Good morning. It’s Wednesday.
Did you know that over the next 50 years, women are expected to outnumber men, and currently the ratio of women to men worldwide stands at 100 to 101?
Just over 50 percent of the current U.S. population are women, and we control or influence about 85 percent of consumer spending. In others words, women have strength in numbers – in more ways than one.
So WHY, I ask you, are women STILL fighting for adequate, equal, quality, respectful, and affordable health care treatment and bodily autonomy? It makes no sense. None.
Statistically speaking, women are more likely than men to require health care throughout their lives. They are more likely to have chronic conditions that require ongoing medical treatment. They are more likely, on average, to use prescription drugs.
In addition, certain mental health problems – like depression, for example – impact twice as many women as men.
And yet, when it comes to health care we are too often second class citizens.
If you happen to be a woman who is also poor, a person of color, and/or a member of the LGBTQ+ community, the disparities in the care you receive and/or are able to access are even broader.
Today is National Women’s Health and Fitness Day, which is celebrated annually on the last Wednesday in September to acknowledge and highlight the fact that women have specific and unique needs when it comes to being – and staying – healthy.
This is not to be confused with the International Day of Action for Women’s Health, which is observed on May 28. (Actually, all of May is Women’s Health Care Month, which kicks off with National Women’s Health Week).
You would think that with all this attention paid to elevating the importance of women’s health and wellness that things would be looking up for women, and I guess that’s the case if you take a VERY long view of things.
For example, women are no longer widely viewed as the “weaker” sex due to the fact that we menstruate, get pregnant, and give birth. Just think of that, it used to be widely believed that childbearing makes one weak. HAHAHAHAHAHHA!!!! Only a man who never gave birth – or a woman who has never had the experience – (raises hand sheepishly) – could say something like that.
Nor do physicians believe that a woman’s uterus wanders around her body, making her prone to hysteria. FWIW, the very word is derived from the Greek “hystera,” meaning “womb.”
But the bottom line is that decisions about women’s health historically have been made by men, and the foundation of medical research is based on men’s bodies and experiences. And, of course, when it comes to reproductive health, the vast majority of decisions about what a woman can and can’t do with her own body are also made by men.
I’m not here to rail against the establishment or espouse some extreme feminist agenda. I’m simply stating facts. It is simply a fact that women’s health concerns are routinely overlooked, misdiagnosed, blamed on hormones, shunted aside, and flat-out ignored.
And this has to stop.
On a positive note: Despite all the aforementioned challenges women face when it comes to healthcare – they live longer, on average, than men. So, there’s that.
Another typical fall day is on tap, with clouds in the morning and sun in the afternoon. Temperatures should be in the mid-60s.
In the headlines…
As Hurricane Ian made landfall in western Cuba yesterday, Floridians were keeping an anxious eye on the storm. That included the operators of Florida’s popular theme parks.
More than 1,700 U.S. flights were canceled for today as of yesterday afternoon, including hundreds to and from Miami, Orlando, Tampa, Southwest Florida, and Fort Lauderdale airports, according to FlightAware.com data.
Hundreds of thousands of Floridians faced mandatory evacuation orders as the National Hurricane Center expanded its hurricane warning along more than 150 miles of the state’s Gulf Coast. Power outages can be expected statewide.
Gov. Ron DeSantis has already faced unprecedented challenges during his first term, including a two-year pandemic and a vexing environmental catastrophe. He’s now priming for a more traditional but no less daunting test of Florida leaders: a hurricane.
President Joe Biden called three Florida mayors as Hurricane Ian nears Florida’s western coast — but initially didn’t call DeSantis, with whom he has clashed on issues such as COVID-19 policies and migration. The two later connected.
Ian is expected to bring 12 to 18 inches of rain to central and northeast Florida, and 6 to 8 inches to the Keys and south Florida through tomorrow.
The lower part of the Florida Keys saw severe flooding early today as Ian made its way toward the western coast of the state.
Officials in Cuba said they were working to restore electricity after the storm knocked out power to the entire island last night.
Sen. Joe Manchin threw in the towel on including his contentious proposal to speed up permitting of energy projects in a must-pass funding bill, clearing the way for the Senate to advance the legislation needed to keep the government open.
The permitting changes were included in a 237-page continuing resolution that would extend current government funding levels until Dec. 16 and prevent a partial shutdown this weekend, when the fiscal year ends.
The Senate voted overwhelmingly to move forward with a temporary spending package needed to keep the federal government running past Friday, drawing closer to averting a shutdown after Democrats dropped the energy proposal.
At least two members of the Democratic caucus and several Republicans had warned they would vote against the spending measure because of Manchin’s provision, making it unlikely that the legislation could move forward as long as it was included.
Frank Garrison, an Indiana-based lawyer who works for a conservative-leaning law firm, filed a lawsuit against the federal government in an effort to block President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program in its first major legal challenge.
The Pacific Legal Foundation, a conservative legal group, filed a 26-page complaint on his behalf in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana against the U.S. Department of Education and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.
Garrison’s claim centers on the Biden administration’s plan to automatically cancel the debts of some borrowers, arguing that it would personally harm him by forcing him to pay taxes on those forgiven debts.
“Congress did not authorize the executive branch to unilaterally cancel student debt,” said Caleb Kruckenberg, of the Pacific Legal Foundation. He said it’s illegal for the executive branch to create the policy “by press release, and without statutory authority.”
The political spotlight may be drifting back toward issues where Republicans have an advantage, like the economy and immigration.
The United States has started to allow people to apply for asylum under a new process that the secretary of homeland security hopes can help fix the current “very broken system.”
Biden’s decision to leave the refugee cap at 125,000 was a contrast with the Trump administration, which severely restricted entry, but advocacy groups said migrants were still processed too slowly.
Biden warned that Republicans posed a threat to Social Security and Medicare, amplifying an effort by Democrats to make the fate of America’s social safety net programs a central campaign issue ahead of November’s midterm elections.
With the election of Italy’s most right-wing government since World War II, diplomats are increasingly concerned by the Biden administration’s decision not to fill the U.S. ambassador post in the country.
Russia is set to formally annex occupied territories in Ukraine after staging referendums that involved coercion, threats and, in some places, soldiers going door to door and forcing people to vote at gunpoint.
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has postponed its hearing planned for today at 1 p.m., citing Hurricane Ian’s advancement on Florida.
The Secret Service has reportedly seized 24 phones from agents in connection with a controversial investigation by the Department of Homeland Security inspector general into the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Texts from GOP operative Roger Stone that promoted violence on Jan. 6 and then sought a pardon are among the evidence expected to be presented at the House investigative committee’s next hearing, which was postponed because of Hurricane Ian.
A jury trial got under way for five members of the Oath Keepers militia, including its founder Stewart Rhodes, in a test for prosecutors seeking to hold leaders of far-right groups accountable for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
A federal judge delivered a blistering rebuke of Republican Party leaders for what she said was a cynical attempt to stoke false claims of election fraud of the kind that fueled the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
A District of Columbia court will have to determine whether Donald Trump was acting in his official capacity as president when he scoffed at the accusations of a woman who said he raped her decades ago, a federal appeals court in New York ruled.
The court ruled that Trump during his term in office was a government employee covered by the Federal Employees Liability Reform and Tort Compensation Act of 1988.
The newest addition to Trump’s legal team, Chris Kise, has been sidelined from the Mar-a-Lago documents investigation less than a month after he was brought on to represent Trump in the matter.
There are signs that the United Kingdom could be heading into a fall Covid-19 wave, and experts say the United States may not be far behind.
A large international study has confirmed the findings of a previous U.S. study that linked COVID-19 vaccination with an average increase in menstrual cycle length of less than one day.
Disease experts say it has become increasingly clear that an autoimmune response, in which antibodies attack the body’s own healthy cells and tissue, plays an important role in some long-Covid cases.
New York has entered into an agreement with the Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester to dispose of and recycle 168 tractor-trailer loads of the expired hand sanitizer.
New York City will enforce a judge’s order barring enforcement of the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for members of the largest police union while the decision is appealed.
There may not be any debates in the New York governor’s race if Gov. Kathy Hochul and her challenger, Lee Zeldin, cannot agree on how many to hold.
Hochul and Zeldin rolled out dueling endorsements from law enforcement organizations in the race for governor.
The Police Benevolent Association of New York State (which is not the union that represents NYPD officers) endorsed Hochul over Zeldin in the upcoming gubernatorial election.
For the first time since 1946, New York’s governor’s race features just two choices on the ballot.
Hochul says New York will invest $10 million to advance medical research and the life sciences on Long Island.
Mayor Eric Adams accused the city’s press corps of trying to “put me in the box” as he refused to provide more information about whom he meets with — saying that some of his sit-downs, many of them late at night, aren’t job-related.
Adams is being scolded online by both progressives and conservatives for disparaging the state of Kansas for lacking a “brand,” as Republicans also bashed his record leading the country’s most populous city.
Speaking about efforts to construct tent cities for migrants entering New York City, Adams suggested that these actions were in line with New York’s “brand” and that other states like Kansas don’t have one.
Adams made no apologies for limiting the amount of information released with his public schedules – an egregious rollback of the transparency provided by his predecessor, Bill de Blasio.
This isn’t the first time Adams had thrown shade at the Midwest. Previously he threw shade at Iowa too when he was Brooklyn borough president.
Adams acknowledged his administration’s controversial migrant tent camp in the Bronx may violate local right-to-shelter rules that have tripped him up several times this summer as the city struggles to accommodate waves of Latin American asylum seekers.
“The migrant crisis is outside of the housing initiative that we’re doing, in seeing the right to shelter,” Adams said. “These are two different entities.”
Adams gave Biden a pass for the city’s escalating migrant crisis — even while admitting he was “frustrated” that the problem wasn’t being addressed with a national “decompression strategy.”
The Legal Aid Society, a non-profit legal aid organization, publicly condemned Adams as well as the city’s Department of Corrections (DOC) Commissioner Louis Molina over the two most recent in-custody deaths.
New York City jails’ top official came under fire for an email in which he appeared to push for the compassionate release of a severely ill Rikers Island detainee to keep down the number of people reported to die in city jails.
After two days of assessing the damage caused by Hurricane Fiona in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, Adams and city leaders announced they’re planning to commit generators, medicine and out-of-use city equipment to recovery efforts there.
New York City is enlisting the help of celebrity chef Rachael Ray in the hopes of finally getting kids to say “Yum-o” to school lunches.
Adams and NYC Schools Chancellor David Banks announced the launch of the city’s first-ever Chefs Council in partnership with Wellness in the Schools (WITS), chaired by Ray, which includes celebrated chefs, culinary industry professionals, and food activists.
In an opinion piece for CNN.com, Adams wrote: “Major advances have been made in addressing hunger and malnutrition, but it’s long past time for us to shift our focus from calories to nutrition, to help Americans get – and stay – healthy.”
City education officials are finally set today to release the results of last year’s standardized tests, which the state had previously instructed local officials to keep under wraps.
The mom of five who was mercilessly pummeled by a homeless maniac at a Queens subway station revealed her gruesome injuries, while issuing a desperate plea to Adams.
An NYPD cop accused of going on a hate-filled road rage rampage during which he beat a drunk driver and derided his victim’s Middle Eastern background has been fired, the department confirmed.
A reputed gang member acquitted of murder charges in the 2015 killing of Carey Gabay, an aide to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, will face a new trial this week, connected to the Brooklyn slaying.
Workers at a Trader Joe’s in Williamsburg, Brooklyn have filed a petition to unionize, following in the footsteps of a slew of Starbucks outposts and other retail chain stores across the five boroughs.
Just weeks before they ordinarily would begin setting up the exhibit, organizers of Holidays Lights in the Park say they do not have a location picked for this year’s show.
The Albany County legislature will discuss two more gun bills after it passed legislation last month requiring firearm dealers and the county clerk to hand out warning notices of the connections between firearms and deaths from suicide and domestic violence.
A majority of 215 eligible full-time and part-time non-tenure-track Skidmore College faculty, librarians, and accompanists voted to unionize and join with the Service Employees International Union Local 200United, the union announced.
An unlicensed motorcyclist who allegedly sped off Route 9 in Lake George while intoxicated and killed two pedestrians, one of them an 8-year-old boy, is facing two new felony charges that carry the possibility of decades in prison.
Montgomery County is accepting bids for demolition work on the western portion of the former Beech-Nut Baby Foods factory in Canajoharie.
The pharmaceutical companies Biogen and Eisai said yesterday that a drug they are developing for Alzheimer’s disease had slowed the rate of cognitive decline in a large late-stage clinical trial.
