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Father of accused Illinois gunman faces charges in July 4 parade mass shooting

2022-12-17T02:07:45Z

An Illinois prosecutor has filed felony charges against the father of the man accused of opening fire on a crowd watching a July Fourth parade in Chicago’s Highland Park suburb five months ago, killing seven people and injuring dozens.

The father, Robert Crimo Jr., turned himself in to police on Friday under an arrest warrant charging him with seven counts of reckless conduct related to helping his son to obtain a state firearms license in 2019.

Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart said the elder Crimo was criminally reckless when he sponsored his son’s application for a firearm owner identification (FOID) card, despite knowing his son was unfit to own a gun.

“He knew what he knew and he signed the form anyway,” Rinehart told a news conference. “This was criminally reckless and a contributing cause to the bodily harm suffered by victims on July Fourth.”

Rinehart declined to specify what knowledge the father had that should have dissuaded him from sponsoring his son’s application.

Authorities have previously acknowledged the accused gunman, Robert Crimo, applied for a FOID card at age 19 in December 2019, three months after police were called to his home for a report that he had threatened to kill family members.

According to law enforcement, the police seized a collection of 16 knives, a dagger and a sword, but the weapons were returned after the father told authorities they were his.

The alleged threat in September 2019 followed a prior incident in which police responded to an emergency call reporting that the younger Crimo had attempted suicide.

The son used the FOID card he later received to legally purchase five guns between 2020 and 2021, including the one police said he used to shoot his victims from a sniper’s perch on a rooftop above the parade route. By then he was 21.

The younger Crimo could not have legally applied for a FOID card in 2019 without a parent or guardian signing for him because he was under 21 at that time.

The father was due appear in court on Saturday for a bond hearing. If convicted, he would likely face a prison term of up to three years, Rinehart said.
The situation was reminiscent of involuntary manslaughter charges brought against the parents of a teenager who shot four classmates to death at a Detroit-area high school last year. Prosecutors said the couple bought their son a gun despite signs he was disturbed. The parents have pleaded not guilty.

The Michigan case appeared to mark the first instance in which the parents of a teenage school shooter were prosecuted in connection with crimes allegedly committed by their child.

In the Illinois case, questions were also raised about how that state’s comparatively strict gun laws, including the FOID licensing requirements, failed to prevent the July Fourth massacre.

Highland Park police filed a “clear and present danger” report with state police regarding the younger Crimo on the day of the September 2019 call to his home over the alleged threat he made against relatives.

But a state police officer later disregarded that report as based on “second-hand” information, so it was not a factor when the Crimo FOID application was later reviewed by state police.

Related Galleries:

Robert E. Crimo III’s mother Denise Pesina and father Robert Crimo Jr. attend a hearing for their son in Lake County court, in Waukegan, Illinois, U.S., August 3, 2022. Nam Y. Huh/Pool via REUTERS

Robert E. Crimo III listens to Judge Victoria A. Rossetti during a hearing in Lake County court, in Waukegan, Illinois, U.S., August 3, 2022. Nam Y. Huh/Pool via REUTERS

Robert E. Crimo III walks into the courtroom during a hearing on Highland Park shooting in Lake County court, in Waukegan, Illinois, U.S., August 3, 2022. Nam Y. Huh/Pool via REUTERS
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John Carmack, the consulting CTO for Meta’s virtual-reality efforts, is leaving. ‘I wearied of the fight’

john carmackJohn Carmack arrives for The British Academy Games Awards 2016 at Tobacco Dock on April 7, 2016 in London, England.

Jeff Spicer/Getty Images

  • Carmack joined Oculus in 2013 as CTO, prior to its acquisition by Facebook.
  • He is a well known and regarded game designer, who moved to a new consulting role at Oculus in 2019.
  • Often openly critical of Facebook’s progress in AR/VR, Carmack’s exit note urged people to “give a damn.”

John Carmack, the consulting CTO for Meta‘s virtual-reality efforts, is leaving, according to two people familiar with the company.

His exit came on Friday, the people said. Carmack, who has been openly critical of Meta’s advancements in AR and VR, core to its metaverse ambitions, posted to the company’s internal Workplace forum about his decision to leave.

“We built something pretty close to the right thing,” Carmack said in the note, seen by Insider. “The issue is our efficiency.”

Overall, Carmack said he simply “wearied of the fight” with Meta, formerly known as Facebook, which acquired Oculus in 2014. Despite being one of the best known and more popular VR headsets on the market, Meta changed the name of the brand last year to Meta Quest. Oculus was founded by Palmer Luckey in 2012 with Carmack coming on as its first CTO in 2013.

“I have my own startup to run, but the fight is still winnable!” Carmack added in his note. “Maybe it is actually possible to get there by just plowing ahead with current practices, but there is plenty of room for improvement. Make better decisions and fill your products with ‘Give a Damn!'”

A spokesperson for Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Carmack founded earlier this year Keen Technologies focused on the development of AI technologies. 

Carmack is one of the most respected names in video games, thanks in large part to his role in co-creating the pioneering “Doom” and “Quake” franchises. That cachet has helped make Carmack one of Meta’s most important ambassadors in selling its vision for virtual and augmented reality to the gamers who are also one of its core demographics.

During Meta’s developer conference in October, Carmack hosted a solo hour-long talk about the company’s Oculus or Quest headset. He admitted he had many things to be “grumpy” about, like the company’s rate of progress on technological advancements and the basic functionality of the headsets. He said it was frustrating to hear from people inside Meta who found the Quest 2 headsets so unreliable that they refused to use them for work or demo them for people outside the company.

“It pains me to hear people say that they don’t even get their headset out to show off at the company because they know it’s going to be a mess of charging and updating before they can make it do something cool,” Carmack said at the time. “VR should be a delight to demo for your friends.”

Carmack has said that Meta has made some improvements. On Friday, he wrote “VR can bring value to most of the people in the world, and no one is better positioned to do it than Meta.”

Earlier this year, Carmack acknowledged that the $100 price increase for the Quest headset happened because the company’s free metaverse apps, which Meta makes little revenue from on in-app purchases, were more popular than its premium games.

Are you a Meta employee or someone else with insight to share? Got a tip? Contact Kali Hays at khays@insider.com or through secure messaging app Signal at 949-280-0267. Reach out using a non-work device. Twitter DM at @hayskali.

Contact Ashley Stewart via email (astewart@insider.com) or send a secure message from a nonwork device via Signal (+1-425-344-8242).

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Poetic Justice

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Sometimes there is poetic justice. But only sometimes. This article is about one of these times. Things are bad for Donald Trump — very, very bad. The orange menace is completely isolated, and his popularity has plummeted wildly.

And there is a new Utah poll out about possible republican presidential nominees in 2024. It does not contain good news for his royal narcissist. Deseret News-Hinckley did this poll. The poll showed Ron DeSantis was in the lead. That isn’t a huge surprise. He came in first with Utah respondents at 24.2 percent.

It is who came in second that is the shocker. It is Liz Cheney. She bested Trump, coming in second with Utah voters at 16.4 percent Take that in. Liz Cheney — the enemy of Donald Trump, the one he set out to destroy (and failed) is more popular with Utah voters than Trump is.


Astonishing. Poetic justice. Trump placed third with a measly 14.6 percent. I would not want to be at Mar-a-Lago when Trump hears about THIS. Trump is now so unpopular, so toxic, so very hated that he is polling less than his nemesis — the woman who willingly gave up her job to “get” Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is over and finished and everyone knows it. Poetic Justice. Sometimes there is poetic justice. This is one such time.

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Russia“s war on Ukraine latest news: Russian troops pull back near Kherson

2022-12-01T14:49:31Z

Fears that the Ukraine war could spill over its borders and escalate into a broader conflict eased on Wednesday, as NATO and Poland said it seemed likely a missile that struck a Polish village was a stray from Ukraine. Kyiv, which has blamed Russia, demanded access to the site. Lucy Fielder has more.

Ukraine’s military said Russia had pulled some troops from towns on the opposite bank of the Dnipro River from Kherson city, the first official Ukrainian report of a Russian withdrawal on what is now the main front line in the south..

* Spain has stepped up security at public and diplomatic buildings after a spate of letter bombs, including one sent to Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and another to the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid, where an official suffered minor injuries.

* Air raid alerts were issued across all of Ukraine following warnings by Ukrainian officials that Russia was preparing a new wave of missile and drone strikes. “An overall air raid alert is in place in Ukraine. Go to shelters,” country’s border service wrote on Telegram messaging app.

* Ukraine’s military said it had found fragments of Russian-fired nuclear-capable missiles with dud warheads in west Ukraine, and that their apparent purpose was to distract air defences.

* The recently liberated Ukrainian city of Kherson has lost its power supply after heavy shelling by Russian forces, the regional governor said.

* European Union governments tentatively agreed on a $60 a barrel price cap on Russian seaborne oil, with an adjustment mechanism to keep the cap at 5% below the market price, an EU diplomat said.

* Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on that big problems had accumulated in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), accusing the West of spurning the chance to make it a real bridge with Russia after the Cold War.

* Lavrov said that discussions with Washington about potential prisoner exchanges were being conducted by the two countries’ intelligence services, and that he hoped they would be successful.

* The European Union needs patience as it sanctions Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, as most measures will only have an impact in the medium and long term, Lithuania’s prime minister said in an interview at  the  Reuters NEXT conference.

* Switzerland has frozen financial assets worth 7.5 billion Swiss francs ($7.94 billion) as of Nov. 25 under sanctions against Russians to punish Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) said.

* Russia said the German parliament’s move to recognise the 1932-33 famine in Ukraine as a Soviet-imposed genocide was an anti-Russian provocation and an attempt by Germany to whitewash its Nazi past.

* Ukraine sacked a top engineer at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, accusing him of collaborating with Russian forces, and urged other Ukrainian staff at the plant to remain loyal to Kyiv.

* Russia must withdraw its heavy weapons and military personnel from the Zaporizhzhia plant if the U.N. atomic watchdog’s efforts to create a protection zone are to succeed, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said.

* In a grim sign of the energy crisis caused by Russian attacks on Ukraine’s electricity grid, nine people have been killed in fires over the past 24 hours as Ukrainians resorted to emergency generators, candles and gas cylinders in violation of safety rules to try to heat their homes after power outages.

* “Remember one thing – the Russians are afraid. And they are very cold and no one will help them, because they do not have popular support,” – Andriy Yermak, chief of Ukrainian presidential staff.

Related Galleries:

Ukrainian servicemen fire a mortar on a front line, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, in Donetsk region, Ukraine, in this handout image released November 20, 2022. Iryna Rybakova/Press Service of the 93rd Independent Kholodnyi Yar Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces/Handout via REUTERS

A view shows the city without electricity after critical civil infrastructure was hit by Russian missile attacks, amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine November 23, 2022. REUTERS/Vladyslav Sodel/File Photo

Rescuers work at a site of a residential building destroyed by a Russian missile attack, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, in the town of Vyshhorod, near Kyiv, Ukraine, November 23, 2022. REUTERS/Vladyslav Musiienko

Toys are placed near the cross in memory of victims of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 plane crash in the village of Rozsypne in Donetsk region, Ukraine March 9, 2020. REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speaks during a news conference at the Alliance’s headquarters in Brussels, Belgium November 25, 2022. REUTERS/Johanna Geron
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US court rejects maintaining COVID-19 asylum restrictions

REYNOSA, Mexico (AP) — An appeals court on Friday rejected efforts by conservative states to maintain Trump-era asylum restrictions on immigrants seeking asylum.

With the limits set to expire next week, thousands of migrants packed shelters on Mexico’s border. The ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit means the restrictions remained on track to expire Wednesday, unless further appeals are filed. A final decision could come down to the wire.

Republican-led states were pushing to keep the asylum restrictions that former President Donald Trump put in place at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. Migrants have been denied rights to seek asylum under U.S. and international law 2.5 million times since March 2020 on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19. The public-health rule known as Title 42 has left some migrants biding time in Mexico.

Advocates for immigrants had argued that the U.S. was abandoning its longstanding history and commitments to offer refuge to people around the world fleeing persecution, and sued to end the use of Title 42. They’ve also argued the restrictions were a pretext by Trump for restricting migration, and in any case, vaccines and other treatments make that argument outdated.

A judge last month sided with them and set Dec. 21 as the deadline for the federal government to end the practice.

Ahead of that, illegal border crossings of single adults dipped in November, according to a Justice Department court filing released Friday, though it gave no explanation for why. It also did not account for families traveling with young children and children traveling alone.

Border cities, most notably El Paso, Texas, are facing a daily influx of migrants that the Biden administration expects to grow if asylum restrictions are lifted.

Tijuana, the largest Mexican border city, has an estimated 5,000 people in more than 30 shelters, Enrique Lucero, the city’s director of migrant affairs said this week.

In Reynosa, Mexico, near McAllen, Texas, nearly 300 migrants — mostly families — crammed into the Casa del Migrante, sleeping on bunk beds and even on the floor.

Rose, a 32-year-old from Haiti, has been in the shelter for three weeks with her daughter and 1-year-old son. Rose, who did not provide her last name because she fears it could jeopardize her safety and her attempts to seek asylum, said she learned on her journey of possible changes to U.S. policies. She said she was happy to wait a little longer in Mexico for the lifting of restrictions that were enacted at the outset of the pandemic and that have become a cornerstone of U.S. border enforcement.

“We’re very scared, because the Haitians are deported,” said Rose, who is worried any mistakes in trying to get her family to the U.S. could get her sent back to Haiti.

Inside Senda de Vida 2, a Reynosa shelter opened by an evangelical Christian pastor when his first one reached capacity, about 3,000 migrants are living in tents pitched on concrete slabs and rough gravel. Flies swarm everywhere under a hot sun beating down even in mid-December.

For the many fleeing violence in Haiti, Venezuela and elsewhere, such shelters offer at least some safety from the cartels that control passage through the Rio Grande and prey on migrants.

In McAllen, about 100 migrants who avoided asylum restrictions rested on floor mats Thursday in a large hall run by Catholic Charities, waiting for transportation to families and friends across the United States.

Gloria, a 22-year-old from Honduras who is eight months pregnant with her first child, held onto a printed sheet that read: “Please help me. I do not speak English.” Gloria also did not want her last name used out of fears for her safety. She expressed concerns about navigating the airport alone and making it to Florida, where she has a family acquaintance.

Andrea Rudnik, co-founder of an all-volunteer migrant welcome association in Brownsville, Texas, across the border from Matamoros, Mexico, was worried about having enough winter coats for migrants coming from warmer climates.

“We don’t have enough supplies,” she said Friday, noting that donations to Team Brownsville are down.

Title 42, which is part of a 1944 public health law, applies to all nationalities but has fallen unevenly on those whom Mexico agrees to take back — Guatemalans, Hondurans, El Salvadorans and, more recently, Venezuelans, in addition to Mexicans.

According to the Justice Department’s Friday court filing, Border Patrol agents stopped single adults 143,903 times along the Mexican border in November, down 9% from 158,639 times in October and the lowest level since August. Nicaraguans became the second-largest nationality at the border among single adults after Mexicans, surpassing Cubans.

Venezuelan single adults were stopped 3,513 times by Border Patrol agents in November, plunging from 14,697 a month earlier, demonstrating the impact of Mexico’s decision on Oct. 12 to accept migrants from the South American country who are expelled from the U.S.

Mexican single adults were stopped 43,504 times, down from 56,088 times in October, more than any other nationality. Nicaraguan adults were stopped 27,369 times, up from 16,497. Cuban adults were stopped 24,690 times, up from 20,744.

In a related development, a federal judge in Amarillo, Texas, ruled Thursday that the Biden administration wrongly ended a Trump-era policy to make asylum-seekers wait in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration court. The ruling had no immediate impact but could prove a longer-term setback for the White House.

___

Santana reported from Washington. Associated Press reporters Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Paul J. Weber in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.

___

This version corrects November illegal crossings to single adults only, not all migrants.

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2 climate activists got kicked out of the world’s biggest Earth-science conference for protesting, and one says the association is ‘silencing scientists’

peter kalmus and rose abramoff stand on a stage in front of a screen with a bannerPeter Kalmus (left) and Rose Abramoff (right) unfurled a banner onstage during a lunchtime plenary at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

Courtesy of Rose Abramoff

  • Two climate scientists were kicked out of a major science conference in Chicago on Thursday.
  • Peter Kalmus and Rose Abramoff went onstage to urge other researchers to take climate action.
  • They told Insider the American Geophysical Union told them they’d be arrested if they returned.

CHICAGO, Illinois — Two climate scientists say they were kicked out of the world’s biggest meeting of the Earth and space sciences on Thursday.

NASA climate scientist Peter Kalmus and ecologist Rose Abramoff each told Insider they acted on their own behalf when they climbed onstage during a plenary event at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, an association of 60,000 advocates and professionals in the Earth and space sciences.

All week at the meeting, scientists had been presenting their latest research on the ways human activities are changing the planet, leading to increasing weather extremes and ecosystem collapse.

Abramoff and Kalmus see these catastrophes unfolding in their own research, and they’ve both been arrested multiple times this year as part of climate protests. They wanted to galvanize other scientists to act on their own research, too.

“If the people who know the most about Earth breakdown are still acting like everything’s fine, then of course everyone else is going to keep acting like everything’s fine,” Kalmus told Insider.

Onstage, Kalmus and Abramoff unfurled a banner that read, “out of the lab and into the streets,” and called for their colleagues to start taking climate action.

They told Insider they planned ahead of time to do this during the brief pause between introductory remarks and the appearance of the first speaker, and had prepared about 20 seconds of remarks.

They didn’t know they’d be competing with a voiceover that automatically began playing over the sound system.

‘Our science is showing that the planet is dying’

—Peter Kalmus (@ClimateHuman) December 16, 2022

“Our science is showing that the planet is dying. It’s terrifying. Everything is at risk. As scientists, we have tremendous leverage, but we need to use it. We can wake everybody up,” Kalmus yelled over a recording introducing the first speaker.

“Please, please, please find a way to take action,” Abramoff called out, as a woman standing below them grabbed the banner from her, according to video footage from the event.

AGU staff escorted the pair offstage as audience members applauded and cheered.

Kalmus and Abramoff said two staff members then took their conference badges from them and told them to leave.

Abramoff said she received a phone call later, in which AGU staff informed her that if she or Kalmus returned to the fall meeting, they would be arrested, and that AGU was contacting their employers to complain.

“I interpreted that as basically a threat — which I don’t know if it was a hollow threat or not — to try and get us fired,” Abramoff told Insider.

rose abramoff in winter coat stands beside chicago riverRose Abramoff, seen here on the last day of the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting, which she said she’s now barred from attending.

Morgan McFall-Johnsen/Insider

A spokesperson for AGU sent Insider the following statement via email:

“Our main plenary at the AGU Meeting Thursday on the subject of Art and Science was disrupted just as our first speaker began her presentation. AGU staff and convention center security was able to quickly escort the protesters off stage.

“AGU Fall Meeting year after year provides a wide-open space for debate and discussion around all issues in Earth and space science. But we also need to ensure there is safety for all attendees. AGU Meetings and Events Code of Conduct requires attendees to treat everyone with respect and this includes respecting presenters’ time to speak and audiences’ time to listen.”

portrait of Peter KalmusPeter Kalmus is a climate scientist who’s deliberately gotten himself arrested in calls for action.

Rachel Jessen/Insider

Abramoff accused AGU of ‘silencing scientists’

Abramoff said the reaction was “much harsher” than she expected.

“I think it doesn’t reflect well on the American Geophysical Union, that they’re silencing scientists for trying to essentially sound the alarm about what I think most people agree is a pretty severe crisis,” Abramoff said, adding that this would not reflect well on AGU “through the long lens of history.”

Sessions at the fall meeting included a dire report card on the state of the Arctic; projections of future extreme heat, drought, and floods; research on record-breaking wildfire seasons; investigations into the side effects of injecting sulfur into the atmosphere to cool the planet; and discussions on how to feed the global population as extreme weather causes major crops to fail.

“I love the AGU fall meeting, and I’m really grateful that the AGU exists,” Kalmus said.

But at the same time, he added, “I don’t feel like it’s responding with any appropriate urgency to the content of the science that it helps to foster.”

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Mexican president condemns attempt on prominent journalist“s life

2022-12-17T01:22:38Z

Mexico’s president condemned on Friday an apparent assassination attempt on a prominent news anchor he has often clashed with, prompting calls for better security for media workers as journalist slayings hit record levels in the country.

Television and radio presenter Ciro Gomez Leyva said two unidentified people on a motorcycle shot at him when he was in his car some 200 meters (660 feet) from his home on Thursday night.

He shared images of bullet impacts on the car on Twitter, saying he survived because of the vehicle’s armor. Gomez was back on the air on his morning radio show on Friday.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has repeatedly lambasted Gomez and other journalists critical of his policies, but opened his daily morning conference by denouncing the attack.

“He’s a journalist, a human being, but he’s also a leader of public opinion. Hurting a figure like Ciro creates a lot of political instability,” Lopez Obrador said.

On Wednesday, Gomez was singled out for criticism during a regular section of a news conference dedicated to identifying what Lopez Obrador calls the media’s “lies of the week.”

“Imagine if you just listened to Ciro or Loret de Mola or Sarmiento,” Lopez Obrador said, naming Gomez and other leading journalists. “It’s even bad for your health, I mean if you listen to them a lot, you could even develop a brain tumor.”

The assassination attempt underscored “even in Mexico City, journalists are not safe,” said Jan-Albert Hootsen, Mexico representative of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar condemned the attack.

“Journalist security in Mexico must be guaranteed, which is of paramount importance to fully exercise democracy and freedom of expression,” Salazar wrote on Twitter.

Eleven journalists were killed in 2022 in Mexico, making it the deadliest country for the profession, according to Reporters Without Borders. Other groups have documented even more murders.

Tony Payan, director of the Center for the United States and Mexico at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, urged Lopez Obrador to use the “opportunity to acknowledge his own responsibility given his constant attacks on the press and specific journalists.”

Related Galleries:

Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador speaks during a news conference where he condemned an apparent assassination attempt on a prominent news anchor and critic of the president, at National Palace in Mexico City, Mexico, December 16, 2022. REUTERS/Mexico’s Presidency/Handout via REUTERS

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador gestures as he speaks after attending a march with supporters to mark his fourth year in office, in Mexico City, Mexico November 27, 2022. REUTERS/Toya Sarno Jordan
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Want to email your doctor? You may be charged for that

WASHINGTON (AP) — The next time you message your doctor to ask about a pesky cough or an itchy rash, you may want to check your bank account first — you could get a bill for the question.

Hospital systems around the country are rolling out fees for some messages that patients send to physicians, who they say are spending an increasing amount of time poring over online queries, some so complex that they require the level of medical expertise normally dispensed during an office visit.

Patient advocates, however, worry these new fees may deter people from reaching out to their doctor and that they add another layer of complexity to the U.S. health care system’s already opaque billing process.

“This is a barrier that denies access and will result in hesitancy or fear to communicate and potentially harm patients with lower quality of care and outcomes at a much higher cost,” said Cynthia Fisher, the founder of Patient Rights Advocate, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit that pushes for hospital price transparency.

The explosion of telehealth over the last three years — driven by the COVID-19 outbreak and relaxed federal regulations for online care — prompted many doctors to adopt more robust telecommunication with their patients. Consultations that once happened in an office were converted to computer or smart phone visits. And health care systems invited patients to use new online portals to message their doctors with a question at any time, American Medical Association president Jack Resneck Jr. told The Associated Press.

“When people figured out this is cool and could improve care, you saw hospitals and practice groups saying to patients, welcome to your portal … you can ping your physician with questions if you want,” Resneck said. “We found ourselves as physicians getting dozens and dozens of these a day and not having time built in to do that work.”

The charges vary for each patient and hospital system, with messages costing as little as $3 for Medicare patients to as much $160 for the uninsured. In some cases, the final bill depends on how much time the doctor spends responding.

Health systems that have introduced these new policies, many in recent months, say they automatically alert patients that they may be charged when they message their doctor through online portals, such as MyChart, an online system that many organizations now use for scheduling appointments or releasing test results to patients.

Under new billing rules devised during the pandemic, doctors are permitted to bill Medicare for as little as 5 minutes of time spent on an online message in a seven-day period, according to the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare.

Doctors need to be paid for the time they spend doling out expert medical advice — even over messages, said University of Chicago health economist Katherine Baicker. But it’s also important that hospital systems are transparent about what patients can expect to pay as they roll out these new charges, she added.

“Co-pays do not accomplish anything when they are not clear for patients ahead of time,” Baicker said.

Physicians at University of California San Francisco Health field roughly 900,000 email threads — 3 million total messages — in a year, according to Jess Berthold, a spokesperson for the system.

The hospital announced in November 2021 it would start charging for some of those messages, after noting a spike during the pandemic. During a year’s time, 1.4% of email threads, or about 13,000, have resulted in a bill.

Only certain messages trigger a charge. Patients won’t be charged, for example, for prescription refills, scheduling an appointment, asking a follow-up question about an office visit within the last seven days, or if their doctor advises they should schedule a visit in response.

What types of messages will prompt a bill? Sending your doctor a picture of a new rash, asking for a form to be filled out or requesting a change in medication.

Navigating how much you might end up owing can be trickier.

At UCSF, patients on Medicaid who message their doctor won’t have any out-of-pocket costs, and those on traditional Medicare may have to pay $3 to $6. Patients on private insurance will be billed a co-pay — typically about $20 — as will patients on Medicare Advantage, the private insurance plans for Medicare.

Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, the latest major hospital system to announce charges for online messages, rolled out similar guidelines late last month, with messages costing as much as $50 for those on private insurance. And at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, which charges $35 for some messages, fewer than 1% of those correspondences resulted in a bill, spokesman Christopher King said.

All of those systems use the online portal MyChart. Epic, the privately owned software company that runs MyChart, does not track which health systems charge patients for messages, spokeswoman Barb Herandez said in an email. The company did not answer questions about whether it receives a share of the fees from those charges.

Giving patients advice online can save a patient time or money in the long run, hospital systems argue. If the doctor can answer a patient’s question over email, the patient can cut out wait times for an appointment and avoid taking time off work to go to the doctor’s office.

Plus, some patients simply prefer the convenience of getting a quick answer from the doctor on an app, Berthold of UCSF added.

“If patients can have access to a doctor right when questions or concerns arise, they can seek care more quickly and be treated more quickly,” Berthold said.

But Fisher argues it could have the opposite effect with patients thinking twice before they message a doctor. Instead, some people may turn to free, unreliable advice online.

“It becomes a slippery slope, and that slippery slope is not in favor of the patient,” she said.

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Emboldened Right-Wing Activists Spread Lies About Katie Porter on Twitter

Lies about Rep. Katie Porter reached millions of Twitter users this week, as the California Democrat’s remarks about how the platform has been used to falsely label LGBTQ+ people as pedophiles were misleadingly edited and captioned in tweets by influential right-wing activists.

The deceptive clips of Porter’s remarks, accompanied by false claims that she had condoned pedophilia, were viewed more than 2.2 million times on Twitter after being shared by right-wing activist accounts, including Chaya Raichik’s LibsofTikTok and Jaimee Michell’s GaysAgainstGroomers.

Those video clips were created by Porter’s political enemies, who made it seem as if Porter, at a Congressional oversight hearing on Wednesday, had argued that pedophilia was not a crime but an identity. 

Transcripts and video of Porter’s complete remarks make it clear that she was saying something entirely different — namely, that right-wing activists have inspired hatred of LGBTQ+ Americans in tweets falsely accusing them of being pedophiles, or so-called “groomers.”

A spokesperson for Porter also told the fact-checking service VERIFY, which works with local news stations in 29 states, that the representative “did not say that pedophilia is not a crime.”

In an irony that perfectly encapsulates the impossibility of reasoned discourse with far-right activists willing to lie, the video used to smear Porter was taken from her discussion of a report documenting how activist accounts like LibsofTikTok and GaysAgainstGroomers use Twitter to falsely accuse LGBTQ+ liberals of pedophilia. The report was produced by the LGBTQ+ civil rights organization the Human Rights Campaign.

At the hearing, Porter prefaced a question for Kelley Robinson, the HRC president, by saying: “Your organization recently released a report analyzing the 500 most viewed, most influential tweets that identified LGBTQ+ people as so-called ‘groomers.’ The ‘groomer’ narrative is an age-old lie to position LGBTQ+ people as a threat to kids. And what it does is deny them access to public spaces, it stokes fear, and can even stoke violence.”

Porter then asked Robinson if Twitter’s hateful conduct policy allows users to call LGBTQ+ people “groomers” on the platform.

After Robinson explained that those slurs are used in violation of Twitter’s poorly enforced community guidelines, she added that when people baselessly use words like “groomers” and “pedophiles” to describe LGBTQ+ people, “it is dangerous, and it’s got one purpose: It is to dehumanize us, and make us feel like we are not a part of this American society, and it has real-life consequences.”

Porter responded by saying that she agreed with Robinson that the use of such terms to smear members of LGBTQ+ communities whose politics differ from the far-right activists was intended to marginalize them.

“I think you’re absolutely right,” Porter said. “And it’s not, you know, this allegation of ‘groomer’ and of ‘pedophile,’ it is alleging that a person is criminal somehow, and engaged in criminal acts, merely because of their identity, their sexual orientation, their gender identity. So this is clearly prohibited, under Twitter’s content, yet you found hundreds of these posts on the platform.”

In addition to Raichik and Michell, whose anti-LGBTQ+ activism has previously been amplified by America’s most-watched cable news host, Tucker Carlson, misleading clips of Porter were also shared by Greg Price, a former Republican operative and Daily Caller social media editor, Sebastian Gorka, who was fired by the Trump White House, and Ian Miles Cheong, a far-right Malaysian blogger Elon Musk frequently replies to and agrees with on Twitter.

While the tweets from Cheong and Raichik — who falsely asserted that “Rep Katie Porter (D) says pedophilia isn’t a crime- it’s an identity” – were eventually flagged as misleading by Twitter users, the 1.5 million people who follow Michell, Price or Gorka encountered no such warning.

Although he did not share the video, Rep. Ronny Jackson, a Texas Republican, also lied about what Porter said on Twitter. “Katie Porter just said that pedophilia isn’t a crime, she said it’s an ‘identity,’” Jackson claimed, falsely. “The sad thing is that this woman isn’t the only VILE person pushing for pedophilia normalization. This is what progressives believe!”

While the HRC report Porter highlighted showed that right-wing activists had violated Twitter’s hateful conduct policy repeatedly before Musk bought the platform, the previous ownership team did make some attempt to rein in Raichik, who was temporarily suspended several times.

Since Musk took control, however, “retweets of right-wing figures’ tweets that included the anti-LGBTQ ‘groomer’ slur increased substantially, as did mentions of right-wing figures in tweets containing the slur,” according to new data from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and Media Matters, a watchdog group that monitors right-wing misinformation.

Michell’s GaysAgainstGroomers account, the study found, “saw an increase of nearly 300% for retweets of tweets with the slur,” comparing the two months before and after Musk took control of the platform. Raichik’s LibsofTikTok “saw more than a 600% increase in its mentions,” over the same period for tweets using “groomer” slurs.

The post Emboldened Right-Wing Activists Spread Lies About Katie Porter on Twitter appeared first on The Intercept.

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