Politics
Video: Biden Administration Selects Drugs for Medicare Price Negotiations

When we act, change happens, you know. And today I’m proud to announce that Medicare has selected the first 10 additional drugs for negotiation under the Inflation Reduction Act — 10 additional. Drugs that treat everything from heart failure, blood clots, diabetes, kidney disease, arthritis, blood cancers, Crohn’s disease and so much more. Reducing the cost of these 10 additional drugs alone will help more than nine million Americans. And by September 2024, H.H.S., Health and Human Services, is going to publish the prices it negotiated. In January of 2026, the new prices will go into effect. For years, Big Pharma blocked us. They kept prescription drug prices high to increase their profits and extend patents on existing drugs to suppress fair competition, instead of innovating. Playing games with pricing so they could charge whatever they can. But this is — finally, finally, finally, we had enough votes by a matter of one to beat Big Pharma.

Politics
Obama Calls for Universities to Stand Up to Trump Administration Threats

Former President Barack Obama urged universities to resist attacks from the federal government that violate their academic freedom in a campus speech on Thursday.
He also said schools and students should engage in self-reflection about speech environments on their campuses.
“If you are a university, you may have to figure out, are we in fact doing things right?,” he said during a conversation at Hamilton College in upstate New York. “Have we in fact violated our own values, our own code, violated the law in some fashion?”
“If not, and you’re just being intimidated, well, you should be able to say, that’s why we got this big endowment.”
Mr. Obama’s comments came as the Trump administration has threatened universities with major cuts. It took away $400 million in grants and contracts from Columbia University in March. It later suspended $175 million to the University of Pennsylvania, and said this week that it was reviewing about $9 billion in arrangements with Harvard and its affiliates.
At Harvard, where the university has made efforts to respond to Republican criticism and concerns from Jewish students and faculty, more than 800 faculty members have signed a letter urging their leadership to more forcefully resist the administration and defend higher education more broadly.
Universities have received critiques from all sides, including those outside of leadership, saying they should do more. But the stakes are high, and large portions of endowments are often earmarked for specific causes that make dipping into them as a rainy-day fund difficult. Johns Hopkins, for example, has a significant endowment, but still laid off 2,000 workers in the wake of federal cuts.
Many universities have seemed to be at a loss about what to do. But some presidents, including those at Brown and Princeton, which have also been told they will have millions in federal grants canceled, have said that they would fight back against the administration, sometimes framing it as a fight for academic freedom.
Princeton’s president, Christopher L. Eisgruber, called the targeting of Columbia University “the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of the 1950s.”
Mr. Obama’s advice to lean on the endowment in the face of threats and stand on principle was also endorsed by his former Treasury secretary, Lawrence Summers, in a guest essay this week in The Times. “Believe me, a former president of Harvard,” Mr. Summers wrote, “when I say that ways can be found in an emergency to deploy even parts of the endowment that have been earmarked by their donors for other uses.”
To many on the right, and even some on the left, one reason Mr. Trump is attacking higher education is because universities have become politically weakened, partly because they haven’t taken the free-expression concerns of conservatives seriously.
In his remarks on Thursday, Mr. Obama also called on law firms, which have also faced threats from the Trump administration, to stand for their principles, even if they risked losing business.
Mr. Obama told the crowd, which included college students, that everyone should stand up for the rights of others to say wrong and hurtful things.
“The idea of canceling a speaker who comes to your campus, trying to shout them down and not letting them speak,” Mr. Obama said, according to a transcript on his Medium account, “even if I find their ideas obnoxious, well, not only is that not what universities should be about, that’s not what America should be about.”
He added, to applause, “You let them speak, and then you tell them why they’re wrong. That’s how you win the argument.”
Politics
Trump touts airstrike on Houthis, showing video: Will 'never sink our ships again'

Trump on Friday shared video of a recent airstrike on Houthi rebels, writing, “They will never sink our ships again.”
“These Houthis gathered for instructions on an attack,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Oops, there will be no attack by these Houthis! They will never sink our ships again!”
The black and white aerial footage appeared to show a group assembling before a massive blast leaves nothing but a crater.
The Trump administration has been conducting daily airstrikes on the Iranian-backed rebels for the last 20 days following renewed Houthi threats against Israeli vessels last month after Jerusalem cut off humanitarian aid headed for the Gaza Strip.
IRANIAN-BACKED HOUTHIS SHOOT DOWN THIRD US REAPER DRONE AS TRUMP ADMINISTRATION CONTINUES DAILY STRIKES
Following the strike, all that was left was a crater. (Donald Trump/Truth Social)
Late last month, the group took responsibility for attacks on the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier and several U.S. warships in the Red Sea.
The Houthis have also shot down three U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drones since March 3, sources previously told Fox News.
The State Department put forward sanctions after the Houthis shot down the first Reaper in early March, and on Tuesday, the State Department announced sanctions on “financial facilitators, procurement operatives, and companies operating as part of a global illicit finance network supporting the Houthis.”
National Security Advisor Mike Waltz told CBS’ “Face the Nation” late last month: “These guys are like al Qaeda or ISIS with advanced cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and some of the most sophisticated air defenses, all provided by Iran. Keeping the sea lanes open, keeping trade and commerce open, is a fundamental aspect of our national security.”
AFTER DEBILITATING STRIKES, TRUMP TELLS HOUTHIS: STOP SHOOTING AT US AND ‘WE WILL STOP SHOOTING AT YOU’

Trump said that the Houthis had gathered to plan an attack before the strike. (Donald Trump/Truth Social )
On Monday, Trump wrote on Truth Social that the Houthis have been “decimated by the relentless strikes over the past two weeks.”
“Many of their Fighters and Leaders are no longer with us,” he continued. “We hit them every day and night — Harder and harder. Their capabilities that threaten Shipping and the Region are rapidly being destroyed. Our attacks will continue until they are no longer a threat to Freedom of Navigation. The choice for the Houthis is clear: Stop shooting at U.S. ships, and we will stop shooting at you. Otherwise, we have only just begun, and the real pain is yet to come, for both the Houthis and their sponsors in Iran.”

Trump told the Houthis earlier this week: “Stop shooting at U.S. ships, and we will stop shooting at you.” (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
The terrorist network, backed by Iran, began escalating its attacks on Western ships in the Red Sea following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel. Notably, security experts have pointed out the Houthi attacks are not indiscriminate as they do not routinely target Chinese or Saudi Arabian vessels.
Trump also issued a message to Iran on Monday and warned if the attacks do not stop, Washington will come for Tehran next.
Fox News’ Rachel Wolf, Liz Friden, Caitlin McFall and Landon Mion contributed to this report.
Politics
Supreme Court OKs Trump's cuts to teacher training grants in California

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled for the Trump administration on Friday and lifted a judge’s order that had blocked the canceling of $148 million in grants for recruiting and training new teachers in California and millions more nationwide.
By a 5-4 vote, the justices granted the administration’s appeal and freezes the funding for now.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said he would have denied the appeal, and the court’s three liberals — Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson — filed a written dissent.
“In my view, nothing about this case demanded our immediate intervention,” Kagan wrote.
The majority did not explain its decision. In a brief, unsigned order, it said the plaintiffs did not “refute the Government’s representation that it is unlikely to recover the grant funds once they are disbursed.”
Trump administration lawyers had urged the court to rein in judges who were acting as “self-appointed managers” of the federal government.
In early February, Trump’s appointees at the Education Department reviewed pending grants aiming to end funding for “discriminatory practices, including in the form of DEI,” or diversity, equity and inclusion.
They decided to terminate 104 of 109 teacher training grants valued at about $600 million nationwide. They did so through form letters that said the grants “no longer effectuate … agency priorities.”
Led by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, eight Democratic-leaning states filed suit in Boston and argued that Congress had approved the grants and that their sudden canceling was not “authorized by law.” The suit targeted about $250 million in canceled grants, and of those, about $148 million went to California.
Joining California in the suit were Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Illinois, Wisconsin and Colorado. No Republican-led states have filed suit.
Bonta’s suit relied on the Administrative Procedure Act, which forbids agencies from abruptly changing their regulatory policies without a clear and reasonable explanation.
U.S. District Judge Myong Joun, a Biden appointee, agreed that the Education Department’s decision to abruptly terminate the grants was “arbitrary and capricious” and illegal under the Administrative Procedure Act. He said “there was no individualized analysis of any of the programs” that were terminated.
On March 10, he issued a temporary restraining order to maintain the status quo.
When a federal appeals court refused to lift that order, Trump administration lawyers appealed to the Supreme Court.
“This court should put a swift end to federal district courts’ unconstitutional reign as self-appointed managers of Executive branch fund and grant disbursement decisions,” wrote acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris in her appeal in U.S. Department of Education vs. State of California.
A statement from Bonta’s office said the Supreme Court order “does not conclusively resolve any of the issues in this case, and the preliminary injunction motion is still pending.”
“The Trump Administration is pursuing an anti-education agenda that would yank teachers out of schools and prevent new teachers-in-training who are close to being ready to serve our students from filling empty classrooms,” Bonta said in a statement. “While we would have preferred to maintain the [temporary restraining order], we respect the court process, and we look forward to continuing to make our case in the lower court.”
Bonta’s suit said the California State University and the University of California lost eight grants that were valued at about $56 million. The aim of the federal grants was to recruit and train teachers to work in “hard to staff” schools in rural or urban areas.
Among the canceled programs was a $7.5-million grant to Cal State L.A. to train and certify 276 teachers over five years to work in high-need or high-poverty schools in the Los Angeles Unified and Pasadena Unified school districts.
Other cancellations included an $8-million program at UCLA to train at least 314 middle school principals as well as math, English, science and social science teachers to serve in several Los Angeles county school districts.
In a statement, California Teachers Assn. President David Goldberg criticized the Supreme Court’s ruling.
“At a time when we are facing ongoing staffing shortages in our public schools, we should be devoting more resources to the recruitment and retention of educators, not holding critical resources hostage to push political agendas,” Goldberg said.
Times staff writer Daniel Miller contributed to this story.
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