Tag: United States Department of Health and Human Services

Since the summer of 2016, when a campaign to bring a full-fledged medical marijuana market to Florida by constitutional amendment hit high gear, Florida’s licensed cannabis corporations and their executives have given at least $2.5 million in political contributions to state lawmakers and political parties. Sign Up and Save Get six months of free digital access to the Miami Herald “Their participation goes hand in hand with it being a lawful industry now, or a constitutionally authorized industry, in the state of Florida,” said Senate President Bill Galvano, whose Innovate Florida political committee has received at least $102,000 from marijuana companies and executives since 2016. And in 2019, the three companies have given at least $103,500 to lawmakers’ political committees. All of the donations followed a Jan. 17 press conference DeSantis held in Orlando with marijuana advocate and booster John Morgan to declare that he’d drop the state’s appeals of several lawsuits — including one filed by Morgan — if lawmakers didn’t pass bills by March 15 allowing patients to smoke marijuana. But last month, as Rodrigues’ bill moved through the Health and Human Services committee that he chairs, the Estero lawmaker warned that without legislation to guide smoking marijuana, a federal judge’s ruling striking down Florida’s smoking ban would leave the state with “the law of the wild west.” Ben Pollara, the political consultant who steered the campaign to bring a full-blown marijuana market to Florida, thinks political contributions have helped the industry make its case. Rob Bradley, among the biggest recipients of cannabis donations, was a sponsor of the 2014 Compassionate Medical Cannabis Act long before Costa Farms gave his political committee its first $10,000 contribution from a cannabis company in August 2015. “As is the case with many companies both large and small, we support candidates and elected officials who support our industry,” Curaleaf, the cannabis brand that grew from Costa Farms’ cultivation license, said in a statement. The Democratic politician receiving the most industry money is Nikki Fried, a former marijuana lobbyist who won the race for agriculture commissioner and also happens to date Jake Bergmann, who stepped down as CEO of Surterra the day before the election. Nikki Fried campaign Galvano, the Senate president, says he doesn’t see a link between the campaign money given to lawmakers and the recent change in position on smoking marijuana.

Now she’s worried how he would handle the issue as a Supreme Court justice. In 2017, Garza was appointed the guardian ad litem for Jane Doe, the pseudonym used in court for a 17-year-old woman who sued the federal government after she was denied access to an abortion while in federal custody for illegally crossing the border. Under Texas law, minors need the permission of a parent or guardian, but Doe stated that she had fled domestic violence involving her parents, who were still in Mexico. Even after a state judge said she could bypass the parental requirement, the Office of Refugee Resettlement under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services refused to let her leave its custody to get the abortion. The case then went to U.S. District Court, where Kavanaugh argued that Doe’s abortion could be delayed until she could be placed under the care of a sponsor on multiple occasions, writing that unlawful immigrant minors should not be permitted to seek an “abortion on demand” in his final dissenting opinion. Based off this case and his decision-making in this particular case,” Garza told TIME, “it appears to me that no burden is too high on a woman to exercise her right to get an abortion.” Last week, Garza shared Doe’s story with the Senate Judiciary Committee, testifying against Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Some criticized him over a reference in the hearings to some contraceptives as “abortion-inducing drugs” — a reference to a case involving a religious group which claimed that FDA-approved contraceptives were abortifacients . He was also criticized after emails were released from his days in the Bush White House in which he said that not all legal scholars would agree that Roe is the “settled law of the land at the Supreme Court,” although Kavanaugh’s defenders noted that he was merely describing the opinions of the sitting justices. In her testimony, Garza said that Doe was repeatedly pressured to call her mother and tell her she was pregnant by employees of the government-run facility where she was held. This continued, according to Garza’s testimony, even after Jane disclosed that her parents had beaten her pregnant older sister “with firewood and cables to the point that her sister miscarried.” Garza said Jane Doe was taken to a religious-affiliated crisis pregnancy center, prayed over and asked what she would name her unborn child.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price has taken at least 24 flights on private charter planes at taxpayers’ expense since early May, according to people with knowledge of his travel plans and a review of HHS documents. HHS officials have said Price uses private jets only when commercial travel is not feasible. But many of the flights are between large cities with frequent, low-cost airline traffic, such as a trip from Washington to Nashville that the secretary took on June 6 to make a morning event at a medication distributor and an afternoon speech. Some believe the HHS Secretary should be Washington-focused. That flight likely cost more than $7,100, according to one charter jet agency estimate. While Price has flown to Maine, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania since last Wednesday, President Donald Trump and Senate Republicans have been frantically rallying support to pass an Obamacare repeal bill by Sept. 30. But rather than fly commercially to these events, which are scheduled well in advance, Price tends to rent corporate-style jets. According to records, HHS signed a $14,570 charter plane contract for Washington to Tennessee travel with a July 6 effective date. In June, Price spoke at a physicians association conference in San Diego, where he vowed to wring out wasteful spending in the government’s health care programs. Price took a private plane to get to the meeting, which was one stop on a five-state sprint of charter travel that cost $50,420.