A6
NATION
East Oregonian
Friday, July 26, 2019
Workers return to
Idaho nuke facility
after fire evacuations
Governors weigh
health care plans,
awaiting court ruling
More than 20
million Americans
would be at risk of
losing their health
insurance
By BRADY MCCOMBS
Associated Press
SALT LAKE CITY — As
they gather at a conference in
Utah, governors from around
the U.S. are starting to think
about what they will do if an
appeals court upholds a lower
court ruling overturning Pres-
ident Obama’s signature health
care law.
More than 20 million
Americans would be at risk
of losing their health insur-
ance if the 5th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals agrees with
a Texas-based federal judge
who declared the Affordable
Care Act unconstitutional last
December because Congress
had eliminated an unpopular
tax it imposed on people who
did not buy insurance.
The final word on striking
down the law will almost cer-
tainly come from the Supreme
Court, which has twice upheld
the 2010 legislation.
Nevada Gov. Steve Siso-
lak, a Democrat, signed a bill
earlier this year prohibiting
health insurers from deny-
ing coverage to patients due
to pre-existing conditions,
a pre-emptive move in case
the Affordable Care Act were
struck down.
He said this week in Salt
Lake City at the summer
meeting of the National Gov-
ernors Association that he
would ask his recently created
patient protection commis-
sion to come up with recom-
mendations for how to ensure
patients don’t lose coverage if
the law is overturned, which
would impact about 200,000
people enrolled in Medicaid
expansion in Nevada.
“To rip that away from
them would be devastating to
a lot of families,” Sisolak said.
“For example, women’s health
care: You’re talking about with
ACA being gone potentially
mammograms and cancer
screenings and reproductive
care and an assortment of cov-
erages they currently have.”
Nevada is among a coali-
tion of 20 Democratic-leaning
states led by California that
By REBECCA BOONE
AND FELICIA
FONSECA
Associated Press
AP Photo/Rick Bowmer
From left to right, Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, Oregon Gov. Kate
Brown, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock,
Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak and Maine Gov. Janet Mills pose for
a photograph following a news conference launching an Out-
doors Recreation Initiative on Wednesday in Salt Lake City.
appealed the lower court rul-
ing and is urging the appeals
court to keep the law intact.
Sisolak and other Demo-
cratic governors were sched-
uled to speak about health care
issues Thursday afternoon at a
news conference.
Arkansas
Gov.
Asa
Hutchinson, a Republican,
said states need Congress
to be ready to quickly pass a
new health care plan if the
court overturns Obama’s law,
since doing so would cut off
federal funding for Medicaid
expansion.
A court decision in March
blocked Arkansas from
enforcing work requirements
for its Medicaid expansion
program, which has gener-
ated seemingly annual debate
in that state’s Legislature
about whether to continue the
program.
“Congress can’t just leave
that out there hanging,”
Hutchinson said.
The 2018 lawsuit that trig-
gered the latest legal battle
over the Affordable Care Act
was filed by a coalition of 18
Republican-leaning
states
including Arkansas, Arizona
and Utah.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey,
a Republican, said he wants to
see how the court rules before
he makes any decisions about
how his state would deal with
the loss of Medicaid funds
but that Arizona has backup
funds available.
U.S. will execute inmates for first time since 2003
By MICHAEL BALSAMO
AND COLLEEN LONG
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The
United States will resume
executing federal death-row
inmates, the Justice Depart-
ment said Thursday, ending
an informal, two-decade mor-
atorium even as the nation
sees a broad shift away from
capital punishment.
Attorney General William
Barr instructed the Bureau
of Prisons to schedule execu-
tions starting in December for
five men, all accused of mur-
dering children.
“The Justice Department
upholds the rule of law — and
we owe it to the victims and
their families to carry forward
the sentence imposed by our
justice system,” Barr said.
The move is likely to stir
up fresh interest in an issue
that has largely lain dormant
in recent years, adding a new
front to the culture battles
that President Donald Trump
already is waging on matters,
such as abortion and immi-
gration in the lead-up to the
2020 elections.
Most Democrats oppose
capital punishment. Vice
President Joe Biden this week
shifted to call for the elimina-
tion of the federal death pen-
alty after years of supporting
it.
By contrast, Trump has
spoken often — and some-
times wistfully — about cap-
ital punishment and his belief
that executions serve as both
an effective deterrent and
appropriate punishment for
some crimes, including mass
shootings and the killings of
police officers.
“I think they should very
much bring the death pen-
alty into vogue,” Trump said
last year after 11 people were
gunned down in a Pittsburgh
synagogue.
He’s suggested repeatedly
that the U.S. might be better
off if it adopted harsh drug
laws like those embraced by
Philippine President Rodrigo
Duterte, under whom thou-
sands of drug suspects have
been killed by police.
Trump was a vocal propo-
nent of the death penalty for
decades before taking office,
most notably in 1989 when
he took out full-page adver-
tisements in New York City
newspapers urging elected
officials to “BRING BACK
THE DEATH PENALTY”
following the rape of a jogger
in Central Park. “If the pun-
ishment is strong,” he wrote
then, “the attacks on innocent
people will stop.”
Five Harlem teenagers
were convicted in the Central
Park case, but had their convic-
tions vacated years later after
another man confessed to the
rape. More than a decade after
their exoneration, the city
agreed to pay the so-called
Central Park Five $41 million,
a settlement Trump blasted as
“outrageous.”
The death penalty remains
legal in 30 states, but only a
handful regularly conduct
executions. Texas has exe-
cuted 108 prisoners since
2010, far more than any other
state.
Executions on the federal
level have long been rare. The
government has put to death
only three defendants since
restoring the federal death
penalty in 1988, the most
recent of which occurred in
2003, when Louis Jones was
executed for the 1995 kidnap-
ping, rape and murder of a
young female soldier.
In 2014, following a
botched state execution in
Oklahoma, President Barack
Obama directed the Jus-
tice Department to conduct a
broad review of capital pun-
ishment and issues surround-
ing lethal injection drugs.
That review has been com-
pleted, Barr said Thursday,
and it has cleared the way for
executions to resume.
Barr approved a new pro-
cedure for lethal injections
that replaces the three-drug
cocktail previously used in
federal execution with a sin-
gle drug, pentobarbital. This
is similar to the procedure
used in several states, includ-
ing Georgia, Missouri and
Texas.
Though there hasn’t been a
federal execution since 2003,
the Justice Department has
continued to approve death
penalty prosecutions and fed-
eral courts have sentenced
defendants to death.
Robert Dunham, the exec-
utive director of the nonprofit
Death Penalty Information
Center, said he was concerned
the process for resuming exe-
cutions was rushed.
Worship Community
BOISE,
Idaho
—
Employees returned to
work on Thursday at a
sprawling nuclear research
site in southwestern Idaho
after a wildfire forced two
days of evacuations.
The lightning-caused
wildfire at the Idaho
National Laboratory is
one of several burning
across the U.S. West.
“The fire is antici-
pated to be 100% con-
tained today,” said Idaho
National
Laboratory
spokesman Mike Johnson.
The nuclear research
complex sits on a parcel
of desert that is nearly the
size of Rhode Island, and
facilities there include
nuclear reactors, high-
level nuclear waste treat-
ment plants and various
nuclear research projects.
The wildfire, which
started Monday night
and has burned an esti-
mated 177 square miles,
threatened some of those
buildings for a time. But
a shift in wind direction
on Wednesday moved the
fire toward open range-
land and helped fire crews
make progress in fighting
the flames.
The lab has several
safety measures for wild-
fires, including clear-
ing ground around each
building and having sev-
eral specially trained fire
crews.
“It’s not our first rodeo,”
spokeswoman Kerry Mar-
tin said. “We have fire sta-
tions, a lot of fire equip-
ment; we have trained
firefighters and equipment
to cut barriers.”
Wildfires
are
not
uncommon on sprawl-
ing nuclear sites scattered
across the arid West. A
blaze burned more than 62
square miles last weekend
near the Hanford Nuclear
Reservation in Wash-
ington state, where most
of the plutonium for the
nation’s nuclear weap-
ons was created. That
fire didn’t threaten any
buildings.
Timothy Judson, direc-
tor of the Nuclear Infor-
mation and Resource Ser-
vice watchdog group in
Takoma Park, Maryland,
said there were concerns
that fires near nuclear sites
in California and Colo-
rado could release radio-
active material.
Meanwhile, a wildfire
burning in a scenic moun-
tain pass near the northern
Arizona city of Flagstaff
has grown slightly.
Fire incident manage-
ment spokeswoman Bon-
nie Strawser said Thurs-
day the fire was about
12% contained. The fire
has burned about 3 square
miles since it started
Sunday. Densely vege-
tated and rugged terrain
is creating challenges for
firefighters.
Rain
helped
on
Wednesday and allowed
some residents of one
neighborhood to return
home after evacuations,
but also raised the risk of
flooding because of aging
drainage systems, officials
said.
A drying trend is
expected in coming days
before seasonal rain picks
up again early next week,
officials said.
The area had not
received any significant
moisture in weeks and
had no previous wildfires
on record. That means
the dense forest with lots
of pine needles and grass
will burn more intensely,
creating a hard clay sur-
face that quickly sheds
water.
A team that will ana-
lyze the soil and look
at ways to stabilize it
was expected to arrive
Thursday.
“It’s not an easy task,
but we’re going to give it
our best shot,” Coconino
National Forest Supervi-
sor Laura Jo West said at a
community meeting.
Ladd Vagen, his wife
and two daughters were
among the residents of
more than two dozen
homes who were ordered
to evacuate. They were
allowed to return home
Wednesday, and found
everything exactly as they
left it with an added smell
of smoke.
The family is on notice
that they may have to flee
again.
Arizona’s governor has
declared an emergency,
freeing up funding to bat-
tle the blaze. The firefight-
ing cost to date is $2.1 mil-
lion, incident commander
Rich Nieto said.
BAHA’I FAITH IN PENDLETON
“See ye no strangers, rather see all men as friends, for love and
unity come hard when ye fi x your gaze on otherness.”
– Abdu’l Baha
Please come visit with us at
The Baha’i Center:
1015 SE Court Place
PENDLETON
LIGHTHOUSE CHURCH
Sunday Service: 10am & 6pm
Tuesday Kingdom Seekers: 7pm
Wednesday Bible Study: 7pm
We off er: Sunday School • Sign Language
Interpreters • Nursery • Transportation • & more!
Pastor Dan Satterwhite
541.377.4252
417 NW 21st St. • Pendleton, OR 97801
www.facebook.com/
PendletonLighthouseChurch
EVERYONE INVITED!
Redeemer
Episcopal
Church
OPEN HEARTS – OPEN DOOR
www.graceandmercylutheran.org
Sunday Worship 8:45 a.m.
Sunday School 10:00 a.m. (Nursery Provided)
Fellowship, Refreshments & Sunday School
Check Out our Facebook Page or
Website for More Information
241 SE Second St. Pendleton
(541)276-3809
www.pendletonepiscopal.org
Sunday Holy Communion 9:00 a.m.
Wednesday Holy Communion Noon
Weekly Adults Spiritual Life Group
All Are Welcome
Good Shepherd
Lutheran Church
Community
Presbyterian Church
FAITH LUTHERAN
CHURCH
LCMC
14 Martin Drive,
Umatilla, OR
922-3250
in Mission for Christ LCMC
Sunday Worship.........9:00 AM
Bible Study......10:00 AM
Sunday worship at
11:00 AM
Pastor Michael Smith
420 Locust St. • Boardman, OR
541-481-6132
Worship: 10 AM
Sunday School at 11:30
Red Lion Hotel
( Oregon Trail Room )
www.faithpendleton.org
541-289-4535
Pastor Weston Walker
Grace and Mercy Lutheran Church, ELCA
(First United Methodist Church)
191 E. Gladys Ave. / P.O. Box 1108
Hermiston, Oregon 97838
Seventh-Day
Adventist
Church
Saturday Services
Pendleton
1401 SW Goodwin Place
276-0882
Sabbath School 9:20 am
Worship Service 10:45 am
FIRST PRESBYTERIAN
CHURCH
SUNDAYS
Morning Celebration - 10am
Morning Kids Place - 10am
Evening - 6pm
Adult - Study
Youth - Small Group
Kids - Rangers & Girl’s Ministries
THURSDAYS
Celebrate Recovery - 6pm
Celebration Place - Kids - 6pm
The Landing - Teens - 6pm
WEEKLY
Groups For All Ages
AN ASSEMBLY OF GOD CHURCH
1911 SE Court Ave.
541.276.6417 • pendletonfi rst.com
401 Northgate, Pendleton
Celebration of
of Worship
Celebration
Worship
Sundays 10:00 am
Youth: 0-6th grade
Midweek Service
Midweek Service
Wednesdays 6:00 pm
Youth: 0-6th grade
Overcomer’s
Outreach
Jr./Sr. High
’
Pastor Sharon Miller
541-278-8082
www.livingwordcc.com
Pastor Sharon Miller
-Presbyterian Church (USA)-
201 SW Dorion Ave.
Pendleton
Service of Worship - 10:00 am
Children’s Sunday School -
10:20 am
Fellowship - 11:00 am
www.pendletonpresbyterian.com
Open Hearted...
Open Minded
Sunday Devotions @ 11am
Everyday Devotions @ 11am - 1pm
Thursday: Seminars on World Religions @ 7pm
(541) 276-9360 or visit us at www.pendletonbahais.com
www.facebook.com/pendletonoregonbahais/
To share your worship times
call 541-278-2678
The Salvation Army
Center for Worship & Service
Sunday Worship Service
9:30 - Sunday School
10:30 - Worship Service
Wednesday Bible Study
5:30 Family Fellowship Meal • 6:00 Bible Study
COME AS YOU ARE
150 SE Emigrant
(541) 276-3369
P eace L utheran C hurch
210 NW 9th, Pendleton
1909 SW Athens Ave.,
Pendleton
Come join us for Worship
at 10:45am on Sunday
541-966-8912
ELCA
Join us Sundays
9:30 am Sunday Worship
10:00 am Sunday Worship
11am Fellowship & Adult Class
9am Sunday School
~Come and be at Peace ~
on 1290 KUMA noon each Sunday
St. Johns
Episcopal Church
Behind These Stone Walls Beat the Hearts
of Some of the Warmest Most Sincere,
Most Caring People in Pendleton.
We Invite You to Come Get Acquainted!
Sunday Worship
at 9:40am
June - September
Offi ce 541-276-5358 M-Thr, 8:30-12:30
www.fccpendleton.org
Join Us
Join
On Our Journey
With Jesus.
Scripture, Tradition and Reason
Family service 9am Sunday
N.E. Gladys Ave & 7th, Hermiston
PH: 567-6672
We are an all inclusive Church
who welcomes all.
First United
Methodist
Church
Pendleton
501 SW Emigrant Ave. • Pendleton OR
Sunday Worship 9am
in the Community Room
541-276-2616
Worship Livestream at
www.facebook.com/FUMCPendleton/
Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors
Patty Nance, pastor