At least 2 million children have lost Medicaid insurance this year

At least 2 million low-income children have lost health insurance since the end of a federal policy that guaranteed coverage through Medicaid earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic, according to new analyses by researchers at the Georgetown Center for Children and Families and KFF, a health policy research organization. The figures, which are likely a significant undercount, represent one of the fastest and most dramatic ruptures in the American safety net since Medicaid went into law in 1965, experts say. Many of the children were qualified for federal assistance but lost it because of bureaucratic mistakes, such as missing paperwork or errors by state officials.

Manchin says he will not seek reelection, dealing blow to Democrats

Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a conservative Democrat known for bipartisan deal-making and also for frustrating some of his party’s most ambitious policy goals, announced Thursday that he would not seek reelection, dealing a blow to Democrats’ chances of holding the Senate next year. Instead, Manchin said he would continue exploring whether there was an appetite in the country for a centrist third-party bid for the presidency. That prospect has alarmed many Democrats, who fear such a run could doom President Joe Biden’s hopes of remaining in the White House.

Senate panel punts effort to force testimony in Supreme Court ethics inquiry

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday abruptly put off its push to subpoena two conservative allies of Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas as part of a Supreme Court ethics inquiry that has met stiff resistance from Republicans. Facing GOP threats to engage in a bitter, drawn-out fight, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the panel’s chair, halted his planned effort to compel cooperation from Leonard Leo, a longtime leader of the Federalist Society, and billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow. Durbin said that Democrats needed more time to assess a barrage of politically charged amendments that Republicans were planning to offer in an effort to derail the inquiry.

House Republicans clash over spending days ahead of shutdown deadline

At odds with one another on spending, House Republicans abruptly scrapped their legislative work Thursday and left Washington with little progress toward funding the government and no plan to avert a shutdown next week. Speaker Mike Johnson, just two weeks into the job, had yet to give any public indication about his plan to prevent a lapse in government spending — currently slated to happen next Friday at midnight if Congress fails to act. That effort would involve rallying deeply anti-spending Republicans around a stopgap funding bill that is likely to be a dead letter in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

America’s new wildfire risk goes beyond forests

Forest fires may get more attention, but a new study reveals that grassland fires are more widespread and destructive across the United States. Almost every year since 1990, the study found, grass and shrub fires burned more land than forest fires did, and they destroyed more homes, too. But many residents are not as aware of wildfire risk in grasslands and shrublands. When the Marshall fire swept into the Boulder, Colorado, suburbs in 2021, killing two people and incinerating more than 1,000 homes, many residents were shocked that such a fierce blaze could encroach on their community, far from the forests of the Rocky Mountains.

As Haley rises, the clock is ticking on taking down Trump

For a third time on Wednesday night, Nikki Haley won praise for her deft performance on a Republican primary debate stage. Still, months of campaigning, a series of strong debate performances, healthy campaign accounts and rising numbers in surveys of early voting states haven’t been enough to put Haley within striking distance of Donald Trump, who remains the dominant front-runner. While Haley’s support has increased, particularly in Iowa, voters have yet to flock to her candidacy in overwhelming numbers. Now, a little less than 10 weeks before Iowa voters cast the first ballots in the caucuses there, the clock is ticking.

Heat pump installations slow, impeding Biden’s climate goals

More Americans are buying heat pumps, an environmentally friendly alternative to furnaces and air conditioners that can significantly lower monthly energy bills. But the pace of installations has slowed in the past year, posing an obstacle to the Biden administration’s climate plans. Rising interest rates and inflation combined with a slow and confusing rollout of federal government incentives for the purchase of heat pumps are largely responsible for the recent drop in sales, energy analysts said. These headwinds, if they persist, could jeopardize President Joe Biden’s goals of effectively eliminating U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050.

Why are oil prices falling while war rages in the Middle East?

Intense fighting is underway in a region that holds much of the world’s petroleum resources. Yet, after a few days of anxiety following the bloody Oct. 7 raids by Hamas militants in Israel, energy markets have been slumping. Brent crude, the international oil bench mark, is now selling for about $80 a barrel, cheaper than when the Israel-Hamas war started. Why aren’t prices higher? A main reason, analysts say, is that the fighting, no matter how vicious, has produced little disruption to petroleum supplies, leading traders to conclude that there is no immediate threat.

Fed chair pledges to do more to restrain inflation if needed

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Thursday expressed little urgency to make another interest rate increase imminently — but he said officials would adjust policy further if doing so proved necessary to cool the economy and fully restrain inflation. Powell and his colleagues left interest rates unchanged at 5.25% to 5.5% this month, up from near zero in March 2022. The Fed has raised borrowing costs over the past 1 1/2 years to wrangle rapid inflation by slowing demand across the economy. Because inflation has faded from its peak in the summer of 2022 and because the Fed has adjusted policy so much, officials are debating whether they might be done.

Greenland’s glaciers are melting faster than ever

Greenland’s mountain glaciers and floating ice shelves are melting faster than they were just a few decades ago, according to two separate studies published this week. The island’s peripheral glaciers, located mostly in coastal mountains and not directly connected to the larger Greenland ice sheet, retreated twice as fast between 2000 and 2021 as they did before the turn of the century, according to a study published Thursday. Greenland’s northern coast is buttressed by floating ice shelves that prevent inland glaciers, which are part of the ice sheet, from flowing freely into the Arctic Ocean. These ice shelves have shrunk in volume by more than 35% since 1978, according to a separate study published Tuesday.

First-class dinner menu from the doomed Titanic is poised to fetch big bids

There were oysters, salmon with hollandaise sauce, beef, squab, duck, roast chicken, green peas, parsnip purée and Victoria pudding. The feast described is not a Thanksgiving meal, but a snapshot of what first-class passengers on the Titanic ate for dinner on April 11, 1912, when the ship left Queenstown, Ireland, for New York. A menu from that night, with an embossed red White Star Line flag at the top and signs of water damage, will go up for auction Saturday at Henry Aldridge &Son Ltd in southwest England. It is expected to sell for up to 70,000 pounds (about $86,000).

By wire sources