Blog Archives

The Club PUBlication 11/24/2025

11/24/2025

CDC links measles outbreaks across U.S. states
Country’s elimination status threatened by sustained transmission.
By APOORVA MANDAVILLI and TEDDY ROSENBLUTH The New York Times

Health officials l inked for the first time the measles outbreak that began in Texas with another in Utah and Arizona, a finding that could end the United States' status as a nation that has eliminated measles.
The news came in a phone call Monday, a recording of which was obtained by the New York Times, among officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state health departments.

The chain of transmission began in January, in a conservative Mennonite group on the western edge of Texas, and spread to Oklahoma and New Mexico.

Countries lose their elimination status after 12 months of sustained transmission. If the outbreak cannot be extinguished by January, the anniversary of the first cases in Texas, the United States will lose what is known as "elimination status" as determined by the World Health Organization, which it has had for 25 years.

"I wouldn't call the code yet, but I think the patient's not looking real good," said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

Canada lost its status last week, ending a 27-year run, after failing to control an outbreak that began at a Mennonite gathering in October 2024.

Losing elimination status may not lead to tangible changes, such as travel restrictions.

But experts have called the possibility "deeply embarrassing" for a wealthy country with the medical resources of the United States.

"CDC and state and local health agencies continue to work together to assess transmission patterns and ensure an effective public health response — which is what led to the Texas outbreak being declared over," Andrew Nixon, a representative from the Department of Health and Human Services, wrote in a statement.

This month, the CDC presented its outbreak information to the Pan American Health Organization.

As of Nov. 13, the CDC had confirmed 1,723 measles cases nationwide, 87% of which were associated with a record 45 outbreaks this year. By contrast, 16 outbreaks were reported in 2024.

About 92% of the reported cases this year are among people who are either unvaccinated or of unknown vaccination status.

Another large outbreak in two schools in South Carolina is close to being contained.

Rockland County, N.Y., has four reported cases, the first since a massive outbreak in 2018 that lasted 10 months.

That outbreak raced through Orthodox Jewish communities, some of which had vaccination rates below 70%.

“I wouldn’t call the code yet, but I think the patient’s not looking real good.”

Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota

The Club PUBlication 11/17/2025

11/17/2025

After Trump rupture, Epstein said he could ‘take him down’
By DAVID ENRICH, NICHOLAS CONFESSORE, JESSICA SILVER- GREENBERG and STEVE EDER
The New York Times

President Donald Trump's long friendship with Jeffrey Epstein came to an apparent end in the mid-2000s. But Epstein remained intently focused on Trump for years afterward, seeking to exploit the remnants of their relationship up until his arrest on federal sex-trafficking charges in 2019.

In more than 20,000 pages of Epstein's typo-strewn emails and other messages released by a congressional committee on Wednesday, Epstein insulted Trump and hinted that he had damaging information on him.

By turns gossipy, scathing and scheming, the messages show influential people pressing Epstein for insight into Trump, and Epstein casting himself as the ultimate Trump translator, someone who knew him intimately and was "the one able to take him down."

The release of the messages instantly pushed the two men's much-scrutinized relationship back into the public eye, re-energizing Democratic attacks on Trump and his Justice Department for failing to publicly disclose more information from the investigation of Epstein.

The emails date to at least 2011, when Trump was a reality TV star toying with a long-shot presidential run and Epstein was trying to rehabilitate his image after his conviction and incarceration for soliciting prostitution from a minor. The messages continue through the spring of 2019, when Trump was president and his Justice Department was building a criminal case against Epstein.

The messages hint that Epstein or his advisers believed they had inside — and potentially damaging — knowledge of Trump's far-flung properties and business dealings.

Some suggest that Epstein thought Trump knew more about his personal conduct than the president has publicly acknowledged.

The trove doesn't appear to include messages from Trump or anyone purporting to speak on his behalf. The president responded on social media Wednesday, writing that "the Democrats are using the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax to try and deflect from their massive failures, in particular, their most recent one — THE SHUTDOWN!"

The emails, the latest batch of Epstein-related documents, were obtained from the Epstein estate in response to a subpoena from a congressional committee. They offer a clear window into his day-to-day communications with friends and associates.

But they are unlikely to quell the furor around the Trump-Epstein relationship.

A core part of Trump's base believes the mother lode of documents, audio files and video related to Epstein are in the possession of the FBI and the Justice Department. A slice of those documents has been released only in small, curated batches.

The basic contours of their relationship have long been known. Trump and Epstein were friends in the 1980s and 1990s, attending social events in New York or Florida together. One of Epstein's former girlfriends has accused Trump of groping her, an allegation that Trump has denied.

Trump has said that he cut ties with Epstein after his associates recruited teenage girls from Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate.

But the new emails show that Epstein was closely following Trump's business decisions and political fortunes.

In April 2011, Epstein wrote to his longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who was later convicted of helping orchestrate Epstein's sex-traffi cking operation, that Trump was the "dog that hasn't barked."

One of Epstein's victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, had recently gone public about her experiences with Epstein — telling a British tabloid that he had abused her and trafficked her to other men, and providing the outlet with a now famous photo of herself, Prince Andrew and Maxwell.

Epstein's email said that Giuffre had "spent hours at my house with him" — Trump — yet Trump "has never once been mentioned." Giuffre said in a 2016 deposition that Trump never had sex with her or even flirted with her.

In 2012, Epstein emailed one of his lawyers, Reid Weingarten, and suggested that he get someone to dig into Trump's finances, including the mortgage on Mar-a-Lago and a $30 million loan Epstein said that Trump had received. Reached on Wednesday, Weingarten declined to comment, saying he was limited by attorney-client privilege.

In March 2016, Epstein was bracing for the publication of a book, "Filthy Rich," that detailed allegations against him. Journalist Michael Wolff, who had a long-standing relationship with Epstein, told him that he needed to serve up a "counter narrative" to the forthcoming book.
"I believe Trump offers an ideal opportunity," Wolff wrote. "It's a chance to make the story about something other than you." It is unclear whether Epstein responded to the message and acted on Wolff 's advice.

A couple of months later, Wolff told Epstein that he would be interviewing Trump.

"Anything you think I should ask?" he wrote.

Epstein replied with a list of "provocative" questions, including about the Trump Shuttle airline, a casino bankruptcy and his debts. "otherwise you can just throw easys," Epstein wrote.

Wolff did not respond to a request for comment.

Epstein repeatedly insulted Trump. In a January 2018 email to Wolff, Epstein referred to the president as "dopey donald" and "demented donald," saying that his finances were "all a sham."

Later that year, Epstein emailed with Lawrence Summers, the former treasury secretary and Harvard University president, about Trump.
Epstein called him "borderline insane."

Summers declined to comment and referred to previous statements in which he acknowledged "regretting my past associations with Mr. Epstein."

By late 2018, authorities were closing in on Epstein. A series of articles in The Miami Herald showed that Trump's labor secretary had signed off on Epstein's 2008 plea deal.

The Herald series prompted the Justice Department to open a wide-ranging criminal investigation into Epstein.

That December, Epstein was texting with an unidentified acquaintance, who wrote that "they're really just trying to take down Trump and doing whatever they can to do that...!" "its wild," Epstein replied. "because i am the one able to take him down."

The next month, Epstein wrote to Wolff about Trump and Mar-a-Lago. "Trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever," Epstein wrote. "of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop." Trump has said that he cut ties with Epstein after he "stole" Giuffre from Mar-a- Lago, where she had worked as a spa attendant.

The Club PUBlication 11/10/2025

11/10/2025

These are perilous times for health coverage

To listen to what’s said in Congress — and feel the threat — you’d think people actually don’t want health insurance.
By LAURA HERMER

We are at a dangerous moment for health coverage — and with it, our ability to get health care.

If you looked only at the congressional battle over funding the federal government, you'd think that Americans were deeply opposed over health coverage.

The Democrats are fighting to save enhanced subsidies for the 24 million Americans who get their coverage through Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplaces.

Trump insists that "[t]he cost of Obamacare is out of control, plus it's not good Healthcare," and most Republicans, who control Congress, are taking their cues from him.

But in key respects, Americans are not opposed on health care. A new poll of 1,319 people who voted in 2024 found that overwhelming bipartisan majorities agree that health care is not affordable. They believe that health insurance should protect them from medical debt. A majority of Republicans and Democrats agree that insurers should not be able to deny coverage based on a person's medical history and that sick people shouldn't have to pay more than healthy people for coverage. In fact, a majority in both parties support keeping the very enhanced subsidies that our representatives and senators are fighting over.

Protecting the ACA will help achieve these goals. The ACA requires most insurance plans to cover the services most people need, makes standard plans available to nearly all Americans, and helps people pay for coverage that they otherwise couldn't afford. It also provides ways to remain covered if you lose your coverage.

Some powerful Republicans, however, want to weaken the ACA with the goal of ultimately eliminating it and returning to the bad old days before it was enacted. House Speaker Mike Johnson recently called the ACA's creation "sinister" and said it was "created to implode upon itself." Others simply want to "repeal all of Obamacare."

This will not reduce costs. The problem is that the cost of health insurance is fundamentally tied to the price of health care. When prices go up, or when more covered health care services are provided per person, so does the cost of insurance.

Consider how health insurance — or any insurance — works.
An insurer collects money, or premiums, from each member of a group, or risk pool, in exchange for covering all or part of a specific set of services that members of the group might need. The total amount of premiums must cover the cost of all the covered services that group members need, plus marketing, administration and profit.

When covered services are very expensive, the insurance covering them will also be costly. Rising health care costs from increased usage of GLP-1 drugs and other pharmaceuticals, private equity investment in and consolidation of hospitals and physician practices, and tariff costs and uncertainties all translate to higher premiums.

The answer to this is not to shift costs from employers, insurers and the government to you and me. We've tried that and it doesn't work.
Just insuring sick people also doesn't work. First, it means that health insurance premiums are extraordinarily expensive, for the reason discussed earlier.

Second,
you want to catch health problems earlier rather than later. Studies show that uninsured and underinsured people are diagnosed later and have worse health outcomes than insured people.
In fact, nearly everyone actually wants health insurance — even relatively young and healthy people, who signed up for coverage in droves once it became affordable. Your life isn't like your house or car.
When disaster strikes — and it inevitably will, if given enough time — you can't save your money and buy another body.

And if you don't have good health insurance when disaster strikes, you'll be out of luck.

So remember this as congressional Republicans dither on the issue of extending Obamacare subsidies. Remember it when they talk about "concepts of a plan" for having employers partially fund premiums for individual coverage, or letting people buy short-term, limited duration policies that exclude pre-existing conditions and might exclude coverage for prescription drugs, maternity care and other services.

They don't have real health care solutions. We need to preserve Obamacare for now while we take a hard look under different leadership at how best to provide and fund health care for all of us.

Laura Hermer is the James E. Kelley Professor of Law at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul.

The Club PUBlication 11/10/2025

11/10/2025

Chicago judge curbs agents’ use of force, says they lied about threats
By CHRISTINE FERNANDO and SOPHIA TAREEN
The Associated Press
CHICAGO

A federal judge in Chicago on Thursday issued an extensive injunction restricting federal agents' use of force, saying Thursday that a top Border Patrol official leading an immigration crackdown repeatedly lied about threats posed by protesters and reporters.

The preliminary injunction came in response to a lawsuit filed by news outlets and protesters who allege federal agents have used excessive force during the operation that has netted more than 3,000 arrests and led to heated clashes across the nation's third-largest city and its many suburbs.

"I see little reason for the use of force that the federal agents are currently using," said U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis. "I don't find defendants' version of events credible."

The order restricts agents from using certain riot control weapons, such as tear gas and pepper balls, "unless such force is objectively necessary" to prevent "an immediate threat." It also bars agents from using physical force, including shoving protesters and journalists to the ground, and it says agents must give two warnings before using riot control weapons.

A Department of Homeland Security official said in a statement that DHS plans to appeal the ruling, calling it "an extreme act by an activist judge that risks the lives and livelihoods of law enforcement officers."

The Chicago area crackdown, part of the Trump administration's growing intervention in Democratic strongholds, has triggered a litany of court action, including forcing improvements at a federal immigration facility activists say is a de facto detention center and blocking a National Guard deployment.

Thursday's ruling largely mirrors an earlier o rder that required agents to wear badges and banned the use of certain riot-control techniques, such as tear gas, against peaceful protesters and journalists. After repeatedly chastising federal officials for not following her previous orders, she added a requirement for body cameras.

In delivering the injunction, Ellis quoted presidents including George Washington and a famous poem about Chicago by Carl Sandburg. She described protesters and advocates facing tear gas, having guns pointed at them and being thrown to the ground, saying "that would cause a reasonable person to think twice about exercising their fundamental rights."

A day earlier, attorneys for both sides repeatedly clashed in court over accounts of several tense incidents since the immigration crackdown began in September. Several involved Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol commander who has led the crackdown, including an incident where he threw a canister of gas a crowd after alleging he was hit by a rock.
Ellis said Bovino walked back the claim about the rock after video evidence didn't show it to be true. "Bovino admitted that he lied," she said.

Bovino, who led a similar operation in Los Angeles, has been forced to sit for hours of closed-door depositions related to growing legal challenges stemming from "Operation Midway Blitz." Clips of the private interviews, where Bovino is dressed in his green Border Patrol uniform and is at times evasive, were played in court, along with body camera footage.

Bovino has repeatedly defended agents' use of force, while also dodging questions about Border Patrol agents' tactics. He oversees nearly 230 agents from U.S. Customs and Border Protection that have been in the Chicago area.