Viewpoints: Pruitt Takes Another Swipe At Clean Air, Public Health; Lessons Learned About Guns During An Unforgettable ER Shift

The New York Times: Unclean At Any Speed: Pruitt’s Attack On Obama Auto Pollution Rule
Scott Pruitt, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and second only to President Trump in the climate denial game, proposed on Monday revising — which definitely means relaxing and probably means crippling — the ambitious, groundbreaking greenhouse gas and fuel-economy standards approved during the Obama administration. ...Backsliding now on public health and the environment would not do the automakers a lot of good. (4/2)

Los Angeles Times: Don't Let Trump And Pruitt Make America Smoggy Again
The world is increasingly speeding toward a future of clean, zero-emissions cars. ...But here in the United States, President Trump and his anti-environmental protection sidekick, Scott Pruitt, are determined to head recklessly in the opposite direction. It's up to California and other environmentally responsible states to stop them. ...Pruitt has used his tenure at the EPA to systematically attack responsible, science- and health-based regulations. (4/3)

Sacramento Bee: Why Roll Back Progress Toward Cleaner Cars?
For decades California has used its market power and its policy innovation to push America toward a cleaner energy future. But the Trump administration seems just as determined to drag America backward to more dependence on dirty fossil fuels. While expected, the official announcement Monday that the Environmental Protection Agency is rolling back landmark fuel economy rules is still sweeping in its significance – and stunning in its stupidity. (4/2)

Detroit Free Press: What Being An ER Doc Taught Me About Sensible Gun Control
I don’t remember when, exactly, I dropped my NRA membership. Perhaps it was 1988 or 89, but I do remember it was my silent but conscious protest to what I felt were their more extremist positions. ...I’m not sure if they had changed or I had. Maybe it was after the shift with six different gunshot victims, or maybe after seeing a young man shot with an assault weapon. I remember him clearly, as I had never before seen a human being so completely destroyed physically. (Michael Paterson, 4/1)

The Hill: Social And Emotional Intelligence Training Will Save Lives — Not More Guns
More than one million students and supporters in 62 U.S. cities participated in the recent March For Our Lives protest to create action on gun control. Others acted in 800 sister marches across the world with support from teachers, parents and survivors of school shootings.  We can take the lead from these nonviolent student organizers. Instead of proposing funding for training teachers in K-12 as well as secondary education to use guns in classrooms, we need policies to fund the training teachers on social emotional intelligence. (Cynthia Yung, 4/2)

The Washington Post: The President Attacked My Reputation. It’s Time To Set The Record Straight.
I am an emergency room pediatrician and an accidental politician — someone who never thought much about politics until I was recruited to run for state office after making a statement about the importance of expanding Medicaid. That decision — plus some twisted reporting and presidential tweets — ended up costing my husband, Andrew, his job and our family a significant portion of his pension my husband had worked hard for over 21 years of federal service. For the past year and a half of this nightmare, I have not been free to speak out about what happened. Now that Andrew has been fired, I am. (Jill McCabe, 4/2)

Seattle Times: Come On, California, Coffee Won’t Kill You
Don’t worry, coffee-addled Seattleites: You and your morning ritual are safe. Despite a Los Angeles judge’s ruling that in California coffee must carry a warning label, there’s little cause for concern.California’s Proposition 65 labeling certainly delivers a jolt, notifying consumers of the presence of chemicals the state has listed as causing cancer and birth defects. And while it’s smart to be cautious about food and drink, here’s something to ease your caffeinated mind. California’s coffee shop warning relates to acrylamide, a chemical produced when coffee beans are roasted. Acrylamide has been shown to cause cancer in rodents, but that’s when they are given doses up to 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than what people might be exposed to in foods, according to the American Cancer Society. (4/2)

The Hill: 'Right To Try' Preserves Patient Freedom, Puts Regulators On Right Path
On March 21, the House of Representatives passed its “Right to Try” bill H.R. 5247 by a 267-149 margin, with 35 Democrats joining Republicans in voting for the legislation. The bill moves to the Senate, which unanimously passed a similar bill on August 3 of last year, but where its current path into law is uncertain. The Senate should pass the House Right to Try legislation.Designated the ‘‘Trickett Wendler, Frank Mongiello, Jordan McLinn, and Matthew Bellina Right to Try Act,” H.R. 5247 gives informed, terminally ill patients the freedom to take, and their physicians the freedom to prescribe, promising medicines that have completed initial safety testing but have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Thirty-eight states have passed Right to Try laws, but federal law supremacy probably renders these merely symbolic. A federal Right to Try law is unlikely to have much direct impact for different reasons. (Roger D. Klein , 4/2)

The Wall Street Journal: Planned Princesshood
‘We need a Disney princess who’s had an abortion,” tweeted a Pennsylvania branch of Planned Parenthood last week. Though the tweet was deleted, Planned Parenthood Keystone chief Melissa Reed stands by it. “Planned Parenthood believes that pop culture . . . has a critical role to play in educating the public and sparking meaningful conversations around sexual and reproductive health issues and policies, including abortion,” she said in a statement to Fox News. (Faith Moore, 4/2)

Des Moines Register: Action On Mental Health Care In Iowa Owes Debt To Personal Stories
Sergei Neubauer had a problem with pens. He was always losing the caps, so he left his mark everywhere. The laundry, the furniture, and even the family cars were often streaked with ink spots and accidental squiggles.It became a family joke: “Sergei was here.” Sergei is gone now. He took his own life last September. His funeral was held on what would have been his 19th birthday. His mother, Mary Neubauer, and father, Larry Loss, of Clive have spent nearly every day since then telling the story of how Iowa’s mental-health system failed their son and urging lawmakers to act. (Kathie Obradovich, 4/2)