Month: June 2025

Five people were killed after a train hit their vehicle when the driver allegedly went around the crossing gate in Gary, Indiana.

The incident took place just after 10 p.m. on Wednesday, near Highway 20 and Utah Street in Gary, Indiana, when a witness told Gary Police that the crossing gate for the oncoming South Shore train was down when the driver of the vehicle went around it to beat the train.   The Gary Police Department confirmed all five people inside the vehicle died. The identities of the victims were not released as of Thursday.

South Shore service was temporarily suspended but was up and running again as of Thursday morning.  The South Shore Line put out a statement regarding the collision:

“On June 25, 2025, shortly after 10 PM, South Shore Line Train #133 was traveling eastbound in Gary, Indiana, approaching the intersection at US 12/20 and 7th Avenue when a southbound vehicle bypassed lowered crossing gates and entered the path of the oncoming train.

Emergency responders were immediately dispatched to the scene. According to the Gary Police Department, the five occupants of the vehicle sustained fatal injuries. No passengers or crew members aboard the train were injured.

Our heartfelt thoughts and prayers are with all those affected by this tragic incident. We remind everyone to never attempt to cross railroad tracks when signals are activated, and to always expect a train on any track from any direction at any time. South Shore Line services were temporarily suspended following the incident, but normal operations have since resumed. We will continue to cooperate fully with local authorities during their ongoing investigation.”

South Shore Line President Mike Noland confirmed that the passengers and crews on the train were not hurt, and added: “putting aside the fact we always want people to be extremely careful around trains and train tracks and to expect a train on a track at any time – there is a tragedy when five human beings are lost and our hearts go out to the family of the loved ones who experienced loss in this accident.”

Editorial credit: Matt Gush / Shutterstock.com

On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of South Carolina’s effort to cut off Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood. The case centered on whether recipients of Medicaid, a joint federal and state health insurance program for low-income people, may sue to enforce a requirement under U.S. law that they may obtain medical assistance from any qualified and willing provider.

In a 6–3 decision, divided along ideological lines with conservative justices in the majority, the Court determined that the federal law in question does not grant Medicaid patients the authority to bring lawsuits against states to enforce their right to provider choice. Justice Neil Gorsuch delivered the opinion for the court, with the three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, in dissent.

Justice Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion, which also potentially opens the door for other Republican-led states to pursue similar actions. The ruling effectively curtails the ability of Medicaid enrollees to challenge such decisions in court.  Gorsuch wrote: “[t]he decision whether to let private plaintiffs enforce a new statutory right poses delicate questions of public policy. New rights for some mean new duties for others. And private enforcement actions, meritorious or not, can force governments to direct money away from public services and spend it instead on litigation. The job of resolving how best to weigh those competing costs and benefits belongs to the people’s elected representatives, not unelected judges charged with applying the law as they find it .. Congress knows how to give a grantee clear and unambiguous notice that, if it accepts federal funds, it may face private suits asserting an individual right to choose a medical provider,” but “that is not the law we have.”

In 2018, Republican Governor Henry McMaster signed an executive order barring Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, the regional branch of the organization, from offering family planning services through Medicaid. McMaster said in a statement after the ruling: “Seven years ago, we took decisive action to uphold the sanctity of life and assert our state’s values. Today, our stance has been vindicated.” South Carolina received support from 18 other states in the case.

In her dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by the Court’s two other liberal justices, argued that the ruling continues a troubling trend of weakening the 1871 Civil Rights Act. The law was originally passed in the aftermath of the Civil War to give individuals the ability to sue over civil rights violations: “[T]oday’s decision is likely to result in tangible harm to real people. At a minimum, it will deprive Medicaid recipients in South Carolina of their only meaningful way of enforcing a right that Congress has expressly granted to them. And, more concretely, it will strip those South Carolinians — and countless other Medicaid recipients around the country — of a deeply personal freedom: the ‘ability to decide who treats us at our most vulnerable.’ The court today disregards Congress’s express desire to prevent that very outcome .. South Carolina asks us to hollow out that provision so that the state can evade liability for violating the rights of its Medicaid recipients to choose their own doctors. The court abides South Carolina’s request. I would not.”

Planned Parenthood sharply criticized the outcome. Paige Johnson, president of the South Atlantic affiliate, called the decision a “devastating blow that undermines fundamental freedoms and threatens to deepen South Carolina’s growing health care crisis;” and Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Alexis McGill Johnson said in a statement that “today, the Supreme Court once again sided with politicians who believe they know better than you, who want to block you from seeing your trusted health care provider and making your own healthcare decisions.”

This case reached the Supreme Court prior to its 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade, which ended the constitutional right to abortion.  South Carolina at that time enacted a law banning most abortions after six weeks, resulting in significantly reduced access; however Planned Parenthood continues to operate clinics in Charleston and Columbia to offer abortion services in compliance with the state’s new law, alongside other medical services like cancer screenings, contraception, and pregnancy testing.

Editorial credit: Wolfgang Schaller / Shutterstock.com