NBC News is facing an internal and external backlash over its hiring of former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel as a paid contributor, with critics blasting the decision given her past support of Donald Trump’s unfounded election claims.

*snip*

McDaniel appeared on NBC News’ Meet the Press this morning for a sometimes contentious sit down interview with moderator Kristen Welker. Welker had told viewers that the interview was scheduled weeks before it was announced that McDaniel was joining the network. “This will be a news interview, and I was not involved in her hiring,” Welker said.

*snip*

Later on Meet the Press, Chuck Todd, the former moderator of the show and NBC News’ chief political analyst, criticized the network as he took part in a panel. He told Welker that “I think our bosses owe you an apology for putting you in this situation.”

Todd said, “She is now a paid contributor by NBC News. I have no idea whether any answer she gave to you was because she didn’t want to mess up her contract. She wantsus to believe that she was speaking for the RNC when the RNC was paying for her. So she has she has credibility issues that she still has to deal with. Is she speaking for herself or is she speaking on behalf of who’s paying her?

Lots more here: https://deadline.com/2024/03/nbc-news-ronna-mcdaniel-paid-contributor-1235866884/

CHICAGO — It is almost time for Chicago’s piping plovers to return and volunteers flocked to Montrose Beach on Saturday to prepare for the visitor’s arrival.

“I come here regularly to take walks, to go bird watching and you know, because I use the grounds I also want to give back,” said Laura Miske, who is among the legion of piping plover fans.

*snip*

Two hundred and seventeen. That's how many vaccines a man in Germany claims to have received for COVID-19 in just 29 months – and his body isn't reacting the way some scientists thought it would.

The 62-year-old male from the city of Magdeburg made headlines a few years ago for his private and risky decision to thwart national medical advice and get jab after jab after jab – all allegedly in a bid to sell proof of vaccination cards to unvaccinated individuals.

Researchers in Germany first read about the case in the newspapers. With the man's permission, they are now studying his immune system to see how it's coping with 'hypervaccination'.

While the researchers emphasize that they "do not endorse hypervaccination as a strategy to enhance adaptive immunity", they were curious about the effect that hundreds of vaccines might have on a person.

More: https://www.sciencealert.com/extreme-case-of-man-who-had-217-covid-vaccines-surprises-scientists

Abortions are on the rise in the United States, despite bans that have taken effect in more than a dozen states since the US Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that revoked the federal right to abortion in June 2022.

There were more than 1 million abortions in the US in 2023, the highest rate in more than a decade and a 10% jump from 2020, according to a report released Tuesday by the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization focused on sexual and reproductive health that supports abortion rights. The latest trends also suggest that medication abortion is a more common option than ever.

Although abortions all but stopped in the 14 states with total bans, nearly every other state had an increase in the number of abortions provided from 2020 to 2023. As the geography of abortion care shifted amid a fractured policy landscape, the 10% increase in abortions nationwide meant that states without total bans saw a 25% increase in those years.

The “drastic loss of access in states with bans has been counterbalanced by monumental efforts on the part of clinics, abortion funds and logistical support organizations to help people in ban states access care through financial and practical support,” the authors of the report wrote.

More: https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/18/health/abortion-data-guttmacher/index.html

We diagnose Trump with probable dementia: A petition for licensed professionals only

Why this petition matters

Started by
John Gartner Ph​.​D.

We, the undersigned licensed medical and mental health professionals (INCLUDE YOUR ADVANCED DEGREE IN YOUR LAST NAME WITH NO PUNCTUATION), have a high level of confidence that Donald Trump is showing unmistakable signs of moderate to advanced dementia based on his public behavior and informant reports that show progressive deterioration in memory, thinking, ability to use language, behavior, and both gross and fine motor skills.

*snip*

Lots more here: https://www.change.org/p/we-diagnose-trump-with-probable-dementia-a-petition-for-licensed-professionals-only

Sitting at her computer one day in late December, Dr. Sarah Osmundson mustered her best argument to approve an abortion for a suffering patient.

The woman was 14 weeks pregnant when she learned her fetus was developing without a skull. This increased the likelihood of a severe buildup of amniotic fluid, which could cause her uterus to rupture and possibly kill her. Osmundson, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center who helps patients navigate high-risk pregnancies, knew that outcome was uncommon, but she had seen it happen.

She drafted an email to her colleagues on the Nashville hospital’s abortion committee, arguing that the risk was significant enough to meet the slim exception to Tennessee’s strict abortion ban, which allows termination only when “necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman or to prevent serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.” She pleaded with her fellow doctors to spare this woman the gamble when her baby wasn’t even viable.

Then came the replies.

More: https://www.propublica.org/article/abortion-doctor-decisions-hospital-committee

Sitting at her computer one day in late December, Dr. Sarah Osmundson mustered her best argument to approve an abortion for a suffering patient.

The woman was 14 weeks pregnant when she learned her fetus was developing without a skull. This increased the likelihood of a severe buildup of amniotic fluid, which could cause her uterus to rupture and possibly kill her. Osmundson, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center who helps patients navigate high-risk pregnancies, knew that outcome was uncommon, but she had seen it happen.

She drafted an email to her colleagues on the Nashville hospital’s abortion committee, arguing that the risk was significant enough to meet the slim exception to Tennessee’s strict abortion ban, which allows termination only when “necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman or to prevent serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.” She pleaded with her fellow doctors to spare this woman the gamble when her baby wasn’t even viable.

Then came the replies.

More: https://www.propublica.org/article/abortion-doctor-decisions-hospital-committee

On the same day that Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Parker handed down an opinion declaring that fertilized frozen embryos are people, imperiling women’s access to in vitro fertilization treatments, he espoused support for a once-fringe philosophy that calls on evangelical Christians to reshape society based on their interpretation of the Bible.

During an online broadcast hosted by Tennessee evangelist Johnny Enlow on Friday, Parker suggested America was founded explicitly as a Christian nation and discussed his embrace of the Seven Mountains Mandate — the belief that conservative Christians are meant to rule over seven key areas of American life, including media, business, education and government.

“God created government, and the fact that we have let it go into the possession of others, it’s heartbreaking,” Parker said in the interview, first reported this week by Media Matters for America, a liberal nonprofit media watchdog. “That’s why he is calling and equipping people to step back into these mountains right now.”

More: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/alabama-justice-embryos-biblical-seven-mountains-rcna139969