As jurisdictions around the nation explore how to shore up their voting systems against vulnerabilities revealed by the 2016 election, Congress held a hearing yesterday to learn more about cyberthreats and options for thwarting them.

Current cancer control efforts in the United States typically are fragmented and uncoordinated, but taking a systems approach to establish a U.S. National Cancer Control Plan would address the challenge more holistically, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

The nation’s highways and roads connect almost 330 million Americans and are important to both commerce and national security. Two-thirds of total passenger travel in the country moves along this vast network of roads, as does 60 percent of the weight and almost three-quarters of the value of total U.S. freight transported.

The lack of supportive policies for families in the United States, such as paid parental leave, has serious implications for health equity, as it affects families’ overall health and financial stability, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

We tend to think of the process of seeing as fairly objective — that our eyes are similar to cameras, neutrally taking in light and turning it into pictures. But research has shown that biases buried beneath our awareness can powerfully shape how we see.

PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are ubiquitous fluorinated organic compounds found widely in manufactured products, from firefighting foam to stain-resistant carpets. These water- and oil-repellent compounds are known to degrade slowly over time, and have been found in humans, drinking water, and even in Arctic ecosystems.

For severe acute pain due to surgeries and medical conditions, there is a lack of guidance on the appropriate type, strength, and amount of opioid medication that clinicians should prescribe to patients, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

The U.S. is a clear leader in the global bioeconomy landscape, but faces challenges from decentralized leadership, inadequate talent development, cybersecurity vulnerabilities, stagnant investment in fundamental research, and international competition, according to Safeguarding the Bioeconomy, a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine says that enhancements to the geodetic infrastructure are needed to answer important questions about sea level rise, water resources, geological hazards, and more over the next decade.

A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine finds new and innovative approaches to dust control are needed at Owens Lake, California, to improve air quality, reduce water use, and preserve habitats.

A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine urges systemic action to change the culture in STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine) to address the underrepresentation of women in these fields.

In light of the present situation in the U.S., we believe that it is essential to explore a wide range of options for treating the increasing numbers of very ill patients with COVID-19 respiratory illness.

The recently formed National Academies Standing Committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases and 21st Century Health Threats, assembled at the request of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, has been providing rapid expert consultations on several topics, such as social distancing and severe illness in young adults.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and the National Science Foundation announced today the formation of a Societal Experts Action Network (SEAN) to connect social and behavioral science researchers with decision-makers who are leading the response to COVID-19. SEAN will respond to the most pressing social, behavioral, and economic questions that are being asked by federal, state, and local officials by working with appropriate experts to quickly provide actionable answers.

This is a public service campaign suggesting you save water...and suggesting some other things too. ; Credit: SFPUC

Friday's news is going to make you wait for it...when it comes to an explanation for the picture above.

The Wall Street Journal takes on pricing and other big-think policies that various authors claim are worsening the drought.

• Those higher food prices Jed wrote about yesterday? Alyssia Finley, assistant editor of OpinionJournal.com, says they're the fault of environmentalists, and higher food prices will be the way the rest of the country will pay for California's "green sanctimony." (WSJ)
• Economist Edward Lazear argues that "government-dictated prices, coupled with restrictions on the transfer of water, have made a bad situation much worse." He takes aim at the state's limitations on water transfers (lifted, he doesn't note; but he argues that pricing distorts the need for transfers anyway). He argues that public agencies that protect environmental conditions with water should pay for the privilege:

Although there may be good reasons to ensure that some fish and wildlife be protected, we should not pretend that this protection is costless. Agencies that divert water for environmental purposes should be required to budget explicitly for the lost revenue associated with the decision to divert it for this purpose, rather than allowing it to be sold at the market price for urban or agricultural use. (WSJ)

...and he argues that farmers, who might have to pay more for water on a more-open market, should get extra money to help them transition to the free market.

• Cato loves Lazear's arguments, and offers one amendment. Chris Edwards wants the federal government to get out of the water business, and in California, to hand over the Central Valley Project to the state. (Cato)
• In other business news, it's going to be a mixed bag for boat businesses at California recreation areas this summer. They're nervous in Tahoe, but overall expect to benefit from Folsom Lake's bad year. (TradeOnly Today)
• CNN gets into the Firehawk, which is a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter with a giant water tank on it. L.A. County owns a few. They're going to be busy this summer, thanks to the drought. (CNN)
• And finally, in a move that reminds me of the time I wanted to name this blog "Hot, Wet, Climate Action," the San Francisco Public Utility Commission has a new, sexy (or is it sexxy?) campaign to conserve water, with words like "QUICKIE" and "DOING IT" popping out of copy alongside minimalist pictures of pieces of water plumbing. My favorite is "DIRTY HANDS" with its faucet shot to look like a piece of anatomy. (SFPUC)

VIDEO: Get paid for doing it nice!

How has your community been affected by the drought (besides getting more suggestive ads about jiggling the toilet handle)? Share your story with a photo on Twitter or Instagram. Tag it #mydrought. For more details on our photo project, click here.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

File: Western monarch butterfly in Huntington Beach; Credit: Courtesy of Huntington Beach Tree Society

A group of conservation organizations teamed up with a leading monarch butterfly scientist on Tuesday to petition for protection of the monarch butterfly under the Endangered Species Act.

The monarch butterfly is one of the most iconic butterfly species in the country. But according to conservation group the Xerces Society, the monarch butterfly population is in trouble.

“Many scientists estimate that there are about 33 million monarchs. And just for comparison, in the past, researchers have estimated more than 1 billion monarchs,” said Sarina Jepsen, who directs the Endangered Species Program for the Xerces Society.

That’s a decline of about 90 percent in just fewer than 20 years, Jepsen said.

The main culprit in the monarch’s decline is the weed killer Roundup, Jepsen said. Most monarch caterpillars breed in the Midwest, and feed off of milkweed. While Roundup doesn’t kill genetically modified crops like soy and corn, it does kill milkweed.

“So, milkweed growing in a large agricultural landscape has largely disappeared in the last decade-and-a-half to two decades,” said Jepsen.

Other contributing factors include climate change and a general loss of habitat, Jepsen said. California’s drought might also play a role.

“There’s a real strong relationship between drought severity and the number of monarchs that we see in the winter on the California coast,” said Jepsen. “In years when droughts are worse, there are fewer monarchs.”

Thousands of the butterflies gather on California’s coast each winter. Spots locally includeLeo Carrillo Beach in Malibu and Doheny Beach in Dana Point, though the Xerces Society has observed a large decline in the butterflies at these locations in the last several decades.

More on the drought’s effect on the monarch population will be known around Thanksgiving, when a group of so-called "citizen scientists" with the Xerces Society perform an annual count of the monarchs.

Along with the Xerces Society, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Center for Food and Safety and leading monarch butterfly scientist Dr. Lincoln Brower filed the petition.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has 90 days to decide whether to go forward with a further review to potentially classify the monarch butterfly as threatened or endangered. 

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

On Broad Beach in Malibu, high tide not only wets sand but also retaining walls and broken down rock revetments. What happens next in homeowners' efforts to get sand trucked in here will go to the State Lands Commission - and the next Controller likely will weigh in on the problem. ; Credit: Molly Peterson/KPCC

The most common question I’ve been asked about the statewide Controller race this election year is the same question I get every four years. “Wait, we have one?”

The inevitable follow-up question: “What does this person do?” Down-ballot races in California’s state election can seem like a tedious part of a the voting process. Most of us just don't take the time to research them. In 2010, the last time we elected statewide executives, 435,308 of those people who voted for Governor just didn’t bother to vote for anybody in the Controller race. 

But in addition to being the chief fiscal officer of the 8th-largest economy in the world, the Controller sits on something like 80 state commissions and boards. And if you’re interested in California’s environment, a biggie there is the State Lands Commission.

The State Lands Commission oversees roughly 4 million acres of submerged land and tidelands, holding them in trust for the public. Right now it's looking at policy alternatives to respond to sea level rise. It manage the state's offshore oil-drilling leases. It even gets authority over historical shipwrecks! 

Three issues coming before to the Lands Commission mean the Controller matters:  

• Coastal Access and Martin’s Beach: At the end of September, Governor Jerry Brown signed a law requiring the State Lands Commission to negotiate with Vinod Khlosa, a private property owner who famously shut down coastal access over his land this year. The commission has all of next year to negotiate with Khlosa. If no deal is reached, it can use eminent domain authority to force public access – something that would represent a big break in historical practice, because that authority hasn’t ever been used in the 76 years that the commission has existed.
• Malibu’s Broad Beach has been rapidly eroding under pressure of waves and storms worsened by climate change, and very rich homeowners there have been seeking to add sand in front of their houses to combat the risk of damage to very expensive properties. Earlier this year, those homeowners successfully completed an application to the State Lands Commission, and the commission was expected to decide on it in October. The decision’s been put over till after the election.
• Fracking: Offshore oil made news late last year and earlier this year when some operators didn’t report that they were using drilling and production techniques collectively referred to as hydraulic fracturing. The news prompted the EPA to require chemical disclosures for drilling operations it oversees.  The state agencies that should be overseeing these issues – the Coastal Commission and the Lands Commission – are considering their next moves too.

Positions on these issues don’t really come up when it comes to the Controller race, though both Betty Yee and Ashley Swearengin have gone on the record to say they’re against fracking. 

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

US-based payments processor Nets has released

UATP has partnered the payment technology company

Perk Labs has formally launched new verticals and unveiled the...

Technical analyst Clive Maund charts the markets and discusses what he believes is ahead for stocks, the dollar and commodities.

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While the broader markets have seen sharp declines, Frank Holmes, CEO and chief investment officer of U.S. Global Investors, homes in on gold, gold stocks and bitcoin, and gives his prognosis for the...

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Peter Epstein of Epstein Research looks into the Gross Overriding Royalty that just changed hands on the company's flagship Red Hill project, and discusses what it means for the firm.

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Dr. Anthony Fauci steps out of the West Wing for a briefing on the novel coronavirus in the Rose Garden of the White House in March.; Credit: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

The White House will not allow the leading immunologist on the coronavirus task force to testify to Congress next week, calling the request "counter-productive" to the administration's efforts to contain the virus.

Dr. Anthony Fauci's testimony had been requested by the House Appropriations Committee, as part of an investigation into the White House response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A committee spokesman on Friday said the White House had blocked the doctor from appearing before the panel.

"The Appropriations Committee sought Dr. Anthony Fauci as a witness at next week's Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittee hearing on COVID-19 response. We have been informed by an administration official that the White House has blocked Dr. Fauci from testifying," spokesman Evan Hollander said in a statement.

Fauci has become one of the most well recognized experts in the administration's coronavirus response team, often speaking publicly during task force briefings, and at times, seeming to contradict statements made by President Trump.

"While the Trump Administration continues its whole-of-government response to COVID-19, including safely opening up America again and expediting vaccine development, it is counter-productive to have the very individuals involved in those efforts appearing at Congressional hearings. We are committed to working with Congress to offer testimony at the appropriate time," White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi wears a mask on Capitol Hill on April 30. Members in the House will not return over coronavirus fears but the Senate is scheduled to return on Monday.; Credit: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, in a rare joint statement on Saturday, declined an offer from the White House to make rapid COVID-19 tests available for Congress.

"Congress is grateful for the Administration's generous offer to deploy rapid COVID-19 testing capabilities to Capitol Hill, but we respectfully decline the offer at this time," Pelosi and McConnell said. "Our country's testing capacities are continuing to scale up nationwide and Congress wants to keep directing resources to the front-line facilities where they can do the most good the most quickly."

McConnell, R-Ky., plans to bring the Senate back into session on Monday, while Pelosi, D-Calif., and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said this week the House would not bring representatives back over coronavirus fears.

On Friday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said on Twitter that the Trump administration would send three Abbott "point of care testing machines and 1,000 tests for their use" to Capitol Hill.

President Trump on Saturday tweeted: " No reason to turn it down, except politics. We have plenty of testing. Maybe you need a new Doctor over there. Crazy Nancy will use it as an excuse not to show up to work!"

Pelosi and Hoyer said they made the decision based on advice from the Capitol's attending physician, Brian Monahan. "The House physician's view was that there was a risk to members that was one he would not recommend taking," Hoyer said Tuesday.

So far, Rand Paul of Kentucky is the only senator to have tested positive for the coronavirus. In the House, seven members have tested positive or presumed to be positive for the coronavirus.

On Friday, McConnell shared guidelines from Monahan urging lawmakers and staff to maintain six feet of distance, limit the number of people in offices and to wear masks when possible.

Monahan has told Republican leaders that his office does not have the capacity to proactively test all 100 senators and can only test those who are ill, Politico reported.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made filling judicial vacancies his top priority ahead of the 2020 elections.; Credit: J. Scott Applewhite/AP

As new allegations emerge about his motives for retirement, Judge Thomas Griffith says that he faced no political pressure in his decision to leave the bench.

"My decision was driven entirely by personal concerns and involved no discussions with the White House or the Senate," he said in a statement provided to NPR.

Griffith said that his wife was diagnosed 11 years ago with a "debilitating chronic illness" and that her health was "the sole reason for my retirement." He said he made the decision to retire in June 2019 and privately informed his family and law clerks at the time. His retirement was announced publicly in March.

Griffith, 65, is a circuit court judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Appointed by President George W. Bush, he has served since 2005.

On Monday, The New York Times reported that Demand Justice, a liberal judicial advocacy group, filed a complaint that raises questions about whether Griffith's decision was tied to efforts by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to encourage older, conservative judges to retire in order to fill their vacancies with younger, conservative judges ahead of the 2020 election, when control of the White House and the Senate will be in play.

Griffith's retirement has paved the way for Justin Walker's nomination to fill the vacancy. Walker, 37, is a longtime McConnell ally who is currently serving as a U.S. district judge of the Western District of Kentucky, McConnell's home state.

The Demand Justice complaint was directed to the U.S. Court of Appeals, where the court's chief judge, Sri Srinivasan, has asked Chief Justice John Roberts to assign another circuit to look into the complaint about whether any ethical improprieties occurred. Griffith's statement refutes the core allegation — that his decision was fueled by political considerations or the result of a pressure campaign.

These allegations are likely to come up at Walker's confirmation hearing on Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Democrats broadly oppose Walker's nomination. He was rated "not qualified" by the American Bar Association. However, unless support for him is diminished among Republicans — unlikely with McConnell's backing — he is likely to be confirmed.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Two years after it released the first season of the show 13 Reasons Why with a graphic suicide scene, Netflix has announced that it has edited it out.

The show is centered on the suicide of fictional teen Hannah Baker, and the first season's finale shows her taking her own life. Several organizations, including the National Association of School Psychologists, raised concerns that it could romanticize suicide for vulnerable teens.

"Our creative intent in portraying the ugly, painful reality of suicide in such graphic detail in Season 1 was to tell the truth about the horror of such an act, and make sure no one would ever wish to emulate it," show creator Brian Yorkey said in a statement. "But as we ready to launch Season 3, we have heard concerns about the scene from Dr. Christine Moutier at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and others, and have agreed with Netflix to re-edit it."

"No one scene is more important than the life of the show, and its message that we must take better care of each other," he added. "We believe this edit will help the show do the most good for the most people while mitigating any risk for especially vulnerable young viewers."

After some initial criticism, Netflix added a warning card to the beginning of the episode, alerting viewers that the episode contained "graphic depictions of suicide and violence."

The show also has a website, 13reasonswhy.info, containing resources about suicide prevention. It contains videos of cast members discussing topics such as bullying, consent, depression and how to talk with a teen about the series. The site also warns: "If you are struggling, this series may not be right for you or you may want to watch it with a trusted adult."

The edited version, now on Netflix, shows Hannah looking at herself in the mirror, full of emotion. It then cuts to her parents finding her body in the bathroom and reacting to her death. The previous version was nearly three minutes long, according to The Hollywood Reporter, and showed her cutting her wrists with a razor blade.

Netflix's decision has drawn praise from a number of suicide prevention advocates, such as American Association of Suicidology, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, American School Counselor Association, Dr. Helen Hsu from Stanford, advocacy group Mental Health America, the Trevor Project and Dr. Rebecca Hedrick from Cedars-Sinai, according to THR.

"We support the decision to edit the scene in which Hannah takes her own life from 13 Reasons Why. There has been much debate about the series in the medical community," they said in a joint statement, as THR reported. "But this positive change will ensure that 13 Reasons Why continues to encourage open conversation about mental health and suicide prevention — while also mitigating the risk for the most vulnerable teenage viewers."

Ron Avi Astor at the University of Southern California, who studies adolescent bullying and mental health, discussed with NPR's Anya Kamenetz how the images of self-harm on the show could affect teens.

Avi Astor told Kamenetz that the depiction could be contagious — but just for certain teens. "It's not just that any random kid would see it and do it," he said, but for a kid who was already thinking about suicide, it had the potential to influence their behavior.

If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (En Español: 1-888-628-9454; Deaf and Hard of Hearing: 1-800-799-4889) or the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The status of soil can be represented by many properties. However, how well they represent soil status depends on the level of rainfall in the area. Researchers in Spain found that in wet regions soil status is strongly linked to biological factors, such as vegetation cover and biodiversity. In drier regions, status has a stronger link to the physical properties of the soil.

The news seems better on Tropical Storm Isaac and its potential threat to next week's events. However, from network news, you'd never know it mattered much if the storm damaged other countries or American cities outside Tampa. Isaac coverage is a wonderful example of how we as journalists care so much about something when we'll personally be affected.

Monday morning at 10 we begin our live coverage from the convention. Patt Morrison will follow at 11 with an hour of regular talk programming. I'll be back at 1 p.m. for another hour from Tampa, followed by Patt at 2.  We'll follow this schedule for the days of the convention, Monday through Thursday.

Patt will make her way to Charlotte, North Carolina for the Democratic Convention the following week. It will be fun to compare the cultures of the two conventions, aside from the platforms and PR spin we'll be exposed to for two straight weeks.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Deirdre Bolona displayed a photo of her and her late father Matt Koenig at a state legislative oversight hearing about the Aliso Canyon natural gas disaster. ; Credit: Sharon McNary/KPCC

It’s been nearly four years since the smell and chemicals from a ruptured gas well at an underground storage field forced thousands of Porter Ranch residents to leave their neighborhood for months. The recriminations and protests have not stopped.

State legislators held a hearing in Porter Ranch Tuesday to review how gas field owner Southern California Gas and public officials responded to the blowout. 

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Chef Chun Lei (l.) and restaurant owner Charles Lu (r.) in the kitchen of Shanghailander Palace in Arcadia.; Credit: Josie Huang/KPCC

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Updated at 10 p.m. ET

Australia's High Court has found reasonable doubt that Cardinal George Pell sexually assaulted two boys in the 1990s and has overturned his conviction.

The court acquitted the former Vatican treasurer of the charges, and no retrial will be possible.

Pell, 78, had been serving a six-year prison sentence in the case. The High Court ordered that he be released.

He was convicted of sexually abusing two 13-year-old choirboys at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne.

As an adult, one of them went to the police in 2015 and accused the cardinal of abusing him and the other boy in 1996. The other individual died of a heroin overdose the previous year without reporting abuse.

In a statement after the acquittal, as reported by Reuters, Pell said, "I hold no ill will toward my accuser, I do not want my acquittal to add to the hurt and bitterness so many feel; there is certainly hurt and bitterness enough."

Pell was convicted in 2018 and an appellate court upheld those convictions last year.

The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference's comments on the acquittal recognize that the outcome will be good news for some people and "devastating for others."

"The result today does not change the Church's unwavering commitment to child safety and to a just and compassionate response to survivors and victims of child sexual abuse. The safety of children remains supremely important not only for the bishops, but for the entire Catholic community. Any person with allegations of sexual abuse by Church personnel should go to the police."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

; Credit: J. Scott Applewhite/AP

The U.S. Supreme Court is no stranger to controversy, but it still gets higher marks in public opinion polls than the other branches of government. Now though, for the first time in memory, the court is not just split along ideological lines, but along political lines as well: All the conservatives are Republican appointees, all the liberals Democratic appointees. That division could put the court in the crosshairs of public opinion if it is forced to make decisions that affect the 2020 election.

Chief Justice John Roberts has worked hard to persuade the public that the justices are fair-minded legal umpires--not politicians in robes. That image got pretty scuffed up earlier this month when the conservative court majority shot down accommodations for the coronavirus that would have allowed six more days for absentee ballots to be received in Wisconsin's election for 500 school board seats, over 100 judicial seats, and thousands of other state and local positions.

In the weeks leading up to the election, the COVID-19 pandemic had become a public health crisis. Encouraged by local officials, about a million more voters than usual requested absentee ballots, and local officials were unable to keep up with the surge. To mitigate that problem, the lower courts allowed an extra six days for election officials to receive completed absentee ballots.

But the day before the election, the Supreme Court overturned the lower court ruling by a 5-to-4 vote. The result was that tens of thousands of people who had not yet even received their absentee ballots were forced to, as the dissenters put it, choose between their health and their right to vote.

The TV footage of people wearing masks waiting for hours to vote at the very few precincts that were open amid the pandemic was, to say the least, not a good look. Health officials in Milwaukee have since identified six voters and one poll worker who appear to have contracted the virus during the election.

The majority opinion was unsigned, so no one knows who the principal author was. But we do know some things.

First, the emergency appeal in the case came through the justice assigned to that region of the country, Brett Kavanaugh. Typically, when a justice refers a case to the full court, he or she writes a memo about the issues, likely with a recommendation. Kavanaugh almost certainly did that. But other justices would then chime in. And in a voting case, Chief Justice Roberts assuredly would have played a pivotal role.

"John Roberts' fingerprints are on this as chief justice and as someone who has owned this area of the law," says Joan Biskupic, a Supreme Court biographer and CNN legal analyst who is the author of a critically acclaimed biography about Roberts.

Indeed, Roberts was invested in voting-rights law as far back as 1982 when he was a staffer in the Reagan administration. Back then, he led the effort to narrow the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act. When that failed, President Reagan signed the broad extension of the law, rejecting advice to veto it. But years later, on the Supreme Court, Roberts wrote the decision in Shelby County v. Holder, gutting a key provision of that law.

So, it was no surprise when the conservative majority refused to make even a modest accommodation to the pandemic. What was surprising was the tone of the opinion. Critics of the opinion, including some Roberts defenders, called the language "callous," "cynical," and "unfortunate."

In fact, the word "pandemic" appears not once in the court's unsigned opinion. Rather, the majority sought to portray the issue before the court as a "narrow, technical question." The majority said the lower court had overstepped the Supreme Court's established rule that courts should "ordinarily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election."

The dissenters replied that the court's treatment of the current situation as ordinary "boggles the mind." Writing for the dissenters, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg opined that "a voter cannot deliver...a ballot she has not yet received. Yet tens of thousands of voters who timely requested absentee ballots" are being asked to do just that.

"I do think there's something to this idea that we need to stick with the rules even in the context of an emergency," says law professor Rick Hasen, an election expert at the University of California, Irvine.

He and others see the legal question before the court as a close call, but say the decision was, at the very least, tone deaf in light of the reality of a pandemic.

Hasen says that the court could have recognized "the inhumanity of making people vote in this way," but that instead the tone of the opinion was "really dismissive of the entire threat facing these voters."

Chief Justice Roberts has, on some occasions tried to bridge the two wings of the court, in a couple of big cases siding with the court's liberals, or sometimes trying to fashion a compromise. But as Hasen observes, "there really is not any case I can think of involving elections where Roberts has forged a larger consensus."

Roberts must have anticipated at least some of the outcry over the Wisconsin decision. He is, after all, an astute political observer.

But as any student of the court knows, Roberts is a reliable, and often leading member of the conservative majority when it comes to a whole host of issues involving campaigns, voting and elections. That includes decisions he has written striking down laws aimed at limiting the role of big money in campaigns and decisions upholding partisan gerrymanders. Moreover voting rights in particular "is an area of the law where John Roberts has not been deterred by anticipated public criticism," says Biskupic, his biographer.

For the chief, says Biskupic, "It's not just voting rights. It's a broader overlay of representation" in his decisions, a pattern that "often will favor Republicans, but more fundamentally, it seems to favor entrenched powers, the status quo in many states, against ordinary citizens. And we certainly saw that in Wisconsin."

Uncertainties around COVID-19 remain, with states facing decisions about when to reopen and what size of public gatherings are safe. As November inches closer, those decisions could affect the 2020 election. Who gets to vote, when, and how, are unanswered questions and states are surely exploring different plans to keep voters safe. But Roberts' Supreme Court may be the ultimate arbiter of what changes and accommodations to voting are allowed.

The majority opinion "tried to tell the public that this was a very small decision," says Biskupic. "But as the dissent pointed out, it laid down a very serious marker about how voters will be accommodated in the middle of the coronavirus crisis."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The Supreme Court's second day of arguments by phone was devoted to a new version of a case it decided seven years ago involving federal money to fight AIDS around the world.; Credit: Andrew Harnik/AP

The Supreme Court kicked off a second day of telephone arguments Tuesday with a case that mingles sex, the HIV/AIDS epidemic and free speech.

At issue is whether the government can require private nonprofits to denounce prostitution in order to qualify for U.S foreign aid grants aimed at fighting the worldwide AIDS epidemic. This is the second time the court has faced this issue, but this time it comes with a twist.

In 2003, Congress, at the urging of President George W. Bush, enacted a major foreign aid program to fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic and prevent new infections worldwide. In appropriating the money, Congress included a provision requiring any private organization that received funding through the program to adopt an explicit policy denouncing prostitution and sex trafficking.

In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down that provision, declaring it unconstitutional because it compelled U.S. nonprofits to adopt an explicit policy as a condition for receiving grant money. By a 6-2 vote, the high court said such a requirement interfered with the free speech rights of private U.S. organizations engaged in the fight against AIDS.

The case was back Tuesday, but this time, the question was whether foreign organizations closely affiliated with those same U.S. nonprofits can be required to adopt the policy denouncing prostitution.

Defending the provision was Assistant to the Solicitor General Christopher Michel. He argued that foreign affiliates of U.S. organizations like Save The Children, CARE and WorldVision are separate legal entities from their parent U.S. organizations, and that as foreign entities, they have no rights under the U.S. Constitution.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the 2013 decision, seemed unpersuaded.

"Is it reasonable to insist on formal corporate ties in this context?" he asked. "It's undisputed that to be effective in many of the foreign countries involved here, you have to operate through a foreign entity."

Michel responded that if the U.S. nonprofits "make the choice to operate through a foreign entity because they decide that is more convenient or more effective, they have to accept the bitter with the sweet."

Roberts still seemed doubtful, noting that the U.S. nonprofits and their foreign affiliates "have the same name, the same logo, the same brand. And I wonder if it makes more sense to think of the foreign entity as simply another channel for the domestic entity's speech."

Representing the nonprofits was lawyer David Bowker. He maintained that for all practical purposes, there is no difference between the U.S. nonprofits and their foreign affiliates, so making the affiliate adopt an anti-prostitution message effectively puts words in the mouth of the U.S. nonprofit.

Questioned by Justice Clarence Thomas, Bowker said that the harm suffered by the U.S. nongovernmental organizations is that their foreign affiliates must either lose their funding by refusing to comply with the anti-prostitution policy or undermine their mission by denouncing the very people they need to work with — namely prostitutes. And if the foreign affiliates make the pledge needed to get funding, he said, the U.S. parent organizations have to disavow their own affiliates' anti-prostitution pledge, thus harming the entire anti-AIDS fight.

"It's a Catch-22 for these U.S. organizations," said Bowker.

Justice Stephen Breyer followed up: "So why don't you simply write a grant to get all the money yourself and then you give it to CARE India? Why doesn't that work?"

Because, replied Bowker, under the statute, CARE USA, in subcontracting a grant to CARE India, would be required to impose the anti-prostitution pledge on its own affiliate on behalf of the government.

Justice Samuel Alito, who signed on to the court's 2013 decision, said he had more concerns in this case — mainly "that it will force Congress to either withhold foreign aid entirely or allow foreign aid to be used in ways that are contrary to the interests of the people of this country."

Justice Brett Kavanaugh followed up: "Suppose the U.S. government wants to fund foreign NGOs that support peace in the Middle East but only if the NGOs explicitly recognize Israel as a legitimate state. Are you saying the U.S. can't impose that kind of speech restriction on foreign NGOs that are affiliated with U.S. organizations?"

Bowker said that kind of a restriction would likely be acceptable because the aid in that case would be tied to the U.S. relationship with Israel.

Kavanaugh moved on to another question, noting, "The government says your position would unleash foreign affiliates of U.S. corporations to pump money" into U.S. election campaigns, something that is explicitly barred under current law.

Bowker replied that U.S. campaign laws, as ruled on by the Supreme Court in prior cases, allow the ban on foreign contributions because they do not come from U.S. entities at all.

A decision in the case is expected some time this summer. While the court usually concludes its work by the end of June, it is expected that this term will extend into July because the arguments in this and nine other cases were postponed for more than a month because of the coronavirus.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Nuns with the Little Sisters of The Poor, including Sister Celestine, left, and Sister Jeanne Veronique, center, rally outside the Supreme Court in Washington on March 23, 2016.; Credit: Jacquelyn Martin/AP

The birth-control wars return to the Supreme Court Wednesday, and it is likely that the five-justice conservative majority will make it more difficult for women to get birth control if they work for religiously affiliated institutions like hospitals, charities and universities.

At issue in the case is a Trump administration rule that significantly cuts back on access to birth control under the Affordable Care Act. Obamacare, the massive overhaul of the health care system, sought to equalize preventive health care coverage for women and men by requiring employers to include free birth control in their health care plans.

Listen to the arguments live beginning at 10 a.m. ET.

Houses of worship like churches and synagogues were automatically exempted from the provision, but religiously affiliated nonprofits like universities, charities and hospitals were not. Such organizations employ millions of people, many of whom want access to birth control for themselves and their family members. But many of these institutions say they have a religious objection to providing birth control for employees.

For these nonprofits, the Obama administration enacted rules providing a work-around to accommodate employers' religious objections. The workaround was that an employer was to notify the government, or the insurance company, or the plan administrator, that, for religious reasons, it would not be providing birth-control coverage to its employees. Then, the insurance company could provide free birth-control options to individual employees separately from the employer's plan.

But some religiously affiliated groups still objected, saying the work-around was not good enough, and sued. They contended that signing an opt-out form amounted to authorizing the use of their plan for birth control. Among those objectors was the Little Sisters of the Poor, an order of Catholic nuns that runs homes for the elderly poor.

The Supreme Court punted in 2016

The Little Sisters sued, and their case first reached the Supreme Court in 2016. At the time, Sister Constance Viet explained why she refused to sign any opt-out form, saying that "the religious burden is what that signifies and the fact that the government would ... be inserting services that we object into our plan. And it would still carry our name."

Back then, when the Little Sisters' case got to the Supreme Court, the justices basically punted, telling the government and the sisters to work together to try to reach a compromise that would still provide "seamless birth control" coverage for employees who want it, without burdening the Sisters' religious beliefs. Although the Little Sisters did eventually get relief from the lower courts, the fight over the accommodations rules continued right up to the end of the Obama administration.

But when President Trump came into office, the administration issued new rules that would give broad exemptions to nonprofits and some for-profit companies that have objections to providing birth-control coverage for their employees. And the new rules expanded the category of employers who would be exempt from the birth-control mandate to include not just those with religious objections, but those with moral objections, too.

New rules

Those new rules, currently blocked by lower courts, are what is at issue Wednesday in the Supreme Court.

"Many states are suing and none of them can find a single actual woman who claims she's been harmed," says Mark Reinezi, president of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is defending the Trump rules against challenges brought by Pennsylvania and other states.

And, he adds, "there are many other ways to provide contraceptive coverage to people if they happen to work for religious objectors."

Rienzi says that employees who work for birth-control objectors can get coverage from their spouse's insurance plan, or by switching to a different insurance plan on an Obamacare exchange. And he says that birth control is also available under a program known as Title X, which gives money to state and local governments to provide health care for women.

But Brigitte Amiri, the deputy director the of ACLU's Reproductive Freedom project, says the idea that Title X could make up for the lost coverage is "a joke." Amiri notes that the Title X program has been underfunded for years, and the Trump administration has issued new regulations that in her words "decimated the program."

According to Amiri, "the Trump administration and Vice President [Mike] Pence have long wanted to ... take away coverage for contraception. They want to block access to birth control. They want to block access to abortion ... so this is all part and parcel of the overall attack on access to reproductive health care."

Potential consequences

She maintains that if the expanded Trump rules are upheld for religious objectors, hundreds of thousands of women across the country will lose their contraceptive coverage. Ultimately, Amiri says, there just is no way to maintain birth-control coverage for employees who work for religiously affiliated institutions unless that employer, as she puts it, is willing to "raise their hand" to opt out.

A break in birth-control coverage that big could have serious consequences, say say birth-control advocates. They note that the National Academy of Medicine, a health policy nonprofit, recommended the original rules because birth control is prescribed not just to avoid pregnancy but also to treat various female medical conditions. In fact, it is the most frequently taken drug for women ages 15-60. And it is expensive, $30 a month and more for pills, and as much as $1,000 for buying and having an IUD inserted.

Birth-control advocates say that's the very reason that a broad requirement to cover birth control in insurance was included in Obamacare. They say the new Trump rule improperly undermines that mandate.

But selling that argument to the Supreme Court will be hard. When the court last considered this issue in 2016, its makeup was far less conservative than it is now. Since then, two Trump appointees have been added to the court. And both of those appointees — Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — have already indicated strong support for the notion that religious rights may often trump other rights.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Donations fill up the entryway to a Goodwill Southern California Donation Center in Pasadena during the first week of 2020.; Credit: Carla Javier/KPCC

Now that the holiday season is winding down, thrift shops run by Goodwill, the Salvation Army, and other organizations are tallying up the annual flood of December donations. 

"It's always been a tradition that our donors donate between Christmas and New Year's ... and the last couple days of the year, they donate even more," Goodwill Southern California director of logistics Tinna Bauer explained. "Some do it for tax purposes, and some ... when they if they receive new items for Christmas, they clean out the old."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

As millions of Americans have lost their jobs, Congress is trying to figure out what to do to help those who have also lost their health insurance.; Credit: South_agency/Getty Images

Mayra Jimenez had just lost the job she loved — and the health insurance that went along with it.

The 35-year-old San Francisco server needed coverage. Jimenez has ulcerative colitis, a chronic condition. Just one of her medications costs $18,000 per year.

"I was just in panic mode, scrambling to get coverage," Jimenez said.

A recent estimate suggests the pandemic has cost more than 9 million Americans both their jobs and their health insurance.

"Those numbers are just going to go up," MIT economist Jon Gruber said. "We've never seen such a dramatic increase in such a short period of time."

House Democrats introduced a bill in mid-April to help the millions of people, like Jimenez, who find themselves unsure of where to turn.

The Worker Health Coverage Protection Act would fully fund the cost of COBRA, a program that allows workers who leave or lose a job to stay on their former employer's insurance plan. COBRA currently requires workers to pay for their entire premium, including their employer's share.

The Worker Health Coverage Protection Act is one bill being considered as Congress tries to figure out what to do about the very real health care gap for those millions who have lost their jobs. Sponsors of the COBRA legislation say they hope their plan gets rolled into the next relief bill. But it's unclear when, how and whether the problem will get addressed in upcoming coronavirus relief measures.

Jimenez learned COBRA would run her $426 a month.

"I was kind of shocked to hear the number," she said. "That's almost half my rent."

The idea of allowing laid-off workers to stick with their coverage at no cost in a pandemic has clear appeal, says Gruber.

But he warns, "COBRA is expensive, and for many employees, it won't be there."

Only workers who get insurance through their employer are eligible for COBRA, leaving out more than half of the 26 million who have lost jobs in the last few weeks. Many of the industries hit hardest by COVID-19, including retail and hospitality, are among those least likely to offer employees insurance.

And even if someone had insurance through work, the person loses COBRA coverage if the former employer goes out of business.

Funding COBRA costs, federal dollars also wouldn't go as far as they could. Unpublished Urban Institute estimates show that an employer plan costs, on average, about 25% more than a Gold plan on the Affordable Care Act exchanges.

"We need to be all hands on deck, spending whatever we can to help people," Gruber said. "But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be thinking about efficient ways to do it."

Congress has tried this move before. In response to the Great Recession, lawmakers tucked a similar COBRA subsidy into the massive stimulus bill a decade ago. That legislation paid for 65% of COBRA premiums, leaving laid-off workers to cover the rest.

A federally commissioned study found that COBRA enrollment increased by just 15%. Mathematica senior researcher and study co-author Jill Berk said workers skipped the subsidy for two main reasons.

First, only about 30% of eligible workers even knew the subsidy existed.

"For those that were aware," Berk said, "their overwhelming response was that COBRA was still too expensive."

At that time, the average premium for a single worker — even with the subsidy — ran about $400 per month for a worker with family coverage.

"When you're actually facing those choices, choosing between rent and food and other bills," Berk said, "that COBRA bill looks quite high."

Berk's team also discovered that people who reported using the subsidy were four times more likely to have a college degree and a higher income than those who passed on it. In other words, Berk found that the COBRA subsidy was least helpful to those with the greatest need.

Several economists, including Gruber, and some Democrats in Washington are kicking around alternatives to COBRA. Among their ideas is a plan to have the federal government pick up more of a person's premium and other expenses on the Affordable Care Act exchanges. Another proposal would extend ACA subsidies to people who earn too much to qualify for any aid and to lower-income people who live in states yet to expand Medicaid.

Compared with funding COBRA, beefing up ACA subsidies could potentially help millions more people, including the pool of laid-off workers who did not get health insurance from their employer.

The ACA ties subsidies to people's income, giving more help to those at the bottom end of the wage scale and spending less on those who are better off. In contrast, the current COBRA plan would cover 100% of COBRA for everyone, regardless of the person's income.

There are some downsides to this approach. Making ACA subsidies more generous could end up costing the federal government more overall, because it gives more help to a lot more people.

Chris Holt from the American Action Forum, a conservative think tank, points out that the ACA already increases federal support when people's earnings fall and questions how much more of the tab Washington should pick up.

"If that subsidy would have been good enough for someone six months ago, why is it not good enough now?" he asked.

Maybe the biggest challenge to building on the ACA: The 10-year-old law remains a political football.

"There's just so much both emotion and, frankly, bitterness tied up in debates," Holt said, adding that this makes it hard to move anything forward.

Holt notes that COBRA is not free of political hang-ups either. He expects a fight over whether subsidy money can be spent on employer plans that cover abortion services, for example.

Holt and Gruber agree that perhaps the easiest idea is to leave the ACA alone with one minor tweak: allow people to take the ACA subsidy they're already eligible for and use it on COBRA if they choose.

As for Jimenez, she did not have time to wait for Congress. She brought in too much from unemployment to qualify for Medicaid. And she couldn't afford COBRA, so she picked out a plan on the ACA exchange, where she's eligible for generous existing subsidies. It will cost her $79.17 per month, and she gets to keep her doctors. Not everyone does.

This is the first time she has ever purchased insurance on her own, rather than gotten it through work — and that has delivered one other unexpected benefit.

"Freedom," Jimenez said. "It feels so freeing to take charge of my health care and to know that no one can take this away from me. I don't have to rely on a job to give me what they want to give me. I can make my own choices."

Policymakers, providers, employers and health-industry executives have been fighting over whether the United States should tie insurance to work since the end of World War II.

Subsidizing COBRA preserves the status quo, while doubling down on the ACA might just start to drive a real wedge between work and health insurance.

As states begin reopening businesses, some laid-off workers will get back their jobs, as well as their insurance. But many will remain unemployed and uninsured. A decade ago, faced with the same challenge, Congress chose to subsidize COBRA. It proved to be a narrow solution with limited impact.

Lawmakers now have the ACA at their disposal, a tool that may be a better fit for this moment. Whether they choose to use it may be a choice grounded more in political realism than policy idealism.

Dan Gorenstein is the creator and co-host of the Tradeoffs podcast, and Leslie Walker is a producer on the show, which ran a version of this story on April 23.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Students walk outside Detroit's Pershing High School in 2017. A lawsuit claims the state of Michigan failed to provide the city's students with the most fundamental of skills: the ability to read.; Credit: Carlos Osorio/AP

In a landmark decision, a federal appeals court has ruled that children have a constitutional right to literacy, dealing a remarkable victory to students.

The ruling comes in response to a lawsuit brought by students of five Detroit schools, claiming that because of deteriorating buildings, teacher shortages and inadequate textbooks, the state of Michigan failed to provide them with the most fundamental of skills: the ability to read.

For decades, civil rights lawyers have tried to help students and families in underfunded schools by arguing that the U.S. Constitution guarantees children at least a basic education. Federal courts have consistently disagreed. Until now.

The ability to read and write is "essential" for a citizen to participate in American democracy, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Thursday. One cannot effectively vote, answer a jury summons, pay taxes or even read a road sign if illiterate, wrote Judge Eric Clay, and so where "a group of children is relegated to a school system that does not provide even a plausible chance to attain literacy, we hold that the Constitution provides them with a remedy."

"Like a daycare"

The 2016 complaint alleges that Michigan's then-Gov. Rick Snyder and the state's board of education denied Detroit students their fundamental right to literacy. It cites textbooks that were tattered, outdated and in such short supply that teachers could not send work home. The suit also describes school buildings that were in shocking disrepair: broken toilets and water fountains, leaking ceilings, shattered windows.

In warmer months, the complaint says, a lack of air-conditioning caused some students to faint; in winter, students regularly wore hats, coats and scarves to class. Students became accustomed to seeing cockroaches, mice or rats scurrying across the floor.

"You're sitting down in the classroom, and you see rodents in a corner. Or you can hear things crawling in the books," says Jamarria Hall, a plaintiff in the class-action suit, who graduated in 2017. "But the saddest thing of all was really the resources that they had, like, being in a class where there's 34 students, but there's only six textbooks."

Given these conditions, the five K-12 schools named in the complaint also struggled to retain teachers. Many classes were taught by paraprofessionals or inexperienced teachers placed through the Teach For America program. Often, Hall says, when teachers quit suddenly or didn't show up, students would simply be sent to the gym.

"For days on end — weeks on end — if the school didn't have a substitute or couldn't fill that gap, the gym was basically the go-to place. Or they would set students down in the classroom and really put on a movie, like Frozen... like a daycare," Hall remembers.

At one school, the complaint says, a math teacher quit soon after the school year began "due to frustration with large class sizes and lack of support. ... Eventually, the highest performing eighth grade student was asked to take over teaching both seventh and eighth grade math. This student taught both math classes for a month."

The complaint delivers a crushing assessment of these schools' failure to educate students: Proficiency rates "hover near zero in nearly all subject areas," it says.

"Illiteracy is the norm."

Previous legal efforts to argue that families in low-income, underfunded schools deserve better have run headlong into the U.S. Constitution, which makes no mention of the word "education," let alone a right to it.

One of the most famous cases, San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, made it all the way to the Supreme Court before the justices, in a 5-4 decision, ruled that families in poorer districts have no federal right to the same levels of funding as wealthier districts. They essentially said: The system isn't fair, but the U.S. government has no obligation to make it so.

In fact, the first judge to hear the current, Detroit case came to much the same conclusion.

U.S. District Judge Stephen Murphy dismissed the Michigan suit in 2018, writing that, yes, "literacy — and the opportunity to obtain it — is of incalculable importance," but not necessarily a fundamental right.

The students' lawyers disputed Murphy's reasoning and appealed his ruling, and, on Thursday, two of three judges took their side.

"We're not asking for a Cadillac"

In the past, many of the arguments used to pursue educational equity in the courts have been inherently comparative. Using the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, lawyers have focused on disparity — how one school or one district's resources compare to another's.

"This [case] is different," says Tacy Flint, a partner at Sidley Austin LLP and a lawyer for the plaintiffs. "It's not comparative. It's not a question of some people being treated worse than others. This fundamental right to a basic minimum education is a right that every child has."

Flint and her co-counsel focused more on a different pillar of the 14th Amendment, the Due Process Clause, saying the Constitution protects essential rights that "you can't imagine our constitutional democracy or our political life functioning without." And, Flint says, "access to literacy clearly fits that description."

Put simply: The plaintiffs' lawyers did not set out to level the playing field for all students. Instead, they attempted to use the appalling conditions of five Detroit schools to establish a floor.

"This case focuses squarely on literacy as the irreducible minimum," says Kristine Bowman, professor of law and education policy at Michigan State University.

And that minimum is pretty minimal.

"We're not asking for a Cadillac, or even a used, low-end Kia. We're asking for something more than the Flintstones' car," says co-counsel Evan Caminker, a former dean of the University of Michigan Law School.

In his dissent to Thursday's decision, Circuit Judge Eric Murphy argued that accepting literacy as a constitutional right would open a Pandora's box for states, and force federal courts to wrestle with questions beyond their purview: "May they compel states to raise their taxes to generate the needed [school] funds? Or order states to give parents vouchers so that they may choose different schools? How old may textbooks be before they become constitutionally outdated? What minimum amount of training must teachers receive? Which HVAC systems must public schools use?"

Murphy wrote that history, and legal precedent, are on his side: "The Supreme Court has refused to treat education as a fundamental right every time a party has asked it to do so."

After all, the judge reasoned, food, housing and medical care are also "critical for human flourishing and for the exercise of constitutional rights," but the Constitution "does not compel states to spend funds on these necessities of life." Why should education be any different?

A spokesperson for Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer says her office is reviewing the court's decision before it decides what to do next. Whitmer's office also said in a statement that "the governor has a strong record on education and has always believed we have a responsibility to teach every child to read."

While the ruling is historic, it comes with several caveats. Basic literacy is a remarkably low standard to set for schools. As such, legal experts say, this ruling won't have an immediate impact on children in underfunded schools.

"We're not talking about the court having to recognize a broad-based, free-floating, generalized right to education," says Michelle Adams, a professor at Cardozo School of Law in New York City. This will not "open the floodgates of litigation. We're talking about a situation where students are being warehoused and required to be in school and yet they literally cannot read."

The case is also relatively young. The court's decision could be reviewed by the full 6th Circuit, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, or returned to play out in District Court. Whitmer's office has not yet indicated how the state will respond.

"The fight is not done yet," says Jamarria Hall, who is now living in Tallahassee, Fla., and taking classes at a community college. "We were fighting just to get into the ring. Now we're in the ring. Now the fight really starts."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.