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New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez to run for reelection as independent
Washington — Sen. Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, has decided to seek reelection as an independent as his trial on federal bribery charges is underway.
According to the New Jersey Division of Elections’ website, his petition to run as an independent candidate was filed Monday and had nearly 2,500 signatures. Menendez needed 800 signatures to gain ballot access.
Menendez announced in March that he would not run in the Democratic primary amid allegations that he used his political influence to help three New Jersey businessmen and the governments of Egypt and Qatar. In return, Menendez and his wife, Nadine, received cash, gold bars, a Mercedes convertible, mortgage payments and other gifts, according to prosecutors.
The three-term senator has resisted intense political pressure to resign and left the door open in his March announcement to running as an independent if he’s exonerated this summer.
“Unfortunately, the present accusations I am facing, of which I am innocent and will prove so, will not allow me to have that type of dialogue and debate with political opponents that have already made it the cornerstone of their campaign,” Menendez said at the time.
The filing deadline to run as an independent is Tuesday, but candidates have until Aug. 16 to withdraw from the race and avoid appearing on the ballot, so if Menendez were to be convicted before then, he would be able to end his candidacy in time to remove his name from the ballot.
Menendez’s trial could last another month.
Prosecutors have portrayed Menendez as a “corrupt” politician who “put his power up for sale” in the pursuit of lucrative bribes, detailing a complex scheme that involved a halal meat monopoly, the Egyptian and Qatari governments and several criminal investigations.
Menendez is being tried alongside two New Jersey businessmen — Wael Hana, owner of the halal meat company IS EG Halal, and Fred Daibes, a real estate developer. All three have pleaded not guilty.
A third businessman who was indicted, Jose Uribe, pleaded guilty in March and confessed to buying Menendez’s wife a $60,000 Mercedes to influence the senator.
During Menendez’s trial, his counsel has been pinning the blame on his wife, who is undergoing treatment for breast cancer and is expected to go on trial later this summer. Nadine Menendez kept her husband in the dark about her financial challenges and dealings with the businessmen, the senator’s attorney argued during opening statements. His attorneys claimed that gold bars seized from the couple’s home belonged to Nadine Menendez, and the senator did not have a key to the locked closet in which they were discovered. Nadine Menendez has also pleaded not guilty.
After the initial indictment was unsealed in September, Menendez was abandoned by Democratic allies, including New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, who appeared as a character witness in Menendez’s first federal bribery trial in 2017, which ended in a mistrial.
Primary polls, some which included Menendez before he made the decision not to run as a Democrat, have shown Rep. Andy Kim trouncing his Democratic opponents. Kim was the first member of New Jersey’s congressional delegation to call for Menendez’s resignation.
“Americans are fed up with politicians putting their own personal benefit ahead of what’s right for the country. Everyone knows Bob Menendez isn’t running for the people of New Jersey, he’s doing it for himself. It’s beyond time for change and I’m stepping up to restore integrity back into the U.S. Senate,” Kim said in a statement Monday.
Menendez has spent nearly $4.9 million in campaign funds on legal fees since October, according to Federal Election Commission filings. He has about $3.5 million cash on hand and few contributions coming in to his campaign.
His legal defense fund, which is separate from his campaign account, is bringing in more funds, though he’s burning through it quickly. From July 2023 through March 2024, Menendez pulled in more than $658,000 and had a little more than $112,000 remaining.
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — One person was killed and eight others were hurt after a shooting late on July 4, Philadelphia police said.
The shooting happened around 11:30 p.m. near 60th Street and Kingsessing Avenue in Southwest Philadelphia.
Police said an officer found a victim with gunshot wounds lying in the middle of the street and then other officers were called to the scene. Police found a total of nine victims, five of whom are adults and four who are teenagers.
“Our officers were in the area doing a routine patrol and observed someone laying on the ground,” Philadelphia Police Inspector Kpana Massaquoi said.
CBS News Philadelphia
The victim who was killed was an adult. Police said the teenage victims are between 16 and 17 years old.
Some victims were found at the scene, while others showed up at nearby hospitals.
Medics transported five victims to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center and another was taken by private vehicle to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania’s Cedar Avenue location. Two teens were taken to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and another person arrived at Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital in Delaware County.
Massaquoi said he believed the surviving victims were in stable condition.
Police didn’t mention a motive or suspects for the shooting but said large crowds were being broken up throughout the night.
“It is very alarming, and especially when we have officers in the area to try to prevent anything like this from happening, and it still happened,” Massaquoi said.
The mass shooting happened about one year after 5 people were killed less than a mile away, in the area of 54th Street and Chester Avenue. That was one of the deadliest mass shootings in Philadelphia history.
Kingsessing had just honored the victims of that shooting with a vigil on July 3.
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This Fourth of July weekend, take advantage of incredible deals on the best mattresses of 2024. The experts at CBS Essentials have uncovered Independence Day discounts from top retailers like Nolah Sleep, Casper Sleep, Tuft & Needle and many more. This means you can upgrade to a newer and more comfortable mattress without breaking the bank — or tanking your summer vacation budget.
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Shop the best Fourth of July mattress deals in 2024
Don’t lose sleep over an expensive mattress. Let us be your mattress advisors. Keep scrolling to shop the best Fourth of July mattress deals in 2024.
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Nolah Sleep
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Casper Sleep: 30% off all mattresses and up to 20% off pillows and sheets
Casper Sleep
Calling all Casper Sleep fans: the mattress and bedding brand is having a massive Fourth of July sale. The brand is currently offering 30% off all mattresses and up to 20% off pillows and sheets. This is the perfect opportunity to upgrade your bedding with Casper’s highly-rated products. Don’t miss out on these incredible savings.
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Tuft & Needle: Save 20% on all mattresses and 15% on select bedding and accessories
Tuft & Needle
Shop Tuft & Needle’s July 4th sale and save 20% on all mattresses and 15% on select bedding and accessories. That means the brand’s highly-rated Legacy Original queen mattress is now only $716 (down from $895). This mattress, which boasts a 4.6-star rating, features cooling gel, heat-wicking graphite, and breathable Tuft & Needle Adaptive foam, providing a flexible sleep surface that responds and adjusts with you. It’s especially beneficial for back and stomach sleepers.
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Available in sizes from twin to California king.
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Big Fig: $500 off all mattresses
Big Fig
For a limited time, shoppers can take $500 off a Big Fig mattress. Big Fig (short for Bigger Figure) makes mattresses that can support up to 1,100 pounds. The mattresses are made with the brand’s ThermoGel Cooling Technology to help prevent night sweats and heavy-duty foam to prevent sagging. The brand offers a 20-year warranty and a 120-night sleep trial.
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Nectar Sleep: Up to 40% off mattresses
Nectar
Nectar Sleep’s Fourth of July sale includes up to 40% off mattresses. That means the brand’s most popular mattress, the Nectar Sleep Premier, is deeply discounted right now. The mattress is made with Nectar’s dual-action cooling technology, which reacts to your body’s temp to help you sleep cool. The mattress can be ordered as a memory foam mattress or as a hybrid mattress for an added cost.
The Nectar Sleep Premier mattress (queen), $949 (regularly $1,499)
Discover more of Nectar Sleep’s top-rated mattresses below. They’re all up to 40% off during the brand’s Fourth of July sale.
Nectar Sleep memory foam mattress (queen), $649 (regularly $1,099)
Nectar Sleep Premier copper mattress (queen), $1,249 (regularly $1,949)
Essentia: 25% off sitewide
Essentia
Essentia is offering 25% off sitewide. That means you can get the Classic REM5 mattress at a discount! This particular mattress features cooling technology, which incorporates activated quartz into its patented organic latex foam formula. According to the brand, the sleep surface of the Classic REM5 mattress is proven to sleep up to five degrees cooler than other Essentia mattresses.
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CBS News
Insurance wouldn’t pay for his vasectomy. Such birth control coverage may become more elusive.
David Engler had been pretty sure he didn’t want children. Then a frustrating school day two years ago helped seal the deal for the now 43-year-old substitute teacher.
“It was wild. I had to call the office seven times to get kids pulled out,” he said. “The next day, I called Kaiser and said, ‘I’d like to know how much a vasectomy is.'”
A representative with Engler’s insurer, Kaiser Permanente, told him the procedure would be free because it was a form of birth control, he said. But after undergoing the vasectomy last winter, he received a bill for $1,080.
“I felt defeated, tricked and frustrated,” said Engler, who lives in Portland, Oregon.
Engler’s experience highlights how a labyrinthine patchwork of insurance coverage rules on reproductive health care creates confusion for patients. Oregon requires that vasectomies be covered for most people who work in the public sector. But the federal Affordable Care Act — which mandates that most health plans cover preventive health services, such as contraception, at no cost to the consumer — does not require vasectomies to be covered.
And that perplexity surrounding coverage may get more complicated.
An ongoing federal lawsuit aims to strike down the ACA‘s preventive care coverage requirements for private insurers. If the case knocks out the mandates, state-level laws — which vary widely across the country — would carry more weight, a change that would resume the “wild West” dynamic from before Obamacare, said Zachary Baron, a health policy researcher at Georgetown Law.
It would create an environment “in which insurers and employers pick and choose which services they want to cover or which services they want to charge for,” Baron said. “It would certainly threaten access to care for millions of Americans.”
Studies have shown the requirements to cover preventive care have reduced consumers’ out-of-pocket costs and increased their use of short- and long-term birth control methods.
The job of defining which contraceptive services should be covered falls to the Health Resources and Services Administration, or HRSA. Two other groups — the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, or USPSTF, and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP — make recommendations on other kinds of care that the ACA requires insurers to cover.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit, a group of individuals and Christian-owned businesses, argue the members of these three panels haven’t been properly appointed by Congress. They also say the recommendations for insurance plans to cover medication for HIV prevention violate their religious rights.
On June 21, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit issued what it called a “mixed bag” opinion in the case. It said one group — the USPSTF — had not been properly appointed, and therefore its recommendations made after the ACA was signed into law were unconstitutional. The plaintiffs had asked for a nationwide ruling, but the court said only the plaintiffs’ organizations could be exempted from its recommendations.
The court then sent the plaintiffs’ challenges to the recommendations made by HRSA and ACIP — including those on contraception — back to a lower court to consider.
The case is likely headed to Reed O’Connor, a federal judge in Texas who has issued decisions undermining the ACA — including a ruling striking down the entire law that the U.S. Supreme Court later overturned.
“O’Connor is a judge notoriously hostile to the Affordable Care Act,” said Gretchen Borchelt, vice president of reproductive rights and health at the National Women’s Law Center. “He is someone who is willing to impose remedies where he takes access to care away from everybody in the country based on what’s happening in one situation.”
A win for the plaintiffs, she worried, could create confusion about what kind of contraception is covered and how much it costs, which would ultimately lead to more unintended pregnancies — all at a time when women have less access to abortions.
Nearly two dozen organizations — including the American Medical Association, the American Public Health Association and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association — have joined Borchelt’s group in filing briefs warning about the potential disruptions a ruling for the plaintiffs could cause.
Jay Carson, an attorney with the Buckeye Institute, a conservative think tank, said he’s happy with the court’s ruling. His group, along with the state of Texas, filed briefs in support of the plaintiffs.
“Unelected bureaucrats” shouldn’t have the power to decide what insurance plans should be required to cover, said Carson. “We’ve gotten so far afield of Congress actually making the laws and, instead, relying on Congress to just empower some agency to do the heavy lifting.”
What power agencies do have is likely to be curtailed in the wake of a June 28 U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned a decades-old precedent dictating that courts should defer to federal agencies when it comes to regulatory or scientific decisions.
“Courts are going to be more able to scrutinize experts,” said Richard Hughes, a health care regulatory attorney with the firm Epstein, Becker, and Green. “It’s a vibe shift — we’re moving in the direction of the administrative state being curtailed.”
Eliminating federal coverage requirements for contraception would leave it up to states to determine what services health insurance plans would be required to provide.
Fourteen states and Washington, D.C., currently protect the right to contraception. But states can go only so far with those rules, said Baron, because a federal statute prevents them from regulating self-funded health plans, which cover about 65% of workers.
“It would leave significant gaps in coverage,” Baron said.
A group of Democratic-led states made such an argument in a court brief last year, arguing for the mandates to be upheld to discourage self-funded plans from declining to offer preventive services, as they often did before the ACA.
Even when states can regulate what health plans cover, people still fall through the cracks. “I see denials all the time in instances where the treatment clearly is covered,” said Megan Glor, a health insurance attorney in Oregon.
Patients can appeal their insurers’ decisions, but that’s not easy. And if a patient’s appeals fail, litigation is generally the only option — but that’s a long, complicated, costly process, Glor said. Likely, the best outcome for a patient is an insurer covering what should have been covered in the first place.
When Engler called Kaiser Permanente about his vasectomy charge, he said a representative told him the bill was sent by mistake. Still, he said, the insurer kept asking for money. Engler filed and lost multiple appeals and eventually settled the charge for $540.
Kristina Barker for KFF Health News
Engler’s vasectomy likely should have been free, Glor said. As a teacher, Engler is a public sector employee, which means his insurance would be subject to an Oregon law that mandates no-cost coverage for vasectomies.
Kaiser Permanente told KFF Health News that state law does not apply because of a federal rule for high-deductible health plans paired with health savings accounts. That rule requires patients to cover out-of-pocket costs until their deductible is met.
However, after KFF Health News contacted Kaiser Permanente about Engler’s situation, he said the company promised to issue a full refund for the $540 he had paid to settle his case.
“Although we administered the benefit correctly, an employee who spoke with Mr. Engler told him incorrectly that he would not have” to share the cost, said Debbie Karman, a Kaiser Permanente spokesperson.
Engler said he’s happy with the outcome, though he’s still unsure how Kaiser Permanente’s staff was confused about his insurance coverage.
He worries that others don’t have the means he had to advocate for himself.
“It’s scary,” he said. “So many people are limited in their resources or their understanding of how to fight — or even who to fight.”
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.