US Federal Communications Commission Chairman (FCC) Ajit Pai on Monday announced his plan for a $200 million COVID-19 Telehealth Program to support health care providers responding to the ongoing pandemic. As part of the CARES Act, Congress appropriated $200 million to the FCC to support health care providers’ use of telehealth services in combating the [...]

Lawmakers in Hungary’s Parliament voted 137-53 Monday to grant Prime Minister Viktor Orbán extensive powers to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite protests from the opposition parties, the bill did not limit the powers to a specific time frame. The bill allows Orbán’s government to suspend the enforcement of some laws and permits deviation from legal [...]

The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe’s chairman said Friday that the US Secretary of the Interior has issued an order disestablishing the Mashpee Wampanoag reservation and taking its land out of federal trust. The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe’s land was taken into trust by the US Department of the Interior in September 2015. However, relying on the US Supreme [...]

The California Judicial Council held a telephonic meeting on Saturday to instate new measures for handling the hearing deadlines for individuals currently being held in jails in California. The state has mandatory deadlines to ensure efficiency in their jail system but is struggling to meet the deadlines with the COVID-19 crisis. The Judicial Council cited [...]

The US Center for Disease Control (CDC) issued a travel advisory Saturday for New York, New Jersey and Connecticut residents amid COVID-19 spread concerns. The CDC recommends that residents of these states refrain from domestic travel for the next 14 days. However, the agency advises critical infrastructure industry employees to continue travel. The CDC explained [...]

The Federal Reserve announced Friday that it would loosen bank regulations to support lending during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Federal Reserve Board specifically modified two previous regulations: the standardized approach for measuring counterparty credit risk rule (SA-CRR) and the current expected credit loss rule (CECL). The SA-CRR modification will apply to the reporting period that [...]

The Department of Justice sued Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield on Thursday for Medicare fraud after Anthem submitted inaccurate medical codes to receive higher Medicare reimbursement. The lawsuit alleges that Anthem violated the False Claims Act when it deliberately ignored and submitted coding mistakes from 2014 to 2018. Federal prosecutors claim these coding errors yielded [...]

Lawyers for immigrants who are part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program sent a letter to the Supreme Court on Friday, asking the Court to take into account DACA recipients’ contributions to the nation during the present health care crisis. The DACA program was established by President Obama in 2012 to enable [...]

The world in a plague year is a world turned upside down. Everything familiar becomes strange, and everything normal becomes peculiar. Commodities become scarce and luxuries become worthless. Leisure becomes insufferable and labor becomes precious. The great become small and the small reveal their greatness. But one thing is constant. The plagiarism police remain vigilant. [...]

US President Donald Trump on Friday ordered General Motors to make ventilators under the Defense Production Act (DPA). DPA originated as a reaction to the Korean War and entitles the government to force American businesses to produce products and materials that are in high-demand or short supply during a national emergency. Trump recently declared the [...]