Biden to crack down on junk health insurance

The Biden administration on Friday is expected to propose a new regulation cracking down on short-term health insurance plans, five Democrats with knowledge of the matter, who were granted anonymity to discuss the specifics of White House plans, told POLITICO.

The long-awaited rule will curtail a Trump-era expansion of the skimpy health coverage, which Democrats and patient advocacy groups have criticized for undermining Obamacare and its broad protections for patients with pre-existing conditions.

The move comes as the White House tries to focus the nation’s attention on the administration’s efforts to lower prescription drug prices for seniors, crack down on so-called junk fees, fight inflation and improve the overall economy.

President Joe Biden is also slated to give a speech Friday touting his health care agenda, during which a White House official said he plans to “announce major actions to lower health care costs and crack down on junk fees.”

The White House declined to comment, and the Democrats with knowledge of the matter cautioned that the timing of the rollout could still change.

But the White House’s budget office signed off on the proposed rule last week, according to a regulatory review notice posted to its website, a signal that the regulations had cleared the final internal hurdles. The new short-term health plan policy is designed to “ensure this type of coverage does not undermine the Affordable Care Act” and other health insurance markets, according to the rule's description.

The Obama administration in 2016 limited short-term plans to three months in an effort to get more people on year-round plans sold on the new federal and state-based exchanges created by Obamacare.

The Trump administration adopted regulations in 2018 that let people stay on short-term insurance plans for 12 months and renew those plans for three years. Critics at the time derided short-term plans as “junk” that would not protect people with pre-existing conditions.

Insurers must also post a warning alongside short-term plans alerting consumers that they don’t have robust coverage.

Unlike plans sold on Obamacare’s insurance exchange, a short-term plan doesn’t cover essential health benefits. For example, some plans limit doctor visits, others don’t cover prescription drugs.

CMS leaders in the Trump administration said the plans were meant to give consumers an alternative to higher-priced Obamacare plans.

Democrats and consumer advocacy groups counter that the short-term expansion was meant to sabotage Obamacare, which Trump unsuccessfully tried to repeal in 2017.

States can decide to prohibit short-term plans or limit their duration, and there are 12 states that do not offer short-term plans as of March 2023, according to data from healthinsurance.org.

Shortly after Biden took office, he signed an executive order directing agencies to reexamine any policies that “undermine protections for people with pre-existing conditions,” in a move seen as setting the stage for a major rollback of short-term health plans.

But the process has dragged on for more than two years, frustrating advocates and Democratic lawmakers who on multiple occasions publicly urged the health department to move faster.

“HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra should do everything he can to limit sale of such plans,” according to a February 2022 letter from 38 Senate Democrats and two independents. The letter called for immediately restoring the three-month duration cap and ban sales of such plans on all Obamacare insurance exchanges.

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Marjorie Taylor Greene booted out of Freedom Caucus member says

Andy Harris called the vote — the first time HFC has formally booted a member — an “appropriate action.”

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Abortion rights likely headed for showdown in Ohio this fall

Ohio is poised to become the latest battleground over abortion after advocates Wednesday submitted more than enough signatures to get an abortion rights initiative on the ballot this fall.

A coalition of abortion-rights groups has submitted more than 700,000 signatures for a ballot initiative that would codify the right to an abortion in the state constitution. The submission sets up a crucial test of the potency of abortion as a political issue ahead of 2024, with vulnerable Democrats in the House and Senate attempting to cling to their seats in an increasingly red state.

It also resembles a show of force from the left in a state that voted twice for former President Donald Trump, and where the state legislature has chipped away at abortion rights since the fall of Roe v. Wade. The state currently has a 22-week abortion ban on the books.

The number of signatures submitted far surpassed the approximately 400,000 required for an initiative to make the ballot. County boards have until July 20 to vet the signatures for the secretary of state, who then has until July 25 to make the final call on the initiative’s qualification for the November vote.

Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights, a nonpartisan coalition of abortion-rights groups, submitted the ballot language earlier this year, kicking off a four-month dash to collect signatures and campaign across the state. Proponents, including state Democrats, ACLU of Ohio and Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio, anticipate spending upward of $35 million on the effort heading into November.

Opponents have pushed against the measure by arguing that it would allow for gender-affirming care without parental consent, even though such a provision is not in the initiative’s language.

“The ACLU’s attempts to hijack Ohio’s constitution to further its own radical agenda would be pathetic if it wasn’t so dangerous,” Amy Natoce, spokesperson for Protect Women Ohio, a coalition of anti-abortion rights groups against the measure, said in a statement.

Conservatives have reason to be concerned. Almost one year ago, ruby red Kansas became the first state in the nation to put the question of abortion rights directly to voters after the Supreme Court overturned Roe. Voters overwhelmingly rejected that ballot measure, which would have removed protections for abortion rights from the Kansas Constitution and given the Legislature the right to further restrict or ban abortion.

Kansas was a warning sign for anti-abortion rights supporters — one that some anti-abortion advocates waved off as a fluke. But that assertion was proved wrong after pro-abortion rights causes prevailed in states across the country in last year’s midterms and earlier this year in Wisconsin, leading to an ideological flip on the state Supreme Court. Nationally, supporters of abortion rights remain more motivated by the issue than opponents, according to recent Gallup polling.

For Democrats, the prospect of an off-year, abortion-focused campaign could hardly come at a better time. Ohio will be home to a high-stakes Senate battle in 2024, with Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown up for reelection. GOP challengers for that seat include state Sen. Matt Dolan and businessperson Bernie Moreno. Secretary of State Frank LaRose — who has been in the spotlight as his office handles ballot measures — is teasing a run as well. Over in the House, Republicans have their sights set on flipping the seats held by Democratic Reps. Greg Landsman, Marcy Kaptur and Emilia Sykes.

“Ohio is ground zero for the fight for abortion rights in this country, and nowhere is that more clear than the race for U.S. Senate,” said Democratic state House Minority Leader Allison Russo. “Next year, we have to reject whatever out-of-touch candidates make it through this messy Republican primary.”

But abortion messaging hasn’t always been front and center for Ohio Democrats. Former Rep. Tim Ryan, who unsuccessfully ran for Senate last year, mostly emphasized the economy, jobs and crime.

Irene Lin, a Democratic strategist based in Ohio who helped collect signatures for the abortion-rights campaign, said she thought that stories like that of a 10-year-old Ohio rape victim who traveled to Indiana to obtain an abortion would have moved the needle for Democrats like Nan Whaley, who ran for governor last year and made abortion one of her top issues. But it didn’t. Whaley lost by 25 points.

“There is this perception that abortion helped us during the midterms, and I agree it did in certain states,” Lin said. “If you’re in a state where there’s a lot of college-educated, a lot of suburban women, yes, it can help you. If you aren't one of those states, … we cannot as Democrats count on it being as helpful as we would like it to be.”

Republicans are already moving to handicap the abortion measure’s chances of succeeding, putting a proposal known as Issue 1 on an August special election ballot to make it more difficult to pass constitutional amendments. If approved, the threshold for passage would be raised from a simple majority to 60 percent.

If this 60 percent threshold was in place in other states last year, the series of abortion-rights ballot measure wins wouldn’t have necessarily succeeded. Ohio’s effort is most similar to Michigan, which passed a ballot initiative in November to proactively codify abortion rights in the constitution there. That measure received around 57 percent of the vote.

And that was in Michigan, a swing state. The political environment in Republican-leaning Ohio is more favorable for conservatives.

“Ohio has trended enough Republican in the last decade,” said Doug Preisse, a veteran Republican strategist in the state, that abortion is “less hurtful to Republicans.”

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It pays to be censured: Schiff scores record haul after GOP rebuke

California Rep. Adam Schiff, the target of conservative scorn and House Republican censure as he campaigns for the U.S. Senate, raised over $8.1 million in the year’s second quarter, a major haul that’s likely to put more distance between his rivals.

The record-breaking quarter places the Democratic congressman in his party’s upper echelon of 2024 fundraisers and brings to $29.5 million his cash on hand for the Senate race. Prior to Schiff, Sen. Raphael Warnock, at the time an incumbent Democrat from Georgia, raised $7.2 million in the second quarter of the off-cycle in 2021.

Schiff had more than 144,000 unique donors over the quarter who made more than 233,000 donations from 50 states and all of California’s 58 counties, according to contribution figures shared first with POLITICO.

The numbers are all the more startling considering California is a deep blue state and the race to succeed retiring Sen. Dianne Feinstein will almost certainly have no bearing on which party holds control of the Senate in 2024. But they demonstrate the power of using Republicans and specifically former President Donald Trump and his acolytes as central foils in the fierce competition for online dollars from national Democrats. During the spring stretch before and after his House censure, Schiff was a constant presence on cable TV and other programs, and his email appeals became ubiquitous.

All but 2 percent of his contributions came from grassroots supporters giving $200 or less, the campaign said. The average contribution was $34. Schiff is not accepting corporate PAC money.

Public and private polls show a close race for the Senate in California. But in a memo from Schiff’s campaign that’s being sent to key supporters, aides emphasized his financial advantage and pointed to his list of endorsers — from former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and more than half of California’s Democratic congressional delegation to the backing of four statewide labor unions. None of the others have gotten one yet.

“It’s still very early, and while the polls will shift, Adam continues to lead in every metric that is critical to running an effective campaign,” Schiff’s campaign manager Brad Elkins wrote in the memo, which also previewed an August barnstorming of the state across 20 cities, including San Diego, Bakersfield, Riverside, Santa Cruz and Nevada City. “Our campaign continues to build up significant advantages that will propel Adam forward,” Elkins added.

The push for early money has been an intense topic in the Senate campaign, with Democratic Rep. Katie Porter and her advisers consistently pointing to a raft of polls from over the spring that show a tight race with Schiff to make the case that it’s still a wide open contest despite her cash gap.

Both Democrats are nationally recognized figures with large followings, and under the state’s top-two primary system both could advance to a rematch in the November 2024 runoff if no single Republican can consolidate the vote on the right. Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee trails them in polls and has fallen further behind in fundraising.

Schiff in recent years has burnished his national profile as a chief antagonist of Trump and his allies, having served as an impeachment manager and unofficial face of the Democratic resistance to MAGA. He launched his campaign as such, centering Trump and framing the larger debate as a fight to preserve democracy.

Trump’s continued dominance among Republicans, along with his mounting legal troubles, have kept him front of mind with voters and helped to ensure that the threats Schiff has been warning about have remained relevant in the Senate campaign.

House Republicans late last month moved ahead with their censure of Schiff, a largely symbolic action over his role in investigating Trump. That came after GOP leaders removed language to level a multimillion-dollar fine against Schiff over constitutional concerns. Still, they accused him of abusing his office during the Trump probe, an accusation Schiff said smacked of “petty political payback” as he promised not to yield.

The renewed Republicans' attacks on Schiff have generated a seemingly endless stream of online fundraising appeals from his campaign, to the point that even Democrats aligned with his rivals conceded that all the attention on him as a Trump foe would only help bolster his financial lead over the others.

Last quarter, Schiff raised $6.5 million — more than his opponents combined. Porter, who took in $4.5 million and had $9.4 million on hand, has yet to release her second quarter haul. Lee has raised just over $1 million in each of the first two quarters of 2023.

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After Discord leak Pentagon to tighten procedures for classified info

The Pentagon is tightening up the way it handles classified national security information, after a member of the Air National Guard allegedly leaked a trove of military secrets online earlier this year.

A review ordered after that incident and made public Wednesday did not find systematic failures, or call for drastic changes to the way the Pentagon safeguards classified information. However, it did find areas where the Pentagon needs to improve accountability measures to prevent future leaks.

Those include keeping better track of who has access to classified documents and where that information is being held, along with making sure those who can see classified information have up-to-date nondisclosure agreements.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin commissioned the review following the April arrest of National Guardsman Jack Teixeira for posting hundreds of pages of classified documents on the Discord social media platform.

The massive leak revealed some of the nation’s top military secrets, from America’s relationship with its allies to the war in Ukraine, and prompted questions about whether agencies across the U.S. government are properly safeguarding classified information. Teixeira, who has a history of violent threats and had previously been caught taking classified information, has pleaded not guilty.

Since Teixeira had the security clearance necessary to view the documents, it’s not clear whether the Pentagon’s tightened procedures would have prevented the leak.

Based on the findings from the security review, Austin directed top DOD officials to “validate” that their personnel have a continuing need to access sensitive information, and ensure those personnel have a valid non-disclosure agreement on file by Sept. 30, according to a June 30 memo.

Every military facility containing classified information — called a “SCIF” for Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility — must also be reported to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for entry into the agency’s SCIF repository by Sept. 30.

Austin also directed the intelligence and security office to develop and maintain a centralized tracking system for SCIFs and other special access facilities by Dec. 31, and to establish a “Joint Management Office” for insider threat and cyber capabilities.

The Pentagon will also review and update security processes and procedures to clarify their meaning and reduce any “ambiguity,” according to a senior defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to provide public comment on the issue.

Still, Austin emphasized in the memo that “The department relies on a culture of trust and accountability for those who are granted access to CNSI,” using the acronym for classified national security information.

“This review found that the overwhelming majority of DOD personnel with access to CNSI are trustworthy, and that all DOD components demonstrate a broad commitment to security,” Austin wrote.

The senior defense official added that the review found no “single point of failure” that led to the leak, and that the vast majority of DOD personnel with access to classified information complied with security policies.

The Pentagon also said it is working to ensure the new measures don’t impede the sharing of information between U.S. agencies.

“The department is mindful of the need to balance information security with [the] requirement to get the right information to the right people at the right time to enhance our security,” according to a DOD statement.

As DOD implements the recommendations, “careful consideration will be given to guard against any ‘overcorrection’ which may impede progress on information sharing,” according to the statement.

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Canada vs. Meta: Status quo not working

OTTAWA, Ont. — We're now in war-of-words territory between Ottawa and Meta.

Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez announced Wednesday that his government plans to cut off advertising spending on Facebook and Instagram, a move designed to deprive the tech giant of millions in revenue. (The federal government spent C$11.4 million on Meta platforms in 2021-22.)

Rodriguez singled out Meta for its uncooperativeness in the weeks following the passage of Bill C-18, a law that will eventually force social media platforms to compensate Canadian news organizations for even linking to their content.

Meta and Google have each signaled their intention to block Canadian news content, a dramatic response to the new law that could have a significant impact on how and where Canadians find and consume journalism online.

Rodriguez was resolute on Wednesday: “Guys, it's clear. Status quo, not working.”

Good cop, bad cop: Google has struck a more conciliatory tone behind closed doors, Rodriguez said. The minister has met with company representatives within the past week, and more tête-à-têtes are on the books. His take: “We believe we have a path forward.”

Rodriguez insisted his government can address the company's demands through the regulatory process.

The message: Google, good. Meta, bad.

Choice words: Asked by a reporter about tech giants’ influence on Canadian society, Rodriguez piled on the adjectives. “They're superpowers. They're huge. They're rich, powerful. Lots of big lawyers. They can be intimidating. But are we going to let ourselves be intimidated? We can't. If governments and politicians can't stand up against that kind of bullying and intimidation, who will?”

Momentum building: There may be a method to Rodriguez's bravado.

His line in the sand on C-18 is gathering support south of the border. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) has sponsored a similar bill in the Senate, and recently told the Globe and Mail newspaper that Ottawa shouldn't blink in its showdown.

"Of course monopolies will fight us every step of the way,” she said. “But we won’t back down — we must stand up for small businesses and competition while ensuring people have access to their local news."

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) also tweeted her support for C-18.

California's legislature is considering similar legislation. Meta threatened to block news content in that state, too. Los Angeles Times columnist Brian Merchant urged Canada and California to hold the line: “This is a bluff, and not a particularly convincing one. For the sake of the beleaguered news industries in both places (yes, including this media outlet), the Canadian and Californian governments must absolutely call it.”

Closer to home: Quebecor, a media giant that owns Videotron, TVA and the Journal de Montréal, announced a move Wednesday that mirrored Ottawa’s ad spend: “effective immediately and until further notice, [Quebecor] is withdrawing all advertising by its subsidiaries and business units from Facebook and Instagram.”

What's next: The regulatory process. Now that C-18 is the law of the land, the government must draft regulations that determine how the bill will be applied and implemented. Rodriguez is leaning heavily on Google and Meta's participation in the coming months.

“There's definitely time to negotiate, discuss and find a path forward,” he said.

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Russian regions on Ukraine border come under fire local authorities say

Officials accuse Kyiv of bombings that happen almost daily. Ukraine denies responsibility.

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