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Trump now faces these four major criminal probes: Mueller prosecutor
February 07, 2023
Speaking to MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell, Robert Mueller's senior prosecutor Andrew Weissmann walked through the four major criminal cases Donald Trump now faces in court.
Weissmann said it was "remarkable" that a former president of the United States would be facing so many criminal investigations that are headed toward prosecution at the same time.
"That's worth taking a moment just to realize the breathtaking nature of that inquiry," Weissmann said. "The caveat is, we actually don't know everything that the prosecutors know. We're making educated guesses. But we do have quite a bit of information about some of these investigations."
Putting them in order, he began with the Mar-a-Lago documents case.
RELATED: 'Cat's out of the bag': Mark Pomerantz says nothing in book could be used to help Trump
It's the "one that we know, probably, the most about, and it seems really strong. What I mean by that is that you are looking for evidence of criminal intent, which is almost always in white-collar cases, you're looking for what is proof of the intent of the defendant. And Donald Trump, through his actions and his statements, has made that case very strong."
He explained that there are always several reasons not to bring a case, but that isn't the legal standard. He said a case should be brought if it is "meritorious" and "righteous, even if there is a risk of loss."
"The Georgia case is also very strong," Weissmann continued. "It's hard to separate the Georgia case from the federal so-called Jan. 6th case because the Georgia case is just one component of that. Except, the Jan. 6 case brings in so much more conduct than what the former president did in Georgia."
He went on to say that it might end up taking more time at the federal level than in Georgia, where things are moving more swiftly.
"We do see some signs of life in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. I've always been saying that's the sleeper case to keep your eye on, particularly because the state cases can stick. No matter who is president after Joe Biden, if it were to be a Republican, there is no ability to pardon for a state case. So, keeping your eye on Georgia and Manhattan is really key."
Finally, he noted that the hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, which sent Michael Cohen to prison, is another major case.
See the full discussion below or watch the video here.
the 4 criminal cases against Trump www.youtube.com
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A Christian school in Kansas City is being forced to close after its donations almost completely dried up ever since it came out in support of LGBTQ rights.
The Kansas City Star reports that the Urban Christian Academy announced its support for LGBTQ rights last year and, by the end of the year, it had lost 80 percent of its funding.
"Before publicly supporting the LGBTQ community, Urban Christian Academy raised nearly $334,000 in December 2021," the Kansas City Star writes. "This past December, donations dropped to $14,800. All eight churches that helped fund the school withdrew their support."
Urban Christian Academy co-founder Kalie Callaway-George tells the Kansas City Star that she has no regrets about her decision to support LGBTQ rights even though it is forcing her school to close its doors.
READ MORE: 'Cat's out of the bag': Mark Pomerantz says nothing in book could be used to help Trump
“We find ourselves in a season where we are running on very few resources and each time attention is brought to the issue we are bombarded by hate which further distracts from our ability to care for the scholars we have in our care,” she said.
Darnisha Harris, a parent who had children at the school, told the Kansas City Star that she is heartbroken to see the angry backlash.
"They don’t teach our kids anything about sexuality," she said. "The only thing I’ve heard my kids talk about is being kind and treating others with respect and taking accountability. It really, really hurt my feelings that people would be ignorant like that."
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Feb. 7, 2023
One day, Alexandria Robertson’s carefully crafted life suddenly started falling apart.
She returned from vacation in January 2020 to learn she’d been laid off from her corporate job in the Austin area. Her car was totaled in an accident. At the same time, she found out she was pregnant with her first child.
“I was pregnant. I had no job. I had no car. And I had no health insurance,” Robertson said. “I at the time just did not have money for the expenses of having a baby.”
Robertson qualified for Medicaid, but since Texas is one of just 11 states that haven’t expanded the program, she would be covered only up to two months after childbirth.
But then, just a few weeks later, COVID-19 descended on the United States. For the length of the public health emergency — which turns three next month — no one would be moved off of Medicaid.
The state is urging people on Medicaid to ensure their information is up to date at YourTexasBenefits.com and to respond to renewal notices from the state.
Robertson accessed crucial health care during and after pregnancy — and straight through her next pregnancy.
“As mothers, we know we need health care, we know we should be taking care of ourselves, but it’s so expensive,” she said. “It just put me at ease to have that covered, and my second pregnancy was the best one I’ve had.”
The public health emergency allowed almost three million Texans — mostly children, young adults and new moms — to access consistent health insurance. But now, Congress is bringing this experiment in Medicaid expansion to an end. In April, the state will start moving people off of Medicaid for the first time since March 2020.
For many patients and providers, though, it’s hard to imagine going back.
“If you are afforded a window, however long that window is, where you know you can get care anytime you need it, it completely changes your perspective on health,” said Dr. Vian Nguyen, chief medical officer at Legacy Community Health, Texas’ largest federally qualified health center. “We’re seeing our patients want to come back. We’re seeing that mindset shift.”
Two-year-old Novah Wilson and her one-year-old sister Kellani-Ari drive a toy car down the hallway on Feb. 2, 2023 in Manor, TX. Credit: Leila Saidane/The Texas Tribune
Kellani-Ari Wilson picks up her refilled sippy-cup on the kitchen counter in Manor, TX, on Feb. 2, 2023. Credit: Leila Saidane/The Texas Tribune
First: Two-year-old Novah and her 1-year-old sister Kellani-Ari drive a toy car down the hallway of their Manor home on Thursday. Last: Kellani-Ari picks up her refilled sippy cup on the kitchen counter. Credit: Leila Saidane/The Texas Tribune
Three years of coverage
While navigating a layoff, pregnancy and a global pandemic, Robertson connected with Any Baby Can, an Austin-area nonprofit, and nurse Wiltse Crompton.
Crompton helps first-time moms like Robertson navigate the first two years of their child’s life, through the nurse-family partnership. For many low-income moms Crompton works with, pregnancy is the first time they get on health insurance as adults.
It’s then that many of her clients learn about other diagnoses, like diabetes and high blood pressure, which require long-term care. The pregnancy itself may introduce or exacerbate health concerns, like gestational diabetes or postpartum depression.
But typically, two months after childbirth, right when they started to get consistent with treatment, these moms would lose Medicaid. Crompton helped where she could, but the state’s patchwork of free and low-cost services was a weak facsimile of full health care coverage.
“It’s just so hard to be a new mom and take care of a baby, and then on top of that, you don’t feel well or you’re worried about other things,” Crompton said. “To me, if mom's health is good and she feels good, then that's going to make a big difference in that baby's health.”
The last three years, though, have been a sea change, Crompton said. One client had been in and out of the hospital for untreated Type 1 diabetes.
“Obviously, once the baby’s born, she still has Type 1 diabetes and she still needs insulin,” Crompton said. “So for her, it was literally lifesaving that she got pregnant and then because of COVID was able to stay with the continued Medicaid coverage.”
Crompton’s also seen more moms take control of their fertility and family planning. Before, if these women missed their six-week postpartum checkup due to transportation or child care issues and couldn’t reschedule before their coverage expired, they’d often miss their chance to access long-acting reversible contraception, like an IUD.
If they did get on birth control, Crompton said, “you better like the one you get, because you can’t switch without having to pay out of pocket and it can be really expensive.”
The continuous coverage has also allowed many women, like Robertson, to maintain health insurance in between pregnancies. At Parkland Health and Hospital System in Dallas, they’ve noticed moms and babies are coming into pregnancy and childbirth healthier than ever, said Marjorie Quint-Bouzid, the senior vice president for women’s and infants specialty health.
“Typically, people will just fall off because they don’t want to engage if they’re not sure how they’re going to pay for their medical care,” Quint-Bouzid said.
If they can’t manage chronic conditions or access early prenatal care, she said, “that [next] pregnancy is now significantly high-risk, at significant cost to the system and even potentially their life or the life of the child that they’re carrying.”
Quint-Bouzid said continuous coverage incentivized the entire health care system to more fully engage with pregnant and postpartum women.
“When a woman typically could not afford to make [follow-up] visits, there was the barrier to care,” she said. “As clinicians, we’ve been able to see some of the benefits and the value of really designing programming that looks beyond that one postpartum visit.”
At Legacy Community Health, Nguyen said about 60% of their patients typically had returned for a six-week postpartum checkup. Now, it’s more than 75%, and many of these patients continue to access a wide array of physical and mental health services long after the typical two-month coverage period.
Robertson reads to her daughters in their playroom. She was able to maintain consistent health insurance when the COVID-19 pandemic allowed millions of Texans to stay on Medicaid. Credit: Leila Saidane/The Texas Tribune
The great unwinding begins
Almost since the public health emergency went into effect in March 2020, health care providers, advocates and the state braced for the day it would expire.
Three years later, that day has arrived. While the full public health emergency expires in May, continuous Medicaid coverage ends even sooner, at the end of March.
States have 12 months to determine who still qualifies for Medicaid. But the Texas Health and Human Services Commission created an ambitious plan to complete the process in just six to eight months.
Health advocates have raised concerns about this timeline, especially with agency staffing shortages. HHSC is short more than 300 “eligibility advisors,” who help process benefits applications and renewals, a vacancy rate of 6.35%. This is down from more than 20% in April 2022, the agency said.
The short-handed agency is also dealing with a 68% increase in Medicaid applications during open enrollment in 2022 compared to the same period in 2019. In January 2023, about 70% of Medicaid applications were processed “timely,” within 45 days, up from only about 50% in September.
The agency is making a significant hiring push by raising salaries, offering merit bonuses, allowing flexible work schedules and pushing overtime to keep up with the increased demand.
The state is urging people on Medicaid to ensure their information is up to date at YourTexasBenefits.com and to respond to renewal notices from the state.
“After nearly three years, families are rusty at completing the renewal process, and many families have moved to a new home,” Stacey Pogue, senior policy analyst at Every Texan, a health care advocacy group, said in a press release. “We need all hands on deck to make sure Texans know how to update their addresses with the state and renew their health coverage.”
In addition to existing programs that allow community organizations to help Texans access benefits, HHSC created the Case Assistance Affiliate program, which allows Medicaid managed care plans to directly assist with redetermination. Jamie Dudensing, the CEO of the Texas Association of Health Plans, said she hopes this cuts through some red tape.
“If you have a problem with your insurance, who do you call? Your insurance company,” she said. “We already have always been the first people they call, even though we’ve never really been responsible for eligibility. Now, we can actually log in ourselves and we can set up a [virtual] visit with them and go through this entire application together.”
The state intends to start with people who most likely no longer qualify for Medicaid, including young people who aged out and postpartum women. Many will instead qualify for state programs, like Healthy Texas Women and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or low-cost plans at HealthCare.gov.
A lot of Texans will have to navigate new paperwork, figure out whether they qualify for new programs and potentially find new health care homes as they roll off of Medicaid. Even as they work to make the process as smooth as possible, health care providers — especially those who treat low-income Texans — are prepared for the impact this will have on the whole health care system.
“It’s not that the mom doesn’t get the care,” Nguyen said. “The domino effect is on all of us trying to scramble to make sure she gets the care regardless.”
And after three years of saying “yes” a lot more, Nguyen said it’s hard to return to the old reality.
“It’s a very heavy burden for health care providers to carry when they see someone in front of them who needs something and they feel like they can’t help them,” she said. “When we talk about physician burnout and nurse burnout, it is of course around the hours, but it really is more of the mental component of feeling like you just cannot help when that’s what you signed up to do.”
Robertson reaches for Kellani-Ari in her bedroom. “It just put me at ease to have that covered, and my second pregnancy was the best one I’ve had,” Robertson said about her access to Medicaid. Credit: Leila Saidane/The Texas Tribune
Legislative efforts
During the last legislative session, in the throes of the public health emergency, the federal government offered states a way to easily expand Medicaid for pregnant women from two months to 12 months postpartum.
It passed the Texas House with bipartisan support, but the Senate cut the proposal down to six months. That required Texas to apply for a waiver, which the feds said is “not approvable” in its current form.
This session, as continuous coverage and other pandemic-era provisions expire, there’s broad bipartisan support for the 12-month extension. House Speaker Dade Phelan has said it is a top priority for his chamber; Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick did not respond to request for comment.
Beyond that, though, it seems unlikely as ever that Texas will expand Medicaid more fully. Texas is in the small — and dwindling — minority of states that has resisted the expansion, turning down billions in federal funding in the process.
More than a million additional Texans would qualify for health insurance if the state fully expanded Medicaid. But conservatives have challenged the Affordable Care Act since its inception, arguing that it’s poorly managed, financially unsustainable and encourages government dependence.
In 2021, a proposal called “Live Well Texas,” which proposed expanding Medicaid, increasing reimbursement rates and incentivizing participants to work, died despite broad bipartisan support.
For Robertson, having access to Medicaid after childbirth made all the difference in the world. She was able to stay home and breastfeed without worrying about immediately getting a new job with affordable health benefits.
“As a mom, as a woman, I got to take some time to get myself back together and to then put my heels on and get back to work,” she said. “That time really allows a mother to get back on track, get herself back into the workforce and get herself out of poverty.”
Disclosure: Every Texan, Parkland Health and Hospital System and Texas Association of Health Plans have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/02/07/texas-medicaid-expansion-covid/.
The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
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