First Edition: July 2, 2019

California Healthline: Want Ammo? Be Prepared For A Background Check
California has some of the strictest gun laws in the country — and one of the lowest gun death rates. Public health experts believe one leads to the other. But even with strong laws, 3,184 people died in gun-related incidents in California in 2017, up from 2,942 in 2014, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Roughly half of suicides nationwide are gun-related. (Ibarra, 7/1)

Kaiser Health News: Florida Is The Latest Republican-Led State To Adopt Clean Needle Exchanges
A green van was parked on the edge of downtown Miami, on a corner shadowed by overpasses. The vehicle serves as a mobile health clinic and syringe exchange, where people who inject drugs like heroin and fentanyl could swap dirty needles for fresh ones. One of the clinic’s regular visitors, a man with heavy black arrows tattooed on his arms, waited on the sidewalk to get clean needles.“I’m Arrow,” he said, introducing himself. “Pleasure.” (Mack, 7/2)

The New York Times: ‘It Feels Like A Jail’: Lawmakers Criticize Migrant Holding Sites On Border
Women held in rooms without running water, sleeping bags set up on concrete and children left apart from their families: That was what Democratic lawmakers said they heard about on Monday as they toured two Texas border facilities. Their emotional, and graphic, descriptions came on a day when ProPublica reported the existence of a secret Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol agents. Posts on the group’s page included jokes about migrants’ deaths, obscene GIFs and doctored images of Hispanic lawmakers, the report said. Some of the most offensive posts were directed at Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York. (Cochrane, 7/1)

Reuters: Ocasio-Cortez Describes 'Horrifying' Conditions At Texas Migrant Facility
Migrants held at a border patrol station in Texas were subjected to psychological abuse and told to drink out of toilets, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said after a visit with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to the main border patrol facility in El Paso. ... "After I forced myself into a cell with women and began speaking to them, one of them described their treatment at the hands of officers as "psychological warfare," Ocasio-Cortez, a first-term New York Democrat, wrote on Twitter after leaving the El Paso border patrol station. (Chavez, 7/1)

BuzzFeed: Women Held In Border Patrol Custody Say They Were Told To Drink Water From Toilets
Rep. Judy Chu from California described what the delegation saw as appalling and disgusting. In addition to some immigrant women telling members of Congress they didn’t have access to running water, one epileptic woman said she been unable to obtain medication for her condition. (Flores, 7/1)

CNN: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrats Shocked By Conditions Following Border Facility Tours
US Border Patrol Chief of Operations Brian Hastings denied the accusations that some immigrants in border detention facilities are forced to drink from toilets. "Drinking out of the toilet is completely untrue," said Hastings. He said there are "ample supplies" and that "a lot of our stations look like Costco." (Alvarez, 7/1)

ProPublica: Inside The Secret Border Patrol Facebook Group Where Agents Joke About Migrant Deaths And Post Sexist Memes
Members of a secret Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol agents joked about the deaths of migrants, discussed throwing burritos at Latino members of Congress visiting a detention facility in Texas on Monday and posted a vulgar illustration depicting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez engaged in oral sex with a detained migrant, according to screenshots of their postings. (Thompson, 7/1)

Boston Globe: ProPublica Got A Look Inside A Secret Border Patrol Agent Facebook Page. What It Found Was Ugly
The “I’m 10-15” Facebook group, created in August 2016, has roughly 9,500 members from across the country. “10-15” is Border Patrol radio code for “aliens in custody.” The group described itself in an online introduction as a place for “funny” and “serious” discussions about work with the agency. (Finucane, 7/1)

The Washington Post: A Facebook Group For Border Agents Was Rife With Racism And Sexism. Now DHS Is Investigating.
On a post about a 16-year-old migrant who died in Border Patrol custody, group members responded with crass comments such as, “Oh well,” and “If he dies, he dies.” (Rosenberg, 7/1)

The Associated Press: Border Patrol Head Condemns Agents' Offensive Facebook Posts
The head of the U.S. Border Patrol on Monday slammed as "completely inappropriate" sexually explicit posts about U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and comments questioning the authenticity of a photo of a drowned man and his young daughter in a secret Facebook group for agents. (Attanasio and Long, 7/1)

The Washington Post: Lawmakers Condemn ‘Vulgar’ Posts In Secret Border Agent Facebook Group
A separate statement from Customs and Border Protection, the patrol’s parent agency, said the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security would conduct an independent investigation. (Moore, DeBonis and Wagner, 7/1)

ProPublica: Investigation Of Secret Border Patrol Group Launched As New Degrading Facebook Posts Surface
The disclosure of the group’s existence and the nature of the posts raise a number of questions that remain unanswered. It’s apparent from some of the comments that agents were aware that the posts were inappropriate, and potentially actionable, for serving government employees. But it’s unclear whether CPB’s senior leadership was aware of the group or if any complaints had been made to the agency. (Thompson and Lind, 7/1)

Politico: Dems Call For Firing Border Patrol Agents Over ‘Vile’ Facebook Posts
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus, led by Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), condemned the "derogatory and sexist comments regarding immigrants and members of Congress" and called for a full investigation by the Department of Homeland Security as well as the officers' removal. Castro and other Democrats vowed to scrutinize the agents’ Facebook posts as part of a congressional tour of border facilities in Texas, where lawmakers spoke to mothers with young children who had been detained there, and learned of what they called unacceptable conditions. (Ferris and Caygle, 7/1)

NPR: After Clint Scandal, Government Will Expand Child Shelter Network
The Department of Health and Human Services is dramatically expanding its network of child shelters across the country in order to avoid the scandal in Clint, Texas, where scores of immigrant children were warehoused together. "There are too many kids in Border Patrol stations right now, and we're working to get them out of those stations and into HHS care," says Mark Weber, HHS deputy assistant secretary for public affairs. (Burnett, 7/2)

The Associated Press: Trump Signs Humanitarian Aid Package To Bolster Migrant Care
President Donald Trump signed a $4.6 billion aid package on Monday to help the federal government cope with the surge of Central American immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. Many Democratic lawmakers were hoping for more. They wanted to provide stronger protections for how migrants are treated at holding facilities and to make it easier for lawmakers to make snap visits. (Freking, 7/1)

The Hill: Border Aid Fallout Tests Pelosi-Schumer Relationship
Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) relationship with Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) is being put to the test in the aftermath of an emergency border supplemental spending bill that divided congressional Democrats. The rare disunity from two leaders who have regularly issued joint statements and stood firm together during the Trump presidency raises questions about how Pelosi, Schumer and Senate Democrats will tackle other high-stakes negotiations facing them in the coming weeks and months. (Bolton and Lillis, 7/2)

The Associated Press: South Texas Facility To Detain Migrant Teens Opens
The U.S. government has started detaining immigrant youth at an emergency facility in South Texas. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Mark Weber said Monday that the facility at Carrizo Springs, Texas, now has around 200 boys and girls but that number could expand to up to 1300 children. The Carrizo Springs facility is at the site of a former camp for oilfield workers. Crews were working last week to remove mold spots and make repairs. (7/1)

The Associated Press: Trump, California Governor Spar Over Immigrant Health Care
California's governor vowed on Monday to continue expanding taxpayer funded health benefits to adults living in the country illegally next year, ensuring the volatile issue will get top billing in the 2020 presidential election as Democrats vying for the nomination woo voters in the country's most populous state. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a $214.8 billion operating budget last week that includes spending to make low-income adults 25 and younger living in the country illegally eligible for the state's Medicaid program. (Beam, 7/1)

Politico: Newsom, Trump Spar On Undocumented Medicaid: ‘We’re Going To Stop It,’ President Vows
“To my friends at Fox News, I know we’re keeping you in business and getting your advertising rates and clicks going, but we believe in universal healthcare — universal healthcare is a right,” Newsom said during a budget rally in Sacramento on Monday. “We’re delivering it regardless of immigration status to everyone up to the age of 26,” Newsom added, saying the goal of universal coverage is “the right thing to do and it’s the fiscally responsible thing to do.” (White, 7/1)

The Washington Post: Health Care Costs: Air Ambulance Rates In The United States Are Soaring
Air ambulance rates in the United States are soaring. The cost of a medical ride in a helicopter or airplane climbed about 60 percent from 2012 to 2016, to a median of $39,000, according to a study of federal data released Monday. The list charges rose to as much as 10 times what Medicare pays for the service, despite a surge of air ambulance carriers entering the market, the study said. (Rowland, 7/1)

The Associated Press: Why Wealth Gap Has Grown Despite Record-Long Economic Growth
As it enters its 11th year, America's economic expansion is now the longest on record — a streak that has shrunk unemployment, swelled household wealth, revived the housing market and helped fuel an explosive rise in the stock market. Yet even after a full decade of uninterrupted economic growth, the richest Americans now hold a greater share of the nation's wealth than they did before the Great Recession began in 2007. And income growth has been sluggish by historical standards, leaving many Americans feeling stuck in place. (Rugaber, 7/1)

The Wall Street Journal: Drugmakers Push Their Prices Higher
Drugmakers initiated a new round of price increases on their products Monday, with some of them affecting generic hospital-administered injectable drugs that are in short supply. B. Braun Medical Inc. recorded the most increases, raising the price of more than a dozen drugs, many of which are used by hospitals. B. Braun increased the price of antibiotic cefazolin by 50% to more than $9 a package. That drug, which has been around for decades, is now in short supply like several other antibiotics, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. (Hopkins, 7/1)

The Washington Post: The Battle For Alabama’s Soul
This handsome north Alabama town, population 40,428, boasts two nationally acclaimed fashion designers of luxury togs, two boutique hotels, two hipster coffee shops, a regional state university, a Frank Lloyd Wright house, a sustainably sourced restaurant with a celebrated bourbon program, and an annual Shindig cultural festival in late August drawing Jack White and other artistic and artisanal talents near the verdant banks of the Tennessee River. Florence voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Democrat Sen. Doug Jones in the 2017 special election, in a county that went Republican both times. (Heller, 7/1)

The Washington Post: Teen Vaping: More States Are Targeting Epidemic Use, But Health Advocates Say It's Not Enough
More restrictive smoking laws took effect Monday in Virginia, Illinois, Florida and Vermont — the latest in a line of legislative efforts designed to combat what some say is a teen vaping epidemic. Virginia and Illinois joined six other states, the District of Columbia and hundreds of municipalities in implementing “Tobacco 21” policies, raising the buying age from 18 to 21. Eight more states are expected to enact similar laws by 2021, and a Senate bill introduced in May aims to do the same at the federal level. (Denham, 7/1)

Reuters: U.S. States Sue EPA For Stricter Asbestos Rules
Ten U.S. states and Washington, D.C. sued the Environmental Protection Agency to begin working on rules to tighten oversight of asbestos, and reduce the health risks that the substance poses to the public. The attorneys general from California and Massachusetts, Xavier Becerra and Maura Healey, said on Monday they are leading the case, after the EPA denied the states' petition that it collect more data on asbestos. (Stempel, 7/1)

Los Angeles Times: To Meet Paris Climate Targets, Some Power Plants May Need To Take An Early Retirement
The power plants, factories, vehicles and appliances in use today could make it all but impossible to meet the goals of the Paris climate accord unless some are retired ahead of schedule, according to an exhaustive new analysis of the world's energy infrastructure. If allowed to operate for the rest of their expected lifetimes, the greenhouse gases they would produce by continuing to burn fossil fuels will raise global temperatures more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, the study found. (Rosen, 7/1)

NPR: Researchers Use Embryonic Stem Cells To Create Living Model Embryos For Research
Scientists have created living entities that resemble very primitive human embryos, the most advanced example of these structures yet created in a lab. The researchers hope these creations, made from human embryonic stem cells, will provide crucial new insights into human development and lead to new ways to treat infertility and prevent miscarriages, birth defects and many diseases. The researchers say this is the first time scientists have created living models of human embryos with three-dimensional structures. (Stein, 7/1)

The Washington Post: Glaucoma Can Lead To Blindness. Researchers Foresee Changing That.
When Sylvia Groth steps through the doors of the Vanderbilt Eye Institute in Nashville, she knows she has a tough day ahead. Before she goes home, she’ll likely have at least one hard talk with a person whose sight has been ravaged by glaucoma. “When I make a diagnosis of advanced glaucoma, I do it with a heavy heart,” the ophthalmologist says. “It’s such an empty feeling to not be able to do anything.” (Woolston, 7/1)

The New York Times: 10 Medical Myths We Should Stop Believing. Doctors, Too.
You might assume that standard medical advice was supported by mounds of scientific research. But researchers recently discovered that nearly 400 routine practices were flatly contradicted by studies published in leading journals. Of more than 3,000 studies published from 2003 through 2017 in JAMA and the Lancet, and from 2011 through 2017 in the New England Journal of Medicine, more than one of 10 amounted to a “medical reversal”: a conclusion opposite of what had been conventional wisdom among doctors. (Kolata, 7/1)

The New York Times: Scientists Are Giving Dead Brains New Life. What Could Go Wrong?
A few years ago, a scientist named Nenad Sestan began throwing around an idea for an experiment so obviously insane, so “wild” and “totally out there,” as he put it to me recently, that at first he told almost no one about it: not his wife or kids, not his bosses in Yale’s neuroscience department, not the dean of the university’s medical school. Like everything Sestan studies, the idea centered on the mammalian brain. More specific, it centered on the tree-shaped neurons that govern speech, motor function and thought — the cells, in short, that make us who we are. (Shaer, 7/2)

The New York Times: Scientists Took An M.R.I. Scan Of An Atom
As our devices get smaller and more sophisticated, so do the materials we use to make them. That means we have to get up close to engineer new materials. Really close. Different microscopy techniques allow scientists to see the nucleotide-by-nucleotide genetic sequences in cells down to the resolution of a couple atoms as seen in an atomic force microscopy image. But scientists at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif. and the Institute for Basic Sciences in Seoul, have taken imaging a step further, developing a new magnetic resonance imaging technique that provides unprecedented detail, right down to the individual atoms of a sample. (Sheikh, 7/1)

The Wall Street Journal: When Routine Eye Surgery Leads To Debilitating Pain
Kaylee Patterson woke with a sharp pain in her right eye the morning after she had Lasik surgery. She felt a dull ache on one side of her face. Worried, Ms. Patterson visited her surgeon and her regular eye doctor several times over the next few weeks. They repeatedly told her that everything looked normal, she says. Yet the slightest thing—a draft of air, a ray of light—would cause excruciating pain in her head. “I was in pain and nobody was helping me,” the 33-year-old mental-health counselor said. (McKay, 7/1)

The Washington Post: Chronic Urinary Tract Pain Can Be A Misery And Often Don't Show Up In Standard Testing. New Tests May Help.
In 2015, Jessica Price, a 29-year-old Air Force veteran in Illinois, started experiencing urinary tract infection symptoms, including an unrelenting urge to urinate and bladder pain. But standard dipstick testing, where a doctor dips a plastic stick into a urine sample to check it for signs of bacteria, kept coming back negative. Based on her symptoms and the negative tests, doctors told Price she had interstitial cystitis (IC), an incurable syndrome of unknown cause and suggested several invasive procedures that only worsened her pain. (Weiss, 7/1)

The New York Times: Don’t Let The Bedbugs Bite
Scientists believe that bedbugs have developed resistance to some insecticides, and travel is helping to spread the resistant insects worldwide. Another major contributor is the failure of many hotels and residential landlords to identify infestations promptly, and to dispose of or treat infested bedding and carpeting. It has been known since the 1950s that bed bugs can develop resistance to commonly used insecticides, like pyrethrin. Resistance has emerged to more products over the years. (Ray, 7/1)

The New York Times: A Probiotic For Obesity?
People with obesity-related disorders may benefit from supplements of a common gut bacterium, a small pilot study suggests. Researchers tested the bacterium, Akkermansia muciniphila, in 32 men and women who met the criteria for metabolic syndrome by having at least three of five conditions: high fasting blood sugar, high blood pressure, high triglycerides, low HDL (the “good” cholesterol) or excessive waist circumference. (Bakalar, 7/1)

The New York Times: Keeping The Fun In Children’s Sports
A new clinical report on organized sports for children, preadolescents and adolescents from the American Academy of Pediatrics keeps coming back to the question of fun. The report summarizes evidence on the many benefits of sports participation for children, from acquiring motor skills to developing positive self-image, from strong social interactions to higher levels of physical activity and good weight management. But especially in younger children, all of this should spring from the child’s desire to get out there and play, and kids who participate in organized sports should also have lots of time for less formal activities with friends. (Klass, 7/1)

NBC News: Kentucky Court Rules In Favor Of Health Department Over Teen Who Refused Chickenpox Vaccine
The Kentucky Court of Appeals ruled that state health officials were within their power to ban a chickenpox-afflicted student from school, even at private institutions. A three-judge panel upheld a lower-court ruling that involved the Northern Kentucky Health Department and two Catholic schools in Boone County, about 25 miles south of Cincinnati. (Li, 7/1)

The Associated Press: Kentucky Students Lose Appeal In Chickenpox Vaccination Case
The health agency canceled extracurricular activities and later imposed a temporary ban on school attendance for unvaccinated students as the chickenpox outbreak spread. "The commonwealth has a compelling interest in taking limited and temporary steps to control an outbreak of a vaccine-preventable disease," the appeals court panel said last Friday. (Schreiner, 7/1)

The Wall Street Journal: NYPD Turns To Other Departments For Help After Series Of Suicides
The New York Police Department is looking to outside law-enforcement agencies for help amid a crisis of officers dying by suicide. Six NYPD officers have killed themselves since Jan. 1, placing 2019 on track to be the most in a year since 2012, when there were eight officer suicides. Four of the six deaths in 2019 occurred in June, a cluster that has prompted police officials to ask departments in other cities for advice on how they are working to prevent officer suicides. (Chapman, 7/1)

Knoxville News Sentinel: 11 Tennessee Nursing Homes On Federal List For Persistently Poor Care
Unreported falls. Unexplained bruises. Untreated bedsores. An overdose of insulin — 25 times the prescribed amount. A resident discharged to a hotel without meds, money, food, a phone — or a long-term care plan. These were violations at some of Tennessee's 11 most poorly performing nursing homes. (Nelson, 6/30)

NPR: Pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris Warns Of Dangers Of Toxic Stress
Not long after she finished her medical residency at Stanford University about a decade ago, Nadine Burke Harris got to work as a pediatrician in the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood of San Francisco. She founded and became CEO of a clinic there, focused on addressing health disparities in the community. It was in talking with those children and their families, she says, that she first realized how many of her patients experiencing the worst health outcomes — those with the highest levels of chronic asthma, for example — were also living with significant adversity, such as growing up in a household where a parent was mentally ill, abusive or substance dependent. (Stallings, 7/2)

The Associated Press: Glitches Snarl Start Of California's Ammo Background Checks
California's new ammunition background check law began Monday not with a bang but with a whimper from dealers who reported delays and glitches with the state's online system. But they said few customers were affected because most had stockpiled bullets or shotgun shells in the weeks before the new law took effect. Voters in 2016 approved requiring criminal background checks for every ammunition purchase. But the state's latest attempt to deter gun violence only took effect Monday. (7/1)

The Associated Press: Judge Gets Challenge To Mississippi Mental Health System
A federal judge should intervene in Mississippi's mental health care system, a U.S. Justice Department lawyer argued Monday, saying the state has moved far too slowly to provide community alternatives to mental hospitals. "They could be living in more integrated settings, but they never get the chance, because the state does not make the necessary services available, lawyer Patrick Holkins said in closing arguments following a monthlong trial. "That is not just a policy failure, but a civil rights violation." (7/1)

Reuters: Former USC Gynecologist Pleads Not Guilty To Sexual Assault
A former University of Southern California gynecologist accused by hundreds of patients of molestation and other misconduct over the past three decades pleaded not guilty on Monday to charges of sexually assaulting 16 students who were under his care. George Tyndall, 72, was also ordered to remain in custody in lieu of nearly $2.1 million bond, but Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Theresa Sullivan said she would review a defense request to slash his bail at another hearing set for Wednesday. (7/1)

The Wall Street Journal: Philadelphia’s Hahnemann University Hospital Files For Bankruptcy
The owners of Hahnemann University Hospital, a historic, money-losing teaching hospital in Philadelphia, filed for bankruptcy late Sunday night after failed efforts to find a buyer and a closure announcement that triggered street protests and warnings from state health regulators. (Brickley, 7/1)

The Associated Press: Virginia Moves To Lower Black Women’s Maternal Death Rate
Virginia’s Medicaid agency has announced a new outreach program and other steps to help lower the maternal mortality rate of black women. Virginia Department of Medical Assistance Services said Monday it has launched technology upgrades and other efforts to eliminate delays in health care treatment for pregnant women on Medicaid. DMAS said it’s also trying to increase treatment for pregnant women with substance use disorders. (7/2)