Crash Course Black American History

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xPx5aRuWCtc&list=PL8dPuuaLjXtNYJO8JWpXO2JP0ezgxsrJJ&pp=iAQBmAUB

Texas has spent two years and billions of dollars on the most aggressive attempt by any state to take control over federal border security. There’s no indication it has worked. [wsj]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-billion-dollar-border-security-migration-isn-t-paying-off-16ed598d

By Elizabeth Findell

July 21, 2023 7:00 am ET

Texas has spent two years and billions of dollars on the most aggressive attempt by any state to take control over federal border security. There’s no indication it has worked. 

Operation Lone Star, a top priority of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, has inundated the U.S.-Mexico border with thousands of Texas state troopers and National Guardsmen, started work on a state-controlled border wall and built a new skeleton justice system with its own courts, judges and jails to lodge misdemeanor state trespassing charges against migrants. 

The program is an explicit challenge to the national government, which by law controls international borders and immigration enforcement.

This week, the program was in the public eye for reports of inhumane treatment of migrants. In a July 3 email, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, a trooper and medic raised concerns to his superiors, saying troopers and Guard members on the operation were instructed to push a nursing mother back into the river, to deny water to migrants even in extreme heat and to block a 4-year-old who was trying to cross coils of razor wire, from reaching shore. The email, earlier reported by the Houston Chronicle, detailed instances of injury that included a pregnant woman entangled in the wire having a miscarriage and numerous severe lacerations. 

The program’s efficacy is also under question. The area of the border most heavily targeted by Operation Lone Star has seen the most rapid increases in illegal border crossings in the state since the operation began. Thousands of arrests by state troopers under the program have been unrelated to border security, and instead netted U.S. citizens hundreds of miles from the border. Arrests of migrants trespassing on private property have generally not affected their immigration cases, and courts have found many of the arrests made in the first two years to be discriminatory and invalidated them.

Despite the flood of resources, the added arrests by Operation Lone Star personnel in that section of the border amount to about 1% of the encounters there by Border Patrol in the same time frame, or about 11,000 added to the Border Patrol’s 850,000.

Still, with more than $9.5 billion spent and allocated through 2025, Texas is doubling down on its strategy.

Even as total numbers of illegal crossings have plummeted recently, Abbott asked other states to send their National Guard soldiers and police officers to Texas, and more than a dozen other Republican governors have responded.

Texas has also recently begun making trespassing arrests in public parks and erected a floating barrier in the middle of the Rio Grande.

Operation Lone Star was launched to address dangerous gaps in federal border security, said Andrew Mahaleris, a spokesman for Abbott. He said federal policies allowed illegal migration plus drugs and weapons to cross the border.

Abbott declined to be interviewed for this story. The governor has promoted the operation, sending out weekly news releases with updates and arrest numbers. “Texas has pushed back against the swell of migrants and held the line to keep people out of Texas,” Abbott said as he announced the new floating barrier last month. 

Lt. Chris Olivarez, a regional spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, said that regardless of immigration trends, he doesn’t expect border deployments or spending on them to end. DPS, the state’s law-enforcement arm, is responsible for elements of the operation including arrests.

He said apprehending lawbreakers, particularly smugglers, is part of state law enforcement’s mission. “We don’t need authority from the federal government to do what we’re doing,” he said. “It has become essentially our duty now to have some role in border security.”

New approach

The state-placed razor wire in Eagle Pass, Texas, stretches for miles, lining the riverbank in dangerous coils extending from a barricade of shipping containers. On a recent 115-degree day, dozens of police units behind the containers looked for migrants to arrest in what was, until recently, a popular city park. Around it, the state has clear-cut miles of riverbank to dirt. A state helicopter spends 22 hours a day in the air looking for heads in the brush, or heat impressions on infrared cameras.

The operation, announced in the summer of 2021 amid a historic upswing of illegal border crossings, aimed to take a new approach at deterring migration by arresting migrants on low-level state charges. Texas can’t enforce federal immigration law, but it can impose misdemeanor charges on people for crossing the private property of ranchers along the border who choose to participate.

“The point of this new arrest policy is they’re being arrested for state law violations,” Abbott said in June 2021. “We don’t turn them over to the federal government, we turn them over to a jail cell.”

The arrests quickly overwhelmed courts in rural counties. Arrests in 2021 and 2022 were thrown out by judges who ruled them to be discriminatory because only men were targeted. The state started including some women late last year. Some of the arrested migrants, who would have been deported immediately by Border Patrol under the pandemic-era policy Title 42, were instead allowed to stay after sitting weeks in a jail cell.

Federal data show that prior to Operation Lone Star, the counties in Texas’ far-southern Rio Grande Valley, then the most active Border Patrol sector in the nation, were seeing the largest increases in illegal crossings. Those counties declined to declare a state of disaster, which would trigger major inputs of resources from the operation and cooperation with its trespassing arrests, saying the situation was similar to previous spikes in migration. The counties that embraced the operation were those in the Del Rio sector, near the middle of the state’s 1,254-mile border, unused to seeing thousands of migrants in their region of remote ranchland.

Texas poured resources into the Del Rio area counties, stationing state troopers every couple of miles on highways, setting up expansive base camps and conducting more than 11,000 arrests from its launch until now, some for state charges of smuggling migrants and most for misdemeanor trespassing.

Yet crossings have continued unabated in Kinney, Val Verde and Maverick counties, where more than 83% of those arrests have occurred.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection data indicate illegal crossings rose faster in the counties most heavily targeted by Operation Lone Star after it began, and have been slower to decline since peaking last year. Throughout 2022, border crossings from the previous year rose 64% in the Del Rio sector, the target of the operation. Crossings fell 35% in the Rio Grande Valley, which wasn’t the focus of the operation and didn’t participate in its trespassing-arrest component.

CBP and the Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to requests for comment on the Texas operation overall.

Gil Kerlikowske, who served as CBP Commissioner under former President Barack Obama, compared the trespassing arrests to a short-lived policy in 2018 by federal officials to prosecute all illegal border crossings as low-level crimes, which he said had little effect and overwhelmed courts.

“The vast majority of these folks, with what they endured back home, serving a short amount of time in a county jail for trespassing isn’t much of a deterrent,” Kerlikowske said.

A person is seen in the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass in June.

Razor wire and debris cleared from the riverbed in Eagle Pass.

Former CBP and Border Patrol leaders said it is difficult to develop a yardstick for measuring the efficacy of border security operations. High numbers of arrests can be a sign of law enforcement doing its job, or a sign that operations aren’t having a long-term effect of deterring or rerouting illegal crossings.

“What does success look like?” said Victor Manjarrez, a former Border Patrol sector chief. “Every arrest, every drug seizure is a failure because you didn’t deter it…But no one gets into law enforcement to say ‘Hey, we deterred something.’”

In principle, a successful law-enforcement operation would see a high level of arrests initially, followed by a decline as the arrests have an impact, Manjarrez said, which hasn’t been seen under Operation Lone Star. The trespassing and smuggling arrests have affected a tiny proportion of migrants so are unlikely to be a deterrent, he and others said.

Federal and state experts said that locations where migrants cross are typically affected less by U.S. efforts and more by factors in Mexico. Traffic is high now through Maverick County because Piedras Negras, across the Rio Grande from Eagle Pass, is safer from cartel violence than many other Mexican border cities, said Olivarez, the spokesman for DPS, the state’s law-enforcement arm. 

Aside from the criminal trespassing arrests near the border, Texas also counts some arrests by DPS all over the state as part of Operation Lone Star. Republican-led counties as far afield as Midland, some 150 miles from the border, and Lavaca, 190 miles from the border, declared border disasters in their jurisdictions and asked to be part of the operation.

On top of the border-focused smuggling and trespassing arrests, DPS has logged arrests in 63 counties across the state that it considered to be part of Operation Lone Star, with charges ranging from smuggling to money laundering to possession of marijuana, illegal in Texas. Some 13% of the arrests took place in counties more than 100 miles from the border, including many of citizens for ordinary infractions.

The arrests logged as part of the operation included a 40-year-old resident of San Angelo, between Austin and Midland, for acting belligerently in a driver’s license office; a 79-year-old man north of Corpus Christi who, during a traffic stop, was found to have less than 2 ounces of marijuana in the center console of his car; and a 15-year-old girl and her mother accused of picking up three undocumented immigrants at a motel in El Paso.

Justice-system funds

Texas spent more than $4.5 billion on Operation Lone Star in its first two years, and lawmakers have allocated another $5.1 billion for the next two years. They continue to propose ways to increase its scope.

Customs and Border Protection agents shut down the bridge between Mexico and the U.S. after an incident in Eagle Pass.

A bus used to transport migrants is parked near the border in Eagle Pass.

Some of that money has been pulled from the state’s criminal justice and juvenile justice systems. Much of it has gone to the deployment of thousands of police and soldiers to border counties, where they fill up local hotels, set up tent bases, patrol via helicopter and sit in trucks and Humvees for 12-hour days of watching the Texas brush. 

The Texas Military Department spent over $1 billion on deployment of National Guardsmen under the operation in fiscal year 2022, including $477 million on soldier salaries, $433 million on contracted services and $79 million on in-state travel. The Guard is projecting a $1.1 billion budget for each of the next two years, including $456 million annually to maintain border base camps and $111 million for travel and lodging.

On top of the salaries of some 1,000 personnel it deployed to Operation Lone Star at any given time, the Texas Department of Public Safety spent $199 million on other costs associated with the operation in its first two years. The department is now budgeting more than $2.5 million a week on those costs, including 34 hours of overtime each week for 1,000 officers, car and helicopter fuel, and hotels, meals and travel for 850 nonlocal officers.

“It’s an enormous amount of money, and you want to be seeing concrete results,” said Stephanie Leutert, a border operations researcher and director of the Mexico Security Initiative at the University of Texas. “It’s not clear to me that the movement of people has been affected. At this point, it feels more symbolic than substantive.”

Morale crisis

The operation has been emotionally taxing for some members of the Texas National Guard. Their commitments have shifted from occasional short-term deployments, such as in the wake of a hurricane, to yearlong deployments to isolated areas of South Texas.

The state deployments, unlike the foreign deployments common during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, don’t bring along extra federal pay and benefits. At least 10 Guardsmen assigned to the border mission have died, five by suicide, according to National Guard records.

In the first two years of the deployment, at least 193 soldiers were arrested while serving on border task forces, according to the Texas Military Department spreadsheet tracking the incidents. Those incidents have included DUIs, street racing and assaults. 

One service member was arrested by DPS for smuggling undocumented migrants in December, after being pulled over by a trooper with five of them in his car, according to military and DPS records. In another instance, Border Patrol found marijuana in the car of a service member passing through a federal checkpoint, but he was allowed to proceed without an arrest or ticket after providing his supervisor’s name, according to a National Guard incident report reviewed by the Journal. 

The Texas Military Department declined to comment on the incidents.

The deployment has also logged 74 “behavioral health incidents,” including suicidal ideation, and 25 reports of a negligent gun discharge, several of them in hotel rooms. Five service members were reported to have been assaulted, three of them by migrants.

Texas National Guard soldiers spoke to migrants at the border wall in El Paso, Texas, in May. Photo: Paul Ratje for The Wall Street Journal

National Guard and Border Patrol detained migrants in El Paso in May. Photo: Paul Ratje for The Wall Street Journal

Arrests in public park

This month, Texas installed a barrier of floating buoys in the Rio Grande, meant to block migrants attempting to swim across the river. Attorneys and human-rights advocates have warned the barrier could cause more people to drown, a common cause of death for migrants attempting to cross the river. Border Patrol logged some 330 drownings from 2017 to 2021.

Olivarez said the state considered underwater fencing or netting but nixed the idea due to the risk of drownings.

In June, state troopers expanded their trespassing arrests to include migrants found on the public property of a golf course and park in Eagle Pass, in Maverick county. 

Attorneys questioned how troopers could constitutionally distinguish migrants from other members of the public. DPS officials said they would arrest anyone seen walking into the park from the river. 

Abbott in May asked other governors to send police and soldiers to the Texas border. At least 13 states agreed. The states’ Republican governors said they were responding to a crisis at the border that could affect their states.

Tennessee earmarked $1.3 million to send 100 soldiers to Texas for 31 days, while Virginia budgeted $3.8 million to do the same.

Out-of-state officers don’t perform arrests themselves, but are paired with local troopers to provide backup, DPS officials said.

Civil-rights attorneys said Texas’ border operations are discriminatory and have had rampant civil-rights violations. Mexican officials have raised concerns about whether the new river barrier violates an international treaty. 

Attorneys have sought to get the federal government involved in challenging Operation Lone Star. So far, the state has avoided the kinds of legal challenges the federal government has levied against border-control measures in Arizona, where challenges from the federal government forced the state to rescind a “show me your papers” immigration law in 2012 and to remove a shipping container border wall earlier this year.

Despite the tension between state and federal border authority, Operation Lone Star is fundamentally designed to help federal efforts, and officers from both entities cooperate in multiple ways, including in processing detainees.

On a recent day in Kinney County, state troopers patrolling the roadways were trading information on a group chat with Border Patrol agents and National Guardsmen. Members of the chat asked a trooper with a license to inspect commercial vehicles to pull over a truck they considered suspicious. The group also awaited alerts from state-owned game cameras that monitor for migrants. 

“This operation would not be possible without the federal government enabling it,” said Amrutha Jindal, who coordinates defense attorneys representing migrants arrested under Operation Lone Star.

 

Officers working for Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security initiative have been ordered to push small children and nursing babies back into the Rio Grande, and have been told not to give water to asylum seekers even in extreme heat

https://www.expressnews.com/politics/texas/article/border-trooper-migrants-wire-18205076.php

Benjamin Wermund

Updated: July 17, 2023 9:41 p.m.

 

WASHINGTON — Officers working for Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security initiative have been ordered to push small children and nursing babies back into the Rio Grande, and have been told not to give water to asylum seekers even in extreme heat, according to an email from a Department of Public Safety trooper who described the actions as “inhumane.” 

The July 3 account, reviewed by Hearst Newspapers, discloses several previously unreported incidents the trooper witnessed in Eagle Pass, where the state of Texas has strung miles of razor wire and deployed a wall of buoys in the Rio Grande.

According to the email, a pregnant woman having a miscarriage was found late last month caught in the wire, doubled over in pain. A four-year-old girl passed out from heat exhaustion after she tried to go through it and was pushed back by Texas National Guard soldiers. A teenager broke his leg trying to navigate the water around the wire and had to be carried by his father.

The email, which the trooper sent to a superior, suggests that Texas has set “traps” of razor wire-wrapped barrels in parts of the river with high water and low visibility. And it says the wire has increased the risk of drownings by forcing migrants into deeper stretches of the river

The trooper called for a series of rigorous policy changes to improve safety for migrants, including removing the barrels and revoking the directive on withholding water.

“Due to the extreme heat, the order to not give people water needs to be immediately reversed as well,” the trooper wrote, later adding: “I believe we have stepped over a line into the inhumane.”

Department of Public Safety spokesman Travis Considine did not comment on all the contents of the trooper’s email, but said there is no policy against giving water to migrants. 

Considine also provided an email from DPS Director Steven McCraw on Saturday calling for an audit to determine if more can be done to minimize the risk to migrants. McCraw wrote troopers should warn migrants not to cross the wire, redirect them to ports of entry and to closely watch for anyone who needs medical attention. 

In another email, McCraw acknowledged that there has been an increase in injuries from the wire, including seven incidents reported by Border Patrol where migrants needed “elevated medical attention” from July 4 to July 13. Those were in addition to the incidents detailed by the trooper.

 “The purpose of the wire is to deter smuggling between the ports of entry and not to injure migrants,” McCraw wrote. “The smugglers care not if the migrants are injured, but we do, and we must take all necessary measures to mitigate the risk to them including injuries from trying to cross over the concertina wire, drownings and dehydration.” 

The incidents detailed in the email come as Abbott has stepped up efforts in recent weeks to physically bar migrants from entering the country through his Operation Lone Star initiative, escalating tensions between state and federal officials and drawing increased scrutiny from humanitarian groups who say the state is endangering asylum seekers. The most aggressive initiatives have been targeted at Eagle Pass.

The state has also now deployed a wall of floating buoys in the Rio Grande, which triggered complaints over the weekend from Mexico. 

Federal Border Patrol officials have issued internal warnings that the razor wire is preventing their agents from reaching at-risk migrants and increasing the risk of drownings in the Rio Grande, Hearst Newspapers reported last week. 

The DPS trooper expressed similar concerns, writing that the placement of the wire along the river “forces people to cross in other areas that are deeper and not as safe for people carrying kids and bags.”

The trooper’s email sheds new light on a series of previously reported drownings in the river during a one-week stretch earlier this month, including a mother and at least one of her two children, who federal Border Patrol agents spotted struggling to cross the Rio Grande on July 1. 

According to the email, a DPS boat found the mother and one of the children, who went under the water for a minute. They were pulled from the river and given medical care before being transferred to EMS, but were later declared deceased at the hospital. The second child was never found, the email said. 

The governor has said he is taking necessary steps to secure the border and accused federal officials of refusing to do so. 

“Texas is deploying every tool and strategy to deter and repel illegal crossings between ports of entry as President Biden’s dangerous open border policies entice migrants from over 150 countries to risk their lives entering the country illegally," said Andrew Mahaleris, Abbott’s press secretary. "President Biden has unleashed a chaos on the border that’s unsustainable, and we have a constitutional duty to respond to this unprecedented crisis.”

The DPS trooper’s email details four incidents in just one day in which migrants were caught in the wire or injured trying to get around it. 

On June 30, troopers found a group of people along the wire, including a 4-year-old girl who tried to cross the wire and was pressed back by Texas Guard soldiers “due to the orders given to them,” the email says. The DPS trooper wrote that the temperature was “well over 100 degrees” and the girl passed out from exhaustion. 

“We provided treatment to the unresponsive patient and transferred care to EMS,” the trooper wrote. A spokesperson for the Texas National Guard did not respond to a request for comment.

In another instance, troopers found a 19-year-old woman “in obvious pain” stuck in the wire. She was cut free and given a medical assessment, which determined she was pregnant and having a miscarriage. She was then transferred to EMS.

The trooper also treated a man with a “significant laceration” in his left leg, who said he had cut it while trying to free his child who was “stuck on a trap in the water,” describing a barrel with razor wire “all over it.” And the trooper treated a 15-year-old boy who broke his right leg walking in the river because the razor wire was “laid out in a manner that it forced him into the river where it is unsafe to travel.”

In another instance, on June 25, troopers came across a group of 120 people camped out along a fence set up along the river. The group included several small children and babies who were nursing, the trooper wrote. The entire group was exhausted, hungry and tired, the trooper wrote. The shift officer in command ordered the troopers to “push the people back into the water to go to Mexico,” the email says. 

The trooper wrote that the troopers decided it was not the right thing to do “with the very real potential of exhausted people drowning.” They called command again and expressed their concerns and were given the order to “tell them to go to Mexico and get into our vehicle and leave,” the trooper wrote. After they left, other troopers worked with Border Patrol to provide care to the migrants, the email said.

The trooper did not respond to a request for comment Monday. His email was shared by a confidential source with knowledge of border operations. It was unclear whether the trooper received a response from the sergeant he’d messaged. 

Considine acknowledged that DPS was aware of the email and provided the additional agency emails in response. Those emails detail seven other incidents reported by federal border agents in which migrants were injured on the wires, including a child who was taken to the hospital on Thursday with cuts on his left arm, a mother and child who were taken to the hospital on Wednesday with “minor lacerations” on their “lower extremities,” and another migrant taken to San Antonio on July 4 to receive treatment for “several lacerations” that required staples.

Victor Escalon, a DPS director who oversees South Texas, wrote in an email Friday to other agency officials that troopers “may need to open the wire to aid individuals in medical distress, maintain the peace, and/or to make an arrest for criminal trespass, criminal mischief, acts of violence, or other State crimes.

“Our DPS medical unit is assigned to this operation to address medical concerns for everyone involved,” Escalon wrote. “As we enforce State law, we may need to aid those in medical distress and provide water as necessary.”

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/07/12/remarks-by-president-biden-on-supporting-ukraine-defending-democratic-values-and-taking-action-to-address-global-challenges-vilnius-lithuania/

July 12, 2023

Remarks by President Biden on Supporting Ukraine, Defending Democratic Values, and Taking Action to Address Global Challenges | Vilnius, Lithuania

Vilnius University
Vilnius, Lithuania

7:51 P.M. EEST

THE PRESIDENT:  Hello, Lithuania!  (Applause.)  As my mother would say, “G/d love ya.”  No seats.  Holy mackerel.  (Laughter.) 

It’s good to be back in Vilnius, a nation and a region that knows better than anyone the transformational power of freedom.  (Applause.)  You know, you showed the world that the strength of a people united cannot be denied.

And together, with your brothers and sisters in Estonia and Latvia, you helped end the era of division through the power of connection.  The Baltic Way, not the Berlin Wall, became the symbol for Europe’s future.

And later, when Soviet tanks sought once more to deny your independence, the people of Vilnius said, “No.”  No, no, no.  And in January of 1991, tens of thousands of citizens, unarmed and unyielding, came for their own — of their own accord, standing as one to protect the TV Tower, to shield the Supreme Council, and to defend freedom.

Fourteen heroes tragically lost their lives.  Hundreds were wounded.  But the whole world saw that decades of oppression had done nothing to dim the flame of liberty in this country.  (Applause.)  I mean it.  It’s consequential.

The light of Lithuania: You kept it strong.  You kept it bright.  And you kept the light shining here in Vilnius and in Washington, D.C., where the yellow, green, and red of your flag flew every day.

This past year, we have celebrated 100 years of unbroken diplomatic relationship between the United States and the Baltic states. 

America — America never recognized the Soviet occupation of the Baltics.  Never, never, never, Mr. President.  (Applause.)  

And besides, you’ve got a great president.  (Applause.)  Stand up.  No, stand up.

As your president can yell you, the bonds between Lithuanian and the American people have never faltered. 

And just — just seven months after the bloody January crackdown, the first foreign vivistor [sic] — first foreign visitor to have their passports stamped here in Lithuania with visas of this — to this new, reborn state were a planeload of Lithuanian Americans from Chicago, Illinois.  (Applause.)  Oh.  (Laughs.)  And their families are still proud of that.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  From Los Angeles.

THE PRESIDENT:  Los Angeles came after that.  (Laughter.)  A lot came after.

Look, many aboard that plane had fled Lithuania during the early years of Soviet oppression and marveled — marveled at their return to this independent state.  One of them told reporters, quote, “This day is like a resurrection for us.”  “This day, Father, is like a resurrection for us.”  That’s what the quote was, for real.  That’s the feeling.

And it was — a resurrection that quickly became a revelation.  And a nation which stands today as a stronghold of liberty and opportunity, a proud member of the European Union and of NATO.  (Applause.)

I had the great honor as a United States senator of championing Lithuania and other Baltic states to join NATO in 2004.  Wasn’t I brilliant doing that?  (Laughter.)

But all kidding aside, think about what it — how it’s changed things.  Think about what’s happened. 

Now, over the last few days, as President of the United States, I had the honor of participating in a historic NATO Summit hosted by Lithuania, where we welcomed NATO’s newest Ally, Finland, and reached agreement to bring Sweden into the Alliance as soon as possible.  (Applause.)  And President Erdoğan kept his word.

We have witnessed your historic journey.  And I’m proud to call Lithuania a friend, partner, and Ally.  Ally.  Ally.  (Applause.)
Soon, NATO will be the 32nd freestanding — have free- — 33 — 32 freestanding members — (laughter) — standing together to defend our people and our territory, beyond — beyond all the rest, bound by democratic values to make us strong and by our sacred oath that an attack against — it is a sacred oath — attack against one is an attack against all.  Because each member of NATO knows that the strength of our people and the power of our unity cannot be denied.  (Applause.)

If I sound optimistic, it’s because I am.

Today, our Alliance remains a bulwark of global security and stability as it’s been for more than seven decades.  NATO is stronger, more energized, and, yes, more united than ever in its history.  Indeed, more vital to our shared future. 

It didn’t happen by accident.  It wasn’t inevitable. 

When Putin, and his craven lust for land and power, unleashed his brutal war on Ukraine, he was betting NATO would break apart.  He was betting NATO would break.  He thought our unity would shatter at the first testing.  He thought democratic leaders would be weak.  But he thought wrong.  (Applause.)

Faced with a threat — (applause) — faced with a threat to the peace and stability of the world, to democratic values we hold dear, to freedom itself, we did what we always do: The United States stepped up.  NATO stepped up.  Our partners in Europe, in the In- — and then the Indo-Pacific stepped up.  All across the world they stepped up.

And we’re ready — we were ready because we stood together. 

In the months leading up to the war, as Putin amassed his forces on the Ukrainian border and laid the groundwork for his brutal invasion, it wa- — I was in constant contact with my fellow leaders of the G7 and the European Union and NATO, constantly.

We warned the world what Putin was planning.  Even some in Ukraine didn’t believe we were — what we had — our intelligence community found.  We made sure NATO was prepared to deter any aggression against any member state.  We pursued intense diplomacy with Russia, seeking to avert this terrible war.  And when Russian bombs began to fall, we did not hesitate to act.

We rallied the world to support the brave people of Ukraine as they defend their liberty and their sovereignty with incredible dignity.  (Applause.)  I mean that from the bottom of my heart.  Think about it.  Think about what they’re doing.   

After nearly a year and a half of Russia’s forces committing terrible atrocities, including crimes against humanity, the people of Ukraine remain unbroken.  Unbroken.  (Applause.)  Ukraine remains independent.  It remains free.  And the United States has built a coalition of more than 50 nations to make sure Ukraine defends itself both now and is able to do it in the future as well. 

Since this war began, I’ve stood with President Zelenskyy — as I just spent about an hour with him — both in Washington, in Kyiv, in Hi- — in Hiroshima, and now in Vilnius, to declare to the world what I say again: We will not waver.  We will not waver.  (Applause.)  I mean that.  Our commitment to Ukraine will not weaken.  We will stand for liberty and freedom today, tomorrow, and for as long as it takes.  (Applause.)

We all want this war to end on just terms — terms that uphold the basic principles of the United Nations Charter that we all signed up to: sovereignty, territorial integrity.  These are two pillars of peaceful relations among nations.  One country cannot be allowed to seize its neighbor’s territory by force. 

Russia could end this war tomorrow by withdrawing its forces from Ukraine, recognize these international borders, and ceasing its attacks on its — inhumane attacks on Russia — I mean, by Russia on Ukraine, against its children — women and children; its military. 

Unfortunately, Russia has shown thus far no interest in a diplomatic outcome.  Putin still wrongly believes that he can outlast Ukraine.  He can’t believe it’s their land, their country, and their future. 

And even after all this time, Putin still doubts our staying power.  He’s still making a bad bet that the conviction and the unity among the United States and our Allies and partners will break down. 

He still doesn’t understand that our commitment to our values, our freedom is something he [we] can never, never, ever, ever walk away from.  It’s who we are.  (Applause.)  I mean it — it’s who we are.  It’s who we are.   

Throughout this horrific war, the people of Lithuania, together with our Baltic brethren, have been among the fiercest champ- — most fiercest champions of Ukraine’s right to a future of its own choosing: one that is free.  

Because you lived so long with freedom denied, many of you who are older know better than anyone how precious the right to determine your own future is, precious to people everywhere — everywhere — not just in Ukraine, but Belarus, Moldova, Georgia — in all the places around the world where people continue to fight to make their voices heard. 

So, my message — my message to all of you tonight is: Keep it up.  Keep it going.  Keep reminding the world of hope that Lithuania embodies.  And that’s what you embody: hope in this country.  (Applause.)  No, I really mean it.  I’m not joking.  I mean this sincerely. 

We must never forget how much this matters and never, never give up on a better tomorrow.  The defense of freedom is not the work of a day or a year.  It’s the calling of our lifetime, of all time. 

We are steeled for the struggle ahead.  Our unity will not falter.  I promise you.  (Applause.) 

Folks, as I look around the world today, at a moment of war and peril, a moment of competition and uncertainty, I also see a moment of unprecedented opportunity — unprecedented opportunity — opportunity to make real strides toward a world of greater peace and greater prosperity, liberty and dignity, equal justice under the law, human rights and fundamental freedoms which are the blessing and birthright of all of humanity. 

That — that is the world the United States is working toward.  And it’s one we’ll only reach if we do it together — and I mean together. 

We need to take the same spirit of unity, common purpose, determination that we have demonstrated in our response to Russian aggression in Ukraine and bring more partners along as we continue working to build a world we want to live in and a world we want for our children. 

My friends, at the most fundamental level, we face a choice — it’s not a hyperbole — we face a choice: a choice between a world defined by coercion and exploitation, where might makes right, or a world where we recognize that our own success is bound to the success of others. 

When others do better, we do better as well — where we understand that the challenges we face today, from the existential threat of climate change to building a global economy where no one gets left behind, are too great for any one nation to solve on their own, and that to achieve our goals and meet the challenges of this age, we have to work together. 

And I mean this sincerely: The world is changing.  We have a chance to change the dynamic.

That’s why I’ve been so focused as president on rebuilding and revitalizing the alliances that are the cornerstone of American leadership in the world. 

These past years, we have brought the Transatlantic Partnership to new heights, reaffirming the importance of the relationship between Europe and the United States as an anchor to global stability.  The idea that the United States could prosper without a secure Europe is not reasonable.

We’ve also elevated — (audience members clap) — that’s — it really isn’t.  Not a joke.  (Applause.)

I sometimes — well — we also elevated and deepened America’s alliance in the Indo-Pacific with Japan, the Republic of Korea, Australia, and the Philippines, which provide critical security and deterrence in that vital region of the world. 

Through our Quad partnership — it’s a fancy way of saying our partnership with Australia, India, Japan, and the United States — we’re bringing major democracies of the region together to cooperate, keeping the Indo-Pacific free and open, prosperous, and secure. 

We’ve demonstrated during this NATO Summit, with In- — with Indo-Pacific partners joining us for the second year in a row, we’re working to deepen connections between the Atlantic and Pacific democracies so they can better work together toward the shared values we all seek: strong alliances, versatile partnerships, common purpose, collective action to meet our shared challenges. 

The world has shrunk.  That’s how we build a future to see.  But we share and know we share challenges and work together.

We have to step up together, building the broadest and deepest coalition to strengthen and defend the basic rules of the road, to preserve all the extraordinary benefits that stem from the international system grounded in the rule of law. 

We have to come together to protect the rights and freedoms that underwrite the flow of ideas and commerce and which have enabled decades of global growth.  Yes, territorial integrity and sovereignty, but also principles like freedom of navigation and overflight, keeping our shared seas and skies open so that every nation has equal access to our global common space. 

And as we continue to explore this age of new possibilities, an age enabled by rapid advances in innovation, we have to stand together to ensure that the common spaces of our future reflect our highest ras- — aspirations for ourselves and for others — as my dad would say, that everybody has — is treated with some dignity — so that artificial intelligence, engineering, biology, and other engineering techno- — emerging technologies are not made into weapons of oppression but rather are used as tools of opportunity. 

We’re working with our allies and partners to build a supply chains that are more resilient, more secure, so we never again face a situation like we had during the pandemic where we couldn’t get critical goods we needed for our daily lives. 

You know, we all must summon the common will to — to actually address the existential threat of accelerating climate change.  It’s real.  It’s serious.  We don’t have a lot of time. It is the — the single greatest threat to humanity. 

And it’s only by working together that we’ll prevent the worst consequences of climate change from ravaging our future and that of our children and grandchildren.

We also have to recognize our shared responsibility to help unlock the enormous potential that exists in low- and middle-income companies [countries] around the world — not out of charity, because it’s in our own self-interest.  We all benefit when more partners stand together, working toward shared goals.  We all benefit when people are healthier and more prosperous.  And that’s not, again, hyperbole.  It’s true.  We all benefit when more entrepreneurs and innovators are able to pursue their dreams for a better tomorrow. 

You know, so we need to update our toolset to better address the needs of today in this interconnected world.  A world where climate disasters, pandemics, conflicts spill over borders and make it harder to address the challenges of poverty and instability that hold so many people back. 

That’s why the United States is leading an effort to transform the multilateral development banks, like the World Bank, to help them better address the global challenges while enhancing their core mission of reducing poverty and boost shared prosperity.

We’re all working together with our partners in the G7 to address the enormous needs for high-standard infrastructure around the world, especially in low- and middle-income countries in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.  It’s a statement about the world we want to build together. 

Ladies and gentlemen, we stand at an inflection point, an inflection point in history, where the choices we make now are going to shape the direction of our world for decades to come.  The world has changed. 

Will we turn back naked, unchecked aggression today to deter other world — would-be aggressors tomorrow?

Will we staunch the climate crisis before it’s too late?

Will we harness the new technologies to advance freedom or will we diminish it?

Will we advance opportunity in more places or allow instability and inequality to persist?

How we answer these essential questions is literally going to determine the kind of future our children and grandchildren have.  And, again, that’s not an exaggeration; that’s a fact.  It’s going to take all of us.  All of us.  

I believe that with ambition, with confidence in ourselves and one another, with nations working together for common cause, we can answer these questions.  We can ensure the vision we share and the freedoms we cherish are not just empty words in a troubled time, but a roadmap — and I mean this literally — a roadmap, a plan of urgent action toward a future we can reach, and we’ll reach if we work together.

Folks, the road that lies before us is hard.  It will challenge us, summon the best of ourselves to hold faith in one another and never give up, never lose hope.  Never. 

Every day, we have to make the choice.  Every day, we must summon the strength to stand for what is right, to stand for what is true, to stand for freedom, to stand together.

And that, my friends, is the lesson we learn from history and the history of Lithuania’s story.  You know, it’s the lesson we see demonstrated each day, and it will determine — it will determine what Ukraine looks like.  And it is now — it’s how we’re going to work — how we rewrite the future of peace and hope, justice and light, liberty, possibilities for everyone — everyone everywhere. 

Folks, some have heard me say to my country many times: Never ever in my entire career I’ve been more optimistic about the prospects of the future.  Never.  Never. 

So let me just say thank you for taking the time to be here to listen. 

Gd bless you all, and may Gd protect the freedoms of the — the protectors of freedom in Ukraine, here, in every nation in the world, everywhere.  Gd protect our troops. 

Thank you, thank you, thank you.  (Applause.)

8:12 P.M. EEST

Eric Geller - Email Hacking Campaign Ups Pressure on Microsoft Over Fees for Critical Security Features Government officials say Microsoft needs to provide more security data to customers without charging them extra

 https://twitter.com/ericgeller/status/1679207878605828102

Eric Geller

@ericgeller

The FBI and CISA just held a briefing on the Microsoft email hacking campaign. The big takeaway: The USG is still pushing Microsoft to offer more log data for free, including the currently premium feature that was necessary to detect this particular attack.

"We have been working deeply collaboratively with Microsoft for months to determine the specific log types that are most valuable to cybersecurity defenders and that should be made available without premium costs," a senior CISA official said.

"Microsoft has been very responsive and collaborative in these conversations," the official added, "and we anticipate highly positive announcements soon for the availability of additional log types in non-premium license tiers that will be available to all organizations."

The official noted that "a preponderance of organizations using Microsoft 365 or other widely used technology platforms are not paying for premium logging or other telemetry services, and we believe that model is not yielding the sort of security outcomes that we seek."

These are some of the bluntest comments yet by a senior government official about the tech industry's practice of charging extra for critical security features, a challenge that I wrote about in a feature story published this mornining:

https://themessenger.com/tech/amazon-google-biden-cybersecurity-policy

The speed with which this campaign was detected is a testament to improvements in network visibility and public-private coordination since SolarWinds, the senior CISA official said. "This is a notable improvement over prior intrusion campaigns," they said.

"Microsoft has been deeply collaborative in the response and investigation around this campaign," said the senior CISA official, "including sharing technical information with operational teams from CISA and FBI, as well as the victim organizations."

A senior FBI official added that "we wouldn't have fidelity on the scope of the victims without Microsoft's collaboration and sharing of intelligence with both the FBI and CISA."

The one new tidbit from this briefing was that the number of affected U.S. organizations "is in the single digits," per the senior CISA official, "and the number of impacted accounts for each was a small number." Matches what I first reported this AM:

Adding on to Sean's reporting: Three federal agencies had their emails compromised in this attack, with 10 or fewer individual victims at each agency, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter. "Clearly targeted for [People's Republic of China] policy interests." twitter.com/snlyngaas/stat…
https://twitter.com/ericgeller/status/1679110092967358464

Microsoft and the government are still working to figure out the root cause of the attack, which involved the misuse of a signing key used to authenticate accounts. "That is an area of urgent focus," the senior CISA official said.

My story:

https://themessenger.com/tech/email-hacking-campaign-ups-pressure-on-microsoft-over-fees-for-critical-security-features

Email Hacking Campaign Ups Pressure on Microsoft Over Fees for Critical Security Features

Government officials say Microsoft needs to provide more security data to customers without charging them extra

Published 07/12/23 04:02 PM ET|Updated 13 min ago

A newly revealed hacking campaign targeting Microsoft’s email system which compromised multiple US government agencies underscores the need for Microsoft and other tech giants to offer more basic security features for free, the Biden administration argued on Wednesday.

The email hacking campaign, which Microsoft linked to Chinese operatives, was stealthy enough that only Microsoft customers who paid extra fees for the company’s advanced activity-logging feature could possibly have spotted it. One of the government victims paid for the feature, spotted the suspicious activity, and alerted Microsoft in mid-June, prompting a scramble to kick the hackers out of email systems belonging to roughly 25 organizations.

During a briefing for reporters on Wednesday, a senior official at the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency noted that most Microsoft customers didn’t pay the premium for the logging feature that revealed the attack and described Microsoft’s practice of charging for this feature as unacceptable.

“We believe that model is not yielding the sort of security outcomes that we seek,” said the senior CISA official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity according to the agency's policy. “We cannot rely upon organizations to pay more for better logging. That is a recipe for inadequate visibility and adversaries having unnecessary levels of success in targeting American organizations.”

The Biden administration has launched a campaign to convince tech companies to offer more security features for free and by default — instead of making users opt into them or pay extra for them. Offering adequate free log data is one of the areas where tech firms like Amazon, Google and Microsoft continue to dodge those recommendations.

The newly disclosed intrusions could increase pressure on Microsoft and its competitors to make more of their advanced security features available as part of their basic service tiers, given how important those features are to detecting sophisticated cyberattacks.

The US government has been “working closely with Microsoft to ensure the availability of this necessary logging for all organizations, federal and non-federal, without added charge,” the official said, “and we anticipate highly positive announcements soon” regarding the addition of more logging featres for all customers.

The suspected Chinese hacking campaign compromised three federal agencies, with the hackers accessing 10 or fewer individual accounts at each agency, The Messenger previously reported.

The US State Department confirmed in a statement that it was one of the affected agencies. CNN first reported that the department was the victim that detected the intrusion and reported it to Microsoft. The Commerce Department is another one of the victims, CNN reported.

 

Of the estimated 25 victims, the number of compromised US organizations “is in the single digits,” the senior CISA official said, with only “a small number” of affected accounts at each organization.

Senior CISA and FBI officials said the rapid discovery and remediation of the intrusions represented “a notable improvement” over responses to previous cyberattacks, including the SolarWinds breach perpetrated by Russian intelligence operatives in 2020.

A senior FBI official speaking at the same briefing said the government wouldn’t have a clear sense of the scope of this latest attack “without Microsoft's collaboration and sharing of intelligence.”

Still, it remains unclear how the hackers acquired the Microsoft authentication key that they used to break into victims’ email systems. The senior CISA official described that as “an area of urgent focus.”

 

When Are Heatbeats Audible During Pregnancy? (factcheck.org)

https://www.factcheck.org/2019/07/when-are-heartbeats-audible-during-pregnancy/

When Are Heatbeats Audible During Pregnancy?

By Jessica McDonald

Posted on July 26, 2019

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Q: When is the human heart fully developed, and when are heartbeats audible during pregnancy?

A: A developing heart has all of its primary structures after about nine weeks of pregnancy. Some forms of ultrasound can detect cardiac activity in an embryo in the sixth week, but a heartbeat wouldn’t be audible until about 10 weeks on a Doppler fetal monitor.

FULL QUESTION

When does an ACTUAL heart become fully functioning and formed?

When do doctors actually hear a heartbeat?

I was confused after reading a Popular Science article along with information shared by MayoClinic. Thank you for any information that you can provide.

FULL ANSWER

In the past four months, five states (Kentucky, Mississippi, Ohio, Georgia and Louisiana) have passed laws that ban abortion once a heartbeat becomes detectable during a pregnancy, which is generally possible by the sixth week of gestation, or the fourth week after conception. 

For this reason, abortion rights advocates such as Planned Parenthood refer to these measures as six-week abortion bans. Others, including proponents, call them “heartbeat” and sometimes “fetal heartbeat” legislation. All of the state laws allow abortion if the pregnant woman’s life or physical health is severely endangered, but only some make exceptions for fatal chromosomal anomalies in the fetus or in cases of rape or incest.

“Fetal heartbeat” is more of a legal term than a medical one, as some of the state laws specifically define a fetus as existing from the moment of conception. In medicine, however, a fetus doesn’t exist until eight weeks after fertilization, or at the end of the 10th week of pregnancy, when all the major organ systems have begun to form. Before then, the correct term is an embryo.

While none of the laws are currently in effect — and some have already been blocked in court — news coverage of the legislation has led to confusion. A Popular Science article, for instance, described the heartbeat at six weeks as a “rhythm a doctor can pick up on an ultrasound,” stating that “it isn’t a heartbeat, because the embryo has no heart.”

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists also has said in a statement, “What is interpreted as a heartbeat in these bills is actually electrically-induced flickering of a portion of the fetal tissue that will become the heart as the embryo develops. Thus, ACOG does not use the term ‘heartbeat’ to describe these legislative bans on abortion because it is misleading language, out of step with the anatomical and clinical realities of that stage of pregnancy.”

At the same time, many online medical websites, including the Mayo Clinic, do refer to the heart and its beating early-on in pregnancy. And plenty of medical textbooks use the words “heart” and “heartbeat” to refer to the embryo’s developing heart.

These sources don’t include many details on how heart development occurs, so it’s no surprise our reader was confused.

Precise answers to these questions depend on an individual’s definitions, but the heart doesn’t have all of its major components until the beginning of the 10th week of pregnancy. Beating occurs earlier, at the very end of the fifth week or at the start of the sixth week, when the heart is immature and lacks most of its identifiable features, including its iconic chambers. The heartbeat shows up around this time or shortly after as a flickering motion on an ultrasound. Only later, after the 10th week or beyond, is a heartbeat audible with a Doppler fetal monitor.

We’ll walk through what is known about heart development to provide more context. We’ll also share the various ways heartbeats are monitored throughout a pregnancy, and the medical significance of early heartbeat detection.

But first, a quick primer on how pregnancy weeks are calculated, because there are multiple ways of counting this time. One way is to count from fertilization, or when sperm meets egg. Fertilization dates, however, are not usually known, so pregnancy is more often measured from the last menstrual period. This way of counting, which is also termed gestational age, includes approximately two weeks prior to conception. As a result, a six-week pregnancy by this measure includes only about four weeks of actually being pregnant. A normal pregnancy lasts approximately 40 weeks.

The first sign of pregnancy is often a missed period, which would occur, on average, 14 days after conception, or at four completed weeks of pregnancy. Many women, however, do not have regular periods, so they may not know they are pregnant until later.

To be consistent, we will refer to weeks of pregnancy as measured from the last menstrual period, but will also give days since conception in some cases, as this is a standard measurement in embryology.

Heart Development 101

We consulted multiple embryology textbooks and several scientific reviews and research papers to learn about heart development, and also spoke with a pediatric cardiologist and researcher, Colin Phoon of New York University Langone Health. 

A good rule of thumb, according to Phoon, is that heart development occurs over a four-week period, starting in the sixth week of pregnancy. Before the sixth week, he said, “There is no heart; there’s nothing beating.”

Textbooks and scientific papers don’t always give the same exact dates for each milestone, and the timing is often extrapolated from animal studies. So scientists may eventually learn more and revise their timelines. But a general consensus is that around 21-23 days after conception, two groups of cells that form a horseshoe shape fuse together to form a tiny, hollow tube. This tube is known as a heart tube, and initially is very simple. It’s straight, a bit like a straw, and doesn’t have any chambers that are typical of a developed heart. 

Very soon after the tube forms, some cells of the tube begin to spontaneously contract, creating the first heartbeat, although the heart tube may not pump blood for another day or two. Textbooks and papers also peg this to approximately 21-23 days after fertilization, or what would be five completed weeks of pregnancy, or a few days into the sixth week.

Over the next several days, the heart tube elongates and loops, bending and twisting into a more recognizable heart shape. “It does a bunch of funny convolutions,” said Phoon. “It has to curve on itself, it has to loop. It eventually has to become four chambers and four valves,” he said, adding that the veins and arteries — including the aorta, which exists as a series of vessels early-on — must also develop.

The process of forming separated heart chambers begins around 28 days, or six completed weeks of pregnancy, as tissue starts to form to divide up the tube. The chambers include the upper left chamber, or left atrium, which after birth will collect oxygen-rich blood coming from the lungs, as well as the right atrium, which collects oxygen-depleted blood coming from the rest of the body. The two lower chambers, or ventricles, perform the reverse functions, and pump blood back out to either the lungs or the rest of the body. In the embryo and fetus, oxygen comes not from the lungs, but from the mother, via the placenta.

The last key elements of the heart that begin to develop are the valves, which are important flaps between the upper and lower chambers and between the ventricles and the major arteries. These make sure blood moves only in one direction through the heart. 

Chamber and valve formation take about three weeks to wrap up. Based on 3D imaging of human embryos, scientists are able to identify all of the major structures after nine weeks and one day of pregnancy, when the entire process is largely complete.

That’s not to say that heart development doesn’t continue. As one cardiology textbook explains, “The heart is the first functional organ in the mammalian embryo; however, its full development spans the whole intrauterine period and is finished only in the postnatal period.” There is, for example, some fine tuning of the valves later in pregnancy, and of course, the entire heart continues to grow. Cardiac muscle also changes its composition and structure over time, including a shift to a more mature helical organization well into the second trimester. But the majority of the developmental action occurs within those first nine to 10 weeks.

Heartbeat Detection

Heartbeats are first detectable with a transvaginal ultrasound, usually after six completed weeks of pregnancy, but also sometimes during the sixth week. 

The real-time scan, however, doesn’t provide expecting parents with an audible heartbeat.

As Erika Werner, a maternal fetal medicine physician at Brown University and a Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine board member, explained, the ultrasound at this stage is visual-only.

“You can see a little flicker,” she said. “That’s it.”

The ultrasound is picking up on the slight movement of the developing heart while it beats, as high frequency sound waves are sent out from the machine, get reflected back when they hit different kinds of fluids and tissue, and are used to form an image.

Transvaginal ultrasounds, or ultrasounds that use a probe inserted into the vagina, are closer to the growing embryo, so they’re more likely to detect cardiac motion before six weeks. The more standard abdominal ultrasound, Werner said, can be used after six to eight completed weeks. 

But even then, it may depend on a variety of factors. With both types of ultrasound, Werner said, whether or not a heartbeat is detectable can depend on the patient’s weight, the presence of scar tissue, and the position of the uterus and fetus. The more tissue you have to penetrate with the sound waves, she said, the less likely the ultrasound will be able to pick up a heartbeat.

Even the quality of the ultrasound machine matters. In places with poor machines, Werner noted, the flicker might not be apparent until weeks later.

What most parents experience as the first audible “heartbeat” during pregnancy comes from a device known as an acoustic Doppler or a Doppler fetal monitor. The machine is handheld and also uses ultrasound waves, taking advantage of the Doppler shift.

Technically, the heart sounds that the machine produces are not the actual sound of the fetus’s heart beating. As a product manual for one such device explains, the sound is the amplified version of the difference between the transmitted and received signals. “It is important to remember that the sound you hear is an artificial sound, the frequency (pitch) of which is proportional to the velocity of the moving target,” the manual reads. “It is not the real sound made by blood rushing through an artery or vein, or movement of the fetal heart.”

Werner said she doesn’t usually try an acoustic Doppler on a patient until at least 10 weeks, and on an obese patient, it still may not work until after 12-14 weeks.

Doppler ultrasounds, which are distinct from the handheld monitors, can also provide audio and visual confirmation of a heartbeat during pregnancy, including more detailed evaluations of fetal blood flow. The American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine, however, discourages the use of such machines in the first trimester.

To hear a true heartbeat, expecting parents can turn to a stethoscope — if they are willing to wait. According to the 25th edition of “Williams Obstetrics,” a standard stethoscope successfully picks up fetal heartbeats in 80% of patients after 20 weeks, and in all patients after 22 weeks. But Werner said that in her practice, most OB/GYNs don’t even carry stethoscopes. “All the rooms,” she said, “have acoustic Dopplers.”

What Early Heartbeat Detection Means

In medicine, the detection of a heartbeat is important because it signals that the embryo or fetus is alive and that the pregnancy is likelier than not to continue.

According to the 7th edition of “Obstetrics: Normal and Problem Pregnancies,” once there is identifiable cardiac activity, only about 2-3% of pregnancies in low-risk women will fail.

The miscarriage rate, however, can be much higher in other groups. One study, for instance, found that in women 36 years or older receiving fertility treatment, 16% of pregnancies ended in miscarriage even after confirmation of cardiac activity in the eighth week.

A heartbeat, then, is no guarantee of a continued or healthy pregnancy, although it is a requirement for one.

A heartbeat, it should also be mentioned, does not necessarily mean that a fetus is viable, or capable of surviving outside the womb. Older fetuses might be, but after just six weeks, no embryo is capable of living on its own, even with medical assistance. According to UpToDate, an online medical resource for physicians, many infants will live if delivered after 26 weeks of pregnancy, but almost none do if delivered before 22 completed weeks.

Viability is an important legal milestone with respect to abortion. In 1992, the Supreme Court held in Planned Parenthood v. Casey that women have the right to abortion before fetal viability, and that states cannot legally impose an “undue burden,” or create “substantial obstacles in the path of a woman seeking an abortion,” before that time.

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