chron briefs
House Democrats pass health care, tax and climate bill
House Democrats on Friday passed a sweeping health care, tax and climate change bill. Now they have to sell it. The vote was 220-207, with all Democrats voting in favor and all Republicans opposing.
With the midterm elections quickly approaching, congressional Democrats have had a series of legislative victories in recent weeks – expanding NATO, securing health care and benefits for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits, investing nearly $53 billion into the U.S. semiconductor industry and passing bipartisan gun safety legislation.
That momentum has culminated into passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, an offshoot of the many versions of President Joe Biden’s failed Build Back Better Act. The IRA, which the Senate advanced Sunday with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking a tie, now heads to Biden’s desk for his signature.
FBI attacker a prolific contributor to Trump website
In the minutes after an armed man in body armor tried to breach an FBI field office in Cincinnati, an account with the suspect’s name, Ricky Shiffer, posted to former president Donald Trump’s social network, Truth Social: “If you don’t hear from me, it is true I tried attacking the F.B.I.”
The Shiffer account appeared to be one of Truth Social’s most prolific posters, writing 374 messages there in the past eight days – mostly to echo Trump’s false claims about election fraud and, in the hours after FBI agents searched Trump’s Florida home, call for all-out war. “Be ready to kill the enemy,” Shiffer had posted on Tuesday. “Kill (the FBI) on sight.” Shiffer was killed Thursday in a shootout, police said, and the Truth Social account has since been taken down.
But the calls for pro-Trump violence are still a common presence online – including on Truth Social, where the top “trending topics” Friday morning were “#FBIcorruption” and “DefundTheFBI.”
Actress Heche not expected to survive after fiery crash into house that left her in coma
Actor Anne Heche is not expected to survive after a fiery car crash in Mar Vista last week left her in a coma, according to a statement on behalf of her family and friends Thursday night.
She is being kept on life support at the Grossman Burn Center at West Hills Hospital in Los Angeles while medical staffers determine whether any of her organs are viable for donation, as had long been her wish, the statement said.
The crash left Heche, 53, with “a severe anoxic brain injury,” and she remained in critical condition in the coma, according to the statement.
Investigators, meanwhile, continued to probe the circumstances surrounding the crash and found that Heche was under the influence of narcotics at the time of the incident.
FDA: People Exposed to COVID-19 May Need to Take as Many as 3 At-Home Tests
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday issued a new recommendation that asymptomatic people who are using coronavirus antigen tests take at least three tests, each spaced 48 hours apart, to reduce the odds of missing an infection.
People who have COVID-19 symptoms should take at least two tests, 48 hours apart, according to the agency.
The new guidelines come as the highly transmissible BA.5 subvariant of omicron continues to spread and after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eased its recommendation for routine surveillance testing in most circumstances.
Many people have reported that at-home tests failed to detect their infections, but studies have generally shown that rapid antigen tests are as good at detecting omicron as they were at detecting delta, the previous variant of concern.