Vice President Kamala Harris criticized House Speaker Mike Johnson on Saturday for suggesting that Republicans might attempt to repeal the law CHIPS and Science Act in the event that they win Congress, a comment he has since tried to retract.

“I also want to address the comments that the speaker of the House made recently,” Harris told a gaggle of reporters in Milwaukee. “It's just further evidence of everything I've been talking about for months [former President Donald] Trump’s intention to implement the project in 2025.”

“We have spoken repeatedly about their intention to get rid of this Affordable Care Act. Now the CHIPS law must be repealed,” she added.

Speaker Johnson, R-La., made the comment at a campaign event Friday in New York for House Speaker Brandon Williams, R-N.Y., an endangered Republican Party candidate in one of the vital closely watched House races this election cycle .

“I expect we probably will, but we haven't developed that part of the agenda yet,” Johnson said in response to a reporter's query about whether Republicans would seek to repeal the law.

The CHIPS Act was passed by Congress in 2022 with bipartisan support. The law freed up nearly $53 billion in funding to construct domestic production of semiconductors, that are critical to the expansion of strategic industries similar to artificial intelligence. The federal government has greater than announced $30 billion in investments based on the law from August.

Harris has made investment in manufacturing a central pillar of her economic platform.

“It is my plan and intention to continue to invest in American manufacturing, in the work of American workers that preserves and promotes good union jobs,” Harris said in Milwaukee. “This is how we will win the competition with China in the 21st century.”

Johnson's remark followed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's attack on the CHIPS Act during an Oct. 25 interview with Joe Rogan.

In the interview, Trump accused Taiwan of stealing “our chip business” and called for tariffs on imported semiconductors.

“This chip deal is so bad,” Trump said. “We have allocated billions of dollars for rich companies to come in, borrow the money and build chip companies here, and they won't give us the good companies anyway.”

Rep. Williams' congressional district has welcomed the potential economic boost micron Semiconductor manufacturing facility funded by the CHIPS Act.

“The CHIPS law has a huge impact here,” Williams said in a subtle cleanup after Johnson’s comments. New York lawmakers also issued an announcement Friday saying Johnson apologized “profusely” for the error and said “he misunderstood the question.”

Democrats only need to realize 4 additional seats within the House of Representatives to wrest the gavel from Republicans in the following Congress. Polls up to now show the House race is basically at coin toss status.

Johnson has made attempts at further damage control since his Friday comments, saying after the campaign event that repeal of the CHIPS law was not on the Republican agenda.

Yet Democrats are piling on the faux pas just days before the Nov. 5 election.

“The Republican Speaker of the House just told the tens of thousands of construction workers working on the future of New York and America that they want to send them red slips as quickly as possible,” wrote Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. , on Friday post on the X platform.

Novo NordiskThe top manager faced a Interrogation by the Senate on Tuesday over high prices for the corporate's weight-loss drug Wegovy and diabetes drug Ozempic, as demand for each injections soars within the U.S.

Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen, CEO of Novo Nordisk, made no explicit commitment Legislators within the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions hearing in Washington, DC, that he would lower the costs of the 2 drugs.

But Jørgensen said he desires to work with them on policy solutions that address the “structural problems” that drive up prescription drug costs. He also promised to sit down down with pharmacy profit managers – middlemen who negotiate drug discounts with manufacturers on behalf of insurers – to “work together on anything that will give patients access and affordability to medicines.”

The commitment got here after Senator Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont who chairs the Senate committee, said he had received written commitments from all major PBMs that they’d not limit coverage of Wegovy and Ozempic if Novo Nordisk lowered its list prices. The hearing comes about five months after Sanders launched an investigation into the Danish pharmaceutical company's pricing practices.

“All we're saying, Mr. Jørgensen, is that you should treat the American people the same way you treat people around the world,” Sanders said during Tuesday's hearing. “Stop ripping us off.”

He identified that Novo Nordisk had generated nearly $50 billion in revenue from Wegovy and Ozempic, with the vast majority of that revenue coming from the United States. Sanders claims that Novo Nordisk charges Americans significantly higher prices for its blockbuster drugs than patients in other countries. Before insurance costs, Ozempic costs nearly $969 monthly and Wegovy costs almost $1,350 monthly within the USA

In some European countries, each treatments can now be offered for lower than $100 monthly, in line with a press release from the CommitteeOzempic costs only $59 in Germany, while Wegovy costs $92 within the UK.

Sanders also said last week that CEOs of major generic pharmaceutical corporations had told him they may develop a version of Ozempic for lower than $100 monthly with profit. There are currently no generic alternatives to Ozempic available within the US

Large PBMs, including UnitedHealth Group's Optum Rx and CVCaremark and a few health insurers said list prices of $100 monthly for Wegovy and Ozempic would help make these drugs more widely available to patients, in line with a release by Sanders.

That could undermine Jørgensen's claim in his written testimony that the PBMs are answerable for the high list prices of Novo Nordisk's drugs and “exercise almost total control over ensuring that hundreds of millions of Americans get the medicines they need at affordable prices.” The company argues that it must give you the option to pay rebates to those middlemen to get their drugs on drug lists, or lists of medicine covered by insurance firms.

Jørgensen noted that the written guarantees Sanders received from the PBMs were “new information to me,” but said he could understand “that the PBMs may have changed their minds.”

Novo Nordisk argues that it has invested billions in researching, developing and expanding production of those drugs, and is pouring even extra money into researching their potential to treat other obesity-related diseases. This investment has prolonged and improved the lives of thousands and thousands of Americans, helping to cut back health care costs related to obesity and diabetes, in line with Jørgensen's written testimony.

During the hearing, Jørgensen said the corporate had fought to have the drugs covered by private and non-private health insurers.

He also blamed the “complex U.S. health care system” partly for making it difficult for patients to get inexpensive pharmaceuticals, noting that “no single company alone can solve such enormous and complicated policy challenges.”

Jørgensen promised that Novo Nordisk would “remain committed and work with this committee on policy solutions to address the structural problems that are driving up costs.”

However, Jørgensen believed that a price reduction could have consequences because it may lead to a discount in insurance coverage.

In his written testimony, Jørgensen said Novo Nordisk's insulin product, Levemir, was previously available to 90 percent of U.S. patients through drug lists. But after Novo Nordisk lowered the list price, insurers began to stop covering the insulin, leaving only 36 percent of patients with access.

This ultimately prompted the corporate to stop producing the insulin, Jørgensen said in his written statement.

Sanders and other lawmakers, Health experts and insurers have warned that insatiable demand for Novo Nordisk’s drugs and similar weight-loss and diabetes treatments from rival Eli Lilly could potential bankruptcy of the US healthcare system unless prices fall.

Both drug corporations make GLP-1 drugs that mimic hormones produced within the gut to curb appetite and regulate blood sugar. Eli Lilly's weight-loss injection Zepbound and diabetes drug Mounjaro also cost around $1,000 a month, before insurance and other subsidies.

In a press release, the Senate Health Committee said it will cost the U.S. $411 billion a yr if half of all Americans took weight-loss drugs made by Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly. That's $5 billion greater than Americans will spend on all pharmaceuticals in 2022.

Medicare spending 4.6 billion dollars for Ozempic in 2022 alone, in line with the health policy research organization KFF.

Other insurers and employers have implemented strict requirements to regulate the fee of weight-loss drugs or have stopped covering these treatments altogether. Many health plans cover GLP-1 drugs for diabetes but not for weight reduction. The federal Medicare program doesn’t cover weight-loss treatments unless they’re approved and prescribed for one more condition.

The hearing comes because the Biden administration and lawmakers on each side seek to contain health care costs within the United States, including by pressuring the pharmaceutical industry and the middlemen within the drug supply chain. On average, Americans pay two to 3 times more for pharmaceuticals than patients in other industrialized countries, in line with a Profile from the White House.

Notably, Ozempic will likely be subject to the subsequent round of price negotiations between manufacturers and Medicare – a key provision of President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act geared toward lowering costs for seniors. Wall Street analysts say Ozempic will likely be eligible for negotiations until the subsequent round of medicine is chosen in 2025, for price changes that take effect in 2027.

The lawmakers called on Novo Nordisk to commit to not sue the federal government if Ozempic and Wegovy are chosen for the subsequent round of negotiations.

Jørgensen didn’t make this commitment explicit, noting that the corporate believes the talks are “not fair negotiations, but in reality price fixing” that could have negative consequences for drug innovation.

Senator JD Vance, former President Donald Trump's running mate, defended his comments on Friday, accusing leading Democrats – including Vice President Kamala Harris – of being pathetic “childless cat ladies” who desired to “make the rest of the country pathetic too” and of being anti-family and anti-child.

Vance has been under fire for days after the “cat lady” remark resurfaced online following the Ohio Republican's nomination because the party's vice presidential candidate.

His decision on Friday to make more comments relatively than apologize or say his views have modified means the Trump team faces further criticism.

“That was obviously a sarcastic comment. I have nothing against cats,” Vance said on Friday on The Megyn Kelly Show on SiriusXM.

“I know the media wants to attack me and get me to back off, Megyn, but all I'm trying to say is that I think your perspective changes pretty fundamentally when you have kids, become a parent,” Vance said.

“The Democrats have become anti-family over the last five, 10 years, Megyn. It's part of their politics, it's part of the way they talk about parents and children. It's time we called that out,” said Vance, who has three children of her own.

“I don't think we should back away from that… I think we should be honest about the issue.” Vance's comments on Kelly's show were his first to handle renewed controversy over comments he made in 2021 while running for Ohio's Senate seat.

“It's not a criticism of people who don't have children. I said that explicitly in my remarks,” Vance said. “It's not about criticizing people who, for various reasons, don't have children. It's about criticizing the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child.”

“I want to attack the left, particularly the childless left, because I think the rejection of the American family is perhaps the worst and most evil thing the left has done in this country,” Vance said during an appearance on the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

Vance said on the time that although Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Senator Cory Booker (DN.J.) and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (DN.Y.) come from different parts of the country and have different backgrounds, “one thing unites them all: none of them have children.”

While Vance stressed that he was not targeting people “who cannot have children for very complicated and important reasons,” he said, “It is a very different thing to build a political movement that is theoretically committed to the future of this country when not a single one of them is actually committed to the future of this country.”

Harris, who’s the de facto Democratic nominee, is stepmother to her husband Douglas Emhoff's two children, whom they call “Momala.” When Vance made the remarks, Buttigieg was within the means of adopting twins together with his partner.

A month after his 2021 comment, Vance appeared on Tucker Carlson's now-defunct show on Fox News – Kelly's former employer – and further addressed the problem.

“We are essentially run in this country, by the Democrats, by our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are unhappy with their own lives and the choices they have made and therefore want to make the rest of the country unhappy as well,” Vance said.

“It's just a basic fact that when you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,” he said.

Last week, much of the criticism of those comments got here from Democrats and their allies, who sharply accused Vance of assuming that politicians' decisions to have children or not are a function of their political ideology.

However, a few of Harris' supporters also used Vance's remarks to support the concept they may function “cat ladies” to assist elect the primary female U.S. president after President Joe Biden dropped out of the election and endorsed Harris because the Democratic Party's presidential candidate.

Harris' campaign on Friday seized on a theme that emerged online amongst supporters who called Vance “weird.”

“JD Vance is a creep (who wants to ban abortion nationwide),” said an email from the Harris campaign team. “JD Vance is weird. Voters know it – Vance is the most unpopular vice presidential candidate in decades.”

Emhoff's ex-wife Kerstin Emhoff said Vance's comments were “unfounded” and pointed to Harris' role of their children's lives.

“For over 10 years, since Cole and Ella were teenagers, Kamala has been co-mom to Doug and me,” Kerstin Emhoff said in a press release to NBC News on Thursday. “She is loving, caring, fiercely protective and always there. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her as a part of it.”

Ella Emhoff, 25, posted a screenshot on her Instagram story supporting her mother's statement and added her own words: “How can you be 'childless' when you have such sweet kids like Cole and I?”

“I love my three parents,” wrote Ella.

The Wall Street Journal's editorial board – which often supports Republicans – wrote on Wednesday that “the accusation that Ms. Harris is childless is another false note” from Republicans as they grapple along with her White House bid.

“The decision to have children is a highly personal matter and often as much a matter of chance as of choice. The attack underscores the culture-censoring side of the Republican Party that turns off many voters,” the Journal's editorial board wrote in its editorial.

“She has two stepchildren. You can emphasize the virtue of family and children without sounding like a moralizer.”

South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem on Sunday tried to portray a controversial anecdote about killing her puppy, revealed in her upcoming memoir, as an argument for her political savvy in her bid to grow to be Donald Trump's vice presidential pick.

A Friday report from The guard described excerpts from her memoir about her decision to kill various of her family's cattle, including a 14-month-old puppy named Cricket and an unnamed goat.

“I can understand why some people are upset about a 20-year-old story about Cricket, one of the working dogs on our ranch,” Noem wrote in a single X contribution on Sunday. “Whether I'm running the ranch or working in politics, I've never passed on my responsibilities to anyone else. Even if it is hard and painful. I followed the law and was a responsible parent, dog owner and neighbor.”

Noem has spent the weekend coping with ridicule from each Democrats and Republicans since those anecdotes became public.

In each cases, she stood by her decision to euthanize the animals, saying Cricket had an “aggressive personality” and the goat was “evil and mean,” in accordance with the Guardian report.

Noem's defense on Sunday is a final try to dispel the flood of doubts created by the situation as she competes for Trump's nomination for vp against candidates like North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Sen. Tim Scott and RS.C. starts. and Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y.

In recent days, people across the political spectrum have taken to social media to comment on the controversy.

Right-wing media personality Laura Loomer said this anecdote was the death knell for Noem's vice-presidential ambitions.

“She can’t be vice president now,” Loomer said Friday post. “You can’t shoot your dog and then become vice president.”

President Joe Biden The re-election campaign quickly seized the chance to take a subtle swipe on Friday by releasing images of Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris smiling with dogs.

Florida governor and former GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis posted a call to motion for people to adopt rescue dogs.

Noem's animal killing isn’t the primary time it has caused a stir in Washington.

In March, the governor of South Dakota released an infomercial-style video for one Dentist from Texas seemingly acting as a industrial credential for the corporate despite holding public office.

Boeing defended the standard and safety testing of its 787 Dreamliner and 777 planes on Monday, days after one in all the corporate's engineers went public with allegations that the plane maker took “shortcuts” to hurry up production of the planes.

Whistleblower Sam Salehpour said last week that assembling Boeing's 787 put excessive stress on the plane's joints, which could shorten the lifespan of some planes. Boeing rejected the allegations, calling them “inaccurate” and saying it stood for the protection of the planes.

Salehpour, together with one other whistleblower who worked at Boeing, a former aviation official and independent safety expert, is scheduled to look Wednesday at a Senate hearing on aircraft safety called “Investigating Boeing's Broken Safety Culture: First-Hand Accounts.”

Salehpour's claims come as Boeing is under intense scrutiny after a door plug flew out of a 737 Max plane in January. The narrow-body aircraft is Boeing's best-seller, and the accident at 16,000 feet left passengers inches from tragedy. Since the accident, the Federal Aviation Administration has blocked Boeing from increasing production of the aircraft.

In a roughly two-hour presentation to reporters Monday, two Boeing engineering managers detailed the corporate's stress and safety tests for the 787, which include testing the plane in 165,000 cycles, each designed to correspond to a flight under different conditions. In addition, the fuselage skin was hit by a 300-pound pendulum, engineers said.

Steve Chisholm, Boeing's chief engineer for mechanical and structural engineering, said Boeing caused damage to fuselage panels in intensive testing repeated more times than aircraft would experience in service, “and the damage has not increased.”

Salehpour's claims relate to tiny spaces where parts of the 787's carbon composite fuselage come together. He said Boeing used force to suit the pieces together and didn't properly measure the gaps. He and his lawyers sent a letter to the FAA in January detailing his allegations and the agency is investigating.

The whistleblower said on a call with reporters last week that he “literally saw people jumping on the pieces” of the 777 “trying to get them to agree.” Boeing said later that day that those claims were inaccurate and that the corporate was “completely confident in the safety and durability of the 777 family.”

Boeing had previously suspended deliveries of the 787 for nearly two years until August 2022 due to incorrect clearances on some parts of the plane's fuselage.

“These claims about the structural integrity of the 787 are inaccurate and do not represent the extensive work Boeing has done to ensure the quality and long-term safety of the aircraft,” the plane maker said in a press release concerning the claims. “The issues raised have undergone a rigorous technical review under FAA oversight. This analysis has confirmed that these issues do not represent safety concerns and that the aircraft will maintain its service life for several decades.”

Salehpour's lawyers also allege that Boeing retaliated against him after he raised his concerns by excluding him from meetings and moving him from the 787 program to the corporate's 777 plan.

Last week, Boeing declined to comment on these specific allegations, citing the FAA's ongoing whistleblower investigation, but said, “Retaliation is strictly prohibited at Boeing.”

The company is anticipated to report quarterly results on April 24, facing investor questions on aircraft safety, production rates and FAA oversight.