Business
Column: Nikki Haley is as bad on abortion and health as any other Republican
Nikki Haley blocked the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act while she was governor of South Carolina. Her policies on abortion rights are execrable. Her home state has one of the nation’s worse records in the nation on maternal health — indeed, on health generally.
Since Haley says she’s staying in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, despite coming in second to Donald Trump in the New Hampshire primary, there’s no time like the present to examine her positions on the all-important issue of healthcare.
A thousand political takes have bloomed in newspapers and on the airwaves since Haley expressed her determination to keep running. Too many of them deal with whether she really has a chance to beat Trump and what Trump says or thinks about her or what she thinks of Trump.
It’s easy and lazy to expand Medicaid because all you’re doing is giving people money to buy them time.
— Nikki Haley
It’s much more important to contemplate what a Haley presidency would mean to Americans confronting those thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, especially among low-income Americans and women of childbearing age. The general answer is that it’s ugly.
South Carolina ranks 37th in healthcare performance among all states, a ranking by the Commonwealth Fund based on reproductive care and women’s health, access and affordability of healthcare, premature deaths from preventable and treatable causes, and other factors.
Let’s dive in.
We can start with the most important healthcare issue on the partisan landscape: abortion. South Carolina’s rules on abortion are among the most restrictive in the nation. The rules were implemented under a law passed after she left the governorship, but she never specifically disavowed them either.
The state bans most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, a time when many women don’t know they’re pregnant. Women seeking abortions must be offered antiabortion counseling and wait 24 hours afterward. Minors can’t receive abortions without the approval of a parent or legal guardian.
Abortions must be performed by physicians, which bars the involvement of midwifes and other healthcare professionals. Medication abortions — that is, via pills — must be administered by physicians in person, not via telehealth sessions or through the mail.
The state prohibits even private health insurance plans offered through Obamacare to include abortion coverage except in narrow circumstances. Haley signed that law as governor. Its Medicaid program doesn’t cover abortion.
During the GOP candidate debates, Haley has tried to dodge questions about her abortion policies, or at least shroud them in a miasma of verbiage. “We need to stop demonizing this issue,” she said during the Aug. 23 GOP debate in Milwaukee. “Unelected justices didn’t need to decide something this personal, because it’s personal for every woman and man.”
But she implicitly praised the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, which overturned the national right to abortion established in the 1973 ruling in Roe vs. Wade.
Dobbs placed abortion legislating in the hands of state lawmakers. “Now, it’s been put in the hands of the people,” Haley said during the debate. “That’s great.”
Nikki Haley’s legacy: South Carolina has one of the nation’s worst infant mortality rates, and the rate among Black children is nearly three times that of white children.
(South Carolina Dept. of Health and Environmental Control)
But that circumvented the reality that even in states where voters have backed abortion rights by wide margins at the ballot box, such as Ohio, legislators have been attempting to reimpose abortion restrictions despite the votes.
Haley has said that as president she would sign a national abortion ban if it reached her desk. She tries to leaven that determination by arguing that Congress would be unlikely to pass one.
It’s proper to note that abortion restrictions and indicators of maternal and infant health more generally tend to go hand in hand. That seems to be the case in South Carolina, which persistently has ranked low among states on maternal and infant health.
The state had the ninth-worst maternal death rate in the country in 2019-21, according to the Commonwealth Fund — 35.3 deaths per 100,000 live births. (California’s rate of 9.6 was the best in the country; the U.S. average was 32.9.) The state’s rate was lower while Haley was governor, running between about 26 and 28 per 100,000 births, but was consistently worse than the U.S. average by eight to nine percentage points throughout her tenure.
South Carolina also had the fifth-worst infant mortality rate in the country in 2021, at 7.26 deaths per 1,000 live births — better than only Mississippi, Arkansas, Alaska and Alabama — according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The rate fluctuated between 6.4 and 7.5 while she was governor. Tellingly, the rate among Black infants, 12.7 per 1,000 live births, is nearly three times that of white children, 5.2.
Now let’s turn to the Affordable Care Act, which was enacted in 2010, just as Haley took office as governor. Haley opposed Obamacare virtually from the outset, and gleefully. In July 2014, when a federal appeals court blocked Obamacare premium subsidies in states, such as South Carolina, that had not created their own ACA exchanges but left that task to the federal government, she celebrated.
“This is a huge blow to Obamacare as we know it,” she wrote on Facebook. “The way I see it, this allows the Supreme Court a redo. We can only hope!” (Her reference was to the 2012 Supreme Court decision that ruled the ACA constitutional.) The Supreme Court overturned the appeals courts subsidy decision in 2015.
Haley flatly refused to expand Medicaid in South Carolina under the ACA. The state remains one of the 10, all Republican-controlled, that still haven’t expanded Medicaid. The consequences to its residents are marked. South Carolina’s health uninsured rate, 14.9%, was the 10th worst in the country, according to the Commonwealth Fund, below the national average of 12.1%. All the 10 worst states except Nevada are non-expansion states.
South Carolina also had the second-highest percentage of residents with medical debts recorded by credit bureaus in 2021, at 22.3%. Only West Virginia, with 24%, was worse. The failure to expand Medicaid undoubtedly plays a role in this record, for the program would relief lower-income households of many medical bills.
Asked at a New Hampshire town hall broadcast in May about her refusal to expand the program, Haley responded with a word salad about job-creation programs her state had sponsored, rather than on addressing the healthcare needs of lower-income residents.
“We focused on lifting up everybody, not just a certain amount,” she said. She said the job program she sponsored found work for 35,000 residents. What she didn’t say was that this figure was a fraction of the number of residents locked out of Medicaid eligibility. This “coverage gap,” as the independent healthcare research organization KFF defines it, is 166,000 in South Carolina. The Urban Institute placed the figure at 196,000 in a 2018 survey.
Haley doubled down on her opposition to Medicaid expansion during that New Hampshire town hall. “It’s easy and lazy to expand Medicaid,” she said, “because all you’re doing is giving people money to buy them time.”
How penny-wise and plain foolish was her Medicaid policy as governor? Under the Affordable Care Act, the federal government paid 100% of the cost of expansion from 2014 through 2016. From 2017 on, the match was reduced bit by bit until it reached a permanent level of 90% in 2020. Even that is well above the federal match rate for traditional Medicaid, which is 69.67% for South Carolina.
In other words, Haley’s refusal to expand Medicaid was based not on empirical effects, for there is no disputing that Medicaid eligibility improves health outcomes for enrollees.
It was not based on state finances, for the residual state match even today is more than compensated by gains in the economic vitality of enrollees and the fiscal health of local hospitals that are economically dependent on Medicaid reimbursements. The only remaining rationale is ideological — Haley’s policy hewed close to the furthest-right position of the Republican Party.
In 2021, four years after Haley left office, her state was forced to come to terms with the consequences of its inattention to maternal health. A legislative panel detailed the toll on South Carolina mothers — finding that 62% of maternal deaths were pregnancy-related and 68% were preventable. The maternal mortality rate was 2.4 times higher for Black and other women of color than for white women (42.3 per 100,000 live births for Black and other women of color, compared with18.0 for white women).
The state enacted one of the most important recommendations of the study panel, which was for Medicaid to cover 12 postpartum months rather than the existing cutoff at 60 days. The change went into effect in 2022. In this respect, at least, South Carolina joined 46 other states in extending Medicaid coverage for new mothers.
But Haley’s legacy lives on, in wretched figures on infant and maternal mortality and uninsured rates. She may be representing herself on the stump as new blood with a fresh outlook in comparison to Donald Trump, but her policies impose the same old GOP-style cruelty on Americans whose lives could be improved by a government that cares.
Dear Mr. Pelley:
I meant what I said in my letter last week to the 60 Minutes team: joining 60 Minutes is the honor of my career and I am grateful to be working alongside the people who have contributed to the most important television journalism brand this country has ever produced. While I’m new to 60 Minutes, I’ve devoted my career to investigative journalism and storytelling. I started this job excited to collaborate and to benefit from the wisdom and experience of the 60 Minutes veterans, with you among them. For that reason, one of the first things I did in my new role was call you to talk and invite you to dinner. It is a profound disappointment that you rejected that overture and chose ambush instead. Yesterday, you hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt. I welcome a diversity of viewpoints and respectful debate among the team, but this was nothing of the sort. Yesterday’s performative display of hostility enacted in front of the staff instead of in a civil, private conversation-demonstrated that you have no interest in contributing to the future success of the show, or approaching my new tenure with a mind open to collaboration and progress. I am here to deliver first-in-class news programming, not to make headlines about newsroom drama. I am eager to work alongside those who share this goal.
Despite yesterday’s misconduct, I had hoped that in sitting down with you today we could find a path forward together. You made clear that you are not interested in such a path.
Your antipathy to the future of the show has come through loud and clear. And I have heard you. I therefore write on behalf of CBS News, Inc. (“CBS”) to inform you that your employment with CBS is terminated for cause effective immediately. Enclosed is your formal termination letter.
Sincerely,
Nick Bilton
Executive Producer, 60 Minutes
The co-founder of Aspiration, Joseph Sanberg, was sentenced to 14 years in prison on Monday after defrauding investors and lenders of over $248 million.
The startup, an eco-friendly digital banking company boasting fossil fuel-free investments, carbon offsets for gas purchases, and a debit card with cash-back benefits for shopping at clean companies, was founded by Sanberg and Andrei Cherny. Cherny left the company in 2022 and has not been charged.
Sanberg, an Orange County native, pleaded guilty to wire fraud in October after being arrested in March last year. Aspiration subsequently filed for bankruptcy and liquidated all of its assets by July.
Sanberg and venture capitalist Ibrahim AlHusseini, who also faces charges, together forged a series of bank statements in order to obtain loans. From 2020 to 2021, the pair forged AlHusseini’s bank statements to show millions of dollars in assets in order to obtain millions of dollars from lenders.
Additionally, they forged a letter from their audit committee stating that $250 million in funds were available, when in reality Aspiration had less than $1 million. The amount of loans defrauded exceeded $248 million.
In 2021, Sanberg artificially inflated Aspiration’s 2021 revenue by $44 million by recruiting 27 fake customers to sign letters of intent pledging tens of thousands of dollars per month for tree planting services. Sanberg himself funded the contracts and used the inflated revenue numbers to obtain more loans.
The charges sparked an NBA investigation into salary cap allegations due to Aspiration’s connections with Clippers owner Steve Ballmer.
Ballmer personally invested $60 million in Aspiration, all of which was lost. He is now the target of a civil lawsuit alleging his participation in the scheme. Ballmer denies the allegations.
The team announced a $300-million sponsorship deal with Aspiration, and Clippers player Kawhi Leonard signed a four-year, $28-million marketing contract with the company, which reportedly performed no duties. The issue has raised concerns about how players are circumventing the NBA’s salary cap.
The team lost the $300-million sponsorship deal and an additional $20 million paid for carbon offset purchases.
Residents in the city of Monterey Park will be the first in the nation to vote on a permanent ban on data centers Tuesday.
If approved, Measure NDC would prohibit data centers within the city limits and could only be overturned by another vote.
Yard signs saying “No Data Center” in English and Chinese with images of dragons line sidewalks in the San Gabriel Valley city.
As a wave of data center opposition sweeps the country, numerous towns and counties across the U.S. have instituted temporary moratoria and other restrictions on the facilities. But only a handful have instituted indefinite bans, and just four other towns have sent related matters to the ballot.
Supporters are hoping the vote will set a precedent for the rest of the region, where residents are fighting proposals in Vernon and City of Industry.
“This is about as permanent a ban as we can get,” said Steven Kung, co-founder of the group No Data Center Monterey Park. “Winning Measure NDC would send a huge message to the rest of the San Gabriel Valley about how residents don’t want data centers.”
The ballot measure emerged from the fight against a 247,000-square-foot center proposed in 2024 by the Australian-owned investment firm HMC StratCap for a residential area in Monterey Park.
The facility would have sat less than 500 feet away from the nearest home and used three times the electricity of the 60,000-person, predominantly Asian American city.
While the developer touted the potential for jobs and tax revenue, residents expressed concerns about noise and air pollution, rising electricity rates and a potential to lower property values.
The company pulled its plans in late March following public outcry and a March 4 city council vote to extend a temporary data center moratorium and place a ban on Tuesday’s ballot.
In a letter to the city council, HMC StratCap said it would pursue a different use for the land and would not engage in a ballot measure fight.
The city council later banned data centers indefinitely, the first in California to do so, said Mayor Elizabeth Yang. But she’s still been out campaigning for the measure with all four other council members.
“If a council puts in an ordinance, a future council can reverse it too,” said Yang. “With the ballot measure, unbanning it is a lot harder because you need the entire city to vote on it.”
The measure proposes the ban “to protect air quality, drinking water resources, and public health” and “prevent impacts to electricity and water rates.”
While California places third in the country for existing data centers with about 300 facilities, it hasn’t been a hot spot in the recent AI-driven data center boom. High electricity rates, expensive land and regulatory hurdles mean that fewer, and smaller, facilities are currently planned than in Virginia, Texas, Georgia, Illinois or Arizona.
“Most of California’s data centers are small by today’s standards,” said Shaolei Ren, an engineering professor at UC Riverside who studies how to reduce the environmental impacts of data centers. “Ten years ago, they would be medium-sized, but the power demand for new AI data centers has increased a lot.”
The average operating data center demands 45 megawatts, according to the Washington Post, while the average planned one would draw 430 MW. The one proposed for Monterey Park would have required about 50 MW at peak demand.
As proposals crop up in SoCal, they’re met with fierce opposition. Montebello, El Monte and Baldwin Park have all enacted temporary moratoria, and Alhambra recently banned data centers as part of a zoning code update. City of Industry, Vernon, City of Commerce and Santa Fe Springs are moving in the other direction, trying to court developers and streamline data center approvals. Community groups are fighting that.
Outside the San Gabriel Valley, residents of Coachella and Imperial County are showing up in droves to protest local proposals.
Matthew Shaw, a volunteer with the Coalition for Responsible Data Center Development, who recently published a report on opposition to AI data centers, said a vote to ban them in Monterey Park “would lead to copycats, partially because so many groups are just opposed to any data center development at all.”
While there is no formal opposition to Measure NDC, some building trades like Ironworker Local 433 supported the Monterey Park data center when it was still live before city council. Those in the data center industry are lamenting the state of public opinion.
“These are multi-billion-dollar assets that are built by multi-trillion-dollar companies. These things will get done,” said Mehdi Paryavi, chairman of the International Data Center Authority. “My biggest problem is that our industry does not invest enough in community engagement.”
Paryavi said towns that seek to limit data centers are missing out on thousands of jobs generated by data center construction, operations and customers, as well as faster artificial intelligence speeds and better performance.
Kung said local community organizers are “looking at the empirical evidence” and seeing a ban as a win.
“We’ve never seen a city that embraces a data center and is like, ‘Look how our quality of life has increased, look how all the revenue has gone into citywide improvements,’” he said. “That just doesn’t exist.”
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