Israel's Supreme Court, State Legislatures Lookahead, Ridding Water of PFAS

recently that weakened the country's Supreme Court.

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own authority.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition passed a law last year.

The effort united his right-wing government but divided Israeli society at large.

It was the reason for massive protests in the months before the start of the war against

Hamas.

Daniel, good morning.

a year ago.

And the idea was that the government wanted to strip the Supreme Court of some of its

powers.

This is the most right-wing religious nationalist government in Israel's history.

And it saw the Supreme Court as too left-wing, too protective of Palestinian rights, and

said the government should be the one to rule.

Let the elected officials rule, accusing the court of too much interference.

And this attempt to overhaul the judiciary sparked historic protests in Israel.

Hundreds of thousands of people in the streets, demonstrators accusing the government of

weakening Israel's democracy.

But the government passed this law anyway this summer.

It stripped the court of one of its powers to overturn government appointments.

What grounds did it give for this?

character of Israel as a democratic country, and said the government does not have omnipotent

powers.

This is a landmark ruling in Israel.

It's the first time the Supreme Court has overturned the equivalent of a constitutional

amendment.

And it is a big blow to Netanyahu and to his right-wing allies, because this judicial overhaul

was the number one main agenda of the government.

in Gaza?

ruling, but they suggest that they're not going to do anything further to overhaul the

judiciary while the country is at war.

They recognize it's too divisive of an issue at this time of war, but it does add fuel

to what we're hearing as a growing discontent in Israel about the war, about the government's

role in this catastrophic situation Israel's facing.

Israeli defense officials, in the months leading up to the war, had warned publicly that Israel's

regional enemies saw how the country was torn apart over this judicial overhaul debate.

And that enemies were identifying this as a moment of weakness to attack Israel.

And indeed, Hamas attacked on October 7th.

The military spokesman yesterday said that was likely one of the reasons Hamas chose

this moment to attack.

And there are also implications, Michelle, about the day after the war.

Analysts say that the government, you hear officials in the government talking about

all kinds of policy proposals for what they want to see in Gaza, things that the Supreme

Court might determine to be unreasonable.

And now that they've overturned this law, they will be able to weigh in.

Daniel, thank you so much.

It had a magnitude of 7.6, which is very powerful.

It struck far from the population center in Tokyo, but near towns on a peninsula along

Japan's western coast.

An Associated Press photo shows people who've come outside for safety standing in a street

lined with massive cracks.

More than 100 aftershocks are complicating rescue efforts.

We will bring you more as we learn it.

We told you a lot about what the U.S. Congress did not do last year.

But state legislatures are a very different story, and this year their agendas are packed.

As lawmakers head back to work in the next couple of weeks, many of them have big plans

to tackle issues that federal lawmakers have been dragging their feet on.

Reid Wilson is here to give us a preview of the year ahead in state legislation.

He is the editor-in-chief of Pluribus News.

That's a news service that focuses on state-level policymaking, and he is with us on the line

from Arizona.

Good morning.

How are state legislators talking about this?

in the country.

Lawmakers are thinking about how to promote what could be this massive economic engine

in their own backyards, and they're also considering ways to set up guardrails to protect against

things like discrimination in algorithms.

I think this year is going to be mostly about studying government's role in AI policy.

But the common thread in the dozens of conversations that we've had with lawmakers across the country

about this is that the states feel the need to act because they don't trust Congress to

get its act in gear.

We're going to see a lot of efforts to regulate social media companies in different ways this

year, all in services of protecting kids online.

You know, eight states passed digital privacy laws in 2023, and lots more will be taking

up bills that either require parental permission for kids to access social media sites or to

ban addictive features in social media apps.

and states have been on the front lines of that for years.

Do you see more legislation on addiction and health care coming up?

We're going to see two distinct trends in health care this year.

First of all, states are trying to find a solution to this massive opioid crisis.

Blue states are considering proposals like creating safe injection sites or legalizing

drug paraphernalia like fentanyl test strips.

The theory really being users are going to use, so why not give them a safe environment

in which to do so?

Red states and even some Democratic states are also moving to increase penalties on dealers

who provide drugs that cause a user serious harm or death.

The second big trend in health care is this never ending effort to bring down costs.

Some states are pressuring the Biden administration to approve permits that would allow them to

reimport prescription drugs from Canada.

Some blue states are in the process of setting up panels that would be able to set payment

limits on high cost drugs.

And some of the 10 red states that have yet to expand Medicaid coverage under the Affordable

Care Act are going to at least consider doing so after North Carolina Republicans decided

to expand coverage last year.

You know, we saw a number of state leaders attending the climate change conference in

Doha this year.

Does that say something about what the states are interested in moving on?

I mean, we're in the midst of a massive transition from a carbon based energy to renewable and

clean energy, and the states are really leading the way on this.

More states move to require utility companies to transition to entirely renewable energy

portfolios by 2040 or 2050.

Big renewable projects like solar or wind farms require lots of space.

So we're even seeing some states move to preempt local authority to block those projects as

a way to speed construction.

And you know, Michelle, there's also a renewed interest in nuclear energy.

And after the development of what are called small modular reactors, these reactors, they're

a lot smaller and higher tech than traditional nuclear reactors you might think of.

And both red states and blue states are considering new plants that would eventually provide a

lot of non-carbon energy to the grid.

more time, but we saw the states really taking on a lot of these hot button, what we would

call maybe culture war issues, like gender affirming care for minors, you know, abortion

rights, things of that sort.

Are we going to see more of that?

Most abortion rights and gender affirming care bills have passed in the states where

they're going to pass.

So a lot of that is going to be an issue on the ballot box this year.

But in conservative states especially, one of the areas where the culture war has flared

up is over education.

Sort of the watchword among conservative circles is the Parents' Bill of Rights.

Lawmakers are trying to legislate what books can be included in libraries, what subjects

can be discussed in the classroom.

And that's become a real flashpoint.

In some conservative states, others and even liberal states haven't brought those up yet.

So I expect we'll see a lot more of that discussion coming this year.

Reid, thank you so much.

forever chemicals, known as PFAS, in drinking water.

Now the city says it will likely be the first in the country to use technology that will

make it easier to filter out these PFAS.

Jessica, welcome.

Thanks for joining us.

So PFAS actually stands for a large family of toxic man-made chemical compounds.

They've been used in consumer and industry products since the 1940s, from clothing, upholstery

and carpet to microwave popcorn bags, pizza boxes and even candy wrappers.

They've been linked to negative health effects for people.

Exposure to certain levels can impact the body's ability to fight infections and lead to

reproductive effects or an increased risk of cancer.

At this point, they are everywhere, so they end up in the water supply.

Here's Sarah Burns with Tampa's water department.

We are passive receivers, so we don't generate a single drop of PFAS.

It just comes to us in our source water.

The utility is actually part of a lawsuit against manufacturers of PFAS, like 3M and

DuPont, to recover the cost of removal.

It's called SIX, or Suspended Ion Exchange.

It removes things like decaying vegetation from the water, and the city says to filter

out PFAS, you have to first remove the organic matter.

Tampa's water department would be the first in the country to have this system.

The other two are in Europe, and the plan for this one is to filter 140 million gallons

a day.

Is Tampa's water that bad?

It's just that the city gets its drinking water from the Hillsborough River, which is

collected along with all sorts of organic matter from nature.

Now, Tampa did recently find slightly elevated levels of two of six PFAS in its drinking

water supplies.

The EPA proposed limit is at four parts per trillion for these two, and the highest the

city found in its water was just over six.

How is this going to be paid for?

2032, but Tampa's more than 700,000 water customers are already paying for it.

It's expected to cost $200 million, and it's part of a larger infrastructure improvement

plan that the city council already approved.

Their water bills will be increasing every October until 2040.

That said, city officials do point out that the technology will actually save the department

nearly a million and a half dollars a year.

How will it save that money?

Sarah Burns said if they weren't using this, they'd have to otherwise go through double

the filters.

Plus, getting the organic matter out of the water early on in the treatment process actually

improves all the other stages that follow, so it makes the system a lot more efficient.

Jessica, thank you so much.

I'm Michelle Martin.

Today's Up First was edited by Kevin Drew, Allie Schweitzer, and Susanna Capilouto.

It was produced by Ziad Butch, Ben Abrams, and Taylor Haney.

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