Chiefs Kicker Goes Wide Right In Blasting Joe Biden On Abortion In Graduation Speech
Ron Dicker – May 14, 2024
Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker launched a right-wing screed at President Joe Biden during Saturday’s commencement at Benedictine College (Kan.). (Watch the video below.)
Butker targeted Biden’s support of abortion rights and railed at “degenerate cultural values,” “dangerous gender ideologies,” and the “tyranny of diversity, equity, and inclusion” on a platform he said was given to him by God.
The guest speaker, whose game-tying field goal extended the recent Super Bowl to overtime, where the Chiefs eventually beat the San Francisco 49ers, tried to score points with his conservative audience at the liberal arts Catholic school.
“Our own nation is led by a man who publicly and proudly proclaims his Catholic faith, but at the same time is delusional enough to make the sign of the cross during a pro-abortion rally,” he said, referring to Biden’s gesture last month that seconded a Democratic official’s criticism of Florida’s six-week abortion ban.
“He has been so vocal in his support for the murder of innocent babies that I’m sure to many people it appears that you can be both Catholic and pro-choice,” Butker continued.
Butker had already gone further afield, appearing to criticize Dr. Anthony Fauci’s COVID-19 response while voicing other conservative objections.
“Bad policies and poor leadership have negatively impacted major life issues,” he said. “Things like abortion, IVF, surrogacy, euthanasia, as well as a growing support for degenerate cultural values and media, all stem from the pervasiveness of disorder.”
HuffPost reached out to the Chiefs for comment on Butker’s remarks.
Fast-forward to 1:20 for many of Butker’s remarks aimed at Biden and culture-war points of contention:https://www.youtube.com/embed/-JS7RIKSaCc?rel=0
Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker bashes Pride Month, tells women to stay in the kitchen
Doug Farrar – May 13, 2024
There are some times when maybe, just maybe, one should actually stick to sports.
Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker has been tremendously successful in his chosen profession over the last few years; the 1027 seventh-round pick out of Georgia Tech has helped his team win three Super Bowls, and in the 2023 season, he made 94.3% of his field goals in the regular season (a career high), and he went 11-fot-11 in the postseason.
Butker’s legacy of tolerance is a bit more complicated.
Butker recently delivered the commencement address at Benedictine College, a liberal arts institution in Atchison, Kansas. This is the same college that once forced out gay basketball player Jallen Messersmith to remove a rainbow flag from his dorm room window.
It would seem that Butker felt right at home.https://www.youtube.com/embed/-JS7RIKSaCc?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en-US&autohide=2&wmode=transparent
After delivering some incendiary comments about Covid and President Biden, Butker got around to what he perceives as a woman’s ultimate and rightful place: the kitchen.
“I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolic lies told to you. Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.
“I can tell you that my beautiful wife Isabelle would be the first to say her life truly started when she started living her vocation as a wife and as a mother. I’m on this stage today, able to be the man that I am, because I have a wife who leans into her vocation.
“I’m beyond blessed with the many talents God has given me, but it cannot be overstated that all my success is made possible because a girl I met in band class back in middle school would convert to the faith, become my wife, and embrace one of the most important titles of all. Homemaker.”
Then, Butker got to what he termed the dangers of the “church of nice.”
“The world around us says that we should keep our beliefs to ourselves whenever they go against the tyranny of diversity, equity and inclusion,” Butker said. “We fear speaking truth, because now, unfortunately, truth is in the minority.”
Then, on to Pride Month, which takes place in June.
“Not the deadly sins sort of Pride that has an entire month dedicated to it, “but the true God-centered pride that is cooperating with the holy ghost to glorify him.”
Butker has every right to say whatever he wants at such an address, but he also deserves the flak he’s going to get over it. Most likely, he’ll take it as one for the team in the fight against, as he put it,
Oldest living Japanese American, 110, shares her longevity tips and the 1 food she eats every day
Aryelle Siclait,TODAY – May 7, 2024
With 110 years of life behind her, Yoshiko Miwa isn’t going to wallow in the negative, and she doesn’t want you to either.
The oldest living person of Japanese descent in the United States, according to the Gerontology Research Group, Miwa prefers to focus on the times when she was happiest. She’s lived through the Spanish flu, prohibition, Black Tuesday, World War II, and the losses of her parents, siblings and friends, and still the supercentenarian’s go-to piece of longevity advice is: Don’t dwell.
Miwa is part of the nisei — the second-generation Japanese Americans sent to internment camps during World War II — who often say “gaman,” which translates to “enduring the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity,” Alan Miwa, her son, tells TODAY.com. It’s often loosely translated to “perseverance,” “patience,” or “tolerance.”
These feelings, Alan Miwa suspects, are born from the resilience of many from his mother’s generation — who had much to endure. Shikata ga nai (仕方がない), a Japanese phrase meaning, “It cannot be helped,” or, “Nothing can be done about it,” is a common saying among them, too, he adds.
Yoshiko Miwa was born Yoshiko Tanaka on Feb. 28, 1914, in Guadalupe, California, to Japanese immigrants. She was the fifth of seven children. When her mother and infant brother died in 1919, her father struggled to care for his family and tend to the farm he owned. So Yoshiko Miwa and her siblings were sent to live at the children’s home founded by their parish, Guadalupe Buddhist Church.
She went on to graduate from Santa Maria High School in 1932, and she studied business at the University of California, Berkeley, graduating in 1936. She married Henry Miwa in 1939.
During the Second World War, the pair and their families were sent to Poston Internment Camp in Arizona before relocating to Hawthorne, California, after the war. When they, along with many other Japanese people, had difficulty finding work upon their release in 1945, her husband founded a plant nursery business, and in 1963, Yoshiko Miwa got her nursing license.
Yoshiko Miwa has three sons, 10 grandchildren, 20 great-grand children and one great-great-grandchild.
Yoshiko Miwa (Alan Y. Miwa)
These days, Alan Miwa says she’s in good health and lives in a care facility, where she gets her hair done weekly and attends church services on Sundays.
In addition to a positive spirit, keeping your mind and body active is the key to a long life, Yoshiko Miwa has said in the past. Ahead she shares a few other aspects of her life that she believes have led to her longevity.
She keeps an ever-expanding roster of hobbies
When Yoshiko Miwa retired, she’d walk 4 miles each morning. In 1990, at 76, she walked a 20K as part of the March of Dimes Walkathon. She’s an avid reader, she practices ikebana (flower arranging), sumi-e (Japanese ink art), sashiko (Japanese stitching), sewing, furniture refinishing and reupholstery.
These days, though, her favorite activity is sleeping, she tells TODAY.com via email.
She wrote an autobiography
After taking a writing course, Yoshiko Miwa penned an autobiography. In it, she recalls her travels to Rome, Japan, Paris and Niagara Falls. She describes life in the children’s home and the long walks to school, her siblings and her childhood with her parents.
“We had a big pasture for the horses and cows to graze on,” she wrote of her family’s farm her in autobiography. “Some days, my sister and I would wander around the pasture to pick wild violets that grew there.”
She loves to eat noodles
Yoshiko Miwa’s a fan of any kind of noodles, eating them every day. “When I was in the children’s home, the cook used to make noodles and I used to love them,” she says. “Today, I like spaghetti, udon, ramen, soba and any other kind of noodles.”
Her faith energizes her
Yoshiko Miwa is grateful to Rev. and Mrs. Issei Matsuura of the Guadalupe Buddhist Church, who took her in when her mother died of the Spanish flu.
Family and friends of Yoshiko Miwa at her 110th birthday celebration at the Gardena Buddhist Church. (Courtesy Alan Y. Miwa)
Yoshiko Miwa was 4 years old when her father turned to the church for help. “The church then started a children’s home and taught us Buddhism, Japanese language, Japanese culture and responsibility,” she recalls. “I’ve always been indebted to Rev. and Mrs. Matsuura.”
… And her family does, too
The Miwa family travels together and hosts reunions. “I’ve been fortunate that my sons, my grandchildren, my great grandchildren and relatives have always been there for me,” says Yoshiko Miwa.
“Because my mother died so young, I have never enjoyed the warmth and love of a family unit,” she wrote in her autobiography. “Later, when I had my children, I keenly felt the wholesomeness of a complete family.”
Can drinking a blend of oats, water and lime juice help you lose weight? Here’s what nutritionists think about the ‘oatzempic’ trend.
Maxine Yeung – April 10, 2024
Experts say “oatzempic” doesn’t offer a balanced or sustainable approach to weight loss. (Getty Images) (izhairguns via Getty Images)
Weight loss drugs continue to gain in popularity, but not everyone who wants them can afford these medications, leaving some people hunting for more cost-effective alternatives. While natural options may seem promising, their effectiveness can be unpredictable. Berberine, for example, has been labeled “nature’s Ozempic,” though it may help more with managing blood sugar levels than aiding in actual weight loss. Meanwhile, psyllium husk — an inexpensive fiber supplement — is sought-after for its ability to temporarily suppress appetite by promoting a sense of fullness, but it’s important to note that fiber alone does not directly cause weight loss.
More recently, there’s been a viral trend involving the consumption of “oatzempic,” a drink crafted from oats, water and lime juice blended together. Its name cleverly references the prescription diabetes medication Ozempic, which is also well known for its weight loss benefits. This trend has gained lots of attention on platforms like TikTok, with claims suggesting it can help individuals shed as much as 40 pounds in two months.
“The oatzempic trend may seem enticing due to its simplicity and potential for rapid weight loss, but it’s essential to approach it with caution,” Vandana Sheth, registered dietitian nutritionist and author of My Indian Table: Quick & Tasty Vegetarian Recipes, tells Yahoo Life. So what are the downsides — as well as any possible benefits — of oatzempic, and can it really help with weight loss? Here’s what experts have to say.
How do you make oatzempic?
To prepare oatzempic, blend a half cup of raw oats, 1 cup of water and the juice of half a lime together until smooth. Drink it on an empty stomach, aiming for one to two servings a day. If you aren’t a fan of the taste, some people add a dash of cinnamon or honey, though the latter will add some calories and sugar.
Why the lime?
It’s unclear why lime juice is a key ingredient, though many suspect it’s primarily for enhancing the flavor of the drink, which has been described as chalky. Plus, lime juice provides a healthy dose of the antioxidant vitamin C.
Despite what some believe, Sheth clarifies, “there’s a misconception that acidic foods like lime juice can aid in fat burning, which is not supported by scientific evidence.” Dr. Amy Lee, head of nutrition for Nucific, tells Yahoo Life that a stomach’s acidity is greater than that of the fruit anyway.
What are the benefits?
Oatzempic’s benefits have been touted by people on social media trying it out for a 40-day challenge, but its impact on health hasn’t actually been researched. That said, oats alone boast many health advantages: They contain antioxidants and are linked with a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, lower cholesterol and better blood sugar control. Research also shows potential for oats to help with regulating appetite and maintaining weight.
In just half a cup of oats, there are 5 grams of protein, 4 grams of fiber and a variety of vitamins and minerals. Oats are an excellent source of soluble fiber, particularly beta-glucan, which helps slow digestion, moves food and waste through the gut and promotes regular bowel movements.
Does oatzempic help with weight loss?
Substituting a meal with oatzempic can support weight loss efforts. However, as Julie Pace, functional dietitian and founder of Core Nutrition Health and Wellness, tells Yahoo Life: “It’s important to understand that this weight loss is primarily due to calorie restriction rather than any unique properties of oatzempic’s ingredients.” With just about 150 calories in a half cup of oats, oatzempic is low-calorie. Its fiber content may also promote a feeling of fullness, leading to less overall eating during the day.
Experts advise embracing this trend with caution since oatzempic does not offer a balanced or sustainable approach to weight loss. “Simply substituting high-calorie meals with low-calorie shakes may result in quick weight loss,” Sheth explains, “but without sustainable lifestyle changes, it may lead to health complications and weight regain once regular eating habits resume.”
Lee agrees: “I don’t think it is a long-term solution. Changing just one meal and its composition is a good start, but overall, one has to be mindful of the rest of the day as well.”
What are the downsides?
Pace says that oatzempic “encourages an unhealthy, unsustainable and restrictive approach to weight loss that is not supportive of overall health and well-being. Sustainable weight management involves making gradual, sustainable changes to diet and lifestyle rather than relying on quick fixes or extreme measures.”
Sheth warns that “rapid weight loss through extreme measures can lead to health complications such as nutrient deficiencies, loss of lean muscle tissue, hair loss and hormonal imbalances.” Not only are trends like oatzempic restrictive, especially if done for an extended amount of time, but they also risk promoting disordered eating habits.
While some people recommend using oatzempic as a meal replacement, experts point out it doesn’t contain nearly enough calories, protein or fat to be considered an equal swap. Generally for meals, you want to aim for about 15 to 30 grams of protein and at least twice as many calories as what’s found in a single serving of oatzempic.
“I do see some people adding protein powder and altering it by squeezing in some good oils,” says Lee. However, these additions change the simplicity of oatzempic and resemble more of a balanced breakfast.
Final takeaways
“If one is trying to just feel full in the morning to start their day strong, there are definitely other ways to do so,” says Lee. Instead of drinking oatzempic, aim for a satisfying breakfast of oatmeal, including fruit, seeds (hemp, chia and flax) and nuts (walnuts, almonds) for added protein, fiber and fat. If you prefer the drink version, consider swapping in milk for water or adding nut butter.
Although drinking oatzempic may increase fiber and water intake, experts agree that prioritizing overall health and wellness with sustainable habits is best if weight loss is your goal, and they note that weight loss alone doesn’t always mean improved health.
Maxine Yeung is a dietitian and board-certified health and wellness coach.
25% of U.S. adults say they drink 1 or 2 glasses of water a day — and 8% rarely or never drink it, Yahoo/YouGov poll finds. Here’s how to sneak more hydration into your day.
Kerry Justich, Health and Wellness Writer – April 18, 2024
How much water should you be drinking a day? (Getty Images) (fizkes via Getty Images)
A new Yahoo News/YouGov poll has revealed that many Americans are coming up short in hydration. The survey of 1,746 U.S. adults, conducted from April 11 to April 15, found that 8% say they rarely or never drink water, while 25% are drinking just one to two glasses of water a day. The overwhelming majority of respondents (66%) reported drinking three or more glasses a day.
Is that enough? According to Edwina Clark, a registered dietitian, certified specialist in sports dietetics and owner of Edwina Clark Nutrition, the answer is no. Clark tells Yahoo Life that she’s “concerned” about the 8% of Americans who are getting very little water intake, especially given the popularity of sugary beverages.
How can people who are skimping on their water consumption make sure they’re still getting hydrated — and what’s the ideal water intake we should all be getting? Experts share their recommendations.
How much water should you drink a day?
According to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), the daily recommendation for water consumption is nine glasses a day for women, totaling 2.2 liters assuming a standard 8-ounce cup size, and 13 glasses, or 3 liters, for men. These guidelines account for “fluid intake from beverages including water, tea, broth and milk,” says Clark. “Food typically provides another 0.5 to 1 liter of fluid intake per day on top of water from beverages.”
But water needs, she adds, can “vary widely depending on age, activity level, size, climate or season, and illness.” People might also need more than what’s been recommended by the NAM when considering water loss through factors like sweat.
“Fluid intake is particularly important before, during and after exercise to combat sweat-related losses,” says Clark. “Some people may need a sports drink during and after exercise to replace electrolytes lost through sweat as well as fluid. However, this is largely dependent on exercise intensity, duration and ambient temperature.”
What are people drinking instead?
Of the 8% of poll respondents who report rarely or never drinking water on a daily basis, 38% indicated that soda is their preferred beverage. Clark says that this is cause for concern.
“While soda may not increase fluid depletion [meaning it won’t contribute to dehydration], drinking sugar-sweetened beverages on a consistent basis is associated with a raft of health problems, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, kidney disease, cardiovascular disease and tooth decay,” she says.
Clark adds that while “the occasional sweetened drink is fine for most,” consistently opting for it over water could pose problems.
The second-most-popular drink among this group was tea, preferred by 21%, which Clark says is a good alternative to water if unsweetened. The 15% who go for coffee, however, could have trouble staying hydrated depending on the amount of caffeine they drink over a day.
“Low to moderate caffeine consumption has not been shown to impact fluid balance,” she says, noting that a 16-ounce Starbucks cold brew won’t leave an average-size adult dehydrated. A 2017 study indicates that higher caffeine intake, amounting to four or more coffees a day, could lead to a diuretic effect.
How can you tell if you’re hydrated?
Ingesting fluids is important for maintaining a good blood pressure, heart rate and electrolyte balance, according to Dr. Amber Robins, a family and lifestyle medicine practitioner at Rochester Regional Health. She tells Yahoo Life that the easiest way to determine if you’re hydrated is taking a look at your urine.
“Having clear urine can mean that you have an adequate amount of fluid intake,” she says. “If your urine is darker in color, this likely means that you are dehydrated.”
Simple ways to increase water intake
If you notice that you might be dehydrated, Clark suggests the following to amp up your fluid intake:
Have water within reach. Keep a large water bottle on your desk, in your gym bag, etc. and sip frequently throughout the day. The more visible water is, the more likely you are to stay hydrated.
Make it fun. Add fruit wedges and herbs to water to make it more appealing; some have even credited the “sexy water” trend with spurring them to sip. If you’re not a water lover, unsweetened tea and sparkling water are good alternatives without added sugar.
Eat your fruits and veggies.Water-rich foods like fruit and veggies can contribute up to 20% of your fluid intake. Make sure you get at least three servings of veggies and two servings of fruit a day to help top off your water tank. Cucumber, iceberg lettuce, bell peppers, watermelon, radishes, tomatoes, spinach and berries are more than 90% water.
Watch out for water depleters like alcohol. Alcohol will make you lose fluids more quickly, which is why bathrooms at bars often have a line.
Other ways to start would be to make a goal of drinking water before each meal or once you wake up in the morning, according to Robins. Clark adds: “People generally wake up dehydrated after consuming little or no fluid overnight, so starting your day with a big glass of water is generally a good idea.”
Many of us turn to food for comfort. But when does emotional eating become an issue?
Ashley Broadwater – April 18, 2024
How to determine and break emotional eating habits. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Getty Images)
When Sam Thomas, a writer, speaker and mental health campaigner, was 11 years old, he experienced homophobic bullying at school. To escape the bullies, he would hide in the bathroom and eat the food in his lunchbox. “It was a sanctuary, as it was the only place I knew I wouldn’t be found,” he tells Yahoo Life.
This common and understandable behavior — emotional eating — was a source of comfort for him, and it didn’t end when he left school. Instability in his home life as a child and teen contributed to Thomas’s eating habits and difficult relationship with food. “It helped fill a void that felt like numbness or emptiness,” he explains.
He’s far from alone in that experience. In fact, about 75% of eating is emotionally driven, according to psychologist Susan Albers from the Cleveland Clinic, a nonprofit academic medical center. But Thomas’s experience is reflective of a more significant issue when the quest to become emotionally satiated by food leads to a cycle of shame and guilt, while underlying anxiety or stress remains.
What is emotional eating?
In a nutshell, emotional eating is using food to soothe, numb or cope with (usually difficult) feelings. “The emotional connection that we have to food exists every time we eat, even when we’re eating primarily because we’re hungry,” Christine Byrne, a registered dietitian and the owner of Ruby Oak Nutrition in Raleigh, N.C., tells Yahoo Life. Emotional eating, however, isn’t motivated by hunger. Instead, it is “the act of using food to cope with various feelings you’re experiencing,” she explains. Like turning to McDonald’s to soothe, distract or calm the mind and body after a stressful work day, rather than to feel satiated.
Emotional eating isn’t defined as an eating disorder, according to Healthline. However, it is a pattern of disordered eating that is heavily tied to mental health.
According to Byrne, “it’s tough to say definitively what the signs of emotional eating are, since the same behavior can either be healthy or maladaptive depending on the intention behind it, the intensity of it and how often you engage in it.”
However, some signs of maladaptive (or disordered) eating she encourages folks to look out for include:
Frequently eating because of feelings (such as boredom, sadness, loneliness, stress, happiness) instead of hunger
When eating is the only way you know how to deal with uncomfortable feelings
Frequently eating until you’re uncomfortably full as a way to numb or escape feelings
Why does emotional eating happen?
The connection between food and emotions has been evidenced through culture and science. “As humans, one way we connect and soothe from infancy is through food,” Rachel Heinemann, a therapist who specializes in eating disorders, tells Yahoo Life. “We build community over joint meals, we comfort those who are grieving with food and we welcome new neighbors with food.”
A study in the International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science also helps to explain the phenomenon of emotional eating, as it points out that sweet, high-calorie foods are often what people crave when experiencing a spike in cortisol from stress. These foods are linked to the release of serotonin, which can boost mood.
Thomas’s go-to foods when he was feeling depressed, for example, were cookies and chips (although he says he’d eat anything he could find in an effort to relieve emotional discomfort). This habit was also informed by past experiences of his mother rewarding and comforting him with sweets. “I associated certain foods with a whole range of emotions,” he says.
Childhood experiences, like being rewarded with sweets, are a notable cause of emotional eating. Other contributors include social influences, boredom, suppressed emotions and stress. Existing body image issues and restrictive dieting are also risk factors, as any one of these can be an emotional trigger that leads to a specific food craving. It’s not inherently a bad thing; however, feeding those feelings doesn’t always bring the intended result or relief.
In Thomas’s experience, food would provide him a kind of high while eating, to eventually experience what he refers to as a “come down” after the fact, in which the difficult feelings return. This is then paired with the discomfort that can come from mindless eating or eating beyond fullness. Breona O’Brien, a licensed mental health counselor with Mindoula, says that that aftermath can perpetuate a negative cycle with body image as well.
“This overeating can lead to weight gain and a feeling of a loss of control. These two things then lead to more negative thoughts about their bodies and can lead to more emotional eating,” she tells Yahoo Life.
When determining events and triggers that lead to emotional eating, it’s important to address the frequency in which it happens. “Frequent emotional eating can be an indication that there is something going on in your life, family, job [or] living environment that is making you distressed,” says O’Brien, “and no one deserves to live in a constant state of discomfort.”
Addressing the root issues
Mindfulness is key to addressing emotional eating and its causes, according to O’Brien. She says it’s important to take a moment to reflect on the messages that our bodies and brains are sending us when it comes to food. This would allow an individual to come to understand if they’re reaching for food because they’re actually hungry or if there’s an emotional reaction at play.
Mount Sinai offers a guide that suggests observing eating patterns and how they relate to certain feelings, situations or places; as well as working on developing new coping skills to handle those moments. This might include reading a book, talking to friends or going for a walk, for example, rather than heading to the pantry.
This isn’t to say that people should emotionally detach from food, or that all emotional eating is inherently a bad thing. (In fact, Heinemann emphasizes that food is meant to be a way for people to “connect, soothe and enjoy.”) These interventions, however, may be more helpful — or are at least other options you can turn to.
Other helpful tactics include eating slowly, planning ahead so that you’re not in a situation that feels urgent and working with a professional to avoid further discomfort, body image issues and the threat of an eating disorder.
Seeking therapy is ultimately what helped Thomas. “Having had trauma therapy, I realized my addictions had been with me since a very young age,” he says. “Therapy sessions enabled me to recognize the pattern [of my emotional eating] and find ways to break it.”
Thomas has found that activities such as going to the gym and writing in a journal also help him meet his emotional needs. To say that he hasn’t turned to food for comfort since wouldn’t be accurate. However, he has “a much healthier relationship with food” after ridding himself of guilt and shame surrounding it.
If you or someone you know is struggling with an eating disorder please visit the National Eating Disorders (NEDA) website at nationaleatingdisorders.org for more information.
The latest transformative outcome of the buzzy weight loss drug may be the most profound yet, with a growing number of patients claiming that the GLP-1 medication — and others like it — have caused anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation, even as they shed the pounds.
Looking into the science behind the life-changing jabs, experts revealed why the medications, originally intended to treat diabetes, could be changing people’s personalities and behaviors.
millaf – stock.adobe.com
Ozempic, and other popular treatments like Wegovy, have an impact on dopamine levels, which are responsible for a range of functions.
Along with impacting our emotional and physical drive for food, the brain chemical impacts feelings of reward, pleasure, motivation and movement.
These changing levels could help explain why some users have even claimed the drugs have also reduced their cravings for drugs, alcohol and sex.
Dr Kent Berridge, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Michigan, explained to The Daily Mail that both addictive substances and food activate the same dopamine signals and reward-learning regions in the brain.
He also noted that: “Cravings for addictive drugs are also amplified by hunger.”
“When researchers are trying to get animals to learn to self-administer cocaine, they often will keep them hungry for a little while, as this helps them learn,” Dr. Berridge explained.
The medical expert added: “Hunger is specifically for food but it’s more general than that, it activates craving for a lot of things. If you’re hungry, the motivational value of things, even that are not food, seems to increase.”
Dr Kent Berridge, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Michigan, explained to The Daily Mail that both addictive substances and food activate the same dopamine signals and reward-learning regions in the brain. REUTERS
Because these drugs help patients to feel satiated for longer, experts believe they then also lessen cravings for things other than food as well, such as drugs and alcohol.
“Satiety may be not only reducing the craving for food, but potentially for other things,” Dr. Berridge said.
GLP-1 drugs appear to alter the motivational dopamine systems, dampening but not eliminating desires. For example, patients have found that they don’t lose their appetites but eat less while on these medications which experts believe could translate to other vices.
“That would be a possibility — taking the [edge off certain cravings], and those are the ones that are problematic if you’re trying to lose weight or if a person is trying to stop taking drugs,” Dr. Berridge said.
Because these drugs help patients to feel satiated for longer, experts believe they then also lessen cravings for things other than food as well, such as drugs and alcohol. Getty Images
He also shared that a decreased libido while on GLP-1 drugs is “conceivable.”
Dr. Berridge explained that because sex is a pleasurable natural desire, suppressing the reward pathway could lead to a reduced sex drive.
“If you’re suppressing [dopamine activation] a little bit and cutting down those mountain peaks, sexual desire is a natural peak, so that would be plausible,” the medical expert said.
However, he admitted that exacly how GLP-1 drugs are suppressing dopamine systems is still unknown.
The FDA requires that medications for weight management that work on the central nervous system, including Saxenda and Wegovy, carry a warning about suicidal thoughts.
Ozempic, which is only FDA-approved to treat diabetes, does not come with that warning.
Lead study author Dr. Alexis Conason, a licensed psychologist in NYC, noted that triggering experiences such as changes in quality of life and unrealistic expectations also occur to those going through other weight loss treatments such as Ozempic.
“People put so much emotion and hope into weight loss, and are sold this fantasy that if they just lose weight everything’s gonna be okay and all the good things that they want in life will come when they lose weight,” Conason previously told The Post.
However, some patients have reported this changed mindset even when the needle on the scale drops but experts aren’t shocked.
“It’s not necessarily surprising when you see there may be an increase in suicidal ideation and other things like that because you’ve taken away a really important coping mechanism for many people,” Brooke Boyarsky Pratt, CEO and co-founder of weight-inclusive care company Knownwell, told The Post in 2023.
However, the medical expert admitted that how GLP-1 drugs are suppressing dopamine systems is still unknown. myskin – stock.adobe.com
Dr. Gregory Dodell of Central Park Endocrinology also noted that patients on medications that suppress their appetite may not be getting sufficient nutrients, which in turn disrupts their mental stability.
“So much of balancing our body is about what we eat and drink,” he said.
The European Medicines Agency recently said there was no evidence for a causal link between Ozempic and suicidal thoughts. The FDA came to a similar conclusion in January.
But some experts have also warned that they have not been available long enough to study the long-term effects and are likely being misused by some as a quick way to shed a few pounds.
If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts or are experiencing a mental health crisis and live in New York City, you can call 1-888-NYC-WELL for free and confidential crisis counseling. If you live outside the five boroughs, call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org.
‘Miracle’ weight-loss drugs could have reduced health disparities. Instead they got worse
Karen Kaplan – April 16, 2024
Wegovy is part of a new generation of weight-loss medications that made some doctors optimistic about reversing longstanding racial and ethnic disparities in obesity. So far, the pricey drugs seem to have made those disparities worse. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades / Associated Press)
For the record: 9:10 p.m. April 15, 2024: An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of Dr. Serena Jingchuan Guo of the University of Florida as Jigchuan.
Americans are most familiar with their brand names: Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, Zepbound. They are the medications that have revolutionized weight loss and raised the possibility of reversing the country’s obesity crisis.
Obesity — like so many diseases — disproportionately affects people in racial and ethnic groups that have been marginalized by the U.S. healthcare system. A class of drugs that succeeds where so many others have failed would seem to be a powerful tool for closing the gap.
Instead, doctors who treat obesity, and the serious health risks that come with it, fear the medications are making this health disparity worse.
“These patients have a higher burden of disease, and they’re less likely to get the medicine that can save their lives,” said Dr. Lauren Eberly, a cardiologist and health services researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. “I feel like if a group of patients has a disproportionate burden, they should have increased access to these medicines.”
Why don’t they? Experts say there are a multitude of reasons, but the primary one is cost.
The injectable drug Ozempic sparked a revolution in obesity care. (David J. Phillip/Associated Press)
Ozempic, which is approved by the Food and Drug Administration to help people with Type 2 diabetes control their blood sugar and reduce their risk of serious cardiovascular problems such as heart attacks and strokes, has a list price of $968.52 for a 28-day supply. Wegovy, a higher dose of the same medicine that’s FDA-approved for weight loss in people with obesity or who are overweight and have a weight-related condition such as high blood pressure or high cholesterol, goes for $1,349.02 every four weeks.
Mounjaro is a similar drug approved by the FDA to improve blood sugar levels in Type 2 diabetes patients, and it comes with a list price of $1,069.08 for 28 days of medicine. Zepbound, a version of the same drug approved for weight loss, has a slightly lower price tag of $1,059.87 per 28 days. For now, at least, all the new drugs are meant to be taken indefinitely.
Few health insurance programs cover the medications when prescribed to help people reach and maintain a healthy weight. Federal law requires that weight loss drugs be excluded from basic coverage in Medicare Part D plans, and as of early 2023, only 10 states included an antiobesity medication in the formularies for their Medicaid programs.
“If everybody had equal access, then this would be a way to help,” said Dr. Rocio Pereira, chief of endocrinology at Denver Health. “But without equal access — which is what we have now — it’s likely this is going to increase the disparity we see.”
U.S. obesity rates have been rising for decades, and they’re consistently higher for Black and Latino Americans. Among adults 20 and older, 49.9% of Black Americans and 45.6% of Hispanic Americans have a body mass index of 30 or greater, compared with 41.1% of white American adults and 16.1% of Asian American adults, according to age-adjusted data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Obesity rates are also associated with income. In 2022, the age-adjusted rate was 38.4% for adults with household incomes between $15,000 and $24,999, compared with 34.1% for those with household incomes of $75,000 or more.
The two are related, said Pereira, who studies health disparities in diseases related to obesity. Black and Latino Americans are more likely to live in lower-income neighborhoods, where fast food is usually cheaper and more convenient than grocery stores.
“If you look at a map of the U.S. and plot out the neighborhoods where there’s no grocery store within a mile and there’s a high percentage of people who have no car, those are the areas where there’s the highest rates of obesity,” she said.
There’s also the time factor, she said: “Can you afford to cook your own meals, or do you have to work two jobs?”
An unusual experiment by the Department of Housing and Urban Development demonstrated the degree to which physical surroundings can influence obesity risk, Pereira said. In the 1990s, hundreds of mothers who were living in public housing were offered housing vouchers they could use only in wealthier neighborhoods. Ten to 15 years later, the women randomly assigned to receive the windfall had significantly lower rates of severe obesity (14.4%) than women in a control group who weren’t offered vouchers (17.7%). They were also less likely to have a body mass index of 35 or higher (31.1% vs. 35.5%).
Two women talk in New York. (Mark Lennihan / Associated Press)
Some people with obesity are able to lose weight by changing their diets and burning more calories through exercise. But that doesn’t work for people who have developed resistance to leptin, a hormone that suppresses appetite.
“If you try to lose weight with diet and exercise, your body is going to fight you,” said Dr. Caroline Apovian, co-director of the Center for Weight Management and Wellness at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “Your leptin levels go down, and when leptin goes down, a signal goes to the brain that you don’t have enough fat to survive.” That prompts the release of another hormone, ghrelin, that triggers feelings of hunger.
Leptin resistance also makes exercise less worthwhile.
“Your body fights you by decreasing your total energy expenditure,” Apovian said. “When your muscles work, they work more efficiently. If you want to lose 10 pounds, you’re going to get really, really hungry. And you can’t fight that. Your body thinks it’s starving to death.”
The “breakthrough” drugs counteract this by impersonating a hormone called glucagon-like peptide 1, or GLP-1, that’s involved in appetite regulation. Inside cells, the drugs bind with the same receptors as GLP-1, reducing blood sugar and slowing digestion. They also last longer than their natural counterparts.
Oprah Winfrey credits the new generation of medications for helping her keep her weight under control. (Chris Pizzello / Associated Press)
The first so-called GLP-1 receptor agonist was approved in 2005 to treat diabetes, and early versions had to be injected once or twice a day. Ozempic improved on this by requiring an injection only once a week. After clinical trials showed that the drug helped people with obesity achieve substantial, sustainable weight loss, the FDA approved Wegovy as a weight management drug in 2021.
Linda Morales credits Ozempic and Mounjaro for helping her lose 100 pounds and drop from a size 22 to a size 14. The 25-year-old instructional aide at Lankershim Elementary School in North Hollywood said she started to become overweight in middle school and carried 293 pounds on her 5-foot, 5-inch frame when she was referred to the Center for Weight Management and Metabolic Health at Cedars-Sinai two years ago.
She is no longer breathless when she climbs stairs, has an easier time when she goes bowling and fits comfortably into the seat on the Harry Potter ride at Universal Studios. Thanks to the medications, she is no longer on a path toward Type 2 diabetes.
Her job with the Los Angeles Unified School District comes with health insurance that covers the pricey drugs and charges her a copay of $30 a month for her Mounjaro prescription. She said she could swing a monthly payment of up to $50, but beyond that she’d have to stop taking the drug and hope the lifestyle changes she’d made would be enough to sustain the weight loss she’s achieved so far.
“It would definitely get hard for me, for sure,” Morales said.
In one study, Eberly and her colleagues examined insurance claims for nearly 40,000 people who received a prescription for GLP-1 copycats. Patients who had to pay at least $50 a month to fill their prescriptions were 53% less likely to get most of their refills over the course of a year compared to patients whose copayments were less than $10. Even patients whose out-of-pocket costs were between $10 and $50 were 38% less likely to buy the medicine regularly for a full year, the team found.
In another study of insured patients with Type 2 diabetes, those who were Black were 19% less likely to be treated with these drugs than those who were white, while Latino patients were 9% less likely to get them, Eberly and her colleagues reported.
In some parts of the country, Black patients with diabetes are only half as likely as white patients to get GLP-1 drugs, according to research by Dr. Serena Jingchuan Guo at the University of Florida, who studies health disparities in pharmaceutical access. The disparity was greatest in places with the highest overall usage of the medications, including New York, Silicon Valley and south Florida.
“In those places, the drug is actually widening the gap,” she said.
“We get excited every time a new, effective treatment becomes available,” Gasoyan said. “But we should be equally concerned that this new and effective treatment reduces disparities between the haves and have-nots.”
Trump’s Second-Term Blueprint Would Take A Wrecking Ball To Public Lands
Chris D’Angelo – April 6, 2024
When it was time to outline their vision for managing America’s federal lands under a future Republican presidency, pro-Donald Trump conservatives turned to a man who has spent his career advocating for those very lands to be pawned off to states and private interests.
William Perry Pendley, who served illegally as Trump’s acting director of the Bureau of Land Management for more than a year, authored the Interior Department chapter of Project 2025, a sweeping policy blueprint that the Heritage Foundation and dozens of other right-wing organizations compiled to guide Trump and his team should he win in November.
The 920-page, pro-Trump manifesto, titled “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise,” aims to dismantle the federal government, ridding it of tens of thousands of public servants and replacing them with “an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One” of a Republican administration.
Pendley’s dream for the more than 500 million acres of federal land that the Interior Department manages is to effectively turn them into a playground for extractive industries — the same interests he’s spent most of his career representing in court.
In fact, when it came to the chapter’s section on energy production across the federal estate, Pendley simply let Kathleen Sgamma ― the president of the Western Energy Alliance, an oil and gas trade association ― and two industry allies write it for him.
Poll after poll confirms that public support for protecting America’s public lands is broad and bipartisan. Still, the most recent Republican Party platform, adopted in 2016, calls for transferring control of federal lands to the states. In recent years, Republicans have largely abandoned brazen public calls for the outright sale and transfer of federal lands, instead focusing on gutting environmental protections and finding savvier ways to give states more of a say in how public lands are managed.
That shift is reflected in Project 2025. Rather than calling for pawning off federal lands, as he has done throughout his career, Pendley writes that “states are better resource managers than the federal government,” and argues that a new administration should “draw on the enormous expertise of state agency personnel” and “look for opportunities to broaden state-federal and tribal-federal cooperative agreements.”
“It says a lot about the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, that they chose someone as far outside of the mainstream as William Perry Pendley to lead the recommendations for our public lands,” said Dan Hartinger, senior director of policy advocacy at the Wilderness Society Action Fund. “And it says a lot about Mr. Pendley’s view of public lands that the first thing he did was hand the pen to the oil and gas industry to write those recommendations.”
William Perry Pendley, the Trump-era acting director of the Bureau of Land Management, speaks during an event in Idaho in 2020. Keith Ridler via Associated Press
In his 22-page contribution to the project, Pendley writes of an Interior Department that he says has lost its way and grown beholden to “radical” environmentalists, and that is now “abusing” U.S. laws to “advance a radical climate agenda.”
He condemns what he describes as the Biden administration’s “war” on fossil fuels, ignoring the fact that U.S. production of crude oil and exports of natural gas have continued to soar during Biden’s tenure. And he calls for the restoration of so-called Trump-era “energy dominance” — a catchphrase that is rooted in myth — and the annihilation of numerous environmental safeguards.
“No other initiative is as important for the DOI under a conservative President than the restoration of the department’s historic role managing the nation’s vast storehouse of hydrocarbons,” Pendley writes.
Pendley’s blueprint for Trump, if he should win in November, includes holding robust oil and gas lease sales on- and offshore, boosting drilling across northern Alaska, slashing the royalties that fossil fuel companies pay to drill on federal lands, expediting oil and gas permitting, and rescinding Biden-era rules aimed at protecting endangered species and limiting methane pollution from oil and gas operations.
“Biden’s DOI is hoarding supplies of energy and keeping them from Americans whose lives could be improved with cheaper and more abundant energy while making the economy stronger and providing job opportunities for Americans,” reads a section titled ”Restoring American Energy Dominance.” “DOI is a bad manager of the public trust and has operated lawlessly in defiance of congressional statute and federal court orders.”
If that reads like a fossil fuel industry wish list, it’s because it is. Rather than personally calling for the keys to America’s public lands to be turned over to America’s fossil fuel sector, Pendley let the head of a powerful industry group do it for him. An author’s note at the end of his policy directive discloses that the entire energy section was authored by Sgamma, as well as Dan Kish, senior vice president of policy at the American Energy Alliance, and Katie Tubb, a former senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation.
Sgamma’s trade and lobbying organization, Western Energy Alliance, represents 200 oil and gas companies. The American Energy Alliance and the Heritage Foundation both have deepties to the fossil fuel industry.
“I guess it’s refreshing that they are being so transparent that the oil and gas industry is literally writing the transition playbook for them,” said Aaron Weiss, deputy director at the Colorado-based conservation group Center for Western Priorities. “Saying the quiet part out loud — thank you for that.”
Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, an oil and gas industry trade and lobbying group, is a fierce critic of President Joe Biden’s energy and environmental policies. Mariam Zuhaib via Associated Press
In his author’s note, Pendley also writes that he “received thoughtful, knowledgeable, and swift assistance” from several other Trump-era Interior officials. Those include Aurelia Giacometto, the Trump-era director of the Fish and Wildlife Service and a former Monsanto executive; Casey Hammond, who served as Interior’s principal deputy assistant secretary for land and minerals; and Tara Sweeney, the former assistant secretary of Indian Affairs who now works for oil giant ConocoPhillips.
Other contributors to Project 2025 include Utah state Rep. Ken Ivory (R), a leader of the pro-land transfer movement, and Margaret Byfield, executive director of American Stewards of Liberty, a fringe, right-wing organization that championed a disinformation campaign against Biden’s conservation goals. The American Legislative Exchange Council and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, two corporate-backed think tanks that advocate handing over control of federal lands to states, are members of the Project 2025 advisory board.
“Beyond posing an existential threat to democracy, Project 2025 puts special interests over everyday Americans,” said Tony Carrk, executive director of Accountable.US, a progressive watchdog group that shared its research on Project 2025 with HuffPost. “The dangerous initiative has handed off its policy proposals to the same industry players who have dumped millions into the project — and who will massively benefit from its industry-friendly policies.”
Accountable found that the Koch network, led by billionaire oil tycoon Charles Koch, funneled over $4.4 million to organizations on Project 2025’s advisory board in 2022.
The Heritage Foundation and Pendley did not respond to HuffPost’s requests for comment.
Pendley’s contribution to Project 2025 is his latest act in a five-decade crusade against the federal government and environmental protections. His first stint at the Interior Department was under James Watt, President Ronald Reagan’s Interior chief, who is widely considered one of the most anti-environment Cabinet appointees in U.S. history. The Washington Post once described Pendley as “Watt’s ideological twin.”
Pendley calls himself a “sagebrush rebel,” a reference to the Sagebrush Rebellion movement of the 1970s and ’80s that sought to remove lands from federal control. For decades, he led the Mountain States Legal Foundation, a right-wing nonprofit that has pushed for the government to sell off millions of federal acres. In a 2016 op-ed published by National Review, Pendley wrote that the “Founding Fathers intended all lands owned by the federal government to be sold.”
Pendley has compared environmentalists to communists and Nazis, immigrants to “cancer,” and the climate crisis to a “unicorn.” He has said the Endangered Species Act has been used as a tool to “drive people off the land” and into cities where they can be “controlled,” and seemingly voiced support for killing imperiled species discovered on private land. Some of his most extreme anti-environmental screeds were published in 21st Century Science & Technology, a fringe magazine of the late cult leader, convicted fraudster and conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche, as HuffPost previously reported.
Asked about some of his radical views during a conference in 2019, Pendley said that his “personal opinions are irrelevant” to the job of overseeing 245 million acres of public land as the head of the BLM.
But those views are no doubt the reason he was tapped to write the Interior playbook for a future Republican president, particularly one that falsely casts Biden as the enemy of the fossil fuel industry.
“At the end of the day, they know that the land disposal position is deeply unpopular and a nonstarter across any Western state, no matter how conservative,” Weiss said. “That just leaves them with this false narrative about Biden’s war on oil and gas. That’s also a lie, of course, but it’s one they have to keep telling because otherwise there is no way to justify what is in this Project 2025 agenda.”
President Donald Trump signs the hat of Bruce Adams, chairman of the San Juan County Commission, on Dec. 4, 2017, after signing a proclamation to shrink the size of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante national monuments at the Utah state Capitol in Salt Lake City. President Joe Biden has since restored the boundaries of the monuments. Rick Bowmer via Associated PressMore
Along with a series of actions to boost drilling and mining across the federal estate, Pendley calls for a future Republican administration to not only dismantle existing protected landscapes but limit presidents’ ability to protect others in the future. He advocates for vacating Biden’s executive order establishing a goal of conserving 30% of federal lands and waters by 2030; rescinding the Biden administration’s drilling and mining moratoriums in Colorado, New Mexico and Minnesota; reviewing all Biden-era resource management plans, which cover millions of acres of federal lands; and repealing the Antiquities Act, the landmark 1906 law that 18 presidents have used to designate 161 national monuments.
“Donald Trump is an unapologetic climate denier who called climate change a ‘hoax’ and slashed environmental protections while he was in office,” Biden campaign senior spokesperson Sarafina Chitika told HuffPost in a statement. “Now, Trump and his extreme allies are campaigning to go even further if he wins a second term by gutting the Inflation Reduction Act and clean energy programs, shredding regulations for greenhouse gas pollution, and serving the fossil fuel industry at the expense of our families and our future.”
The Trump administration positioned itself as an opponent of selling or transferring federal lands, but on several occasions, it proposed public land sell-offs, hosted anti-federal land zealots and installed fierce critics of federal land management in powerful government positions. It also weakened protections for millions of acres of federal land and famously shrank the size of two sweeping national monuments in Utah — the largest rollback of national monuments in U.S. history.
Pendley argues Trump didn’t go far enough with his attack on national monuments, and that protected sites in Maine and Oregon should have also been on the chopping block.
“The new Administration’s review will permit a fresh look at past monument decrees and new ones by President Biden,” he writes in Project 2025.
Weiss views Pendley’s antipathy for the Antiquities Act as an acknowledgement of how successful the law has been in protecting public lands. And he says it speaks volumes that Project 2025 organizers tapped Pendley for the job of crafting the Interior blueprint.
“They could have found any number of mainstream conservatives to write their agenda for them. They didn’t,” Weiss said. “They picked the notorious anti-public lands extremist, because that is at the end of the day what they want. They don’t want someone who is going to come in and follow the last 50 years of legal precedent.”
1.7 million Texas households are set to lose monthly internet subsidy
Pooja Salhotra – April 2, 2024
A colonia, unincorporated neighborhoods that lack basic services such as street lights, proper drainage, paved roads or waste management, is seen near Edinburg on March 25, 2020. Credit: Verónica G. Cárdenas for The Texas Tribune
The $30 per month Daisy Solis has saved off of her internet bill for the past two years stretched a long way.
Those dollars covered new shoes for her three, growing children, dinners out at the Chick-fil-A that popped up in her town of Peñitas in South Texas, and part of a higher-than-usual electricity bill.
Now, Solis worries she might have to sacrifice on her internet speed because a federal subsidy that has helped her pay for her internet plan is set to expire at the end of April.
The Affordable Connectivity Program provides a $30 monthly subsidy to help low-income households pay for internet service, and up to $75 per month for households on tribal lands. The $14.2 billion program was part of the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and has helped 23 million households in the U.S — including 1.7 million in Texas — save money on their internet bills. The program’s funding is slated to dwindle at the end of April, though, potentially cutting millions off from the internet. In May, limited remaining funding in the program will allow eligible households to receive a partial discount; there won’t be any benefits after May.
“It has really helped me in that I don’t have to stress out about the bill,” said Solis, 27. “Even though it’s $30, $30 goes a long way.”
The program’s termination will disproportionately impact South Texas, where counties along the Texas-Mexico border had higher than average rates of participation. Overall, 1 in 7 Texans used the program. But in some border counties, including Hidalgo County, about half of its residents used the subsidy, according to data from the Federal Communications Commission.
“Some people have told me they might not get internet if [the subsidy] goes away,” said Marco Lopez, a community organizer at La Unión del Pueblo Entero, a nonprofit organization that supports low-income neighborhoods in the Valley. “I don’t know what to tell them because it’s not just cutting off their internet; it’s cutting off their opportunities for jobs, for school, for telehealth.”
A bipartisan group of lawmakers has introduced a bill that would extend funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program through the end of 2024. But the bill has not moved and faces considerable pushback from Republican lawmakers who claim the Biden administration has spent “recklessly.”
In a December letter to the chair of the FCC, a group of lawmakers, including U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, disputed that the broadband program was necessary. The lawmakers said that most households using the subsidy already had broadband subscriptions. But that’s likely untrue. According to an FCC survey, 47% of respondents reported having either zero connectivity or relying on mobile service before enrolling in the federal program.
On Tuesday, FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel sent a letter to Congress urging them to fund the program until the end of the year. She said the funding has been particularly critical for vulnerable populations, including veterans, seniors, and students.
“We know that nearly half of ACP households are led by someone over the age of 50,” she wrote. “The ACP and the broadband service it supports is ‘need to have’ for many seniors, who depend on the program for managing their health and maintaining access to their medical teams.”
The program’s termination comes as the state and federal government pump historic sums of money to expand broadband infrastructure and close the so-called digital divide. Texas is poised to receive more than $3.3 billion federal dollars to help connect the roughly 7 million Texans who lack access to affordable internet. The state will bolster those funds with an additional $1.5 billion that voters approved in November.
Some advocates worry that terminating the Affordable Connectivity Program at this juncture could jeopardize the success of future broadband investments.
“If we build the infrastructure but then all these people lose internet access, we are going to be taking one step forward and two steps back,” said Kelty Garbee, executive director of Texas Rural Funders, a nonprofit focused on rural philanthropy. “It is important to take a long view.”
Rural areas lag behind their urban counterparts when it comes to broadband access. The combination of low population density and remoteness make such areas unattractive to internet service providers, who are hesitant to invest in expensive infrastructure without a guaranteed pool of customers. Garbee worries that ending the government subsidies could shrink the rural customer base and make those areas even less attractive to internet companies.
Jordana Barton-Garcia, who focuses on broadband investments for nonprofit organization Connect Humanity, said that while the termination of ACP will be a significant loss for high poverty areas, the program is a “Band-Aid” solution. She said the subsidy doesn’t address the root of the problem: that the economics of broadband do not work in rural, low-income areas.
“Instead of being ruled by profit-maximizing major corporations, we need other models to serve low and moderate income communities,” she said. “We need to be able to serve without maximizing profits and instead serve for the public good.”
Some communities have found innovative ways to provide broadband to their rural constituents at a low cost. The city of Pharr in Hidalgo County, for example, created a municipal internet service program that offers plans for as low as $25 per month, the price residents in the border community said they could afford. Barton-Garcia said Pharr won’t be affected by the termination of government subsidies because the city has already secured its own funding. Pharr used grant money, a municipal bond as well as American Rescue Plan dollars to create a municipally-run internet service.
Large internet providers such as Comcast said they will continue to support low-income customers with an affordable plan. Comcast offers eligible customers a plan called internet essentials for $9.95 and a slightly higher-speed plan for $29.95.
For smaller providers in rural Texas, though, a low-cost plan is not financially feasible without government support. Charlie Cano, CEO of ETex Telephone Cooperative, said his lowest cost option is $62 per month.
“Anything lower than that is going to jeopardize our business model,” Cano said. “I’m nervous about what we are going to do about that low-cost option.”
In order to qualify as a grantee for the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program — the main broadband program created by the bipartisan infrastructure law — providers must offer a low-cost option to low-income customers. Providers like Cano worry this requirement may make it difficult for companies like his to win federal grant dollars.
Disclosure: Comcast has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
