Latest news with #Charleston
Associated Press
8 hours ago
- Climate
- Associated Press
Mudslide along West Virginia highway strands thousands for more than 8 hours
Thousands of motorists were stranded for more than eight hours along a section of rural interstate highway in southern West Virginia early Friday after a mudslide caused by heavy rains blocked a storm drain the previous night, flooding the northbound lanes. Traffic backed up for 12 miles (about 19 kilometers) along the West Virginia Turnpike about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of Charleston, the state capital. Traffic was not rerouted, and many motorists along the mountainous route had no choice but to remain in their vehicles overnight. Motorists posted on social media that they had no information on why the standstill occurred, that they had nothing to drink in their vehicles or that their children needed to use the bathroom. Nicky Walters said in a telephone interview that she felt fortunate while she was stuck because she is healthy, did not not need medicine and had nobody she was responsible for caring for. 'But I felt desperate because I knew that other people needed help,' said Walters, who became stranded while returning to Charleston from a pro wrestling event in Mount Hope. 'People needed, at minimum, water bottles passed out and some snacks, much less information. They needed any lifeline to the outside world, and there was none.' Chuck Smith, executive director of the West Virginia Parkways Authority, said one lane reopened Friday morning but traffic remained at a standstill for hours. 'Traffic should have been detoured to allow drivers an alternate route around the mudslide,' Smith said in a statement. 'The Parkways Authority takes full responsibility for the failure to reroute traffic, and would like to assure the public that this will never happen again.' No injuries were reported. By the time Brittany Lemon and her family finally got home to Parkersburg, 24 hours had passed since they began returning from their vacation in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. In a video posted to Facebook, Lemon said she had no water and her children needed to use the bathroom. They were able to get an hour's sleep while stuck on the highway. 'Definitely next year when I go back, I'll be prepared for an emergency in the vehicle,' she said. Mitch Carmichael, a former cabinet secretary of the Department of Economic Development, said on Facebook that he was on the turnpike 'for hours with no relevant or timely info as to when issue will be cleared.' He called it 'incredibly unprofessional' for the public to be left in the dark and said it gives West Virginia 'a terrible image.' Gov. Patrick Morrisey said in a statement that the shutdown 'was completely unacceptable. I have directed the Parkways Authority to immediately conduct an investigation and revise its procedures as necessary as a result of this incident.' Shutdowns of the turnpike have happened before. In 2022 a tractor trailer crashed and spilled a chemical along the turnpike, closing all lanes for most of the day.
The Herald
a day ago
- Health
- The Herald
US Supreme Court backs South Carolina effort to defund Planned Parenthood
'Today, the Supreme Court again sided with politicians who believe they know better than you, who want to block you from seeing your trusted healthcare provider and making your own healthcare decisions,' said Planned Parenthood Federation of America president Alexis McGill Johnson. Lawmakers are trying to defund Planned Parenthood 'as part of their long-term goal to shut down Planned Parenthood and ban abortion nationwide' she said. South Carolina attorney general Alan Wilson, a Republican, welcomed the ruling. 'This is about who runs South Carolina, our elected leaders or out of state activists and unelected judges. We're glad the court got it right,' Wilson said. Since the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned its landmark Roe vs Wade ruling that had legalised abortion nationwide, a number of Republican-led states have implemented near-total bans or, like South Carolina, prohibitions after six weeks of pregnancy. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic operates clinics in the South Carolina cities of Charleston and Columbia, where it serves hundreds of Medicaid patients each year, providing physical examinations, screenings for cancer and diabetes, pregnancy testing, contraception and other services. Planned Parenthood affiliate and Medicaid patient Julie Edwards sued in 2018 after Republican governor Henry McMaster ordered South Carolina officials to end the organisation's participation in the state Medicaid programme by deeming any abortion provider unqualified to provide family planning services. The plaintiffs sued South Carolina under an 1871 US law that helps people challenge illegal acts by state officials. They said the Medicaid law protects what they called a 'deeply personal right' to choose one's doctor. The South Carolina department of health and human services, represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom conservative legal group and backed by President Donald Trump's administration, said the disputed Medicaid provision in the case does not meet the 'high bar for recognising private rights'. In the ruling, Gorsuch agreed with South Carolina, saying the law did not provide 'clear and unambiguous notice of an individually enforceable right'. He noted 'private enforcement does not always benefit the public, not least because it requires states to divert money and attention away from social services and towards litigation'. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in a dissent joined by the court's two other liberal justices that the ruling 'is likely to result in tangible harm to real people. At a minimum, it will deprive Medicaid recipients in South Carolina of their only meaningful way of enforcing a right that Congress has expressly granted to them'. The ruling will strip Medicaid recipients around the country of the ability to decide who treats them at their most vulnerable, Jackson wrote, calling that 'a deeply personal freedom'. A federal judge ruled in Planned Parenthood's favour, finding Medicaid recipients may sue under the 1871 law and that the state's move to defund the organisation violated the right of Edwards to freely choose a qualified medical provider. In 2024, the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th US circuit court of appeals also sided with the plaintiffs. The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case on April 2. Reuters
Yahoo
a day ago
- Climate
- Yahoo
Fireball streak captured on camera in Southeast U.S.
A possible meteorite was spotted shooting through the sky in the Southeast United States. The National Weather Service office in Charleston said there were "many reports of a fireball" across the region. NBC News' Bill Karins reports on possible explanations for the sighting.
Al Jazeera
2 days ago
- Health
- Al Jazeera
US Supreme Court backs South Carolina effort to defund Planned Parenthood
The United States Supreme Court has cleared the way for South Carolina to strip the nonprofit healthcare provider Planned Parenthood of funding under Medicaid, a government insurance programme. Thursday's ruling was split along ideological lines, with the three liberal justices on the nine-member court dissenting. The ruling overturned a lower court's decision barring Republican-governed South Carolina from preventing Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, a regional branch, from participating in the state's Medicaid programme. Republican leaders in South Carolina have objected to Planned Parenthood because it provides abortions. The Supreme Court's decision bolsters efforts by Republican-led states to deprive the reproductive healthcare provider of public money. The case centred on whether recipients of Medicaid may sue to enforce a requirement under US law that they may obtain medical assistance from any qualified and willing provider. Medicaid is administered jointly by the federal and state governments, and it is designed to provide healthcare coverage for low-income people. Since the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned its landmark Roe v Wade ruling that legalised abortion nationwide, a number of Republican-led states have implemented near-total bans on the procedure. Some, like South Carolina, prohibit abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic operates clinics in the South Carolina cities of Charleston and Columbia, where it serves hundreds of Medicaid patients each year, providing physical examinations, screenings for cancer and diabetes, pregnancy testing, contraception and other services. The Planned Parenthood affiliate and a Medicaid patient named Julie Edwards sued the state in 2018. A year earlier, in 2017, Republican Governor Henry McMaster had ordered officials to end Planned Parenthood's participation in the state Medicaid programme by deeming any abortion provider unqualified to provide family planning services. The plaintiffs sued South Carolina under an 1871 law that helps people challenge illegal acts by state officials. They said the Medicaid law protects what they called a 'deeply personal right' to choose one's doctor. The South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom conservative legal group and backed by President Donald Trump's administration, said the disputed Medicaid provision in this case does not meet the 'high bar for recognising private rights'. A federal judge previously ruled in Planned Parenthood's favour, finding that Medicaid recipients may sue under the 1871 law and that the state's move to defund the organisation violated Edwards's right to freely choose a qualified medical provider. In 2024, the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Richmond, Virginia, also sided with the plaintiffs. The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case on April 2. The dispute has reached the Supreme Court three times. The court in 2020 rejected South Carolina's appeal at an earlier stage of the case. In 2023, it ordered a lower court to reconsider South Carolina's arguments in light of a ruling the justices issued involving the rights of nursing home residents. That decision explained that laws like Medicaid must unambiguously give individuals the right to sue.
New York Times
2 days ago
- Health
- New York Times
Supreme Court Rules Planned Parenthood Cannot Sue Over S. Carolina Defunding Effort
The Supreme Court ruled that Planned Parenthood and one of its patients may not sue South Carolina over its effort to deny funding to Planned Parenthood, reasoning that the relevant federal statute does not authorize such suits. The vote was 6 to 3, with the court's three liberal members in dissent. In 2018, Gov. Henry McMaster of South Carolina, a Republican, ordered state officials to deny Medicaid funds to Planned Parenthood, saying that 'payment of taxpayer funds to abortion clinics, for any purpose, results in the subsidy of abortion and the denial of the right to life.' Medicaid gives federal money to states to provide medical care for poor people, but it sets some conditions. One is that eligible participants may receive assistance from any provider qualified to perform the required services. Abortions are banned in South Carolina after six weeks of pregnancy. Even then, federal law prohibits the use of Medicaid funding for abortion except in life-threatening circumstances or in cases of rape or incest. But Planned Parenthood clinics in Charleston and Columbia provide services unrelated to abortion, including counseling, physical exams, contraception and screenings for cancer and sexually transmitted infections. Planned Parenthood and a patient who sought contraception sued under a federal civil rights law, and a federal trial judge blocked the South Carolina directive, saying that it ran afoul of Medicaid's requirement that patients may choose any qualified provider. The litigation that followed was convoluted and circuitous, focusing largely on whether Medicaid's provision created a right that individuals could enforce by filing lawsuits. The Supreme Court has said that federal laws like Medicaid, which give money to states but only if they accept certain conditions, must 'unambiguously confer individual federal rights' to give affected individuals the right to sue. That is a hard test to meet, and the court has only rarely ruled that it has been satisfied, most recently in 2023 in Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County v. Talevski, a case concerning nursing homes. The statute at issue in that case repeatedly referred to 'rights' as such, while the Medicaid provision in the new case, Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, No. 23-1275, uses different language. That law says that people seeking medical services 'may obtain such assistance from any institution' that is 'qualified to perform the service or services required.' Last year, a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., ruled that the suit could proceed. 'This case is, and always has been, about whether Congress conferred an individually enforceable right for Medicaid beneficiaries to freely choose their health care provider,' Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III wrote for the panel. 'Preserving access to Planned Parenthood and other providers means preserving an affordable choice and quality care for an untold number of mothers and infants in South Carolina.' He added that 'this decision is not about funding or providing abortions.'
