--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Steve Inskeep: The Supreme Court struck down a challenge to an abortion pill. So why does an abortion provider respond with mixed feelings?
--:-- Rob Schmitz: Ultimately, it's a tepid happiness because we know that there are other shoes to drop.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: I'm Steve Inskeep with Rob Schmitz, and this is Up First from NPR News.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: Some Tesla shareholders organized to make sure they paid Elon Musk tens of billions of dollars.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Hot damn, I love you guys. Shareholders defied a judge who said Musk had too much influence over his own compensation.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: So what do his critics try next?
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Also, how safe is your health care information?
--:-- Rob Schmitz: Just yesterday, we reported on safety lapses at Microsoft.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Today, the White House promises to work with Microsoft and Google to secure health care systems.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: Stay with us. We'll give you the news you need to start your day.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Today, the rules for using an abortion pill in the United States are exactly the same as they were the day before.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: That lack of a change is news because the Supreme Court turned aside a request to change them.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: The court unanimously rejected a challenge to the abortion pill mifepristone.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: Some doctors had sued the Food and Drug Administration saying its approval of the drug was improper, but because the doctors opposed the drug and didn't actually prescribe it, the court said they did not have the standing to sue.
--:-- Alyssa Nadwarni: That's right. I talked with many doctors and nurses.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Dr. Kristen Brandy is an OBGYN in New Jersey.
--:-- Alyssa Nadwarni: And when the decision came down, she and her staff were actually in a meeting where they were making a plan for if access to mifepristone was changed.
--:-- Dr. Kristen Brandy: We were all in shock and just so thrilled and relieved that this was not something that we had to worry about anymore.
--:-- Alyssa Nadwarni: It's something that's kind of been looming in the background for weeks now.
--:-- Dr. Louise King: It's a pause and panic.
--:-- Alyssa Nadwarni: A pause and panic, one that allows providers to keep prescribing mifepristone during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy and via telehealth appointments.
--:-- Dr. Louise King: A pause and panic.
--:-- Alyssa Nadwarni: By rejecting the case on standing, the court basically sidestepped the original question about FDA approval.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: So what does abortion access look like now?
--:-- Alyssa Nadwarni: Well, it's a patchwork.
--:-- Lauren Jacobson: We continue business as usual.
--:-- Alyssa Nadwarni: The Supreme Court has not made it more difficult than it already is for people to get access to abortion pills.
--:-- Lauren Jacobson: Jacobson works for Aid Access, one of the largest abortion by mail organizations that sends pills to all 50 states.
--:-- Alyssa Nadwarni: And yesterday, she wrote about 30 prescriptions for mifepristone.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: So, Alyssa, what is next for anti-abortion groups now that this challenge has failed?
--:-- Erin Hawley: We still have work to do.
--:-- Alyssa Nadwarni: Well, you first look for clues in the opinion.
--:-- Brett Kavanaugh: Go through Congress, not the courts, if you want to challenge regulations.
--:-- Alyssa Nadwarni: However, the lawyers who brought the case are confident they can still continue in the courts, perhaps with state attorneys general making a more compelling argument than the group of doctors.
--:-- Erin Hawley: ADF is encouraged and hopeful that the FDA will be held to account.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: Even the providers I talk to expect more challenges.
--:-- Melissa Grant: Ultimately, it's a tepid happiness here because we know that there are other shoes to drop.
--:-- Alyssa Nadwarni: And we look for this case to come forward with gusto again in the next several months.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: So providers are kind of bracing for more challenges.
--:-- Melissa Grant: The main thing she can do now is tell people her medical care will remain the same as it's been for the last two years.
--:-- Alyssa Nadwarni: That's NPR's Alyssa Nadwarning. Alyssa, thanks so much.
--:-- Alyssa Nadwarni: You bet.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Tesla shareholders voted again to pay Elon Musk tens of billions of dollars.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: The vote showed the majority's confidence in the CEO, and at a shareholder meeting, Musk responded.
--:-- Elon Musk: Hot damn, I love you guys.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: This is the second time Tesla investors have voted on Musk's pay package, the same one that a judge threw out earlier this year.
--:-- Camila Dominovsky: NPR's Camila Dominovsky covers the car industry.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: She's here to break this down for us.
--:-- Camila Dominovsky: Good morning, Rob.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: So tell us about the pay package at the heart of this vote.
--:-- Camila Dominovsky: You know, it's somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 billion.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: It's all stock, so the exact value varies.
--:-- Camila Dominovsky: But it's a lot.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: And if you go back in time to 2018, which is when shareholders first approved this pay package, it was a deal where Musk would get no salary at all.
--:-- Camila Dominovsky: But if Tesla got really, really big, so big the benchmark that was set to most people seemed completely impossible, he would get a mind-boggling amount of stock.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: And that's exactly what happened.
--:-- Camila Dominovsky: Tesla grew phenomenally and he received this huge compensation package that was entirely Tesla stock.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: And that means not just a phenomenal amount of money it also means a huge amount of control expanding his influence over this company.
--:-- Camila Dominovsky: Wow, so we got an eye figure for Mr. Musk, a lot of control.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: But is there something wrong with that?
--:-- Camila Dominovsky: So one small shareholder sued and a judge in Delaware, where Tesla, like a lot of companies, is incorporated for the business-friendly laws, this judge said, yeah, no, this is actually no good.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: She found that Musk had too much influence over the board when they determined this package.
--:-- Camila Dominovsky: CEOs aren't supposed to set their own pay, basically.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: And that when shareholders did vote on it, they weren't fully informed.
--:-- Camila Dominovsky: So in response, we've seen two votes here from Tesla.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: One reconfirmed the pay package and the other moved the company's incorporation from Delaware to Texas.
--:-- Camila Dominovsky: So, you know, this vote yesterday went very well for Elon Musk.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: He said, hot damn. Thank you very much to the shareholders.
--:-- Camila Dominovsky: Did any investors have doubts about this?
--:-- Camila Dominovsky: We saw some big investors, including the California teachers and public employees' retirement funds, vote no.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: The logic here was the obvious. It's just too big.
--:-- Camila Dominovsky: There's also been some concerns from some big investors about whether Elon Musk is paying enough attention to Tesla.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: Which is something you do hear from some small investors too.
--:-- Camila Dominovsky: I've been on an EV road trip this week and chatting with people about EVs.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: And one Tesla shareholder in New Jersey told me that he thought it might be time for Musk to step back.
--:-- Camila Dominovsky: So as he put it, Musk could pay more attention to Twitter.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: But obviously that's a minority opinion, right?
--:-- Camila Dominovsky: A lot of individual investors said yes to this pay package.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: There was actually an organized campaign to get them to come out and vote, which a lot of shareholders, individuals usually don't do.
--:-- Camila Dominovsky: Each one's a small chunk of the voting power here.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: But overall, big impact.
--:-- Camila Dominovsky: This is a vote of confidence in Musk that he himself is crucial to Tesla's future.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: So is that it? Is that the end of the story here?
--:-- Camila Dominovsky: There's going to be a lot more legal battles.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: A lawyer for the team that challenged this pay package called this vote coerced and, quote, deeply flawed.
--:-- Camila Dominovsky: Said it doesn't make a difference to their case where this judge said they won.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: You know, we've been in unprecedented territory for this case for a while now, and I think that's still where we are.
--:-- Camila Dominovsky: We'll have to see where it heads.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: NPR's Camila Domenoski, thank you.
--:-- Camila Dominovsky: Thank you.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Leaders of Microsoft are playing offense and defense on their security practices.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: Yeah, they're on the defensive because of some security lapses.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Yesterday, lawmakers asked Executive Brad Smith how Russian and Chinese hackers gained access to federal emails through Microsoft vulnerabilities.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: At the same time this week, Microsoft and Google say they're working with the White House on offense.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: They want to fight back against ransomware attacks at hospitals.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: To talk more about this, we turn to NPR cybersecurity correspondent Jenna McLaughlin.
--:-- Jenna McLaughlin: Good morning.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: So, Jenna, Microsoft is under fire for security challenges, but it does have a lot of financial resources.
--:-- Jenna McLaughlin: Yeah so Microsoft does have its own problems but separate from those email insecurities and those potential national security concerns associated with those breaches we got this other problem.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: Cyber criminals are hoping to make money and they targeting the American health care system.
--:-- Jenna McLaughlin: It's really a crisis, and it's only getting worse.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: So Jenna, what kind of damage are we talking about here, and how bad has it become?
--:-- Jenna McLaughlin: It's really bad, Rob.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: The White House says the total number of attacks between 2022 and 2023 rose a whopping 128 percent.
--:-- Jenna McLaughlin: So these cyber criminals don't just break into email.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: At hospitals, they shut everything down from imagery machines to communications.
--:-- Jenna McLaughlin: And they're demanding ransoms to unlock everything because they know that healthcare has to get back online as fast as possible to prevent emergencies, even deaths.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: And it's happening everywhere.
--:-- Jenna McLaughlin: London's hospitals are under siege as we speak.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: And recently, the scale of attacks has really gone up.
--:-- Jenna McLaughlin: That includes the network of 140 private Christian hospitals owned by the healthcare company Ascension, which is still struggling to get back online.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: And there was a massive attack against Change Healthcare, a company that processes payments between providers and insurance companies.
--:-- Jenna McLaughlin: That one was so bad that it's forcing clinics and pharmacies to close down because they couldn't get paid for months.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: So what's being done about all this?
--:-- Jenna McLaughlin: So like you mentioned up top, the White House has announced this program with Microsoft and Google.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: They're going to be funneling cash and resources specifically towards rural healthcare facilities.
--:-- Jenna McLaughlin: Because often when those places are hit by a ransomware attack, they don't have the resources to respond.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: And there's not a network of nearby hospitals to act as a backup.
--:-- Jenna McLaughlin: If one hospital network is down, sometimes the closest alternative is dozens of miles away.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: Plus, the Department of Health and Human Services is putting up $50 million of its own dollars towards a research project to help develop tools to secure the healthcare ecosystem.
--:-- Jenna McLaughlin: What I've been hearing a lot, though, is that this approach right now might be too little too late.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: So could you unpack that a little more for us?
--:-- Jenna McLaughlin: What else do experts say needs to happen here?
--:-- Jenna McLaughlin: The experts I talk to say the White House program for rural hospitals misses some key problems.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: That includes vulnerabilities in third-party software and actually hiring people to monitor these systems on the ground.
--:-- Jenna McLaughlin: There's also definitely an interest within cybersecurity circles that there be mandatory minimum cybersecurity standards across the healthcare industry.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon wrote a letter urging HHS to do that in light of all the major breaches.
--:-- Jenna McLaughlin: Of course, the industry is wary of moves towards regulation.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: It can be overly onerous and not necessarily solve the problem.
--:-- Jenna McLaughlin: But it's clear to most people I talk to that something major needs to change.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: That was NPR's Jenna McLaughlin.
--:-- Jenna McLaughlin: Thank you.
--:-- [Closing music starts playing]
--:-- Steve Inskeep: And that's up first for Friday, June 14th.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: I'm Rob Schmitz.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: And I'm Steve Inskeep.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: Thanks for listening.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: You can find more of the NPR experience on an old-fashioned radio or a live stream.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: Morning Edition is on your local NPR station at the approximate time that the name would suggest.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Also, sign up for the Up First newsletter to get the news you need straight to your inbox each morning.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: You can sign up at npr.org slash Up First newsletter.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Today's episode of Up First was edited by Katherine Layla, Emily Kopp, Russell Lewis, Mohamed Elberdisi, and Ellis Wolfley.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: It was produced by Ziad Butch, Christopher Thomas, and Julie Deppenbrock.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: We get engineering support from Arthur Laurent.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: Our technical director is Zach Coleman, and our executive producer is Erica Aguilar.
--:-- Steve Inskeep: Join us again on Monday.
--:-- Rob Schmitz: Thanks for listening.
--:-- [Closing music continues to play until the end]
