Why Heart Disease Research Still Favors Men

Published in partnership with The Fuller Project, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to the coverage of women’s issues around the world.

Katherine Fitzgerald had just arrived at the party. Before she could even get a drink, she threw up and broke out in a sweat. “I was dizzy. I couldn’t breathe. I had heart pain,” Fitzgerald says.

She knew she was having a heart attack.

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What she didn’t know then was that the heart attack could have been prevented. Fitzgerald, a health-conscious, exercise-loving lawyer, should have been taking statin drugs to stop the buildup of plaque in her arteries that caused the heart attack and two others that followed.

Fitzgerald’s case illustrates a dangerous gap in medical care between men and women. While they are equally likely to suffer heart attacks, women are more likely to die from theirs. It’s one of the many symptoms of the medical system’s neglect of women.

Life-saving statins, like so many other medications, have been developed based on clinical trials that primarily recruited men. As a result, many women like Fitzgerald don’t receive prescriptions for the drugs that could help them the most, says Dr. Laxmi Mehta, director of Preventative Cardiology and Women’s Cardiovascular Health at The Ohio State University.

“There were a lot of trials. But women weren’t included as much,” says Mehta, who serves on the American Heart Association’s Research Goes Red Science Advisory Group. When women need treatment for heart conditions, she says, “we are assuming we are providing the best care based on data from men.”

Read More: What It Means if You Have Borderline High Cholesterol—And What to Do About It

More than 30 years ago, Congress directed the National Institutes of Health to include as many women as men in clinical trials. But while some progress has been made, equity remains elusive. And that’s dangerous for women. “Since 2000, women in the United States have reported total adverse events from approved medicines 52% more frequently than men, and serious or fatal events 36% more frequently,” research firm McKinsey & Company said in a report released in January.

Now, the Biden administration is taking a run at it.

Last year, the administration established a White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research and, in February, it announced it would be dedicating $100 million to the newly formed Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to spearhead efforts to increase early stage research focusing on women.

“For far too long, scientific and biomedical research excluded women and undervalued the study of women’s health. The resulting research gaps mean that we know far too little about women’s health across women’s lifespans, and those gaps are even more prominent for women of color, older women, and women with disabilities,” Biden said in an executive order signed in March.

Heart disease should be a bright spot in this black hole of medical research. It was the recognition in the 1980s that heart disease was killing women at similar rates to men that kickstarted passage of the 1993 law requiring equity in clinical trials. The American Heart Association has spent decades funding research and leading awareness campaigns about women’s risks.

But gaps persist, says Dr. Martha Gulati, president of the American Society for Preventive Cardiology and a cardiologist at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. “We don’t get represented in trials,” Gulati told a seminar sponsored by the Society for Women’s Health Research in February.

Read More: Why Are So Many Young People Getting Cancer?

One example: Dr. Safi Khan of West Virginia University and colleagues reviewed 60 trials of cholesterol-lowering drugs conducted between 1990 and 2018. Not even a third of the people enrolled—28.5%—were women, they reported in JAMA Network Open in 2020. The trials’ findings likely did not accurately represent the public as a whole, they say.

“Medical research is several steps behind on women and heart disease, and that is a major contributor to ongoing ignorance about the problem on the part of both the public and a range of medical professionals,” says Dr. Harmony Reynolds, a cardiologist at NYU Langone Health. “Everywhere along the way, there is different treatment for women, and there is some bias there.”

Statins have been widely described as wonder drugs, lowering the risk of major heart events such as heart attack or stroke by about 25%. Women are less likely than men to be offered these drugs. And when they do take them, women are more likely to stop using them because of perceived side effects. But no major study digs into the actual rate of side effects among females, or what might lie behind such differences.

Further studies might uncover additional benefits, says Dr. JoAnn Manson, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. There are hints that statins might lower a woman’s risk of dying from cancer, including ovarian cancer.

Failure of recognition

Fitzgerald was 60, had higher-than-optimal blood pressure, unhealthy cholesterol levels, and a family history of heart disease, says Reynolds, Fitzgerald’s new cardiologist. “Katherine had multiple risk factors. Many of my patients are told their blood pressure and cholesterol are ‘borderline’ when really they should be treated,” she says.

Doctors often blame women for failing to recognize their own heart disease symptoms, but the evidence shows medical professionals miss them, too. 

The symptoms of heart attacks in men are widely known: crushing chest pain, a telling sensation in the left arm, or sudden collapse. Women, on the other hand, often feel nausea, jaw pain, or lightheadedness,

Fitzgerald did recognize her symptoms. At the party where she suffered her first heart attack, she begged for an ambulance. But other guests, including a physician friend, said they didn’t think she needed medical attention.

When paramedics finally arrived, they, too, dismissed her fears and diagnosed a panic attack. They sent her home. “If I had been a man, there is no way the paramedic wouldn’t have taken me to the hospital and I wouldn’t be in the mess I am now,” Fitzgerald says.

Fitzgerald waited two days to visit an emergency room. By then, some of her heart muscle had died. She received two stents to hold open clogged arteries, but suffered two more heart attacks in the following months. She now stays out of the courtroom and sticks to less-stressful desk work.

“I take care of all these young women with heart attacks and I hear so many stories about people saying they were ignored,” says Reynolds.

Waiting for attention

The problem is not just anecdotal. Reynolds and colleagues studied the problem by looking at more than 29 million emergency room visits by people under 55 reporting chest pain. 

“In that study we show young women coming in with chest pains and they are waiting longer to be seen,” Reynolds says. “The women are waiting too long and women of color were waiting even longer. So we know there is some subtle bias there.”

Read More: What the Science Says About the Health Benefits of Vitamins and Supplements

Doctors can use risk calculators to try to forecast a patient’s future likelihood of heart disease and treat accordingly. But Dr. Stephanie Faubion, medical director of the Menopause Society, says they do not work well for women.

“That is because we are still using those that were developed and made for men,” says Faubion, who is also director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Women’s Health in Jacksonville, Florida.

Women have many specific heart risks. They have smaller coronary arteries, thinner heart walls, and suffer more heart damage from diabetes. Pregnancy can raise risks in various ways. Autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis also add heart disease risks, and women are far more likely than men to have these conditions. 

Women who start menstruation early, or who reach menopause early, have higher heart disease rates. Birth control pills can raise the risk for blood clots, strokes, and heart attacks.

Perhaps the most recent instance of women being left out of heart disease research can be seen in the trials of highly popular diabetes drugs such as semaglutide, sold under the brand names Ozempic and Wegovy.

The drugs cause dramatic weight loss, which made researchers wonder if they might lower heart disease rates, too. They do, according to several studies, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration now approves their use to prevent heart disease.

But none of the weight-loss trials, published in prestigious medical journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association, break out separate data on men and women. And while the weight-loss studies did include far more women than men, many of the follow-on heart disease trials did not.

“They report the sex. They report ‘we have this many men, this many women,’” says Faubion. “They didn’t disaggregate the data on sex so they don’t know if it works better, the same, or worse in women than it did in men.”

Left out

Dr. Robert Kushner, a professor of medicine at Northwestern University who led some of the weight-loss studies, says he was surprised at the discrepancy between the enrollment of women in the obesity trials of semaglutide—in which about three-quarters of volunteers were women—and in the heart disease trials, in which women represented fewer than 28% of participants.

He says researchers recruited people already being treated for heart disease. “Predominantly, the ones who are getting care and being seen around the world were men,” Kushner says.

Kushner says he has yet to analyze results in his trial of semaglutide and weight loss by sex.

Missing out on breakthroughs

Harvard Medical School’s Manson has been sounding the alarm on discrepancies in medical research for decades.

“Raising more questions is what leads to the major breakthroughs,” she says.

Yet she has been mostly ignored, even though she helped lead the largest-ever study looking specifically at women’s health—the Women’s Health Initiative, which involved more than 160,000 women over 15 years.

The study was initially designed to see if hormone therapy in women past menopause could reduce their rising rates of heart disease and breast cancer. It also later looked for evidence of effects on bone strength, other cancers, dementia and quality of life.

The first results were startling. The hormone therapy used in the trial raised the risk of breast cancer and failed to reduce heart disease.

Read More: Menopause Is Finally Going Mainstream

“Many clinicians stopped prescribing hormone therapy altogether. Many women tossed their pills and patches,” Manson says. When the trial started, an estimated 40% of menopausal women used hormone therapy. Now, Manson estimates, only about 4% do.

The study has since been shown to have been flawed. The average age of the women in the study was 63—well past menopause. And the hormone therapy used was a high-dose hormone distilled from horse estrogens.

Later studies have indicated that lower doses and different formulations such as patches, given to women as they start menopause, may be much less harmful while reducing hot flashes, sleep loss and other symptoms. “These formulations don’t go to the liver and should be safer,” Manson says. There’s also tantalizing evidence they may lower the risk of heart disease.

Meanwhile, the lack of data means that many women who would benefit from hormone therapy are not getting it, says Faubion. 

Back in 1993, it took the considerable efforts of Dr. Bernadine Healy, the first female director of the NIH, to persuade Congress to directly fund medical research on women and heart disease.

“They are just not going to do that again. It’s too expensive,” says Faubion.

Biden asked Congress for $12 billion to improve research planning and to set up a network of research centers to focus on women’s health. And NIH has encouraged requests for money to study women in particular.

But when Congress passed a last-minute spending bill in March, it kept health funding flat. The Republican-led House did not address Biden’s request or allocate any cash for additional research into women’s health.

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source https://time.com/6962474/heart-disease-research-women/

New York City Rattled by 4.8 Magnitude Earthquake

A 4.8 magnitude earthquake struck New Jersey at 10:23 a.m. ET this morning. Tremors were felt throughout the state, New York City, Philadelphia, and as far south as Baltimore. So far, there have been no injuries reported. New York Governor Kathy Hochul said that her team is currently conducting an assessment to check for damage.

The earthquake’s epicenter is believed to be in Lebanon, N.J., a city in the North-Central part of the state.

A 4.8 magnitude earthquake hit west of Manhattan and has been felt throughout New York.

My team is assessing impacts and any damage that may have occurred, and we will update the public throughout the day.

— Governor Kathy Hochul (@GovKathyHochul) April 5, 2024

TIME has reached out to the United States Geological Survey for comment.

A 5.8 magnitude earthquake occurred on the East Coast in August 2011. It struck Virginia, and was felt as far as Boston.

Earthquakes are not as common in the Northeast as they are on the West Coast. However, earthquakes east of the Rocky Mountains can often cause shaking at much further distances than earthquakes of similar magnitude on the West Coast. This is thought to be because rocks on the West Coast are younger and more broken up than rocks found along the East Coast, which means that they are able to absorb more of an earthquake’s seismic energy, according to an article published by the United States Geological Survey.

This post is currently being updated.

source https://time.com/6963886/new-jersey-earthquake-magnitude-new-york-damage-reports/

Scientists Find New Genetic Variants for Obesity

Researchers believe they have discovered a new biological mechanism for obesity, pointing to rare variants on two genes that dramatically increase the risk of carrying excess weight.

Research published in the journal Nature Genetics on Thursday points to variants that raise the chance of being obese by as much as six times. Unlike other known variants that affect weight gain in children, these only appear to play a role in adults.

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Unraveling obesity’s mechanisms could help scientists develop new drugs, or tailor existing ones, for a condition that now affects one in eight people. For the first time, patients can now take highly effective medicines to shed unwanted weight. The revolution, led by drugmakers Novo Nordisk A/S and Eli Lilly & Co., carved open a market that could surpass $100 billion globally by 2030.  

Read More: Ozempic Gets the Oprah Treatment in a New TV Special

Using data from over 500,000 people, scientists from the Medical Research Council at the University of Cambridge found variants in two genes called BSN and APBA1 that increased the risk of obesity in adults. 

The variants in BSN, also known as Bassoon, were associated with an increased risk of diabetes and fatty liver disease. The Bassoon variants affect about 1 in 6,500 adults, the researchers said.  

The hypothesis is that as people who have these gene variants get older, neurons in their brain start to degenerate, removing “some of the key circuits within the brain controlling food intake and therefore you end up with obesity,” said Giles Yeo, one of the authors of the study and a professor at the MRC Metabolic Diseases Unit.

The Bassoon variant may one day help drugmakers develop preventive medicines, according to Yeo. The question would be, “can we actually slow down the process, prevent the process from happening to begin with, so that then we prevent more people from ending up with obesity, particularly in adulthood.” 

The researchers used the UK Biobank database and worked with AstraZeneca Plc to check that their findings applied beyond people of European ancestry, using data from Pakistan and Mexico.

Astra is one of the latest drugmakers to join the obesity race, having clinched a deal last year to buy an experimental pill that’s still in early-stage tests.

source https://time.com/6963455/genetic-variants-obesity/

How to Talk to Kids When a Parent Has Cancer

The U.S. is expected to hit a bleak milestone this year: For the first time, more than 2 million people will be diagnosed with cancer. More than 600,000 will die, according to projections from the American Cancer Society.

Yet when you consider how many people are affected by a single diagnosis, those numbers balloon. As people with cancer grapple with fears about their health, they often describe being equally anxious about how their news will affect their family. When Catherine, Princess of Wales, revealed on March 22 that she was being treated for cancer, she emphasized that she and her husband had “taken time to explain everything” to their three young children “in a way that is appropriate for them.”

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Whatever your treatment might entail, it’s helpful to know how to discuss your prognosis with your loved ones so you can prepare them for the road ahead, as variable and unknown as the future may be. That’s especially true with children, who are often more intuitive than you may realize. 

“Kids are incredibly perceptive on picking up that something is off,” says Dr. Amishi Y. Shah, a genitourinary medical oncologist and associate professor at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. “In general, being transparent about what’s going on with kids is a good policy.”

Of course, each family will talk about a cancer diagnosis with children differently. “There’s not necessarily a one-size-fits-all [approach],” says Amanda L. Thompson, chief of pediatric psychology and director of pediatric programs at Life with Cancer, a northern Virginia nonprofit providing support and education for people affected by cancer. “What you’re going to disclose is going to depend on the age of your child, their maturity, their own experience with or exposure to illness within the family or close friends, and more.” 

Here, cancer experts and mental health professionals share tips for approaching this conversation with care and compassion.

Read More: Kate Middleton Had to Tell Her Kids About Her Cancer Diagnosis. These Parents Know What That’s Like

Plan ahead

This probably isn’t the best time for an off-the-cuff, improvised conversation, notes Shannon Coon, children’s program coordinator at the cancer support organization CancerCare. “Write down what you want to say before the conversation happens, and practice prior,” she says. That might make it easier to speak in a calm and reassuring voice when the time comes, she says.

Think about who you might want to have with you, as well, Coon adds: Do you want to speak with your children individually? Do you want your partner to be there? Should any other adults in their lives be present?

Create a welcoming environment for the conversation

Choose a calm, safe space and time to bring up your diagnosis with childrens. Make sure you have plenty of time to answer questions without having to rush off to another part of your day, says Thompson.

Picking your moment counts in other ways too. It might help to identify when your family already comes together in a way that feels “connected, comfortable, and normal,” says Max McMahon, a licensed independent clinical social worker at the Lank Center for Genitourinary Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. “Is the dinner table when good conversations happen? Is it when you go out for bagels on Saturday mornings? When do your kids seem to want to talk about things or process their day?” he asks.

Whatever the setting, your goal should be to welcome discussion. “We’re creating an environment where it’s OK to talk about the hard things out in the open,” Thompson says.

Stick to age-appropriate terminology

Tailor the language you use based on the age of the child you’re talking to. For a young child, that might look like: “‘Mommy is sick. She has something called cancer. The doctors are doing everything in their power,’” Coon says. You might even point to the sides of your back and explain the cancer is in your kidneys.

Older children will be able to understand more, so the conversation may be more detailed, but they’re also in a different emotional space. “I’ve found the most difficult [scenario] is when the kids are teenagers,” says Dr. Toni K. Choueiri, director of the Lank Center. “They’re going through a lot of changes, and now you add to it.”

Use concrete language

It can be tempting to gloss over unnerving topics, but using the word “cancer” can actually help defuse the situation, Thompson says. “Harry Potter said ‘Voldemort.’ He gave the big bad villain his name to take away some of his power. We have to use that word matter-of-factly. It is important for children to know it’s something they’re going to hear.”

Similarly, it’s helpful for children to hear clear language about death, “even though it is incredibly difficult … especially if you’re the parent who is ill and facing your own mortality,” she adds.

That doesn’t mean you have to state simply, “I’m dying,” McMahon says. You might say something like, “This is a serious, advanced disease, and I’m getting treatment for it, [but] this disease can’t be cured, and I will die from it,’” he says.

Using euphemisms or otherwise prettifying language can lead to children interpreting things too literally. “Sometimes children think ‘heaven’ is a place they can visit,” Coon says, or that they can go find a loved one who has been “lost,” Thompson adds.

Discuss visible physical changes

Immunotherapy and targeted drug therapy for cancer can cause side effects like joint and abdominal pain, diarrhea, loss of appetite, and fatigue, all of which children might notice. And if they do, it’s better to be upfront about it. “Otherwise, they’re wondering in silence,” McMahon says.

Some changes will be more obvious than others. For example, Choueiri says, if you’re dealing with diarrhea and your home has only one bathroom, it would be nearly impossible to hide the fact that you’re using it every hour.

But even if side-effects are more nuanced—maybe you’re walking more tenderly because you’re in pain, or you’re losing weight because you’re not hungry—embrace opportunities to explain where you can. You might try: “‘Dad is in pain. Do you want to know what’s happening inside Dad’s body?’” McMahon advises. Some parents worry this will create more anxiety for a child, “but kids often have anxiety about what they don’t know, so information is helpful for most children.”

Read More: Kate Middleton Is Receiving Preventative Chemotherapy. Here’s What That Is

Explain how their lives may change

Consistency generally makes children feel secure, and cancer can certainly disrupt your schedule. Aim to explain to children what you expect to shift in your routine. “They’re going to want to know, ‘What does this mean for my family and what we do? Does this mean someone else picks me up from school? Are we still going on the trip we take every year?’” Shah says.

Reassure kids that even if someone else will handle school pick-up, their needs will be met and they’ll still be cared for and loved. Consider sharing your treatment calendar with older children, so they can anticipate some of those changes on a weekly or monthly basis.

Answer questions honestly

After you’ve disclosed your diagnosis for the first time, lean on a child’s curiosity to shape your ongoing conversations. Answer questions as they come up, then pause for a moment to see what other questions arise (if any). Kids will likely come up with questions about a parent’s cancer that you don’t know the answers to. “The reality is, we probably won’t have all the answers. Often our physicians don’t even have all the answers,” Thompson says.

In those cases, it’s OK to tell a child you don’t know. “Let them know that when you do know, you’ll get back to them as soon as possible,” Coon says. You can show them you mean it by keeping a running list of unanswered questions and bringing it to your next visit with your oncologist.

Check in

Just as you’ll need more than one visit with your oncologist over the course of treatment, you’ll likely need more than one conversation with a child to fully discuss their feelings about your prognosis. Touch base with specific questions that welcome their curiosity rather than broad questions like asking how they’re doing, suggests the American Cancer Society. You might start with a question like, “‘What changes have you noticed with Dad lately?’” Choueiri suggests, or “‘You’ve noticed Mom has had to go to the hospital more. Do you have any questions about that?’” McMahon says.

Older children can take even more ownership in shaping these conversations. “I often recommend asking how they want to be updated along the way,” Thompson says. “Do they want to know the details? Do they want to talk about it in the morning or the evening? What would be most helpful for them?”

Lean on the services meant to help

Your medical team can likely connect you with support services at your treatment center to assist you in navigating these difficult conversations. You might have oncology social workers, nurse navigators, and other experienced staff members available to you and your children. “It’s our job to guide you to the resources that can help. You don’t have to do it alone,” Shah says.

That’s especially true if children start exhibiting any signs that they need more support than you’re equipped to give them, such as experiencing changes in sleeping or eating patterns, social withdrawal, fighting with their siblings or friends more often, or more frequent bedwetting.

Organizations like the American Cancer Society have information and support groups for parents and caregivers. Nonprofits like CancerCare offer children’s programs free of charge. And there are even Facebook groups for people with specific types of cancer where you can find comfort in knowing you’re not alone.

Talking about a parent’s cancer with children is never easy, but it’s helpful for your kids and your relationship. “In general, know it’s going to be difficult and emotional in the moment,” Coon says, “but it’s so important to have open and honest conversations throughout the cancer journey.”

source https://time.com/6963338/how-to-talk-to-kids-about-cancer/

Here’s Why Taiwan Is So Exposed to Earthquakes

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taiwan was struck Wednesday by its most powerful earthquake in a quarter of a century. At least nine people were killed and hundreds injured, buildings and highways damaged and dozens of workers at quarries stranded.

Taiwan is no stranger to powerful earthquakes yet their toll on the high-tech island’s 23 million residents has been relatively contained thanks to its excellent earthquake preparedness, experts say.

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Here is a closer look at Taiwan’s history of earthquakes:

Why are there so many temblors?

Taiwan lies along the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” the line of seismic faults encircling the Pacific Ocean where most of the world’s earthquakes occur.

The area is particularly vulnerable to temblors due to the tension accumulated from the interactions of two tectonic plates, the Philippine Sea Plate and the Eurasian Plate, which may lead to sudden releases in the form of earthquakes.

The region’s mountainous landscape can magnify the ground shaking, leading to landslides. Several such landslides occurred on Taiwan’s eastern coast near the epicenter of Wednesday’s quake near eastern Hualien County, when falling debris hit tunnels and highways, crushing vehicles and causing several deaths.

How well equipped is Taiwan to handle earthquakes?

Wednesday’s earthquake measured 7.2, according to Taiwan’s earthquake monitoring agency, while the U.S. Geological Survey put it at 7.4. It damaged several buildings in Hualien but caused only minor losses in the capital Taipei despite being strongly felt there.

The earthquake hit in the middle of the morning rush hour yet only slightly derailed the regular commute. Just minutes later, parents were again walking their children to school and workers driving to offices.

“Taiwan’s earthquake preparedness is among the most advanced in the world,” said Stephen Gao, a seismologist and professor at Missouri University of Science and Technology. “The island has implemented strict building codes, a world-class seismological network, and widespread public education campaigns on earthquake safety.”

The government continually revises the level of quake resistance required of new and existing buildings — which may increase construction costs — and offers subsidies to residents willing to check their buildings’ quake resistance.

Following a 2016 quake in Tainan, on the island’s southwestern coast, five people involved in the construction of a 17-story high-rise apartment building that was the only major structure to have collapsed, killing dozens, were found guilty of negligence and given prison sentences.

Taiwan also is pushing quake drills at schools and workplaces while public media and cellphones regularly carry notices about earthquakes and safety.

“These measures have significantly enhanced Taiwan’s resilience to earthquakes, helping to mitigate the potential for catastrophic damage and loss of life,” Gao said.

The 1999 earthquake was a wake-up call?

Taiwan and its surrounding waters have registered about 2,000 earthquakes with a magnitude of 4.0 or greater since 1980, and more than 100 earthquakes with a magnitude above 5.5, according to the USGS.

The island’s worst quake in recent years struck on Sept. 21, 1999, with a magnitude of 7.7. It caused 2,400 deaths, injured around 100,000 and destroyed thousands of buildings.

It was also a major wake-up call that led to key administrative reforms to improve emergency response and disaster reduction, according to Daniel Aldrich, professor of political science and public policy at Northeastern University.

“Observers strongly criticized Taiwan’s response to the 21 September 1999 earthquake, arguing that it took hours for emergency medical response teams to arrive, that rescuers lacked training, and that the operations between government agencies were not well coordinated,” he wrote in an email. As a result, the government passed the Disaster Prevention and Protection Act and set up two national centers to handle coordination and training for earthquakes.

“I think we’re seeing the results in this most recent shock,” he said.

source https://time.com/6963097/taiwan-earthquakes/

New York Inmates Suing to View the Solar Eclipse Due to Prison Lockdowns

Six New York inmates have filed a lawsuit against the state’s corrections department after the department announced a statewide prison lockdown on April 8 that would bar them from seeing the total solar eclipse, which they allege violates their religious freedom. 

The six plaintiffs—of which there is a Christian, Muslim, Santerian and atheist—have each “expressed a sincerely held religious belief that April’s solar eclipse is a religious event that they must witness and reflect on to observe their faiths,” the complaint says. 

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The case was filed in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of New York court on March 29. The New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) told TIME it does not comment on pending litigation.

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DOCCS Acting Commissioner Daniel F. Martuscello III previously issued a memo saying that all 44 prisons in the state would have to remain in their housing units from 2 to 5 p.m. on April 8. Of that group, 23 facilities that fall in the path of totality were directed to be closed to visitation all day. A partial eclipse is expected to begin shortly after 2 p.m., with totality starting at 3:18 p.m. in upstate New York, according to NASA.

Plaintiff Jeremy Zielinski, an atheist, says that he requested special permission to view the eclipse. His initial request was granted but later revoked because of the lockdown order, he says in the lawsuit. 

“Mr. Zielinski firmly believes that observing the solar eclipse with people of different faiths is crucial to practicing his own faith because it is a central aspect of atheism to celebrate common humanity and bring people together to encourage people to find common ground,” the complaint reads. 

The DOCCS says the lockdown is a “proactive approach to ensure the safety” of the prisoners and staff. “Recognizing the surge of visitors expected in the region during the eclipse, the Department is working with the New York State Eclipse Interagency Task Force to ensure DOCCS visitors and staff are not stuck in traffic or otherwise stranded,” a DOCCS spokesperson told TIME. “For this reason, visitation will be suspended at all DOCCS facilities in the path of totality on Monday, April 8, 2024 and will resume on Tuesday, April 9.”

The department will also be providing solar eclipse glasses to staff and inmates who may be able to view the eclipse from their unit. 

DOCCS added that all religious requests related to the eclipse are currently under review.

source https://time.com/6963044/solar-eclipse-new-york-prisons/

Republicans Worry They Could Lose the House—Before the Election

When Republicans gained control of the House in November 2022, many in Washington wondered how they would be able to govern effectively with one of the slimmest majorities in history. Some Democrats even speculated if they might be able to take back the House before the term ended.

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Sixteen months later, as the Republican majority has shrunk even further, House Speaker Mike Johnson is admitting that possibility. He told Fox News on Monday that there is a slim chance he could lose the speakership to Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries in the next few weeks amid a wave of early retirements. “That’s a risk,” Johnson said of Democrats taking control of the House.

Already three Republican lawmakers have resigned from their posts mid-term—Reps. Kevin McCarthy, Bill Johnson, and Ken Buck. A fourth Republican, Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, is expected to step down in mid-April, bringing the party’s former nine-seat majority down to just 217-213 as Republicans lost a fifth seat after George Santos was expelled from the House.

The spate of early departures means that Republicans can soon only afford to lose one single vote when all lawmakers are present and voting, since 216 votes would constitute a majority. The shrinking Republican majority has raised concerns among some in the party about the potential for an unprecedented shift in power mid-Congress. “It’s very feasible that Democrats will be running the House before the election,” says Brian Darling, a GOP strategist and former counsel to Sen. Rand Paul. “It’s time for Republicans to have a team meeting and say, ‘okay, guys, this majority is falling apart and if you keep acting like this, we’re not going to have a majority.’”

As Republicans grapple with the ongoing wave of early retirements, party leadership has little room for error as even a single additional departure could tip the scales in favor of the Democrats, which has never happened in the middle of a congressional term. Buck, who stepped down in March due to what he called growing dysfunction in Congress, has hinted that Republicans could see more resignations in the coming months if bitter divisions inside the GOP continue to escalate.

“Republicans would be smart to be worried,” says Matthew Green, a politics professor at Catholic University. “I don’t think the odds are very high that the Republicans will lose their majority, but it is a much bigger possibility now than it’s ever been. And I think it’s clear that the Republican leadership is worried about it.”

Green adds that if another Republican resigns or experiences an unexpected health crisis leading to their absence from voting, then Democrats could secure the majority before the November elections. It would be the first time such a shift has happened in the House mid-term, with the closest parallel coming in 1930 when Republicans lost their slim majority before the session began after several members died and Democrats won special elections to replace them. 

Complicating matters, some Republicans are already considering strategies to remove Johnson from his leadership position and trigger a vote for a new Speaker of the House. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Georgia Republican, filed a surprise motion to vacate the speakership on March 22 after Johnson had to rely on Democratic votes to pass a critical government funding package. The move could set up a risky leadership vote that would test the unity of the Republican conference. “If we vacated this speaker, we’d end up with a Democrat,” Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, warned immediately after Greene triggered the motion, adding that he believes some Republicans would vote for Jeffries. 

Read More: How Marjorie Taylor Greene Became a Biden Campaign Punchline

The current tumult within the Republican Party has Democrats cautiously optimistic. While the tantalizing prospect of wresting control of the House mid-Congress appears unlikely, it is becoming a more plausible dream for Democrats. “Slowly but surely, House Republicans are catastrophically mismanaging their own majority out of existence,” New York Rep. Ritchie Torres, a Democrat, said in December.

But even if Democrats do manage to gain control of the House, they would face some of the same challenges that plagued Republicans trying to govern with a razor-thin margin. “Democrats will have to ask themselves if they could have a majority, would they necessarily want one?” Green asks. “Is it worth it to go through the whole process of picking a new Speaker with maybe four months, at most, to be able to get something done? It’s not clear what the answer to that question is.”

In 2023, the Republican-led House passed only 27 bills that became law, despite holding a total of 724 votes. It was one of the least productive years in Congress in the last decade, shedding light on the ongoing challenges faced by Republicans—including their slim majority necessitating near-unanimous support for legislative progress, significant party fractures, and a far-right faction that has been a thorn in the side of party leadership.

“Republicans have completely mismanaged the majority, and it started when they kicked George Santos out of the caucus,” says Darling, the GOP strategist. Santos, who faces nearly two dozen federal criminal charges, was expelled from Congress in December, with 105 Republicans voting for his removal. Democrat Tom Suozzi won his seat in a special election in February. “I understand why they did it, but ultimately they were giving away a seat that put them a little bit closer to giving away the majority.”

source https://time.com/6962988/republicans-house-majority-election-democrats/