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Republican Representative Eric Burlison of Missouri has introduced a new bill, the Life at Conception Act, which proposes a federal ban on abortion. The full text of the bill is not yet available, but a press release this week from his office notes, This landmark legislation declares that unborn children are ‘persons’ under the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution, allowing their right to life to be legally recognized and protected. At a time when Republicans are seeking to narrow the definition of who is a citizen under the 14th Amendment by eliminating birthright citizenship, they are also using the 14th Amendment to extend personhood to fetusesan indication of who is and isn’t considered a person with rights according to GOP philosophy. I am proud to introduce the Life at Conception Act, which reaffirms the original intent of the 14th Amendment by declaring that the term person includes all human beings from the moment of conception . . . It is a scientific fact that life begins at conception, Burlinson wrote on his Facebook page. Personhood for a fetus, however, may come at the cost of personhood for a mother. Abortion bans have been linked with delays in medical treatment for women who are miscarrying, deaths in cases of risky pregnancies, as well as the increased criminalization of pregnant women. Even in cases where a mothers life is not at stake, abortion bans can impact the quality of medical carefor both women and the communities they live in. According to a 2023 study, states with abortion bans are seeing fewer applications from medical students for residency programs, particularly OB/GYN residency programs. Applications for OB/GYN residencies dropped by 6.7% in states with abortion bans but increased by 0.4% in states without restrictions. In a 2024 study, 11% of oby-gyns said they left states with abortion bans, while their colleagues who stayed described struggling with larger workloads and to hire replacements. Burlison bill currently has 68 cosponsors. It would need a majority of votes to pass (218 of 435) and move to the Senate. If it were to move to the Senate, it would need 51 votes out of 100 to pass. However, if the bill got filibustered, it would need 60 out of 100 votes to pass. Currently, Republicans hold 53 out of 100 votes in the Senate.
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E-Commerce
President Donald Trump may want lower interest rates, but the Federal Reserve will almost certainly keep its benchmark interest rate unchanged at its two-day policy meeting that ends Wednesday.It is likely to be a quiet start to an eventful year for the central bank. Trump said last week in Davos, Switzerland, that he would bring down energy prices, then “demand” that the Fed lower borrowing costs.Later, when asked by reporters if he expected the Fed to listen to him, he said, “yes.” Presidents in recent decades have avoided publicly pressuring the Fed out of deference to its political independence.Outside of a U.S. President bending norms, the Fed also faces challenges in achieving its economic objectives. Inflation remains above its 2% target: Its preferred measure is at 2.4%, though core pricesconsidered a better gauge of where inflation is headedrose 2.8% in November from a year ago.Fed officials, led by Chair Jerome Powell, want to thread a moving needle: By keeping borrowing costs higher, the Fed hopes to slow borrowing and spending enough to reduce inflation, but without causing a painful recession.Powell said in December that the central bank has entered a “new phase,” in which it expects to move more deliberately after cutting its key rate to 4.3%, from 5.3% in the final three meetings of 2024. In December, Fed officials signaled they may reduce their rate just twice more this year. Goldman Sachs economists believes those cuts won’t happen until June and December.A cut in March is still possible, though financial markets’ futures pricing puts the odds of that happening at just one-third.As a result, American households and businesses are unlikely to see much relief from high borrowing costs anytime soon. The average rate on a 30-year mortgage slipped to just below 7% last week after rising for five straight weeks. The costs of borrowing money have remained high economy-wide even after the Fed reduced its benchmark rate.That is because investors expect healthy economic growth and stubborn inflation will forestall future rate cuts. They recently bid up the 10-year Treasury above 4.80%, its highest level since 2023.Another reason for caution among Fed policymakers this year is that they will want to evaluate any changes in economic policy by the Trump administration. Trump has said he could slap tariffs of 25% on imports from Canada and Mexico as early as February 1. During his presidential campaign he threatened to impose taxes on all imports.The Trump administration has also said it will carry out mass deportations of migrants, which could push up inflation by reducing the economy’s ability to produce goods and services. At the same time, some economists say Trump’s promises to deregulate the economy could lower prices over time.When Trump imposed tariffs on a limited number of imports in 2018 and 2019, Fed economists expected the biggest impact to fall on economic growth, with the inflationary impact being relatively minor. As a result, when growth did slow, the Fed ended up cutting its key rate in 2019, rather than raising it to fight off any inflationary impact.On Wednesday, Fed officials could also change the statement that they release after each meeting to upgrade their assessment of the labor market, a signal that rate cuts may be delayed.In December, the statement included a mildly pessimistic take: “Labor market conditions have generally eased, and the unemployment rate has moved up but remains low.” In the summer and fall, employers slowed their hiring. The rise in the unemployment rate had unnerved Fed officials and was a big reason they reduced their key rate by an unusually large half-percentage point in September.Earlier this month, Fed governor Chris Waller cited weaker hiring as evidence that the Fed’s key rate is “restrictive,” meaning it is acting as a brake on the economy and should bring down inflation over time. If rates are restrictive, that means the Fed would have more room to cut them if inflation were to decline further.Yet this month, just a few days after Waller’s remarks, the December jobs report showed that hiring accelerated and the unemployment rate slipped to a low 4.1% from 4.2%.The healthier employment numbers suggested that hiring has at least levelled off. If it stays as strong as last month, the improved job gains would suggest the Fed’s rate isn’t restrictive at all, and few, if any, rate cuts are needed. Christopher Rugaber, AP Economics Writer
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E-Commerce
When disaster strikes, government emergency alert systems offer a simple promise: Residents will get information about nearby dangers and instructions to help them stay safe.As the deadly L.A. wildfires and other major emergencies have shown, alerts rely on a complicated chain of communication between first responders, government administrators, third-party companies, and the public.Sometimes, the chain breaks.After the wind-driven wildfires broke out in Southern California on January 7, evacuation orders for some neighborhoodsincluding the part of Altadena where the majority of deaths occurredcame long after houses were reported on fire. On Tuesday, Los Angeles County officials approved an outside review of how alerts functioned in the Eaton Fire and Palisades Fire in response to residents’ demands. City officials declined to answer AP’s questions about a lag in some Palisades Fire alerts, though Fire Capt. Branden Silverman said responding to a fire and determining evacuation needs can take some time.It’s an increasingly common issue: After-action reports and investigations revealed issues with alert systems in other California blazes: in the 2017 Tubbs Fire, which killed 22 people in Santa Rosa; the 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 85 people in Paradise; the Woolsey fire, which started the same day and killed three in Malibu; as well as in Colorado’s 2021 Marshall Fire, which destroyed more than 1,000 homes outside Denver; and in Hawaii’s 2023 Lahaina Fire, which decimated that historic town and killed 102.It could take months to know why some evacuation orders lagged in the Los Angeles fires.Several residents who lost homes in the Eaton Fire told the Associated Press they received no notifications about their neighborhoods. For others, the first warning was an urgent text message in the middle of the night.Susan Lee Streets, who signed up for the alert app Nixle, did not get any alerts specific to her west Altadena neighborhood before she and her family left of their own accord around 10 p.m. after losing power and cell reception.“If we had even been informed that houses and other structures were burning down, we would have known better what was happening,” she said. “We almost went to sleep that night with two kids and a dog and two cats in the house.”Only after 3 a.m. did an alert hit her phone. Destroyed along with the house are the Christmas ornaments she saved for her children, and countless other family keepsakes.“We lost everything, everything,” Streets said, breaking into tears.Tricia Wachtendorf, director of the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware, said alerts have to be specific and clear. Research has shown that for them to be effective, people have to hear, understand, believe, personalize, and confirm them before they react.“Just because you send the message at 3 a.m. doesn’t mean someone is hearing it,” Wachtendorf said.The hours between midnight and 3:30 a.m. appear to have been particularly challenging for first responders in Los Angeles County, based on an AP review of scanner traffic recordings and data from CalFire, the state’s chief fire agency; the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA; and the Watch Duty app.Resources were stretched thin, and hurricane-force winds had grounded air support, limiting authorities’ ability to get a top-down perspective on the flames.Calls reporting burning homes were flooding in as embers blew onto roofs and yards. During one half-hour period, 17 new addresses were relayed to firefighters, even as some crews ran low on fuel.By 12:07 a.m., CalFire records show, dozens of neighborhoods had been ordered to evacuate because of the Eaton Fire, all of them east of Altadena’s North Lake Avenue. None of the neighborhoods to the westwhere all of the 17 confirmed fatalities occurred, as first reported by the Los Angeles Timeshad received evacuation warnings or orders, despite house fires being reported there more than an hour earlier.Over the next three hours, fire crews would go from begging for resources on the eastern flank of the blaze to radioing the command center to make sure it knew the fire was spreading west along the foothills near Sunset Ridge.Just before 3:30 a.m., evacuation orders expanded significantly, with residents in 12 areas of Altadena and elsewhere told to “leave now.”Jodi and Jeff Moreno first heard about the fire from a neighborhood app. But the first official warning only came around 2:30 a.m., when authorities yelled through a bullhorn to evacuate. The couple grabbed their three daughters, their dog, and some important papers, and fled.There were no text alerts until after they were gone.“On the neighborhood apps, some people were going, some people were staying. It was a wide variety of responses. We were navigating it on our own,” Jodi Moreno said. “It’s hard for us to gauge where exactly is that fire, where are the embers blowing. . . . Those are things I would rely on people who are monitoring it” for information.Desperate for more information, both the Morenos and Streets downloaded the Watch Duty app, which maps evacuation zones and consolidates information from multiple sources into a single stream. Launched in 2021 and today covering 22 states, it became a lifeline for them.“The ideal system for warning people is informing them, right?” said Nick Russell, vice president for operations at Watch Duty.“There’s certainly diligence necessary in the execution of official evacuation warning and orders or shelter in place, whatever the condition might be,” he said. “But telling people why that discussion is taking place between law enforcement and fire is important. And that’s what we’re doing.”The process of issuing evacuation notices starts with firefighters or other personnel on the ground recommending action, Russell said. It then moves up the chain of command to sheriffs, who ultimately put out any order.During major emergencies that communication can be hampered by issues such as limited radio connectivity, wind noise, or other technical problems. Incident command stations may have trouble synthesizing the large amounts of information they are getting from different agencies, something that is critical for understanding the scope of an emergency like a fire.In Los Angeles County, residents who sign up for emergency notifications through the AlertLACounty website are then directed to a list of 57 links to other specific neighborhood or city alert system signups, as well as a general one covering 19 other cities. The city of Los Angeles and the Sheriff’s Department also have alert systems.It is not clear how the overlapping systems, which use different software programs, work together, or whether officials coordinate.A 2024 Hazard Mitigation plan directed the city’s Emergency Management Department to assess gaps in alert and warning systems in areas with poor cellphone connectivity and then implement a solution to ensure alerts reach people. But that goal was given a “medium” priority level and a long-term timeline, with completion expected sometime in the next 10 years.Meanwhile the county’s Hazard Mitigation Plan, last updated in 2020, did not include a fous on emergency alerts or public notifications. Instead its high-priority goals had to do with educating people about wind’s impact on wildfire risk and with community wildfire protection.Officials at the County’s Coordinated Joint Information Center declined to comment other than to say that an independent review of evacuations and emergency notifications is planned and the Office of Emergency Management, County Fire Department and Sheriff’s Department plan to fully engage with it. Christopher L. Keller, Claudia Lauer, Amy Taxin and Rebecca Boone, Associated Press
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