time, he asked the lower court - the DC Appeals Court - to weigh in on this issue too.

It takes only 4 justices for SCOTUS to agree to take up the case on an expeditious basis. SCOTUS may well do this.

In the meanwhile, last night the Appeals Court said they would do so, expeditiously.

If the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decides either for Trump or for Jack Smith, the Supreme Court could eventually come back into the picture and consider challenges to the Appeals Court’s decision.

___________________________

Oprah at The National Gallery.

Painting honoring Oprah Winfrey unveiled at Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.

(CNN) — Shawn Michael Warren can thank a mural for connecting him with his very famous muse.

Three years ago, the Chicago artist painted Oprah Winfrey’s image as part of a mural in the city’s West Loop neighborhood, curated by the B_Line Projects to honor the media mogul whose famed talk show and production company had been based in the area.

In a video Warren shared on Instagram at the time, Winfrey said when she first saw the mural it took her “breath away.”

“I was so impressed by Shawn Michael Warren’s artistry, the creativity, the way he was able to capture a feeling of hope and inspiration and strength,” she said of his work.

Fast forward to Wednesday in Washington, DC, where the artist and Winfrey were together to unveil a new portrait Warren painted of her for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.

The painting shows Winfrey looking resplendent in a purple dress, holding an olive branch.

In the audience were Winfrey’s best friend Gayle King, friend and director Ava DuVernay and Winfrey’s longtime love Stedman Graham, watching as the former talk show host appeared joyous when Warren unveiled her portrait and she saw it for the first time.

While sharing context for the portrait, Winfrey told the crowd that the color purple “has been seminal” in her life. Her role in the 1985 film “The Color Purple” helped make her a movie star and she’s a producer on the upcoming film version of “The Color Purple” musical.

She referenced her favorite bible verse, Acts 17: 28, which states in part: “For in him we live and move and have our being.”

That scripture came to her mind, Winfrey said, when she was recently struck by the beauty and light outside a window of her home in Montecito, Calfornia.

“I thought ‘I am moving and breathing in the space that is God right now,’” Winfrey recalled. “And I am living in this dream that God had for me. ‘Cause I don’t know how I got from [her birthplace in] Mississippi to Montecito.”

It was her Montecito home which provided the backdrop for her portrait.

In an interview with CNN, Warren said he and his friend Darius Carter, a Los Angeles-based photographer who is originally from Chicago, traveled to Winfrey’s house and shot about 600 images of her in Winfrey’s most sacred of spaces, her prayer garden.

And while he helped suggest the dress she wore, Warren said he gave Winfrey free rein to move as she saw fit for the portrait session.

“I usually tell my models how to pose, but because it’s her, I said to her verbatim ‘I don’t have to tell you how to pose. You’ve been in front of a camera for as long as I’ve been alive,’” Warren said.

He thanked Winfrey during his remarks on Wednesday, calling her his “friend and muse.”

“You could have chosen anyone, but you saw fit that an artist from the place you called home during your rise to prominence should be given this honor,” Warren said of Winfrey. “Thank you for your kindness, your trust, your playfulness, welcoming us into your home, and allowing us to capture your portrait.”

In her speech, Winfrey got emotional as she referenced other notable people throughout history whose portraits also hang in the gallery, including Harriett Tubman, Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Ida B. Wells, former first lady Michelle and President Barack Obama, Lena Horne and President John F. Kennedy.

Entrepreneur Mack Wilbourn serves as a commissioner for the National Portrait Gallery and told CNN that Winfrey was an ideal choice for a portrait given her cultural influence and how she’s helped change the world.

“This is just another milestone,” he said. “One that is well deserved and will be around for centuries to come.”

Winfrey closed her remarks by noting that she’ll turn 70 in January, and she recalled that 20 years ago, her mentor, the late poet and writer Maya Angelou, wrote a poem for her birthday.

“One of my favorite lines she says in the poem is that ‘I hope you continue to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness. And I hope that gratitude will be the pillow on which you kneel every night,’” Winfrey said. “I want you to know that that is exactly what I intend to do. To continue to astonish a mean world with my acts of kindness and continue to live in the space of gratitude and move and have my being in awe of that which is God. To God be the glory.” (CNN).

___________________________