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SUSAN COLLINS RIVAL HITS HER OVER ABORTION RECORD: The speaker of the Maine House of Representatives, Sara Gideon, is out with a new ad blasting Susan Collins for her record on abortion rights.
Gideon is hoping to unseat Collins in November. The video shows two clips of Collins in which she calls herself “pro-choice” and notes that she has been endorsed by Planned Parenthoood. Then it shows a clip of Collins declaring that she will vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, contrasting that with a newscaster who says the court has shifted to the right and that abortion rights are under threat.
“A lot has changed since 1996 — including Senator Collins,” Gideon said in a tweet. “It’s time we elect a Senator who will stand up for reproductive rights and fight back against efforts to overturn #RoeVWade.”
Collins received an award from Planned Parenthood as recently as 2017, but the organization recently announced that it would be endorsing Gideon in the 2020 election, saying Collins “turned her back” on women by voting to confirm Kavanaugh and by supporting other Trump-appointed judicial nominees. Collins, a firm centrist who is facing a tough re-election, is one of the few Republicans in Congress to support abortion rights, and said when she voted to confirm Kavanaugh that she didn’t think he would rule to overturn Roe v. Wade.
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TRUMP TO BECOME FIRST PRESIDENT TO SPEAK AT MARCH FOR LIFE: The president will address the high profile anti-abortion rally on Friday. President Trump is the first president to speak in person in the March’s 47-year history. Last year, he gave a message of support for the cause to attendees through a live video and Vice President Mike Pence made a surprise appearance at the march.
TEXAS GETS FAMILY PLANNING MONEY BACK, SANS PLANNED PARENTHOOD: The Trump administration has re-established federal family planning funds that Texas lost under the Obama administration for trying to cut Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers out of its program. The funds had been initially cut off under the Obama administration, which said the state couldn’t limit patients from seeing providers of their choice, and so Texas left millions of dollars on the table rather than allow Planned Parenthood to participate. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, said that the Trump administration decision meant that “Texas is once again in partnership with the federal government to provide family planning and health services through the Healthy Texas Women program while fostering a culture of life.”
TRUMP SAYS HE’S OPEN TO CUTTING ENTITLEMENTS LIKE MEDICARE: Trump said he will begin to consider cutting entitlement spending, a perilous political issue, “toward the end of the year.”
It’s a statement that is hard to square with his 2016 campaign rhetoric, in which he contrasted himself from other Republicans by saying that he had no intentions of touching Medicare or Social Security, the two biggest entitlement programs. Since then, influenced by Mick Mulvaney, his fiscally conservative budget director and chief of staff, he has issued budget proposals calling for lowering Social Security disability insurance spending and block-granting Medicaid.
E-CIGARETTE EXECUTIVES WILL FACE CONGRESS NEXT MONTH: Leadership of the e-cigarette companies that constitute 97% of the U.S. market will face the Energy and Commerce Committee Feb. 5. Executives from Fontem U.S.; Japan Tobacco International, U.S.; JUUL Labs, Inc.; NJOY, LLC; and Reynolds American Inc. will testify before the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee about their role in e-cigarette use in the U.S.
CHINA QUARANTINES MORE CITIES AS CORONAVIRUS SPREADS: Chinese authorities have begun lockdowns in other cities near Wuhan, a city of 11 million at the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak. After halting all public transportation out of Wuhan Thursday, officials have since suspended buses, subways, and ferries and shut airports and train stations leaving nearby Huanggang and Ezhou. Thus far, at least 570 people have been infected and 17 have died.
The World Health Organization will reconvene Thursday to announce whether it will declare the pneumonia-like virus a “public health emergency of international concern.” Declaring a global health emergency would alert other countries to send aid and would ramp up monitoring efforts.
Warren attacks Trump: Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren knocked Trump for proposing cuts to research funding for diseases like the coronavirus in his budgets. “After Ebola, Congress invested to prevent pandemics like coronavirus,” the Massachusetts Democrat tweeted. “Donald Trump tried to cut that funding. As president, I’ll fully fund global health security, research on medical countermeasures, and public health capacity at home to keep us safe and healthy.”
The Rundown
Reuters Explainer: Global airlines on high alert as virus outbreak spreads
Houston Chronicle CVS, Walgreens aggressively move into delivery of health care services
The Baltimore Sun Feds to cut up to 15,000 in Baltimore from food stamps; Maryland, other states suing to halt change
The CT Mirror Unaccompanied minors are moving to Connecticut in record numbers
Stat Former Insys executive sentenced to a year and a day for her role in opioid bribery scheme
Calendar
THURSDAY | Jan. 23
1 p.m. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report and webinar on “Addressing the Dual Epidemic of Opioid Use Disorder and Infectious Diseases.” Details.
FRIDAY | Jan. 24
March for Life. Details.
