Judge blocks sharing of Washington Medicaid data for immigration enforcement

13 August  SEATTLE – A federal judge has granted a preliminary injunction to block the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from using Medicaid data obtained from Washington and 19 other plaintiff states for immigration enforcement purposes.

 
The judge also barred the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from sharing Medicaid data with DHS, saying that Washington and the multistate coalition were likely to succeed on their claim that the action violated the Administrative Procedure Act’s prohibition on arbitrary and capricious agency action.
 
The preliminary injunction will remain in place either until after HHS and DHS complete a reasoned decision-making process that complies with the Administrative Procedure Act, or until litigation concludes.
 
“Protecting people’s private health information is vitally important,” Attorney General Nick Brown said. “And everyone should be able to seek medical care without fear of what the federal government may do with that information.”
 
On July 1, Washington joined a multistate coalition led by California to sue the Trump administration, arguing that the mass transfer of Medicaid data violates the law and asking the court to block any new transfer or use of this data for immigration enforcement purposes. The lawsuit highlighted that the administration’s illegal actions are creating fear and confusion, leading eligible noncitizens and their family members to disenroll, or refuse to enroll, in emergency Medicaid. This leaves states and their safety net hospitals to foot the bill for federally mandated emergency health care services. 
 
Washington’s Medicaid program is operated as a part of the broader Apple Health suite of health benefits programs. Washington residents signed up for Apple Health understanding that their information would be confidential and not shared for reasons unrelated to the provision of health care.
 
Apple Health includes Apple Health Expansion, which provides full-scope medical services to Washington residents regardless of their immigration status. There are more than 1.9 million Apple Health clients in Washington, including about 49,000 whose immigration status makes them ineligible for some federally funded programs. Apple Health covers a range of health care services, including inpatient and outpatient hospital care, primary and preventative care, long-term services and supports, and behavioral health.
 
Brown joined the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaiʻi, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont in filing the lawsuit.

A Video Conversation With California Governor Gavin Newsom - With Heather Cox Richardson -14 August 2025

Heather Cox Richardson is an American historian who works as a professor of history at Boston College, where she teaches courses on the American Civil War, the Reconstruction Era, the American West, and the Plains Indians. She previously taught history at MIT and the University of Massachusetts Amherst

Gavin Christopher Newsom is an American politician and businessman serving as the 40th governor of California since 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 49th lieutenant governor of California from 2011 to 2019 and as the 42nd mayor of San Francisco from 2004 to 2011.

        

Nike co-founder Phil Knight and wife pledge record $2B to Oregon cancer center, university says...

Bless Them!!

The Associated Press

The Associated Press

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife Penny Knight have pledged to donate $2 billion to Oregon Health & Science University’s Knight Cancer Institute, the school announced Thursday, describing it as the largest single gift to a U.S. university.

“This gift is an unprecedented investment in the millions of lives burdened with cancer, especially patients and families here in Oregon,” OHSU President Shereef Elnahal said in a statement.

The donation will help ensure patients have access to various resources, including psychological, genetic and financial counseling, symptom management, nutritional support and survivorship care, the university statement said.

“We couldn’t be more excited about the transformational potential of this work for humanity,” the Knights said in the statement.

The university described it as the “largest single donation ever made to a U.S. university, college or academic health center.” It surpasses the $1.8 billion given by Michael Bloomberg to Johns Hopkins in 2018, described by that university at the time as the largest single contribution to a U.S. university.

Bloomberg also donated an additional $1 billion to Johns Hopkins last year, covering tuition, living expenses and fees for students from families under certain income levels.

The magnitude of the donation will allow the Knight Cancer Institute to become a self-governed entity with its own board of directors within OHSU, the university said.

Knight is Oregon’s richest man. In 2013, he and his wife pledged $500 million to the cancer institute if the university matched it within two years. The match was met following $200 million in bonds from the Oregon Legislature, $100 million from then-chair of Columbia Sportswear Gert Boyle and donations from some 10,000 people, the university said.

Universities across the country are struggling with moves from President Donald Trump’s administration to cancel or freeze research grants at universities.

Live Up to the Budapest Agreement.

James R. Schlesinger Professor of the Practice of Energy, National Security, and Foreign Policy

Abstract

On December 5, 1994, leaders of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Russian Federation met in Budapest, Hungary, to pledge security assurances to Ukraine in connection with its accession to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) as a non-nuclear-weapons state. 

The signature of the so-called Budapest Memorandum concluded arduous negotiations that resulted in Ukraine’s agreement to relinquish the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal, which the country inherited from the collapsed Soviet Union, and transfer all nuclear warheads to Russia for dismantlement. 

The signatories of the memorandum pledged to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and inviolability of its borders, and to refrain from the use or threat of military force. 

Russia breached these commitments with its annexation of Crimea in 2014 and aggression in eastern Ukraine, bringing the meaning and value of security assurance pledged in the Memorandum under renewed scrutiny.

Citation

Budjeryn, Mariana, and Matthew Bunn. "Budapest Memorandum at 25: Between Past and Future." March 2020.

 AI Overview

The Budapest Memorandum, signed in 1994, involved Ukraine, Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom, where Ukraine agreed to give up its inherited Soviet nuclear weapons in exchange for security assurances.Russia's subsequent annexation of Crimea in 2014 and ongoing aggression in eastern Ukraine are widely seen as violations of these assurances. 

M. Barrett Miller—Banker, spy, educator, adventurer, and author. Video included in the post.

 

M. Barrett Miller

About the Author

While living in Moscow, Russia, Windsor, England, and Dublin, Ireland, combined with extensive travel throughout Europe, the U.S., North Africa, Central America, and Mexico, Mr. Miller had occasion to work directly and indirectly with several "interesting" people and organizations.

"The Bridge" is your introductory read to understand how these adventures began - for several of us willing to say yes to adventure.

All the other books in the series flow from what happened in Moscow.

Over the years, I have been asked many questions about living and operating in the Soviet Union.

"The Bridge" shares actual events with a creative narrative connecting the circumstances for those not familiar with the history under Communist rule in the CCCP.

London - Helsinki - Tashkent 1978

Michael Garrett is asked by Natalie, his lover, and member of French Intelligence, to travel to Tashkent to meet the Colonel she had been running for years. Her abrupt departure from Moscow and relocation to Paris has strained the management of the most strategically placed agent the French had ever developed. She and her backup can only make the trip that she feels will provide vital information to the West. She reluctantly asks Michael to make the meeting.

Before he departs for Tashkent and that meeting, Mick shares his journey as he joins the Australian Secret Intelligence Service in 1972, years before the world knew the Australians had an Intelligence Service. Follow his exploits across Russia along the trail with Jack, ASIS Station Chief, and other remarkable people.

Living in Moscow travelling to Kyiv, Leningrad, Volgograd, and other cities, share what life was like in the CCCP under constant watchful eyes.

Mind-Blown’: Scientists Discover Sex Reversal in Kookaburras and Lorikeets with Cause Unknown

 

                           Graham Readfearn - Atlantic -Australia Edition  - 13 August

"About 5% of common Australian wild birds including kookaburras and lorikeets could have undergone a “sex reversal” where their genetic sex does not match their reproductive organs, according to a new study.

The study is thought to be the first to find widespread sex reversal across multiple wild bird species, but the cause of the phenomenon is not yet known.

The results suggest sex reversal is more common in wild birds than previously thought, and have raised concerns about the potential impact of chemicals that can disrupt hormones in animals.

Researchers tested 480 birds across five common species that had died after being admitted to wildlife hospitals in south-east Queensland.

Researchers first used a DNA test to determine a bird’s genetic sex; in birds, males have a pair of Z chromosomes and females have one Z and one W.

But after dissecting the birds, they found a mismatch between the DNA test and the reproductive organs of 24 of the birds.

Associate Prof Dominique Potvin, a co-author of the research at the University of the Sunshine Coast, said the team were deeply sceptical when the results first came in.

“I was thinking, is this right?” she said. “So we rechecked, and rechecked and rechecked. And then we were thinking, ‘Oh my God’.”

Potvin said she had revealed the results to ornithologist friends. “They were mind-blown,” she said.

Concern sex reversal may skew data

Almost all of the “sex discordant” birds were genetically female but had male reproductive organs, found the research, published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

In one case, a kookaburra that was genetically male had a stretched oviduct – the passageway for an egg – that suggested “recent egg production”, Potvin said.

Two genetically female crested pigeons had both testicular and ovarian reproductive structures, the research found.

Other birds tested were rainbow lorikeets, scaly-breasted lorikeets and Australian magpies. The lowest levels of sex reversal was 3%, found in Australian magpies, and the highest was 6.3% in crested pigeons.

Dr Clancy Hall, the lead author of the research, also at the University of the Sunshine Coast, said sex-reversed birds could affect reproductive success that should raise concerns about the impact on threatened species.

She said: “This can lead to skewed sex ratios, reduced population sizes, altered mate preferences, and even population decline.

“The ability to unequivocally identify the sex and reproductive status of individuals is crucial across many fields of study.”

Experts say chemicals may be to blame

The causes of the sex reversals were unclear, but one factor could be contact with chemicals in the environment.

Sex reversal is known to occur in some molluscs, fish, amphibians and reptiles and can occur naturally or be influenced by chemicals that can affect an animal’s hormones – known as endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs).

Prof Kate Buchanan, who studies the evolutionary biology of wild birds at Deakin University but was not involved in the study, said because the default sex of birds was female, it was not surprising that most of the sex reversal affects were in the direction of female to male.

She said: “The most likely explanation of the masculinisation is some environmental stimulation, probably anthropogenic chemicals.”

Buchanan has been part of research that has found EDCs in insects that develop in sewage treatment works and are food for some birds, as well as a study that found male European starlings exposed to the chemicals developed longer and more complex songs, but had a damaged immune system.

She said even if the masculinisation of affected birds was reversible in their lifetime, “it would probably knock them out of being reproductive”.

Dr Clare Holleley is the head of vertebrate collections at the Australian government science agency the CSIRO and has studied sex reversal in lizards.

“What’s doing this is now the big question,” she said.

While a cause could be natural (for example, sex reversal in lizards can be triggered by temperature changes), Holleley said it was likely “something else is going on”.

“If sex determination gets disrupted then something has to push you off track. The most likely [cause] is endocrine-disrupting chemicals.”

Dr Golo Maurer, the director of conservation strategy at BirdLife Australia, said the research was likely to cause a stir in the ornithological field.

He said the presence of EDCs and the potential impacts was a “huge concern” given the other crises facing birds, from climate change to habitat clearance and plastic pollution.

Some experts were cautious about extrapolating the results to the wider population of wild birds, because the birds were not a random sample but had been admitted to hospitals."

Paul Krugman Speaking the Truth on 47's Selection for the Bureau of Labor Statistics

Paul Robin Krugman is an American New Keynesian economist who is the Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He was a columnist for The New York Times from 2000 to 2024

" On Monday I wrote about Donald Trump’s disastrous press conference touting the economy along with Stephen Moore, a former chief economist at the Heritage Foundation. As I noted, Moore is a dishonest partisan hack, which is only to be expected, but also bizarrely incompetent, incapable of ever getting his facts right. To explain the phenomenon, I invoked Hannah Arendt:

Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.

Let me call this Arendt’s Law: Totalitarian and wannabe totalitarian regimes only hire incompetent hacks.

So when Trump nominated E.J. Antoni, the current chief economist at Heritage, to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it seemed safe to assume that he would be cut from the same cloth. But although Trump’s Truth Social post announcing the nomination declared that Antoni is a Highly Respected Economist, I and most of the economists I talk with knew nothing about him.

Fortunately, Menzie Chinn of the University of Wisconsin, who actually is a Highly Respected Economist and whose blog Econbrowser has been influential for many years, has been on Antoni’s case for a while. And sure enough, Arendt’s Law remains undefeated.

Before I get to Chinn’s work, yesterday morning’s Antoni headline. I’ve argued since before Trump took office that this administration would eventually get around to cooking the economic books. But I didn’t expect it right away. The process of constructing a monthly jobs report is complex. You can’t just take a Sharpie and write in the numbers you want. Corrupting the data would require firing or intimidating a large number of people, which would, I thought, take time.

But one should never underestimate the audacity of hacks. On Monday Antoni went on Fox Business and suggested that the BLS should stop issuing monthly jobs reports until the “problems” at the agency are fixed.

I guess that would be one way to let Trump continue claiming that the economy is booming — just stop publishing the data showing that it isn’t.

True, Antoni did say that the BLS should continue issuing quarterly reports, but scrapping monthly numbers would give Trump’s people more time to corrupt the data — and wanna bet that if the next quarterly report looks bad, Antoni, if confirmed at the BLS, would find reasons to hold off on its release?

Incidentally, as Claudia Sahm reminds us, the BLS is legally required to issue monthly employment reports. So Antoni’s proposal, aside from being a transparently corrupt attempt to hide bad news, would be flatly illegal. I’m pretty sure that canceling publication of the Consumer Price Index, which will be next on the agenda once the full impact of Trump’s tariffs is felt, would also be illegal. But does that sort of thing matter these days?

But let me get to Menzie Chinn who, as I said, has been on Antoni’s case for a while. It turns out that for someone with almost no publications, who has been largely invisible from policy discourse, Antoni has been responsible for a surprisingly large number of bad economic analyses.

Chinn puts special emphasis on a 2024 paper circulated by Antoni and Peter St. Onge claiming that real GDP peaked at the end of 2021, and never recovered — that is, that the U.S. economy was in a deep recession for Joe Biden’s last three years in office.

Chinn tried to replicate their results, and even using what they claimed was their (weird) methodology couldn’t get anywhere close to their numbers. My guess is that a forensic analysis, should anyone bother (I don’t recommend it) would find that Antoni and St. Onge committed a Stephen Moore: They just made some math mistakes or copied some numbers down incorrectly.

But why bother? An economist who gets results completely at odds with every other piece of available evidence — remember, in 2024 The Economist described the U.S. economy as “The envy of the world” — owes it both to himself and his readers to provide a detailed, reproducible explanation of why his story is so different. Antoni didn’t.

I’d like to think that Antoni’s utter professional inadequacy for the role of BLS Commissioner will keep Congress from confirming him. But as I mentioned Monday, Stephen Moore already had a well-established reputation for surreal incompetence by the time Trump tried to install him on the Federal Reserve Board. Yet he would probably have been confirmed anyway if unsavory facts about his personal life hadn’t surfaced.

So there’s a good chance that Antoni will, in fact, take over the BLS. And the result will be the total destruction of one of the world’s greatest statistical agencies — an agency that has, among other things, been a crucial aid to business decision-making. It won’t even matter whether the Trumpists cook the books (although they will.) For from the moment Antoni takes full control, nobody will believe any numbers coming out of BLS.

Fortunately, the same thing won’t be happening to other government agencies providing crucial information, like the Centers for Disease Control. Oh, wait."

A Cold War Thriller With Real Bite

 

                                               He was General Secretary when I lived in Moscow.

Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev was a Soviet politician who served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1964 until his death in 1982 as well as the fourth chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet from 1960 to 1964 and again from 1977 to 1982

"The Bridge" Revewed by CannyScott2000 on Amazon UK 6 August 2025

"There’s something properly gripping about The Tashkent Connection. It’s spy fiction, 

yes, but with that slow-burn, lived-in feel that makes you wonder how 

much of it might actually be true. I enjoyed the vivid settings, 

particularly Moscow, clouded in grim, grey, and full of whispers. 

Michael Garrett is no superhero, just someone trying to navigate l

oyalties and survive in a world built on secrets. A solid Cold War gem, this."

Christopher Ogden, Moscow UPI Correspondent, twice NY Times bestselling author.
“I had no idea what you were up to when we were there...I could not put it down. 

You captured those times perfectly. Wonderful book!”

"Love learning about life in Moscow while following the twists and turns in this plot. 

If you liked A Gentleman in Moscow or Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, then read this next!" 

Charles Martin

"A love story, a spy story, and a great look into Soviet Russia."
“The Bridge,” tells where and how it all began, for a number of us willing to 

say yes to adventure.
“This Bridge” shares actual events with a creative narrative connecting the 

circumstances for those not familiar with the history under Communist rule in the CCCP.
“Any fan of spy novels, history (particularly Cold War history), will enjoy The Bridge" 

E.Vance

London - Helsinki - Tashkent 1978
Michael Garrett is asked by Natalie, his lover and member of French Intelligence, 

to travel to Tashkent to meet the Colonel she had been running for years. Her 

abrupt departure from Moscow and relocation to Paris has strained the management 

of the most strategically placed agent the French had ever developed. Neither she 

nor her backup can make the trip that she feels will provide vital information to the west.

She reluctantly asks Michael to make the meeting.
Before he departs for Tashkent and that meeting, share his journey as he joins 

the Australian Secret Intelligence Service in 1972, years before the world knew the 

Australians had an Intelligence Service. 

Follow his exploits across Russia with Jack, ASIS Station Chief, and other 

remarkable people along the way.

Helping Rhinos Survive - Video Link in Blog

MOKOPANE, South Africa (AP) — A South African university launched an anti-poaching campaign Thursday to inject the horns of rhinos with radioactive isotopes that it says are harmless for the animals but can be detected by customs agents.

Under the collaborative project involving the University of the Witwatersrand, nuclear energy officials and conservationists, five rhinos were injected in what the university hopes will be the start of a mass injection of the declining rhino population.

They're calling it the Rhisotope Project.

 

Last year, about 20 rhinos at a sanctuary were injected with isotopes in trials that paved the way for Thursday's launch. The radioactive isotopes even at low levels can be recognized by radiation detectors at airports and borders, leading to the arrest of poachers and traffickers.

Researchers at Witwatersrand's Radiation and Health Physics Unit say that tests conducted in the pilot study confirmed that the radioactive material was not harmful to the rhinos.

"We have demonstrated, beyond scientific doubt, that the process is completely safe for the animal and effective in making the horn detectable through international customs nuclear security systems," said James Larkin, chief scientific officer at the Rhisotope Project.

"Even a single horn with significantly lower levels of radioactivity than what will be used in practice successfully triggered alarms in radiation detectors," said Larkin.

The tests also found that horns could be detected inside full 40-foot shipping containers, he said.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature estimates that the global rhino population stood at around 500,000 at the beginning of the 20th century but has now declined to around 27,000 due to continued demand for rhino horns on the black market.

South Africa has the largest population of rhinos with an estimated 16,000 but the country experiences high levels of poaching with about 500 rhinos killed for their horns every year.

The university has urged private wildlife park owners and national conservation authorities to have their rhinos injected.

You Can Help by Supporting "Save the Rhino"