Hochul lost the NY suburbs. Now she faces an ‘uprising’ over her housing plan.

NEW YORK — The New York City suburbs nearly cost Gov. Kathy Hochul her job.

Now, far from treading with caution, she’s pushing a proposal that may be radioactive in the bedroom communities that dot the region: A plan to mandate more housing in those suburban counties, some of the nation’s largest and wealthiest.

Hochul wants to give the state bold new authority to override local zoning laws in cases where municipalities resist the measure, which she hopes will help address a housing shortage that’s made New York one of the least affordable places in the country. Her push, while favored by housing advocates, is not likely to make her many friends in the areas that proved to be challenging territory for Democrats last November and will likely be again in 2024.

“You would see a suburban uprising, the likes of which you’ve never seen before, if the state tried to impose land-use regulations on communities that have had local control for over a 100 years,” Bruce Blakeman, the Republican county executive in Nassau County, said in an interview.

Voters on Long Island and in much of the Hudson Valley went overwhelmingly for Republicans in the midterms, putting Rep. Lee Zeldin within striking distance of the Democratic governor and losing her party multiple seats in the House.

But Hochul seems undaunted by the political risk, arguing the suburbs have failed to do their part to add housing supply, with a “potentially catastrophic” impact on the state’s ability to compete for jobs and residents.

Her plan would compel every municipality to grow their housing stock and require those downstate to allow more housing near rail stations, contributing to her goal of reaching 800,000 new homes over the next decade. Similar efforts have been tried in other states, including Massachusetts and California, to varying results, while pitting bucolic suburbs against the needs of pricey metro areas.

“The whole objective is so families can stay in New York, kids can raise their own families where they grew up, employers don’t have to worry about whether or not there’s going to be employees in a community because they’ll have a place to live,” Hochul told state lawmakers Feb. 1 as she outlined her proposed budget.

Even some Democrats are concerned that Hochul’s initiative goes too far and could have political ramifications. The governor is looking to get it approved by the Democratic-led Legislature as part of a budget deal for the fiscal year that starts April 1.

“There’s a lot of resentment when the state or a regional entity tries to come in and tell people how they should make their communities. It’s not a winning strategy,” said Laura Curran, the former Democratic Nassau County executive who was defeated by Blakeman in 2021.

A push for new housing in New York

Hochul, who took over the governor’s office in 2021 after Andrew Cuomo resigned, has faced similar backlash before. A year ago, she sought to legalize apartments on single-family lots — meeting immediate opposition from politicians in the suburbs. With an eye toward her upcoming election, Hochul swiftly abandoned the proposal.

Her rhetoric since November, however — including a keynote speech at a housing group’s annual luncheon, and her own State of the State address in January — suggests that she’s not afraid of the impending fight.

“We’ve failed so far. No longer is failure an option,” she said this month.

There could be political consequences for the governor proposing such a controversial measure after Democrats lostall four House seats on Long Island and three in the Hudson Valley, Curran and others said. The losses were in sharp contrast to what happened elsewhere, with Democrats bucking expectations in other states to hold the Senate and keep GOP control of the House to 10 seats. Hochul won by just six points, the closest New York governor’s race since 1994.

“I am concerned if this is done in a clumsy way that it will continue to hurt Democrats in the suburbs,” Curran said. “It will be one in the long litany of reasons why people are mad at Democrats right now in New York.”

Republicans are already pouncing. Zeldin was in Albany on Monday to rip the proposal, calling it “Hochul control, not local control.”

“The idea that you’re just going to micromanage all of that up in Albany is making a lot of New Yorkers in these communities feel like they’re being deliberately targeted because of how last year’s election turned out,” he told reporters.

Republicans and Democrats questioned Hochul’s political calculus, with some wondering whether she has written off Long Island as entirely lost to Republicans. One Democratic consultant, who requested anonymity to speak freely about the governor, contended Hochul wouldn’t have pursued the measure if there were more Democratic legislators from the area.

“She ignores what’s going on on the ground on Long Island to her own peril,” said Chapin Fay, a Republican consultant. “It’s a very important part of the statewide puzzle.”

Slow housing growth in New York’s suburbs

Hochul is pleading with local leaders to embrace her housing push for the greater good, saying it still gives towns and villages flexibility in how they choose to meet her goals.

New York had the largest population loss in the nation last year, according to Census data, which the governor has attributed to housing unaffordability. Her administration argues the suburbs are not immune to strains on the housing market — a point echoed by housing and business groups and even some local leaders opposed to the scale of the push.

“When you talk to people in the Hudson Valley, if you talk to people in Nassau and Suffolk, the number one issue people have is the housing affordability,” RuthAnne Visnauskas, the state housing commissioner, said in an interview. “Part of quality of life is having availability of housing, having choice in where you live.”

New York is unusual in how much leeway it gives local governments to resist new housing. A 2020 report from New York University characterized the state as “stand[ing] nearly alone” among its peers in how much power suburban leaders have had to restrict growth. Nearly every similar state — Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, California, Oregon, Washington and Florida — “have adopted state-level reforms to promote housing development in high-cost suburban areas.”

Visnauskas said Hochul’s approach was driven in part by seeing other states that initially tried an incentive-based approach to spur housing shifting towards mandates because the earlier policies were failing.

She has dismissed the political risk.

“There’s a housing crisis, it’s in New York City, it’s in the suburbs, and we need a solution,” she told reporters. “And if it isn’t this one, then what is it? There has to be some solution to it or else we’re going to get 10 years down the road and New York City and its suburbs are going to be a place where only millionaires and billionaires can live.”

Hochul faces challenges with housing plan

Hochul’s effort is being celebrated by housing groups who have long called for New York to pursue the kind of substantive state action seen in other parts of the country — and implement it in a way that includes sticks and carrots.

The suburbs have “lost credibility” to produce enough housing without a state mandate, said Andrew Fine, policy director of the group Open New York, which is part of a coalition of housing, transit and climate groups formed to support the governor’s plan.

Proponents point to projects like Matinecock Court, which was first proposed in affluent Huntington on Long Island in 1978, but after multiple legal fights is just now starting development.

“For our region, not being able to provide diverse housing options makes it much more difficult to attract and retain a young vibrant workforce,” said Kyle Strober, executive director of the Association for a Better Long Island. “The lack of housing on Long Island is a dire economic issue.”

Hochul said in January the state has produced just 400,000 new homes over the last decade, while adding 1.2 million new jobs.

Her proposal would impose a 3 percent growth target for New York City and surrounding suburbs to be met every three years. By comparison, over the last three years, Long Island increased its housing stock by just 0.6 percent, while the lower Hudson Valley grew by 1.7 percent.

If the targets aren’t met or new zoning changes aren’t made, a state appeals process would allow certain projects to circumvent local zoning restrictions. Another measure would require municipalities to permit a minimum level of housing density within a half mile of train stations.

Fierce pushback from local officials

The hamlet of Manhasset, in one of the wealthiest parts of Nassau County, is about a 30-minute train ride from Midtown Manhattan. A quaint downtown area surrounding the local Long Island Rail Road station has scarcely a building above two stories.

It’s also home to the town hall of North Hempstead. Local leaders have not made it easy to make changes to area building rules, to put it mildly: The Board of Zoning Appeals recently mulled whether to grant a variance for an air conditioning unit that was located too close to the street and “not properly screened from view.”

North Hempstead supervisor Jennifer DeSena, a registered Democrat who ran as a Republican, said the governor’s proposed requirements “sounds like a parent talking to a teenager.” Residents, she said, are “concerned about losing the quality of life they paid for.”

Republican Donald Clavin, the supervisor of neighboring Hempstead, meanwhile, said his constituents “don’t need bureaucrats in Albany telling them how they’re going to live.”

Hochul’s proposal left some Long Island political strategists perplexed.

“There’s hardly a word that you can poll that polls worse on Long Island than state mandates,” said Michael Dawidziak, who is based in Suffolk County and has worked with both Republicans and Democrats. “To me, this is not good politics for the governor.”

Asked whether she’s targeting Long Island for political reasons through her housing proposal, Hochul said this month she’s “guided by what is best for New Yorkers.”

“Just so all New Yorkers understand, nothing I do in a budget is driven by politics, elections, outcomes,” Hochul told reporters.

State Sen. Kevin Thomas, one of two remaining Democrats representing Long Island in the chamber, cited a “great need for housing out in the suburbs” and expressed openness to Hochul’s proposal, but still raised concerns around the prospect of overriding local zoning.

“Out on Long Island, we pride ourselves on our autonomous villages and towns, so to say, ‘Hey, the state should come in and override what they want,’ is a bit problematic,” he said in an interview.

Westchester County Executive George Latimer, a Democrat, said the county needs housing and sees a willingness there to support development. But he, too, expressed reservations about the prospect of overriding local rules.

“I’d rather not override zoning,” Latimer, a former state senator, said. “But I think it’s important to disconnect the narrative that exists out there, which is, the city wants to develop housing and the suburbs don’t. The suburbs are not monolithic.”

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Biden’s Super Bowl interview appears off — for good

America will have to settle for the Puppy Bowl.

Joe Biden’s planned interview ahead of the Super Bowl appears scuttled after Fox Corp. aggressively volleyed with the White House over an agreement to have the president sit down with Fox Soul, an obscure streaming service operated by a subsidiary.

Fox News originally appeared in line to land an interview with Biden out of a tradition between presidents and the network hosting the Super Bowl.

But brinkmanship between the president’s team and the media giant stretched for days and then hours heading into the weekend of the big game. It started Friday morning when the White House announced that an interview with Fox Soul — which came as a surprise to many — had been scrapped for good.

“The President was looking forward to an interview with Fox Soul to discuss the Super Bowl, the State of the Union, and critical issues impacting the everyday lives of Black Americans,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a tweet. “We’ve been informed that Fox Corp. has asked for the interview to be cancelled.”

Hours later, Fox Corp. issued a statement citing “some initial confusion” the night before, but concluding that Fox Soul still looked forward to hosting the interview.

But by Friday evening — a point by which presidents and TV networks traditionally record Super Bowl interviews ahead of the Sunday program — a White House official informed POLITICO that nothing had changed since providing the earlier comments.

“FOX has since put out a statement indicating the interview was rescheduled, which is inaccurate,” the White House official said. While the person did not elaborate, Biden was not expected to conduct a Super Bowl interview of any kind.

The saga comes after initial talks fell apart between the White House and Fox News, the company’s highly-rated network. Earlier this week, a Fox anchor said the White House had ghosted the network. In the days that followed, Fox representatives confirmed that productive discussions were effectively over.

White House officials declined to provide specifics on why their outreach to Fox stopped. Fox’s Bret Baier was viewed as the most likely anchor from the news and conservative opinion network to land the president. Biden sat down in previous years with news anchors from NBC and CBS.

The decision not to have Biden tangle with one of Fox News’ top anchors means the White House was willing to sacrifice a massive pre-game audience on Sunday to which the president could share his message. But it also suggests the White House was unwilling to reward a network that houses prime-time hosts who mercilessly assail the administration and Democrats.

Instead, Biden’s team worked on landing an agreement with Fox Soul, a streaming outfit part of Fox’s TV stations division and geared toward a Black audience. White House officials had arranged for the interview to be conducted by Fox Sports host Mike Hill and actress Vivica A. Fox. Fox Soul general manager James DuBose had planned to produce the interview. All three flew Friday from Los Angeles to Washington for the interview.

The White House seeking out Fox Soul was seen as a way to have the president avoid appearing with a Fox News personality while still going through with an interview. Biden has yet to sit for an interview with Fox News, making a different calculation than his former boss, Barack Obama. While the Obama White House is remembered for icing Fox News journalists — leading other networks to offer their solidarity — Obama did sit for a pair of pre-game interviews with former Fox host Bill O’Reilly.

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Texas AG settles with former aides who reported him to FBI

DALLAS — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has agreed to apologize and pay $3.3 million in taxpayer money to four former staffers who accused him of corruption in 2020, igniting an ongoing FBI investigation of the three-term Republican.

Under terms of a preliminary lawsuit settlement filed Friday, Paxton made no admission of wrongdoing to accusations of bribery and abuse of office, which he has denied for years and called politically motivated.

But Paxton did commit to making a remarkable public apology toward some of his formerly trusted advisers whom he fired or forced out after they reported him to the FBI. He called them “rogue employees” after they accused Paxton of misusing his office to help one of his campaign contributors, who also employed a woman with whom the attorney general acknowledged having an extramarital affair.

Both sides signed a mediated agreement that was filed in the Texas Supreme Court and will be followed by a longer, formalized settlement.

“Attorney General Ken Paxton accepts that plaintiffs acted in a manner that they thought was right and apologizes for referring to them as 'rogue employees,'” the final settlement must state, according to court records.

In all, eight members of Paxton's senior staff joined in the extraordinary revolt in 2020, and they either resigned or were fired. The attorney general said he settled with the four who sued under Texas' whistleblower law to put to rest "this unfortunate sideshow.”

“I have chosen this path to save taxpayer dollars and ensure my third term as attorney general is unburdened by unnecessary distractions,” Paxton said in a statement.

The $3.3 million payout would not come from Paxton's own pocket but from state funds, which means it would still require approval by the GOP-controlled Texas Legislature.

Settlement of the case, which Paxton's office fought in court for years, means he will avoid sitting for a civil deposition at a time when a corruption investigation by federal agents and prosecutors remains open. In turn, the attorney general's office agreed to remove an October 2020 news release from its website that decries Paxton's accusers and to issue the statement of contrition to former staffers David Maxwell, Ryan Vassar, Mark Penley and James Blake Brickman.

“The whistleblowers sacrificed their jobs and have spent more than two years fighting for what is right," said Maxwell's lawyer, TJ Turner. Brickman was not part of the mediation with Paxton’s office but joined the settlement, attorney Tom Nesbitt said, after being asked to and negotiating “significant non-monetary terms.”

The settlement also prevents Paxton from seeking the withdrawal of a 2021 appeals court ruling that state whistleblower law applies to the attorney general.

The agreement does not include any provisions limiting the ability of Paxton’s accusers to make public statements or cooperate with federal investigators.

The deal comes more than two years after Paxton’s staff accused him of misusing his office to help Austin real estate developer Nate Paul, whose business was also under federal investigation. The allegations centered on Paxton hiring an outside lawyer to investigate Paul’s claims of misconduct by the FBI.

Paxton and Paul have broadly denied wrongdoing and neither has been charged with a federal crime.

In the wake of the revolt, an Associated Press investigation in September found that Paxton’s agency has come unmoored, with seasoned lawyers quitting over practices they say slant legal work, reward loyalists and drum out dissent.

But the investigation, accusations and a separate 2015 securities fraud indictment for which Paxton has yet to face trial have done little to hurt him politically. He easily defeated challenger George P. Bush in a contested GOP primary last spring, went on to decisively beat his Democratic opponent and secure a third term in November and has filed a steady stream of legal challenges to the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden.

While swearing in Paxton to another four years on the job last month, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott described it as an easy call during the midterm elections to keep backing him.

“I supported Ken Paxton because I thought the way he was running the attorney general’s office was the right way to run the attorney general’s office," said Abbott.

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Hispanic Caucus weighs ousting its chair over top staffer’s firing

Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus are preparing to convene a virtual meeting that could lead to Rep. Nanette Barragán’s ouster as chair, according to two people familiar with the situation.

The previously unreported news of the meeting comes just one day after Barragán (D-Calif.) fired the group's executive director, Jacky Usyk, a little over a month into the job. Usyk was fired via an email for "insubordination," one of the two people familiar with the group's dynamics told POLITICO.

“This is a disaster,” said one Democratic chief of staff for a Hispanic Caucus member, granted anonymity to discuss the group's internal discussions — as were several others who spoke for this story.

Barragán’s actions surrounding the Usyk firing are prompting anger from within the group and skepticism that she will be able to lead it going forward, according to more than a dozen people interviewed. Both people who confirmed the Hispanic Caucus' imminent meeting on its chair described it as a potential step toward seeking her removal after Barragán’s axing of its top adviser left the influential Democratic group without any staffers at the start of a new Congress — alarming lawmakers and aides alike.

The turmoil also threatens to hurt the Hispanic Caucus' engagement on issues important to the communities its members represent, because the executive director works with the chair to set the group's priorities. In addition, the staffing change and resulting controversy over Barragán's move could also distract the group from working on policy at a time when its members are preparing for intense negotiations this Congress on immigration in the Republican-controlled House.

“Jacky is no longer with the CHC. We wish her well in her future endeavors. We do not comment on internal confidential personnel matters,” Barragán told POLITICO in a statement on Thursday. Asked on Friday to comment on the news of a virtual meeting to discuss her leadership of the caucus, Barragán's office did not respond.

The Hispanic Caucus' vice chair, Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), is considered next in line to run the CHC. His office did not respond to a request for comment on Barragán’s alleged management issues.

Usyk, a well-respected Hill veteran who declined to comment for this story, rose up through the ranks of Democratic offices before coming to the Hispanic Caucus. She served most recently as a top leadership aide to Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and worked previously for Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-Calif.), who’s now in Hispanic Caucus leadership as well.

The harsh scrutiny of Barragán comes at the outset of her tenure as CHC chair, a position that she won unopposed after its previous chair, Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.), was term-limited out of the job. Her personal office ranked third for highest turnover rate of any House office from 2001 to 2021, according to the nonpartisan tracking site Legistorm.

Dear White Staffers, an Instagram account popular with Hill aides, first posted about Usyk being fired Thursday night and POLITICO confirmed the news shortly after.

After its former policy director recently departed to run another Hill group that represents younger Americans, Usyk's firing leaves the CHC with no employed staffers as of Friday. The group had been set to bring on a new communications director next week, but it is unclear whether that aide, Bianca Lugo Lewis, will start the job as planned. Lugo Lewis did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

There is some ambiguity in the group's bylaws about its chair’s ability to unilaterally fire staffers. One of the people familiar with the group's dynamics who confirmed its meeting on Barragán also told POLITICO that the chair is given authority to hire staff but less clear power over dismissals.

Another two people familiar with the situation said Barragán sought counsel from the House’s lawyers before making the decision.

Barragán has a reputation of being a strict boss who struggles with high turnover in her office, a dozen current and former Hill staffers told POLITICO. Just a few years ago, during her first term, she had conversations with party leadership because of her staff churn, according to two separate people familiar with that situation.

The office of then-Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who likely took part in those conversations with Barragán, declined to comment, citing its policy on addressing private member-to-member conversations.

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Military shoots down 'high altitude object' over Alaska

President Joe Biden ordered the military to shoot down a “high altitude object” flying over Alaskan airspace in the last hour, National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby said Friday.

“The object was flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet and posed a reasonable threat to the safety of the civilian flight,” Kirby said at a White House press briefing. “Out of an abundance of caution and at the recommendation of the Pentagon, President Biden ordered the military to down the object, and they did, and it came inside our territorial waters.”

Kirby said the object was much smaller than the Chinese spy balloon — about the “size of a small car” for the object over Alaska as opposed to “two or three buses size" Chinese balloon — that was shot down near South Carolina last Saturday.

U.S. Northern Command took down the object using fighter aircraft over the northeastern part of Alaska, near Canada, Kirby said. The Pentagon doesn’t know who owns the aircraft or whether it’s state-owned or privately owned.

“We don't have any information that would confirm a stated purpose for this object,” Kirby said.

The object fell into U.S. territorial space, into waters that are currently frozen. Kirby said because of where the object fell, “a recovery effort will be made, and we're hopeful that it will be successful."

Kirby also confirmed that a military pilot assessed the object was not manned, and that there is no indication of the object having surveillance capabilities. He said Biden’s primary reason for ordering the military to shoot the object down “was the safety of flight issue.”

Kirby emphasized the differences between this object and the Chinese balloon that came into U.S. airspace last week, noting repeatedly the smaller size of the new object and that it was over water when Biden ordered to shoot it down. The president faced criticism from both Republicans and Democrats for the delay in shooting down the Chinese balloon, waiting for it to float across the country from Alaskan airspace all the way to the coast of South Carolina before a fighter jet took it down.

Kirby defended that decision on Friday, saying the Pentagon knew the basic flight path of the balloon and was able “significantly curtail any intelligence ability that the Chinese could get from the balloon.” But he said the information gleaned from the surveillance of the balloon did not provide insights for the detection and track of this new object.

“At this time, all I can tell you is it did not appear to have the ability to independently maneuver,” Kirby said. “We'll attempt recovery and see what we can learn more from.”

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Cancer cash cow: Contrarian scientists say Biden's moonshot is largesse for an already rich industry

President Joe Biden's pledge to "end cancer as we know it" is a rare sliver of common ground between Democrats and Republicans.

Congress has appropriated $1.8 billion for the “cancer moonshot” Biden began in 2016, and the positive reaction to Biden’s request for more during Tuesday’s State of the Union suggests it’s eager to maintain the momentum.

But cancer researchers are less unified about the moonshot than Washington policymakers. A contrarian cadre question whether the money appropriated is being well spent. Cancer research is funded well enough, they said, and investing more in high-tech individualized treatments is more likely to help the wealthy live longer than it is to save those most likely to die of the disease: the poor and people of color.

"It's a lot harder than getting a man to the moon," Gilbert Welch, an internist and senior investigator at the Center for Surgery and Public Health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said of curing cancer. "It's a very complex set of diseases. You need to think of it as a family of diseases. The moon is just one thing. Just gotta get there. This is hundreds of different things."

Biden wants to press ahead on a bipartisan initiative. In his State of the Union, he called on Congress to reauthorize the 2016 law that launched the moonshot, the 21st Century Cures Act. He pledged to cut cancer death rates by 50 percent in the next 25 years and to turn fatal cancers into treatable diseases.

Biden also has asked Congress to reauthorize the National Cancer Act, signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1971. Reauthorization would help the National Cancer Institute support researchers around the country by building clinical trial networks and more robust data systems, according to Danielle Carnival, the White House’s moonshot coordinator.

But some experts, such as Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and former White House adviser, said there's plenty of money devoted to cancer research. The National Cancer Institute had a nearly $6.4 billion budget for cancer research in 2021 and its annual spend has been growing since 2015. Cancer non-profits like the American Cancer Institute also raise hundreds of millions of dollars every year.

Additionally, the pharmaceutical industry is incentivized to put money behind increasingly lucrative cancer diagnostics and therapeutics. Research shows that from 2010 to 2019 revenue generated from cancer medicines increased 70 percent among the top 10 pharmaceutical companies to reach $95 billion.

And not everyone thinks more funding is a good thing. "There's so much money sloshing around," Welch said of the cancer industry, adding, "Both academic and biotech or industry are excessively enthusiastic and just trying to put out as many products as they can."

We've overinvested in cancer, according to Welch, especially in expensive cancer drugs with modest or unproven benefit for patients and in screenings — Welch's research area. He's particularly opposed to the Medicare Multi-Cancer Early Detection Screening Coverage Act, sponsored by Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.), which would require Medicare to cover cancer blood tests if they're approved by the FDA. From Welch's vantage point, benefits from screenings have been exaggerated, while its harms have been minimized.

Other critics, such as Keith Humphreys, a public health professor at Stanford University who has published academic articles on the link between alcohol use and cancer, see cancer prevention as a more immediate way to save lives.

Managing disease and curing it

The president's agenda goes beyond money, Carnival told POLITICO, emphasizing prevention efforts, such as improving nutrition for kids, discouraging smoking, and decreasing environmental risks.

"We're going to have to reach more people with the tools we already have and those we develop along the way," Carnival said. "The purview is much broader than research. I don't think anyone would say we have all of the research advancements and knowledge and treatments that we need today to end cancer as we know it."

Those closely involved in developing cutting-edge cancer therapeutics said the field has shifted dramatically in recent years. It's gone from treating cancer as a chronic disease, to trying to cure patients.

During his medical fellowship in the early 2000s, improving patient survival by months or years was the goal, explained Marco Davila, a physician-scientist at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, N.Y., who helped pioneer some of the first CAR-T cell therapies for patients with blood cancer.

Since then, treatment breakthroughs for some previously incurable cancer have upended the cancer-as-chronic-disease philosophy. Now, doctors and researchers believe cancer-curing therapies are within reach. "It's changed the nature of how we manage patients. There's that option there. It's on the table," Davila said.

For Davila, moonshot funds earmarked for cancer research and therapies created a new pool of money for his work. It doesn't fix the problem of underfunded science as a whole, he said, but it makes his work as a cancer researcher a priority.

"It's great for us, because that's our field. It's also great for patients, because cancer is still going to be one of the most common causes of people's death in the United States," Davila said. (In the U.S., it’s second behind heart disease, taking more than 600,000 lives in 2020, the most recent year for which there are statistics.)

Indeed, since the late 1980s, scientists have developed effective treatments for lung cancer, breast cancer and Hodgkin's lymphoma. There are caveats, of course. They don't work for all patients.

"It's maybe 20 percent, 30 percent," Davila said. The goal now is to keep improving those cure rates over time — to 50 percent or 60 percent, for example.

"Will it get to 100 percent in your lifetime? I don't know," he said.

What Davila does know is that each 10 percent cure-rate increase means saving tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of lives.

‘Prevention takes action’

But some cancer experts said there's a downside to the shift toward precision medicine and individualized treatments. Attempting to test everyone or characterize every tumor more precisely is a bit of magical thinking, according to Welch.

"The more you subset people, the more difficult it is to know whether your treatments help. It's too small of a group," Welch said. "It used to be just lung cancer. Now we've got eight genetic variants we're testing in adenocarcinomas of the lung," he added.

"Ironically, the more precise we get, the more types of cancer there are, as we genetically signature each cancer, all of a sudden we don't really know what to do with any one of them."

Others think there needs to be a fundamental shift away from screening and treatment and toward preventing cancer in the first place.

"It's terrific when we develop new treatments for cancer, but it certainly is always better to prevent something than to treat it," said Humphreys, who served as a drug policy adviser under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

"Very high-end, complicated treatments are never going to be accessible to the whole population," he added. "Congress could definitely do more.”

Tobacco taxation is widely considered one of the most effective practices in preventing people from starting to smoke in the first place, leading existing smokers to quit, and reducing deaths from tobacco-related cancers. Humphreys said Congress could take the same taxation approach to the alcohol industry. “We have very good evidence that when we raise the federal alcohol tax that fewer people die,” he said.

While broad blood-based cancer screening may not be a cost-effective strategy for stopping cancer early, targeted cancer screening for colorectal, breast, cervical, prostate, and lung cancers could be. Rules could stoke participation or ensure that patients on Medicaid, who are more likely to be at risk of cancer, are getting regular screenings.

"It's important to acknowledge that our biggest success in cancer really reflects prevention," Welch said. "It's nothing fancy. It's discouraging cigarette smoking."

Following a surgeon general warning in the 1960s about the health risk of smoking, and subsequent anti-smoking campaigns, tobacco use — and later lung cancer rates — plummeted.

The White House touts prevention in its moonshot agenda. In 2022, the first year of the reignited moonshot, the FDA proposed rules to prohibit menthol cigarettes. Among other agenda items, the moonshot program plans to increase cancer screenings in at-risk communities and facilitate donations of sunscreen to schools and youth organizations.

But prevention is a trickier cancer-prevention mechanism than treatment. It could mean cleaning up Superfund sites or removing lead pipes to reduce environmental cancer risk. It often requires people to change their behavior — to drink less alcohol and exercise more or stop smoking — a more challenging mission at the population level than directing patients to take a pill or offering them a diagnostic test.

"It's not necessarily clear how one spends money on prevention," Welch acknowledged. "It's much easier to sell a test or a drug. It's a concrete thing. Prevention takes action on the part of individuals," he said. "You gotta say, that's harder."

More funding wouldn't necessarily solve the problem, according to Emanuel.

There's a lot of money already in the system. It just needs to be redirected and allocated differently, Emanuel explained.

Who is spending that money also matters. The government sponsors roughly one-third of clinical cancer research, according to Emanuel. Industry accounts for the remaining two-thirds of funding. "It's good that they've got a lot of drugs that they're testing. What's bad is having industry shape the clinical research agenda, because industry has a bias."

Emanuel's solution: stronger government leadership and more non-industry sponsors.

"The NCI [National Cancer Institute] is the biggest NIH institute," Emanuel said. "It's not exactly like they're starving."

Ruth Reader contributed to this report.

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Republicans investigate SEC role in Bankman-Fried arrest

Top House Republicans on Friday demanded answers from SEC Chair Gary Gensler about why former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested on the eve of his scheduled appearance before the Financial Services Committee last year.

House Financial Services Chair Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) and oversight subcommittee Chair Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.) said in a letter to Gensler that "the timing of the charges and his arrest raise serious questions about the SEC’s process and cooperation with the Department of Justice."

McHenry and Huizenga asked Gensler to hand over SEC records and communications with the DOJ between Nov. 2 and Feb. 9. They gave the agency until until Feb. 23 to comply.

The letter marked an escalation of the committee's SEC oversight plans, after Republicans signaled for months that Gensler would be a top target. The SEC declined a request for comment.

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