On September 16th, 2015, Martin Shrekli, a pharmaceutical entrepreneur known as “ Pharma Bro” and infamous for his online feud with the Wu-Tang Clan, acquired the living-saving drug Daraprim which had initially cost $13 per pill. The very next day, he jacked up the price up to $750 – a price hike of over 5000%. Soon Shrekli became the most hated face in America, an embodiment of the greed of the pharmaceutical industry. Unfortunately, Shrekli’s actions are not a rare occurrence. Rather, they follow an alarming trend of rising healthcare prices which are leaving thousands either at the brink of death or nearing poverty to pay for their exorbitant medical costs. In fact, near the beginning of 2020, average price hikes on prescription drugs rose by over 10% across the board. To address this impending issue, Speaker Nancy Pelosi proposed HR3 or the “Lower Drugs Costs Now Act” in September 2019, which implemented sweeping reforms across the healthcare system. HR3 contained two major components: first, it would drastically decrease all drug prices for anyone covered by private insurance and second, it would reinvest the savings into new breakthrough treatments. All in all, HR3 has become a controversial bill supported by the majority of Democrats but despised by many Republicans. 

Congress’s debate over drug pricing mainly centers around the trade-off between accessibility and innovation. Many Republicans claim that only the small pharmaceutical companies would suffer under these barring regulations, which can drastically reduce America’s drug innovation output. A report from the Congressional Research Service finds that US companies could lose over $358 billion dollars in profits annually, resulting in significant cuts to research and development budgets and decreasing the new innovative drug output from small companies by 88%. This could be catastrophic for the pharmaceutical industry; as CNBC writer Lori Ioannou explains that because startups need a way to appease new investors to fund their projects, they often produce the most innovative and risky drugs in the market, accounting for 63% of new drug approvals in 2018. With a drastic reduction in the profitability of the pharmaceutical industry, venture capital investment and seed funding into startups could suffer, preventing many companies from creating innovative drugs in the first place. This political discourse over drug pricing is especially vital, as the importance of pharmaceutical innovation cannot be understated. Republicans such as Mitch McConnell argue that promoting innovation helps consumers in the long term, as general improvements on existing drugs could lower drug prices along with generics development. Moreover, innovation in the United States not only benefits Americans but also the dozens of other countries that are able to buy these essential medicines at often discounted prices. The National Bureau of Economic Research finds that US pharmaceutical innovation accounted for an incredible 73% increase in life expectancy in developing countries. In conclusion, while critics demonize the Republicans for supporting the “greedy” drug corporations, many downplay how drug innovation impacts both the developing and developed world. 

However, many Democrats argue that HR3 would save the thousands of suffering and desperate Americans who are unable to take their medicine and could jumpstart innovation in the pharmaceutical industry. A Center for American Progress reports finds that the bill could give the government authority to negotiate down the prices of over 250 pharmaceutical drugs each year. This would be incredibly important for many consumers, as American drug prices are four times higher compared to other countries, causing one-fourth of all Americans to commonly skip out on their medication. Nicole Rapfoegel, a writer from the Center for American Progress, finds that “reform is desperately needed. Today, pharmaceutical companies set excessive prices that they increase over time in order to maximize profits.” A report in the New York Times on April 17th of 2017 which studies comprehensive data from all 50 states from 2012 to 2017 finds that nonadherence results in over 125,000 deaths in America annually. Additionally, while some critics/Republicans forewarn that drug price caps could stifle innovation, House Democrats argue that implementing HR3 could actually benefit innovation. A Statnews report finds that big pharmaceutical companies use the majority of their profits to invest in killer acquisitions to buy out small pharmaceutical startups rather than investing in their own research and development budgets. In fact, over 81% of drugs from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer actually originate from third-party developers bought out. Thus, reducing drug profits would not affect Big Pharma’s already small budget on innovation. With mortality rates rising from America’s broken medicine industry, the implementation of this policy could mean the literal life or death for thousands of Americans annually. 

Regardless of the current fierce debate over HR3, the bill is unlikely to be passed in its current form. Paul Hastings, CEO of Nkarta Therapeutics, explains that the House had “another near party-line vote in the Chamber” with Democrats voting for it and Republicans voting against it. Because the Republicans control the Senate, many analysts predict that the bill will easily be thrown out. Instead, politicians will likely make bipartisan compromises to ensure that some reforms are made in America’s dying healthcare industry. For instance, Erik Watson from Bloomberg argues that the most likely result would be to keep reforms on capping out-of-spending costs for Medicare beneficiaries in HR3, as it benefits the gray vote or America’s elderly voter population, an essential constituency both Republicans and Democrats must win. Other bipartisan agreements under Pelosi’s HR3 bill could include the measures to promote price transparency among American consumers and possible antitrust policies that restrict killer acquisitions to increase competition among existing pharmaceutical giants such as Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson. The result could benefit a large portion of America’s elderly population who see reductions in their medical expenses. Furthermore, improving price transparency and competition could still lower drug prices, but to a lesser degree, ensuring that some of the thousands of Americans can afford another night of medicine. All in all, Congress’s compromise bill over drug pricing will most likely implement some minor common-sense reforms which could further progress in increasing accessibility while still allowing companies the budget to pursue productive innovation. Unfortunately, with the 2020 presidential elections coming up, many Democrats are choosing to forego negotiations because they believe that bipartisan bill could potentially give Trump a political boost. Thus, it is likely that Congress’s fierce debate over drug pricing policy will be delayed until 2021. 

Sources:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/martin-shkreli-who-raised-drug-prices-5-000-percent-heads-into-fraud-trial/
https://www.newsweek.com/us-drug-prices-rise-2020-companies-prepare-charge-more-ibrance-xeljanz-200-others-1479939
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/17/well/the-cost-of-not-taking-your-medicine.html
https://www.statnews.com/2019/12/09/hr3-wrong-path-lower-drug-costs/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/08/26/pharma-industry-ups-donations-senate-republicans-mcconnell/2116231001/
https://itif.org/publications/2017/05/30/fact-week-pharmaceutical-innovation-accounted-73-percent-increase-life
https://www.greenwichtime.com/business/article/Congress-seeks-drug-pricing-deal-in-spite-of-2020-14956252.php

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With Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton becoming the first woman to win her primary elections and almost attaining the presidency, and with President Donald Trump becoming the first real-estate-baron-turned-reality-television-star-turned-orange to win the presidency, the Presidential Election of 2016 was an event of both groundbreaking progress and curious intrigue. For instance, the use of social media by politicians to directly connect to the millions of political constituencies under the swipe of a keyboard skyrocketed, championed by Donald Trump in his persistent nocturnal toilet tweeting sessions. However, under the surface of technological progress holds a darker sinister secret revolving around foreign intervention and its threat to democracy.

Russia’s disinformation operations on social media have become infamous for their intervention to sway the results of the election in favor of Trump. For example, Russian agencies swarmed Twitter with Twitterbots which promote false information about Hillary Clinton, inaccurate polling results favoring Trump, and even cropped images depicting pro-Trump rallies internationally. However, lesser-known is Russia’s attempts to exploit racial tensions in order to demoralize and divide African Americans, discouraging them from voting; over two-thirds of Russian fake ads during the 2016 campaign season targeted Black Americans with the intention to lower turnout. In a country rife with racial discrimination and a history of suppressing the black vote, Russia is now only another group to disentangle African Americans from the political process. More specifically, reports indicate that Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA) on social media has depicted false movements such as “Black Matters US” or “Don’t Shoot” where 96% of all Youtube activity focuses on police brutality on black victims in left-leaning areas. In 2016, the unfortunate police shooting of African-American, Keith Lamont Scott, gave rise to numerous protests for ending police brutality across Charlotte, North Carolina. However, Russian internet trolls attempted to manipulate the mood over these protests through its focus on instigating hate and violence over rightful anger. By injecting negativity of lies among social media and by pressuring African-Americans through antagonism, Russia’s spread of misinformation detrimentally dissuaded real political actions in favor of more violent and hateful alternatives. 

Through their numerous means to divide Americans, all Russian ads have one common message: to skip out on Voting Day. Unfortunately, in 2016, Russia’s strategy worked. The voter turnout for black Americans was 7% lower in swing states in 2016, and a study by the University of Tennessee quantifiably found that every 25,000 retweets connected to Russia’s Internet Research Agency correlated to a 1% increase in Trump polling results. With significant efforts by Russia to destroy the legitimacy of American elections, has the United States shown equal efforts to protect American elections from the foreign intervention? The answer is more nuanced than it seems. 

America’s own cybersecurity and election infrastructure are still incredibly vulnerable to malicious manipulation from foreign and domestic threats after 2016. In Georgia’s sixth congressional district’s election in 2017, leading Democrat Jon Ossoff had 50.3% of votes, enough for him to win the vote, but soon after a computer crash saw his vote share drop to 48.1% which allowed the Republicans to win the district. While initially blamed as a technical error that miscounted the number of Democratic votes, many were looking towards Russia as the culprit behind this cyber attack. However, Georgia is not the only state with a vulnerable election infrastructure today. Alex Halderman, a leading cybersecurity expert at the University of Michigan explains that “Many states are making progress, but the progress is patchy and there are major gaps … Forty states are using computer technology that is a decade old or more and often they are not receiving software updates or security patches”. Critically, with consistent cyber tampering looming over America’s elections and with Republican states passing stricter voter ID laws which disproportionately affect minority voters, more and more African Americans are choosing to remain home on election day. However, even if the states completely renovated their online infrastructure with state-of-the-art technology, many would still face issues. The ISC(2) reports that North America will face a cybersecurity shortage of over 800,000 professionals in the field. With over 51% of cybersecurity professionals citing that their organization is at extreme or moderate risk due to staff shortages, the United States is completely unprepared to defend its minority population from the delegitimization of American elections. 

Instead in 2018, rather than “defending” America, the United States has adopted an “offensive” position actively hacking Russia’s agencies before they hack America first. Under the newly-adopted US Cyber Command which gained new powers in 2018, the federal government is currently targeting individual Russian operatives to deter them from spreading false information in the next election cycle. Dubbed “Defending Forward”, the US Cyber Command pursues an offensive strategy of disrupting, denying, and shutting down enemy networks as a measure of preventing the hacking election. For example, in the 2018 Midterms, US Cyber Command successfully took out the online capabilities of Russian Troll Farm, the Internet Research Agency, thus severing their abilities to spread online propaganda without the need for the United States to defend their networks. Additionally, the United States also took out numerous agencies funding the IRA and indicted over 13 individuals connected to the IRA who face prosecution in the United States. Senator Mike Rounds corroborates “the fact that the 2018 election process moved forward without successful Russian intervention was not a coincidence.” While taking the operations of the IRA offline may seem temporary, America’s strong cyber capabilities can act as a deterrence factor that discourages other countries from hacking into US elections. 
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Overall, America’s decision to ignore cybersecurity and instead focus on offensive cyber operations against Russia will play an important role in the upcoming 2020 elections. With the legitimization of America’s elections and the voter turnout of minorities at stake, the success of Russia’s hacking could very much shake the foundation of American democracy. 

Sources:
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2019/1206/After-Russian-trolls-target-black-Americans-one-city-fights-back
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/06/us/russia-disinformation-black-activists.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/new-study-shows-russian-propaganda-may-really-have-helped-trump-n1025306
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/13/us-election-cybersecurity-hacking-voting
https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/cybersecurity-skills-shortage-tops/
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/23/us/politics/russian-hacking-usa-cyber-command.html
https://outline.com/YZ4UZ7

ATLANTA, GA. – If Georgia State University’s 2017 construction of a brand-new football stadium was meant to give their brand-new football team a morale boost, it seems as if their $30 million venture may have been fruitless. With a 29-77 all-time record and continued difficulty recruiting, the GSU Panthers are coming to terms with a difficult realization: they aren’t very good. In fact, some students have already given up on their athletes. “People care more about Georgia Tech football than they do about our own team,” one graduate student remarks unapologetically. 
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    Although GSU students feel the anguish of another football season devastatingly barren of wins, many are oblivious to the painful history of the grounds where their present football stadium lies. Georgia State Stadium - previously known as Turner Field, home of the Atlanta Braves, sits squarely between some of Atlanta’s poorest areas by median income – Adair Park, Mechanicsville, Peoplestown, Pittsburgh, and Summerhill. The lifelong residents of these working-class communities are certainly no strangers to stadiums, however, having hosted the Centennial Olympic Games in 1996 and, before then, serving as home to the Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium for nearly 40 years.

      When the Braves announced that they would be leaving the stadium in 2013, Georgia State University offered to purchase it and redevelop the surrounding area for its collegiate football team. As local residents prepared to welcome yet another stadium to their towns, however, they reflected on a troubling past, one where development has been synonymous with gentrification and division. In the 1950s, these districts – then known as the Washington-Rawson region – saw a line bulldozed through their streets in order to clear a path for new Interstate highways, displacing thousands and placing an immovable physical barrier in the center of a low-income black community in decline. In the 1960s, the construction of Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium scared away business in droves, resulting in Summerhill, Mechanicsville, and Peoplestown becoming three of metro Atlanta’s most destitute neighborhoods.

        After the first whispers of redevelopment began to spread once again, locals were determined to ensure that their families and friends did not befall a similar fate. In 2015, a group of neighborhood activists formed the Turner Field Community Benefits Coalition (TFCBC), aiming to present to authorities a community benefits agreement (CBA) - essentially, a contract mandating the protection of certain rights for locals. The plan, a collaboration between city council members and representatives of municipal organizations, was ambitious, detailed and comprehensive; a 2016 TFCBC poster lists demands ranging from investments in infrastructure, guarantees against displacement and eviction, upgraded energy and water efficiency, and the construction of a grocery store to improve accessibility to fresh produce. (A majority of the region surrounding Turner Field is considered a food desert by the USDA.) 

        ​Despite ensuing protests in city council meetings and across the GSU campus, the Atlanta-Fulton County Recreation Authority (AFCRA) signed a deal with Carter and Oakwood (the development firm representing GSU) in early 2017 without adopting the goals of the TFCBC’s community benefits agreement. Community leaders and GSU students reacted with fury; the GSU campus soon became engulfed in heated debate. Senior Brandon Andrews was only a freshman when he, along with many other students, protested the redevelopment of Turner by interrupting city council meetings, picketing the president’s office, and stationing themselves on the grounds of Turner Field to protest the university’s lack of receptiveness to their demands, resulting in the creation of a “Tent City” that had to be forcibly taken down by police. “It was rough,” he concedes grimly. Some students, decrying their university as “Gentrification State,” were arrested or barred from campus when they confronted the university’s president, Mark Becker, over his refusal to discuss the merits of a CBA. Andrews continues, “there were a lot of student government meetings,” so many to the point that “the student government president pretty much said, ‘stop asking me [about the CBA], I’m not going to talk to the President [of the school] about it anymore.’” Becker never acquiesced to the students’ demands, arguing that the school, having a sole responsibility for its own well-being, “cannot pay for something if it is not a university activity” and characterizing the TFCBC as a group of “self-interested individuals” with “personal agendas.” “What they’re telling you is, this is a poor neighborhood and we don’t want it to get better. We want it to stay poor and we just want you to put money in there to keep it the way it is,” he responded in a Georgia State Signal interview. Although student protests mostly died down in defeat after the completion of the purchase, several students ended up permanently leaving the university in protest. Now, Andrews says, “We don’t really talk about any of it anymore.” ​

        ​Two years after GSU and Carter finalized the Turner Field redevelopment plan without the legally-binding CBA that community activists had asked for, many still express resentment over the lack of transparency and inclusivity in the planning process. Micah Rowland is the former chair of NPU-V, one of Atlanta’s twenty-five “neighborhood planning unit” advisory boards that includes Summerhill, Peoplestown, and Mechanicsville. “We stood there, we fought the building of this stadium… I stood in front of city council, I stood in front of the Atlanta-Fulton County Recreation Authority, but right now, it’s irrelevant. It’s already done,” Rowland, a current systems administrator for GSU, says, a hint of defeat in his voice. He suggested a desire not to reopen an old wound: “You talk to all these activists [who fought for the CBA] and they’re not going to say anything negative. Because it’s there. It’s there now,” he said. “People aren’t really engaged. Gentrification is continuing.”

        Just as impactful as the effects of redevelopment is the apparent rift that the fight for a CBA seems to have exposed between leaders within the NPU-V community. Some members of the now-defunct TFCBC say that the reality of the final redevelopment plan was a far cry from their worst fears. Wanda B. Rasheed is the current treasurer for the Organized Neighbors of Summerhill (ONS), a nonprofit organization that continues to participate in redevelopment negotiations with both the university and Carter and Oakwood. She reflects back on the negotiating process with pleasant satisfaction. “Honestly, it was a win-win for Summerhill,” she said. “While they didn’t want to sign a legally-binding CBA, we felt as if we were heard. They accepted our recommendations, and they implemented them even without the binding agreement.” The new developments in Summerhill excite her, she said. “We can have the old [businesses and homes] with the new. This is a community, and things are changing.” Regardless, she indicated, her goal was still to protect her district’s residents: “We are still representing Summerhill. We are not sleeping on any of the issues surrounding the development. We are asking the tough questions. And we just want to make sure that at the end of the day, that everything is OK for everybody.”

        ​To others, however, including former State Senator and 2017 Atlanta mayoral candidate Vincent Fort, Rasheed and ONS’s reconciliatory approach represents a betrayal of the constituents they were supposed to represent. “The Organized Neighbors were gentrifiers who sold out their community,” he exclaimed with resentment. “They were gentrifiers who didn’t care about the poor and working-class community getting a greater community benefit from this redevelopment.” Fort, who worked closely with the Housing Justice League - an anti-gentrification advocacy organization - suggested that the debacle had put solidarity within low-income black communities to the test: “There was an element of racism on social media. People were saying mean things about African-Americans and promoting resistance to the deal.” The root cause? “There were white gentrifiers within Summerhill, within Mechanicsville, within Peoplestown. They are still gentrifying the community today."

        Regardless of perspective, no involved party can deny that there is an element of truth in Fort’s insistence that gentrification has proliferated as a result of the lack of a CBA. Even as she extols the business boom in downtown Atlanta, Rasheed admits that “[they’ve] had some renters… who have been displaced” and that “property taxes -- especially for our seniors -- are rising quickly.” Advocates for the initial CBA suggest that such an outcome could have been avoidable. “Community housing development organizations are no longer getting funding from the government as a result of the redevelopment,” Rowland laments. “There’s not gonna be any affordable housing anymore.”  “I think that everything that we thought would come true came true, unfortunately,” Andrews assents. “Atlanta already has a huge homeless issue -- and I’m sure there’s going to be a lot more displacement as a result of all of this.”  

        Both on and off-campus, however, students and residents alike have begun to accept the Turner Field redevelopment plan as an immutable component of their lives. Sophomore Keyshawn Phillips will be one of the first students to move into 120 Piedmont next month, a 26-story privately-owned housing tower that looms over Georgia State Stadium. “I’ll be able to see into the stadium just from my dorm window,” he commented excitedly. Meanwhile, businesses revival in Summerhill is evident. Strolling down Georgia Avenue reveals many an establishment with newly-painted signs and bustling shoppers. “The Little Tart Bakeshop,” one elegant red sign reads. Another — a brewery — is named “Halfway Crooks.” “NOW OPEN!” posters and signs line new apartment complexes running all down the street. “Crime has, for certain, gone down in Summerhill,” Rasheed exclaims happily. Andrews agrees. “It is beneficial for the students, I mean, even if it is awful for the residents,” he says, sounding less-than-excited. “I have a friend who lives over in [Mechanicsville] and he says it is a much nicer place to live — it’s no longer considered a ghetto, or whatever it used to be.” 

        ​In a few years, the painful, complex redevelopment process will be forgotten by most. Seasons go by for the residents and business-owners in downtown Atlanta. Some are evicted. Some move in. And on the campus of Georgia State, the only reminder left of the months of protests, deliberate negotiations, and camping out on “Tent City” will be the football stadium itself; nowadays, the only thing left to stir up gripes and jumbles is its emptiness. “You know how big a football stadium is?” one junior asked with wide-eyed incredulity. “I think it was a waste of money.” She shrugs her shoulders, then walks away.