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The Sacred Place Where Life Begins. That’s what the Gwich’in people call the coastal plain of Alaska where they live.
The Porcupine Caribou, on which the Gwich’in have relied for tens of thousands of years for their subsistence way of life, migrate hundreds of miles each spring to give birth to their calves there, so the Gwich’in name rings true.
It was this life that the Biden administration protected for years to come with the announcement last week that it was canceling oil and gas drilling leases in the 19.6-million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and moving to prohibit drilling in another 13 million acres of protected lands bordering the refuge.
It wasn’t just the Gwich’in, who have been fighting drilling for nearly 50 years, and the caribou who won. The Inupiaq people who live at the edge of the Arctic Ocean, polar bears, musk oxen, Dall sheep, and birds you can find in all 50 states have roots in the Arctic Refuge.
That corner of Alaska is one of the world’s last untouched wild places, our country’s largest wildlife refuge, and the only one designed specifically for wilderness purposes. Its continued existence in its pristine, rugged state signals our commitment to nature and our appreciation of its wonder. It’s a symbol of our national character.
But the value isn’t just symbolic. We’re on pace this year to produce more oil in the United States than ever before. Creating a glut will only extend our addiction to fossil fuels when we know that we need to move swiftly in the direction of burning less. The trade-off is infrastructure needed to drill that will destroy the refuge forever.
It’s a trade that the American people repeatedly have said they don’t want to make. In polls in recent years, roughly two-thirds of voters opposed drilling in the Arctic Refuge. After the president’s decision to allow another Alaskan drilling project to proceed months ago, this is the leadership most voters want.
The argument that Arctic drilling will boost U.S. energy independence and national security fall short when you know that all the oil under that part of Alaska is barely a year of the nation’s consumption by many estimates. We won’t drill our way out of the need for fossil fuels, but we certainly can drill our way to irreparable damage to the climate in just a few years.
Protecting indigenous people and their way of life in Alaska should demonstrate that we can stand firm to defend more communities on the front lines of climate change against the unabated greed of Big Oil. An unscathed, unmatched landscape shouldn’t be the test for doing right by our neighbors and by the planet.
Too often, we’ve allowed a few people lacking political power and desperate for economic opportunities to bear the immediate cost of bad environmental choices. The flaw is that more often than not, we all end up paying.
Whether it’s the cancer alleys created in the communities neighboring refineries along the Mississippi or coastal towns repeatedly crushed by extreme weather, they’re only the first to feel the burden. As the hottest temperatures ever recorded showed us this summer, no one can escape the toll that fossil fuel charges the planet.
Ben Jealous is executive director of the Sierra Club, the nation’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization. He is a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania and author of “Never Forget Our People Were Always Free,” published in January.
Senator Chuck Schumer has long been an advocate for lowering healthcare costs for New Yorkers, and—in his position as majority leader of the Senate—for Americans across the country. The Inflation Reduction Act, which Schumer helped usher through the Senate, included several critical policies that are already helping to lower prescription drug costs for many. However, one issue the Inflation Reduction Act did not address is the pharmaceutical industry’s abuse of the patent system.
Although this may be an under-the-radar issue for some, it has serious ramifications for the prices Americans pay for prescription drugs—which are the highest in the world. According to one recent study from the American Economic Liberties Project and the Initiative for Medicines, Access, and Knowledge (I-MAK), several of Big Pharma’s most commonly used anti-competitive tactics, including several aimed at gaming the patent system, cost the U.S. healthcare system more than $40 billion in 2019 alone.
As the study outlines, “Drug companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars advancing these schemes because they have calculated that doing so is significantly more profitable than competing with generics and biosimilars based on price and quality.”
The pharmaceutical industry uses a range of mechanisms to abuse our patent system, including tactics such as “product hopping,” “patent thicketing,” and “evergreening.” All are ultimately aimed at keeping their blockbuster products on the market longer without having to face competition from generic and biosimilar drugs. This in turn locks patients into paying higher prices for prescription medications.
While there are several egregious examples of Big Pharma’s patent abuse preventing competition from entering the market, the most notorious example may be AbbVie’s rheumatoid arthritis drug Humira. While Humira is set to face competition for the first time this year, during its almost 20 years on the market, AbbVie’s patent strategy for this drug set the standard other companies have followed in terms of fending off competition and securing extended sales by constructing impenetrable walls of patents.
Through the years, AbbVie applied for more than 300 patents on Humira, securing more than half of these. Importantly, more than 90% of the patents AbbVie filed on Humira came after the drug was already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), demonstrating that AbbVie was seeking additional patent protection to extend the length of time the drug could be on the market without competition.
This strategy led to obscene profits for Humira and forced patients and the U.S. healthcare system to pay egregious sums of money. Since its launch in 2002, Humira has raked in over $200 billion for AbbVie. To give you a sense of the scale of these profits, last year AbbVie brought in more in revenue ($21 billion) for just this one drug than all 32 teams combined brought in for the National Football League ($19 billion).
In my work at God’s Battalion of Prayer Ministries, I’ve encountered countless individuals and families who have been burdened by the high price of prescription drugs. It remains an issue for far too many New Yorkers, and far too many Americans.
According to recent polling, almost one in three Americans report difficulty with affording their medications as prescribed due to cost. And importantly, Americans understand where the blame truly lies. Almost eight in ten respondents to the same poll said that pharmaceutical industry profits are a “major factor” in contributing to the price of prescription drugs.
To build on the positive progress made in terms of lowering prescription drug prices with the Inflation Reduction Act, Congress must take the next step and work to crack down on the many ways the pharmaceutical industry abuses the patent system.
A solution to address this critical priority has already been introduced in Congress. The bipartisan Affordable Prescriptions for Patients Act of 2023, introduced by Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and John Cornyn (R-TX), would crack down on several anti-competitive tactics the pharmaceutical industry employs to abuse the patent system and help increase competition by enabling more generic and biosimilar products to come to market, which would lowering prices.
This is an important legislative solution that would help ease the burden of New Yorkers and Americans across the country contending with the high price of many prescription drugs.
In an increasingly divided Congress, our elected leaders can continue to find common ground in working to lower Americans’ healthcare costs. Democrats saw the value of this in the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act last year. I’m certain they will see the value in keeping up the momentum by passing the Affordable Prescriptions for Patients Act of 2023 later this year.
Reverend Alfred S. Cockfield is COO of God’s Battalion of Prayer Ministries.
The video session of the Giants’ 40-0 regular season opening game loss at home at MetLife Stadium on Sunday night to the Dallas Cowboys was undoubtedly both instructive and mortifying.
Bluntly, the Giants were horrible in all facets of the game. The Cowboys imposed their will on them early in the game, taking a 16-0 first quarter lead and essentially deciding the outcome by halftime when the score was 26-0. The Cowboys 14 second half points were for posterity.
It made the shutout the largest by either team in head-to-head matchups, surpassing the Cowboys’ 35-0 victory in 1995. The one positive takeaway for the Giants is that the game took place in Week 1, so they have 16 more to go. But if what transpired was more of an exposure of lingering weaknesses than an anomaly—most glaringly a disjointed offensive line—the Giants will find the next three and a half months problematic.
Giants quarterback Daniel Jones was under siege all evening by the fast and physical Cowboys defense and did not respond well, looking uncertain, hurried, and rattled. He passed for just 104 yards and threw two interceptions. Similarly, running back Saquon Barkley was not able to get untracked and was pounded between the tackles and in space.
Barkley had a respectable 4.3 yards per carry average, rushing for 51 yards on 12 attempts, including an 18-yard scamper. One of Jones’ interceptions came when Barkley was hammered by Cowboys cornerback Trevon Diggs late in the first quarter on a dump off from Jones. The hit jarred the ball from Barkley and it was picked out of the air by Cowboys cornerback DaRon Bland, who sprinted 22-yards for a touchdown with 2:22 remaining in the first quarter.
“Obviously, a tough loss, a disappointing loss, got beat all the way around, [from] coaching to playing and I accept that, got a lot to learn from, a lot to work on and that’s what we’ll do,” said Giants head coach Brian Daboll to begin his postgame press conference.
“No excuses, give credit to Dallas. They just did everything better than we did tonight.”
We got skunked in the National Football League against Dallas, and at home,” said Barkley. “That’s football. We’ve got to do a better job, starting with myself and the leaders of stop the leaking, stop the bleeding and we didn’t do that. We can’t go down like that to a team of that caliber. Just got to go, watch film, learn from it, and get ready for Arizona.”
The Giants will play the Cardinals on the road this Sunday (4:05 p.m.).
With the tagline “Where Health Meets Heritage,” the Black Health Matters Harlem Week Health Summit and Expo featured a wide array of speakers, health resources, and information. Citing “some of the greatest health challenges of our time,” the Summit, held last month at the Alhambra Ballroom in Harlem, featured remarks from CDC Executive Director Mandy K. Cohen, MD, MPH, and Department of Health (DOH) Commissioner Ashwin Vasan, MD, PhD.
Vasan kicked things off by talking about the current status of healthcare among New Yorkers. “In recent times, our health has taken quite the hit,” Vasan said. “Life expectancy and life spans…[have] fallen dramatically over the last few years. And while COVID might have been the greatest threat that we face in our lifetimes, it’s just one explanation for why our life spans are getting shorter and our lives are getting less healthy.”
Vasan spoke about other contributing factors, including alcohol use, drug use, and overdoses.
He added that not everyone experiences these impacts equally. “Black New Yorkers are suffering the largest declines in health of any group in our city,” Vasan said. “The average Black New Yorkers can expect to live 73 years in New York City compared to 78 years for white New Yorkers. This is unacceptable to me.”
What can individuals do? Vasan offered several possibilities, including:
Ensuring that children and adults are up to date on vaccines and boosters (COVID, RSV, flu)
Vasan concluded by saying that “vaccines save lives” and “Black health matters. Your health matters. It matters to me, it matters to the mayor, and we are committed to centering it. We know that if our city is going to be healthier overall, we have to center the needs of the Black community.”
Vasan then handed the microphone over to Cohen, who focused on vaccination. “There are a lot of threats to our health and our ability to be healthy, but we also have more tools than ever before, and one of the tools I want to talk to you about is vaccines,” Cohen said. “How wonderful it is as parents that we can give that gift to our kids.”
Cohen spoke specifically about RSV and new tools available to protect children: “Many of us have had friends or our own kids who have been in the hospital with RSV, so don’t let that happen this year. If you have a little baby, it’s time to get their RSV shot.”
Cohen also discussed the drop in vaccinations during the COVID-19 pandemic and implored families to protect children. “As they get ready for school, put vaccines on their back-to-school checklist.”
Cohen ended her remarks on an upbeat note, saying that she wants “to make sure we’re protecting them from measles and polio and chickenpox.”
In a Q&A session with reporters after their remarks, Vasan reiterated the importance of getting vaccinated. “The majority of people hospitalized and severely ill are unvaccinated, so it’s more important than ever to get vaccinated if you haven’t been vaccinated and to get the new booster [when available].”
Cohen talked about the impending release of the new COVID-19 booster, which she said is likely to be introduced “the second or third week of September. We will see the FDA approve a new COVID Booster, then the CDC will make a final recommendation on who should get that booster. I expect that this will be a booster that is widely available to everyone. Again, we’re seeing more COVID already starting to circulate, or know [there’s] going to be more COVID this fall and winter, so likely what you will see from us is a recommendation to get your COVID booster, probably the second or third week of September.” For additional resources about COVID-19, visitwww1.nyc.gov/site/coronavirus/index.page or call 311. COVID-19 testing, masks, and vaccination resources can also be accessed on the AmNews’ COVID-19 page:www.amsterdamnews.com/covid/. The COVID-19 Express site is atnyc.gov/covidexpress. At-home rapid test kits are available for pickup atnyc.gov/covidtest.
The unthinkable became the Jets’ devastating actuality.
Quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who was acquired by the franchise last April with enormous expectations that he was the missing piece to a potential Super Bowl team, tore his left Achilles tendon on Monday.
In the season-opening game for the Jets and Buffalo Bills at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, Rodgers was sacked by Bills defensive end Leonard Floyd on just the offense’s fourth snap, causing what was confirmed on Tuesday as a season-ending injury.
To frame the occurrence in a more exasperating and emotionally piercing context for Jets fans who have craved another Super Bowl title since the team’s first and only in 1969, 54 years ago, Rodgers, who many believed could help deliver the coveted prize, played less than 5 minutes of the 2023 season.
The Jets defeating the Bills 22-16 in overtime on a dramatic 65-yard game-ending punt return by rookie Xavier Gipson with 9:02 remaining had the relevance of a footnote contrasted with Rodgers’ injury. The Jets’ swarming, relentless defense and quarterback Zach Wilson, who replaced Rodgers, limiting his consequential mistakes to one interception, helped the team fight back from a 13-3 halftime deficit was commendable.
Second-year running back Breece Hall, playing his first regular season game since tearing the ACL in his right knee last October 23 in Week 7 and cutting short a sensational rookie season, was inspiring. Hall looked explosive and fully recovered on Monday night, rushing for a dazzling 127 yards. However, it was an afterthought in light of the Jets’ championship aspirations and the 39-year-old Rodgers’ career in doubt.
“I’m going to enjoy this win,” said Jets head coach Robert Saleh in his postgame press conference. “Winning in the NFL is hard regardless of who the quarterback is. But personally, I don’t hurt for me, I don’t hurt for the locker room. I hurt for Aaron. I’m still going to say a prayer, hold out hope. My heart’s with Aaron now, no one else.”
On Tuesday, Saleh expanded on his sentiments.
“I feel more for Aaron than anyone,” he said of the four-time NFL MVP. “He’s invested so much into this organization, so much into this journey he’s embarked on and wanting to be a part of what we have going here, and…into not only this organization, but his teammates, himself, this fanbase, this city. I have a lot of emotions for him.”
The Jets will face the 1-0 Dallas Cowboys on the road this Sunday (4:25 p.m.). The Cowboys crushed the Giants at MetLife Stadium on Sunday night 40-0.
After two weeks of compelling and history-making tennis, the 2023 U.S. Open ended this past Sunday with the men’s singles final between No. 2 seed Novak Djokovic and No. 3 seed Daniil Medvedev. Djokovic earned his 24th Grand Slam singles title with a 6-3, 7-6, 6-3 win to tie Margaret Court for the most ever.
After the match, which included an epic second set that lasted 1 hour, 44 minutes, Djokovic reflected on the significance of the moment.
“It obviously means the world to me, I’m really living my childhood dream to compete at the higher level in sport, which has given me and my family so much from difficult circumstances,” he said. “I never thought I would be here but I thought I had a shot at history. Why not grab it when it is presented?”
While still on the court, Djokovic displayed a shirt featuring a picture of himself and Kobe Bryant with the caption “Mama Forever.”
A touching tribute to the late basketball legend.
“I thought of doing this t-shirt eventually, if I get the chance to win the tournament, about seven days ago,” he explained. “I didn’t share it with anyone until a few days ago when I asked my people to help me out to make this shirt.
“Kobe was a close friend, we chatted a lot about winners mentality,” the 36-year-old star from Serbia explained. “When I was struggling and trying to make my comeback, work my way back to the top of the game, he was one of the people I relied on the most. He was always there for any kind of support in the most friendly way.
“Of course what happened a few years ago with him and his daughter passing, hurt me deeply. I thought ‘24’ is the jersey that he wore when he became a legend of the Lakers and of the world of basketball. I thought it could be a nice symbolic thing to acknowledge him for all of the things he’s done.”
Djokovic defeated 20-year-old Ben Shelton in the semifinals, while Medvedev upset No. 1 seed and last year’s U.S. Open champion Carlos Alcaraz.
Shelton bested Tommy Paul in the fourth round and then Francis Tiafoe in the quarterfinals. After being ousted, the former Florida Gator shared his thoughts on his experience playing at the Open.
“I think I learned a lot about myself these two weeks, knowing how deep I can dig and what I can do competitively out on the tennis court, because I think it’s such a mental sport,” said Shelton. “I think that’s such a big side of it. “Every loss hurts. It cuts you a little bit. If anything, this week has just motivated me more.”
For several years, Emmanuel Savary and Starr Andrews were the lone African American skaters competing in the U.S. Figure Skating Championships. After several injuries, Savary stepped away from the sport, leaving Andrews as the lone Black skater at the 2021 U.S. Championships. That picture changed in 2023, when Alexa Gasparotto joined Andrews in the senior women’s event.
Feeling disappointed by how his skating career halted, Savary has decided to return to competitive skating, and last weekend made a statement by winning the senior men’s event at the Middle Atlantic Figure Skating Championship, held at SkyRink at Chelsea Piers.
“It’s nice to be back; it’s been awhile,” said Savary, 25, who first competed in NYC when he was 11. “Happy to skate and looking forward to the future. I’m coming back for one more year. My swan song season, I guess you could say. The goal is to go to Nationals and skate the best that I can, and I can move on with my other goals in life. I’m finishing up college (studying physics and astronomy at the University of Delaware) and coaching a little bit as well.”
A student of Savary’s, Gabriella Alexander, made the trip to New York with her family to see him compete. “I hope to see more people who look like me skating in the near future,” she said. “Being on the ice is so magical.”
Nathan Chapple won the silver medal in the senior men’s event. “It felt great; it felt easy,” he said. “I like to perform, so it felt good. One of the major things I like to do is perform. I’d like to take that to a higher level.”
Gasparotto finished eighth overall in the senior women’s competition. She has been beset by several injuries over the past few months but is persevering in her training by prioritizing quality over quantity and adding physical therapy. Expectations are high because she is the recipient of this year’s Mabel Fairbanks Skatingly Yours Fund Elite Award, which provided her with $20,000 toward her training.
“I feel very supported,” she said. “I feel I’m turning into the role model that I always wanted to be.”
Rohene Ward and Amber Gil coach both Chapple and Gasparotto. “It’s important for them to put their programs out there and be seen,” said Ward. “I thought it was a great event. Very musical skaters.”
Middle blocker Nailah Jenkins assumed her competitive volleyball days would end after she earned her bachelor’s degree at Northeastern, but the additional year of eligibility granted to all student-athletes who were in school during the 2020-21 academic year has given her one more year to compete in the sport she loves. She is finding her groove with the volleyball team at Fordham University, which has a record of 7–1.
“It’s definitely a little weird going from living somewhere for four years and being on the same team for four years, to adjusting to a completely new place, new people, new style of volleyball, [and a] new conference and everything, but the girls on the team honestly made the adjustment so seamless and easy,” said Jenkins.
Over the summer, Jenkins joined the Fordham volleyball team for an international trip to Japan. That provided a lot of shared experiences that helped her mesh with the team. She’s enjoying the new team culture and coaching. While she is one of the most experienced players, she is willing to listen and learn from the Fordham veterans on the team.
“The girls have also been really great about asking volleyball advice and letting me share my experiences and knowledge about volleyball,” said Jenkins, who is pursuing a master’s degree in health administration. “They’ve been so receptive to having a grad transfer on the team.”
Jenkins chose Fordham because she had heard many positive things about head volleyball coach Ian Choi and the program. She knew the team needed a middle blocker, so it was a good fit. Also, after four years in Boston, she was eager to play in another big city, and New York City fits that bill nicely. Jenkins said seeing the many different cultures of the city is inspiring, noting there is somewhere for everything.
“I did my undergrad in health sciences and Fordham had the perfect one-year master’s program for me,” Jenkins said. “I think I want to go into healthcare and business. I’m interested in healthcare consulting or medical device sales or marketing. I’m not quite sure yet, but I’m hoping that my master’s will really open my eyes to something I’ll be passionate about in the long run. So I’m excited to take these new classes and gain new skills through my master’s program.”
Fordham hosts the Rose Hill Classic this weekend, facing off against Dartmouth and Fairleigh Dickinson.
The last couple of weeks of WNBA regular season play have been jam-packed for the New York Liberty. The team headed into Sunday afternoon’s Fan Appreciation Day game against the Washington Mystics on an eight-game winning streak. Having just secured a playoff spot after an up-and-down 19–21 season, the Mystics were determined to reassert the presence that brought them the 2019 WNBA title.
The game was incredibly tight, with the Mystics prevailing 90–88. The Liberty will get another chance to assert their dominance because the Mystics are the Liberty’s first-round opponent in the playoffs. Game one is at Barclays Center on Friday night and game two is at Barclays on Tuesday. New York and Washington are 2–2 this season.
“Our fans have been great the entire season, so being able to play here in front of them and have them support us and push us through is going to be amazing,” said Jonquel Jones, who had 19 points and nine rebounds in Sunday’s game. “Any time we get them involved and engaged in a game and we play the right style of basketball, it definitely shows and you can feel it out there.”
Liberty head coach Sandy Brondello said every bench is important, and this team’s bench has continued to show its skills this season. Marine Johannès has been outstanding all season, and put up 11 points off the bench against the Mystics.
“We want them to come out and continue to bring the energy. We don’t know how the game is going, so they’re vital for our success,” said Brondello. “It’s going to be important for us. We want them to be confident when they’re out there and bring what they do best.”
Jones noted that the Liberty’s toughness and togetherness are hallmarks of this team. “We have a very special group and I’m very excited about what we’re going to do in the playoffs,” she said.
The Liberty are the only remaining original franchise in the WNBA not to have won a championship. The team hasn’t been to the Finals since 2002.
Round one of the WNBA playoffs begins on Wednesday as the four-time WNBA Champion Minnesota Lynx take on the Connecticut Sun and the defending WNBA Champion Las Vegas Aces play the 2021 Champion Chicago Sky. On Friday, after the New York versus Washington game, the Atlanta Dream will take on the Dallas Wings.
