‘They’re Tryna Kill Me, I Believe That’
Dear Reader,
Happy weekend. Here’s a news digest on the world’s most pressing health and environmental disparities:
🧓 NEW from The Xylom: ‘We Are Such a Punitive Country’: America’s ‘Death by Incarceration’ Machine
America’s prison population is aging into disability and disease. Understaffed clinics and delayed treatments turn serving life into a death sentence: as the system breaks down, the logic behind decades-long sentences begins to unravel.
“We’re really the only country in the world that keeps people locked up so many years,” says Michele Deitch, director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab, a national policy resource center. “We are getting so used to that here that we forget that that’s not normal and other countries look at us like we’re crazy.”
This story by our Editorial Intern Zoe Beketova was produced by The Xylom and copublished by The Nation. Read more here.
🍑 A SOUTHERN FLAIR
KENTUCKY — Andy Beshear Set Out to Make Drug Treatment Widely Available in Kentucky. Fraud and Abuse Followed. (Alex Acquisto and Taylor Six, Lexington Herald-Leader and ProPublica)
Tom Stephens, president of the group representing Kentucky’s five Medicaid insurers and the letter’s author, said in an interview that it was not the first time Medicaid insurers had shared concerns with the Beshear administration; it was “simply one example of concerns that had been raised over time.”
KERR COUNTY, Texas — “Where are all the volunteers?” Kerr County faces worse flood damage with fewer resources (Emily Foxhall, The Texas Tribune)
“We haven’t received any kind of help, just us as neighbors just doing it ourselves and friends that have trucks or anything just coming to help us,” says Liz Ayala, a 42-year-old clinical research coordinator in Austin.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Kentucky’s Ashen Promises (Austyn Gaffney, The Margin)
“They’re not located in rich neighborhoods,” [Congressman Morgan] McGarvey told The Margin of coal ash sites in his state. “They are already in places where it will hurt even worse for people who have suffered from pollution and being dumped on for years and years.
UPSHUR COUNTY, W.V. — Deadly flooding in West Virginia finds prevention plans unaddressed (Henry Culvyhouse, Mountain State Spotlight)
“We know that’s a drop in the bucket to speak to the issues that we have from an infrastructure standpoint to be better prepared for these emergencies,” [House Minority Leader Sean Hornbuckle, D-Cabell] said. “It boils down to priority, right? Are we prioritizing people? Floods don’t care if you’re red, if you’re blue, if you’re straight, if you’re gay. They just don’t. And so, are we prioritizing the people of West Virginia?”
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🗺️ WHAT ELSE WE'RE READING
There’s a National Blood Supply Crisis Happening Right Now (Ed Cara, Gizmodo)
“[T]his summer, blood donations simply are not keeping pace with hospital demand, and inventories — especially type O blood remain under significant strain,” said Chris Hrouda, president of Red Cross Biomedical Services, in a statement from the American Red Cross.
DR CONGO — DR Congo’s cobalt boom carries an unwanted cargo: uranium (Leslie Hook, Camilla Hodgson, Sam Joiner, Chris Campbell, Peter Andringa and Tomas Statius, Financial Times)
“It is a proliferation concern,” said David Albright, a nuclear weapons expert who founded the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington. “It is low level, but over time these quantities can lead to larger quantities of uranium.”
The accumulation of unmonitored stocks of natural uranium was a risk, he added, “that can lead to some very dangerous situations”.
HETAUDA, Nepal — Sex work or starve: Aid workers in Nepal left jobless by USAID cuts turn to sex work to survive (Kristen Gelineau, The Associated Press)
On the side of the highway, the night is a cacophony of blaring horns and the shouts of drunken men. Lama, 28 years old, softspoken and shy, walks quietly among them, equal parts desperation and dread. Beyond her fear of HIV is her fear of violence, which she and nearly all her former colleagues who have taken to the streets have endured.
She’d give anything to go back to the nonprofit where she once cared for society’s most vulnerable. Now she is the one in need of care, but there is no one left to provide it.
It is 11 p.m. and she’s had two customers so far, who each paid her $3. Rent and food this month will cost her $80.
BALTIMORE — ICE detains Hopkins public health researcher as agency expands airport arrests (Daniel Zawodny and Ellie Wolfe, The Baltimore Banner)
“The university understands the fear and concern this instills in members of our community,” writes university spokesperson Doug Donovan. “Dr. Ameaka was traveling in a personal capacity, and though we cannot comment on the specifics of her situation, we want to assure our community that the university is actively working to provide support for Dr. Ameaka, including ensuring she has access to legal representation.”
SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA — How Scientists With Cancelled ‘Woke’ Grants Kept Going (Tanvi Dutta Gupta, Bay Nature)
“The trust between academic researchers and the federal government has been broken,” says Scott Delaney, a former public health researcher at Harvard. Delaney started the project Grant Witness last year to track terminated federal grants. “A lot of people just want to bail out, but they don’t know where to bail to.”
PERSPECTIVE: Vegan MREs for the Troops (Lela Nargi, Offrange)
“The intent of the MRE is to eat the entire thing and so if people don’t like what’s in them, they ratfuck them,” said [Sherman Neal, a Marine Corps veteran and deputy director of the Sierra Club’s Military Outdoors campaign]. Especially junior service members take out the energy bars and other things they like and throw the rest away—or sell whole meals to non-military MRE enthusiasts over the internet, to supplement paychecks small enough, in some cases, to render them food insecure.
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