Rural health pivot

By Amy Dalrymple | Editor

By Jack Dura

North Dakota’s Health and Human Services Department is turning to outside “anchor partners” to manage a federal grant program for millions of dollars meant to boost rural health care initiatives.

Lawmakers wondered what an “anchor partner” actually is, how they are chosen and how the change will affect the timing to get more than $160 million of awarded funding out the door by a looming deadline.

Earlier this year, the Republican-led Legislature accepted $199 million in federal Rural Health Transformation Program funding. The money is meant to improve technology, increase health care access in rural areas, boost workforce and promote healthy lifestyles.

By Kevin Hardy

Democratic and Republican governors say they will more aggressively push back on federal overreach regardless of which party controls Washington.

Last month, the bipartisan National Governors Association for the first time in over a decade updated its internal principles on federalism — the system of power sharing between Washington, D.C., and the states. That document now says governors must defend state sovereignty, including through public criticism of federal overreach, legal challenges to federal action, and declining to use state resources to enforce federal laws. 

The new policy comes as more state leaders during President Donald Trump’s second term elevate the importance of federalism, the uniquely American structure created by the framers of the Constitution.

By Kelcie Moseley-Morris

In the early months of 2022, Democrats in Congress came close to passing an appropriations bill that did not include a provision barring federal funding for abortions — maybe the closest it had ever come in more than 40 years.

But those who wanted the Hyde Amendment included won the battle in the end. Three months later, the U.S. Supreme Court made its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health to allow states to regulate abortion access.

The Hyde Amendment was first passed Sept. 30, 1976, three years after the Roe decision. It marked one of the first legislative victories for anti-abortion groups after Roe v. Wade guaranteed abortion access up to fetal viability. 

In the decades since, it has been added to every appropriations bill passed by Congress, restricting federal Medicaid dollars from paying for abortion care except in limited cases of rape, incest and to prevent a pregnant patient’s death.

By Ashley Murray

U.S. Senate Republicans did not gain any support Wednesday from Democrats as they attempted to advance a bill that mashed together two hot-button midterm issues: requiring voter ID in federal elections and limiting stock trading for members of Congress.

The Republican-led bill, titled the Stop Insider Trading Act, failed 53-47 when lawmakers stayed solidly within party lines for the procedural vote. Most legislation requires 60 votes, or three-fifths of the Senate, to advance.

The House-passed measure attached a voter ID requirement onto a base bill prohibiting members of Congress and their spouses and close family members from purchasing certain stocks, and requiring a public notice and waiting period prior to selling stocks. 

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