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      Trump propuso que la fertilización in vitro fuera gratuita. ¿Es posible?

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      Conseguir que se cubran los costosos tratamientos de fertilidad sería algo que no puede hacer un presidente solo, dijeron los expertos en políticas de salud.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]El expresidente Donald Trump dijo el jueves en campaña que quiere que el tratamiento de fertilización in vitro (FIV) sea gratuito para todos los estadounidenses.“Bajo un gobierno de Trump, tu gobierno pagará o tu compañía de seguros estará obligada a pagar todos los costos asociados con el tratamiento de fertilización in vitro”, dijo Trump el jueves en un mitin en Potterville, Míchigan.La fecundación in vitro suele costar decenas de miles de dólares. Las políticas para cubrir esos costos serían difíciles de implementar, dijeron los expertos.Exigir a las aseguradoras que paguen estos procedimientos probablemente significaría aprobar leyes en el Congreso o persuadir a un panel de expertos para que añadan la FIV a una lista de servicios preventivos gratuitos de salud femenina establecidos por la Ley de Asistencia Asequible, la ley de cobertura de salud que Trump trató de derogar.Si el gobierno pagara directamente la FIV, se crearía un sistema de pagador único para una sola condición. El enfoque requeriría que el Congreso financie una nueva división del gobierno federal para supervisar el programa.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Republicans Are Right: One Party is ‘Anti-Family and Anti-Kid’

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      In attacking Democrats and Kamala Harris, Republicans have been making a legitimate point: One of our major political parties has worked to undermine America’s families.The problem? While neither party has done enough to support families and children, the one that is failing most egregiously is — not surprisingly — the one led by the thrice-married tycoon who tangled with a porn star, boasted about grabbing women by the genitals and was found by a jury to have committed sexual assault.You’d think that would make it awkward for the Republican Party to preach family values. But with the same chutzpah with which Donald Trump reportedly marched into a dressing room where teenage girls were half-naked, the G.O.P. claims that it’s the Democrats who betray family values.“The rejection of the American family is perhaps the most pernicious and most evil thing that the left has done in this country,” JD Vance said in 2021. Pressed on those remarks last month, he went further in a conversation with Megyn Kelly, saying that Democrats “have become anti-family and anti-kid.”This is gibberish. Children are more likely to be poor, to die young and to drop out of high school in red states than in blue states. The states with the highest divorce rates are mostly Republican, and with some exceptions like Utah, it’s in red states that babies are more likely to be born to unmarried mothers (partly because of lack of access to reliable contraception).One of President Biden’s greatest achievements was to cut the child poverty rate by almost half, largely with the refundable child tax credit. Then Republicans killed the program, sending child poverty soaring again.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Farm Workers Union Battles With California Grower, Wonderful Nurseries

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      Wonderful Nurseries, owned by Stewart and Lynda Resnick, has sued the state to overturn a labor organizing law championed by the United Farm Workers.The allegations ricocheted through the agricultural fields and into a Central Valley courthouse, where one of California’s most powerful companies and an iconic union were trading charges of deception and coercion in a fight over worker representation.Some farmworkers at Wonderful Nurseries — part of the Wonderful Company, the conglomerate behind famous brands of pomegranate juice and pistachios, as well as Fiji Water — said they had been duped into signing cards to join a union. On the other side, the United Farm Workers, the union formed in the 1960s by labor figures including Cesar Chavez, contends that the influential company, owned by the Los Angeles billionaires and powerhouse Democratic donors Stewart and Lynda Resnick, is trying to thwart the will of workers through intimidation and coercion.For months, the back and forth has played out before the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board, which arbitrates labor fights between workers and growers, and in a courthouse not far from Wonderful’s sprawling fields.In May, the company filed a legal challenge against the state that could overturn a 2022 law that made it easier for farmworkers to take part in unionization votes.After vetoing a previous version over procedural concerns, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the measure following public pressure from President Biden and Representative Nancy Pelosi, then the House speaker. The U.F.W. heralded the bill’s enactment as a critical victory, but several big growers said that it would allow union organizers to unfairly influence the process.The law paved the way for farmworkers to vote for union representation by signing union authorization cards, a process known simply as card check. Its passage coincided with an era of greater mobilization to unionize workers during the pandemic and a willingness to press demands for better working conditions and respect from employers, said Victor Narro, project director and labor studies professor at the U.C.L.A. Labor Center.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Section 230 Is Being Used Against Tech Giants Like Meta

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      A Massachusetts professor has filed a lawsuit against Meta using a novel interpretation of Section 230, a law known primarily for shielding social media companies from liability.Facebook, X, YouTube and other social media platforms rely on a 1996 law to insulate themselves from legal liability for user posts. The protection from this law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, is so significant that it has allowed tech companies to flourish.But what if the same law could be used to rein in the power of those social media giants?That idea is at the heart of a lawsuit filed in May against Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The plaintiff in the suit has asked a federal court to declare that a little-used part of Section 230 makes it permissible for him to release his own software that lets users automatically unfollow everyone on Facebook.The lawsuit, filed by Ethan Zuckerman, a public policy professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is the first to use Section 230 against a tech giant in this way, his lawyers said. It is an unusual legal maneuver that could turn a law that typically protects companies like Meta on its head. And if Mr. Zuckerman succeeds, it could mean more power for consumers to control what they see online.“I see and appreciate the elegance of trying to use a piece of law that has made user generated content possible, to now give users more control over those experiences and services,” he said.Section 230, introduced in the internet’s early days, protects companies from liability related to posts made by users on their sites, making it nearly impossible to sue tech companies over defamatory speech or extremist content.Mr. Zuckerman has focused on a part of Section 230 that spells out protection for blocking objectionable material online. In 2021, after a developer released software to purge users’ Facebook feeds of everyone they follow, Facebook threatened to shut it down. But Section 230 says it is possible to restrict access to obscene, excessively violent and other problematic content. The language shields companies from liability if they censor disturbing content, but lawyers now say it could also be used to justify scrubbing any content users don’t want to see.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Scofflaws and Other Hazards on the Roads

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      More from our inbox:Neo-Nazis in Nashville and the Speech QuestionVance vs. the Rule of LawA Ban on Masks? Stella Kalinina for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Traffic Stops Fell in Pandemic, and Didn’t Return” (The Upshot, front page, Aug. 1):Thank you for highlighting the public health crisis that is the rise in traffic deaths across the United States. One point not made is the burden on our children. Motor vehicle crashes are a leading cause of death of children, second to firearms. In my city, Philadelphia, five children, on average, are hit by a car every week.As a pediatric resident physician, I see the devastating outcomes of these statistics in the emergency room and intensive care unit. I advise children to wear a seatbelt, look both ways before crossing a road and wear a helmet when cycling. But people are getting killed even when they do everything right.Plastic bollards separating a designated bike lane don’t work when drivers are willing to barrel over them.We need an evidence-based approach to this public health crisis. Safe road design saves lives. We need to invest in Vision Zero programs to fund structural changes, including speed cameras and physical barriers between cyclists and drivers. Cities need to invest in public transit systems.Culture change takes time. Structural change in the meantime is evidence-based and will work to make all Americans, including our children, safer.Allison NeesonPhiladelphiaTo the Editor:The degree to which American drivers have been ignoring traffic laws over the past several years is mind-blowing. Speeding on highways and parkways is out of control and makes driving an exercise in avoiding catastrophe. It seems as if every other car is drag racing or trying to set a new speed record.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Dangles New Tax Cut Proposals With Real Political Appeal

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      The most recent and costliest of Mr. Trump’s ideas would end income taxes on Social Security benefits.First it was a tax cut for hotel and restaurant workers in Nevada, a swing state where Donald J. Trump proposed exempting tips from taxes. Then, in front of powerful chief executives gathered in Washington, Mr. Trump floated cutting the corporate tax rate, helping to ease concerns in the business community about his candidacy.Now Mr. Trump is calling for an end to taxing Social Security benefits, which could be a boon for retirees, one of the most politically important groups in the United States.Repeatedly during the campaign, Mr. Trump and Republicans have embraced new, sometimes novel tax cuts in an attempt to shore up support with major constituencies. In a series of social-media posts, at political rallies, and without formal policy proposals, Mr. Trump has casually suggested reducing federal revenue by trillions of dollars.While policy experts have taken issue with the ideas, Mr. Trump’s pronouncements have real political appeal, at times putting Democrats on their back foot. Nevada’s two Democratic senators and its powerful culinary union have endorsed ending taxes on tips, while the AARP supports tax relief for seniors receiving Social Security benefits.“You do have to scratch your head a little bit when someone’s going around offering free lunches everywhere,” said Jesse Lee, a Democratic consultant and former Biden White House official. “We’re all for people having their lunch, but we have to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for it.”The most recent and most expensive of Mr. Trump’s plans is ending income taxes on Social Security benefits, which could cost the federal government as much as $1.8 trillion in revenue over a decade, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. That would burn through the program’s financial reserves more quickly and hasten the moment when the government is no longer able to pay out Social Security benefits in full under current law.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Utah Supreme Court Upholds a Block on a Strict Abortion Ban

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      Utah cannot enforce its near-total ban on abortion while a challenge to the law proceeds in the courts, the State Supreme Court ruled on Thursday. The Utah Supreme Court upheld on Thursday a suspension of the state’s near-total ban on abortion, meaning the procedure remains legal while a court challenge to the law proceeds. When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to overturn Roe v. Wade, it cleared the way for two Utah laws to come into force: a ban on most abortions after the 18th week of pregnancy, which was passed in 2019 and is currently in effect, and a near-total abortion ban passed in 2020 that would prohibit the procedure at any time during pregnancy, with very limited exceptions, including for cases of rape or incest or to save the life of the mother.The near-total abortion ban took effect in 2022, but the Planned Parenthood Association of Utah almost immediately filed a lawsuit in the state seeking to block the ban. The organization argued that the ban violated several provisions in the State Constitution, including those that guarantee a right to determine family composition and a right to gender equality.A trial court issued a preliminary injunction in July 2022 blocking the state from enforcing the near-total ban while the case proceeded. Utah state officials appealed, but the State Supreme Court ruled against them on Thursday and left the injunction in place. Camila Vega, a staff attorney for Planned Parenthood Federation of America and one of the litigators on the case, said after the state’s appeal was filed last August that the organization would “once again make the case that the trigger ban violates the Utah constitution, which protects pregnant Utahns’ ability to make their own medical decisions and their right to determine when and whether to have a family.”In court filings, the state argued that the Utah constitution does not protect a right to abortion, and that the injunction imposed “severe irreparable harm on the State side of the balance, given the profound state and public interest at stake — the preservation of human life, both the mother’s and the unborn child’s.” The state challenged Planned Parenthood Association of Utah’s standing to file the lawsuit, and argued that the trial court had abused its discretion and erred in issuing the injunction. The State Supreme Court rejected those arguments on Thursday. Whether abortion up to 18 weeks will remain permanently legal in the state of Utah depends on the outcome of Planned Parenthood Association of Utah’s lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the near-total ban. The ruling on Thursday did not decide that question; rather, it said that the lower courts were right to let the case proceed and to keep the state from enforcing the ban in the meantime. More