Independent News Drop

KELI From Inkwell, this is the Independent News Drop. It's Wednesday, May thirteenth. The time is six a.m. Central. I'm Keli, with Hast.

HAST Morning. We've got movement on the right-to-try front this morning — that's the story where the law exists but patients can't seem to use it. We'll get there in a moment.

KELI Terminally ill patients in the United States were given what looked like a clear promise: if conventional treatments have failed you, and you're running out of time, you can try an experimental drug that hasn't finished FDA approval yet. That's the "right to try" — it's been law in most states for years now. But new reporting this morning shows that promise hasn't translated into practice. Patients, their doctors, even patient advocacy groups report they hit walls at nearly every turn. Drug manufacturers hesitate to provide the medications without indemnification. Insurers won't cover costs. The FDA's compassionate-use pathway, which is supposed to be the shortcut, moves slowly. The framing you'll hear elsewhere is that the law is broken or the FDA is blocking access. The structural piece underneath is simpler: right-to-try exists in a legal space, but the entire ecosystem around it — manufacturers, insurers, the federal approval machinery — has no mandate to make it work. Each player has its own liability calculation. So the checkable prediction over the next weeks: you'll see patient groups and some Republicans call for penalties on manufacturers who refuse to supply drugs, or liability shields for those who do. That's where the pressure will move.

HAST Staying with health policy but different angle. Gene therapy researchers just shared some difficult news with their peers about a safety drug that might actually blunt the therapy's effectiveness. Encoded Therapeutics put out a heads-up saying that a compound designed to keep gene-therapy vectors from triggering immune responses could reduce the treatment's potency. It's an early finding, still being studied, but it signals a real trade-off in this rapidly developing field: you can make the medicine safer, or you can make it work better, but the tools available right now might not do both at once.

KELI Back stateside to Texas now, where a DACA recipient has been caught in a cycle of deportation and re-entry. José Contreras Díaz was among hundreds targeted for removal under the current administration's immigration enforcement push. He was deported, then allowed to return — unusual for someone in his situation — and then detained again. The Texas Tribune has been following his case because it illustrates a wider legal uncertainty around DACA holders and enforcement priorities. His lawyers and advocates are waiting to see whether the government's reversal on his initial deportation signals a broader policy shift or an isolated exception.

HAST Different scale entirely, but related terrain. In Minneapolis, mutual-aid networks raised millions of dollars during Operation Metro Surge to help immigrants facing enforcement actions. Most federal agents have since moved on, and volunteer fatigue has set in. The funding and the energy that sustained those networks are declining. But the people who need the help haven't disappeared. NPR reports that immigrant communities are left trying to sustain support systems that were built for emergency conditions now stretching indefinitely.

KELI Hast, the visa situation in Brazil.

HAST Yeah. An Argentine tourist is facing a court sentence there after an encounter that triggered Brazil's tough racial-inequality laws. The country has some of the strictest racism statutes in the world, but enforcement is uneven and structural racial disparities persist despite the legal protections. The case is raising a question that researchers have been asking for years: how do you close the gap between what the law says and what actually happens on the ground?

KELI One more stateside. A noncitizen woman says she was told by state officials that she could vote. Then U.S. Customs detained her at an airport and threatened deportation. ProPublica is investigating the gap between local registration practices and federal immigration enforcement — and what happens when the two collide for someone who followed what they believed were legal instructions.

HAST That taxi driver in Turkey who wrestled the gunman during the police chase — we've been tracking that one — is being recognized for what he did, though the armed man remains at large.

KELI Before we close, a history note. On this day in 2013, physician Kermit Gosnell was found guilty in Pennsylvania of murdering three infants born alive during attempted abortions, along with involuntary manslaughter in the death of a woman during an abortion procedure — a case that reverberated across national abortion debates.

HAST That's the Independent News Drop. We'll be back this evening. From Inkwell.