deconstruct

Nearly three months into taking Ozempic for diabetes, Jenny Kent had already lost 12 pounds, and her blood sugar numbers were looking better than they had in a while.

Ozempic, the injectable drug approved for Type 2 diabetes, has taken the world by storm.

But for Kent something else changed after she started taking Ozempic.

"I was just constantly in a state of being overwhelmed," says Kent. "So my response to that was just I was just crying all the time. Sobbing, crying ... I still didn't put it together, so I kept ... taking my injections."

She's one of many people taking Ozempic and related drugs who describe mental health problems. But that side effect isn't mentioned in Ozempic's instructions for use, or drug label.

In July, the European Medicines Agency said that it was looking into the risk of thoughts of self-harm and suicidal thoughts with the use of Ozempic and similar drugs. As of July 11, the regulator, Europe's FDA, was evaluating more than 150 reports.

The FDA hasn't taken that step. For now, the agency is monitoring the situation. "We continue to conclude that the benefits of these medications outweigh their risks when they are used according to the FDA approved labeling," spokesperson Chanapa Tantibanchachai said in an email to NPR. She noted that weight-loss drug Wegovy, which contains the same active ingredient as Ozempic, semaglutide, includes a warning about suicidal thoughts on its label.

Even though the link between these drugs and mental health concerns isn't definitive, it's important that patients talk with doctors if they experience something unusual, says Dr. Jonathan Alpert, who chairs the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

"I always think it makes sense to take side effects like that seriously, particularly in drugs that are relatively new and that we're still learning about," he says.

Mango Dragonfruit Starbucks Refreshers are missing mango, Strawberry Açaí Starbucks Refreshers lack açaí and Pineapple Passionfruit Starbucks Refreshers have no passion fruit.

That's what two consumers who have sued Starbucks for consumer protection law violations say about the coffee giant's fruit-based drinks. This week, a federal judge in Manhattan ruled their case could move forward.

U.S. District Judge John Cronan said in his opinion that "a significant portion of reasonable consumers could plausibly be misled into thinking" that Starbucks Refreshers include the fruit in their names.

It's the latest example of a recent legal trend that's seen fed-up consumers taking major food and beverage companies to court over what they say is fishy advertising.

Plaintiffs typically argue that companies are going beyond simple marketing hyperbole and misrepresenting their food and drinks — whether it's promising ingredients that aren't there or displaying promotion images that don't match the real-life items.

There has been a smorgasbord of accusations in recent years: Barilla pasta isn't made in Italy. Burger King's Whoppers are smaller than they appear. The "boneless wings" served at Buffalo Wild Wings aren't actually chicken wings. Subway's "100% tuna" sandwiches either partially or completely lack tuna. Taco Bell skimps on the fillings in its Mexican Pizza, Crunchwrap Supreme and more.

"In general, companies can say great things about their product and make any kind of opinion claims they want to make about it. They can even say it's the best in the world," said Louis Tompros, an intellectual property attorney at the law firm WilmerHale in Boston.

"Opinion claims about a product are called puffery, and they're perfectly fine under false advertising law. What false advertising law does not allow is a false factual claim," he said.

Ramaswamy, who has called himself an environmentalist while also being a staunch proponent of fracking and using fossil fuels in addition to carbon-free energy like nuclear, explained his position on climate change and policies to address rising global temperatures, telling Davis in the interview on Monday night that he believes the "climate change agenda" is a "hoax ... more about pushing global equity" and deferring to China.

"I think that with due respect ... 'Do you believe in climate change?' is not really a meaningful question because climate change has existed as long as the Earth has existed," he said. "Do I believe it is a fact that global surface temperatures are rising over the course of the last century of the last half century? Yes, I think that that is an established fact."

But, as president, he would not take action to address the warming of the planet, he said.

Ramaswamy was pressed by Davis in light of past mass shootings by "self-identified white supremacists," such as the gunman who attacked a predominantly Black church in South Carolina in 2015.

He has been vocal about what he contends is a counteractive focus on race, including through affirmative action and race-conscious policies that seek to address longstanding disparities in areas like university admissions.

Ramaswamy said in Iowa in August that Juneteenth, which marks the emancipation of slaves in the U.S., is a "useless holiday" federalized "under political duress." Weeks earlier, he posted a video saying "Happy Juneteenth" and "we ought to celebrate how far we've come as a country."

House GOP hardliners blocked debate on their party’s defense spending bill on Tuesday, making Pentagon funding the latest casualty of a civil war between Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his conservative critics.

Republican rebels blocked the annual defense appropriations bill in a procedural vote, delivering a stunning loss to McCarthy and hawks who’d sought to break an impasse over federal spending that forced leaders to yank the legislation last week.

House GOP lawmakers are still at odds over an upcoming spending confrontation with the Senate just 12 days out from a government shutdown. Many conservatives withheld their votes on the Pentagon bill to force Republican leaders to take a harder line on a stopgap to keep the lights on.

Ultimately the procedural vote on the $826 billion defense spending bill, known as a rule, failed in a 212-214 vote on Tuesday. Five Republicans defected on the procedural vote, which almost always falls along party lines.

Wisconsin Republicans are considering impeaching a newly elected liberal Supreme Court justice in the state over comments she made as a candidate about redistricting and for receiving donations from the state Democratic Party.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R) announced this week the formation of an impeachment criteria panel as Republicans weigh ousting Justice Janet Protasiewicz, whose win in April established a 4-3 liberal majority on the court.

Protasiewicz has yet to hear a case, but the high court was asked in August to hear several cases on Wisconsin’s legislative maps.

Republicans point to previous comments Protasiewicz made about the state’s maps, in which she called calling them “rigged.”

Protasiewicz declined to say during the election how she would rule on the issue, and she has not determined whether she will recuse herself from the case.

At least five of the major candidates, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence, have endorsed doing away with the Department of Education, a favorite target at August's GOP debate.

Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy has gone a lot further. The list of departments he wants to abolish includes not only the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and Nuclear Regulatory Commission but also the Internal Revenue Service -- and even the FBI.

ABC News spoke with half a dozen experts about how eliminating departments would work. They described such pledges as political talking points easier said than done, with some calling the proposals either impractical or unfeasible.

"Some of the implications are either dangerous in terms of the ability of the federal government to fulfill its mission or downright impossible, that is making promises candidates are not going to be able to keep," said Donald Kettl, a professor emeritus at the University of Maryland and former dean of its school of public policy.

"It's a long shot," said Kevin Kosari, a senior fellow at the center-right think tank American Enterprise Institute. "Government agencies have a habit of sticking around."

The idea of dismantling these agencies isn't novel. Republicans have long run on the idea that the federal government is too big and needs to be streamlined. Abolishing the Department of Education, in particular, has been a Republican Party goal since the agency was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter in 1979.

Polling conducted in August by All In Together, in partnership with polling firm Echelon Insights found that 34 percent of women aged 18-39 said they or someone they know personally has “decided not to get pregnant due to concerns about managing pregnancy-related medical emergencies.” Put another way, poor or unavailable maternal health care post-Dobbs is leading people to alter some of their most important life choices.

For young people, the maternal healthcare crisis is deeply personal. More than a third of young people and 22 percent of young women say they have personally dealt with or know someone who has “faced constraints when trying to manage a pregnancy-related emergency.” And 23 percent of 18- to 39-year-old women say they have themselves or know someone else who has been unable to obtain an abortion in their state — a number almost three times higher than respondents in other age groups.

Perhaps most surprisingly however, these results are similar regardless of whether the respondents are living in states with abortion bans or states without restrictions on abortion access. The consistency between red and blue states suggests that the statistics on maternal mortality and the stories and struggles of women navigating the new normal on abortion access have penetrated the psyche of young people everywhere. The Dobbs decision, it seems, has fundamentally altered how people feel about having families and the calculus for getting pregnant.

In the wake of Dobbs, stories of women enduring horrific medical trauma in states where abortion is illegal have been widely reported. For instance, Carmen Broesder, an Idaho mom, documented her 19-day long harrowing miscarriage on TikTok – including her three trips to the emergency room. While only six weeks pregnant, she was denied access to a D&C (dilation and curettage) surgery because of Idaho’s abortion ban.

It goes almost without saying that this is not good news for the already declining birthrates in the U.S. According to research from Pew, birthrates in the U.S. had been falling since the early 2000s and plummeted during the Covid pandemic. Fertility rates briefly rebounded after the pandemic but now, post-Dobbs, they have dropped again.

In the years following the 2013 debut of Adult Swim’s cartoon phenomenon “Rick and Morty,” its star and co-creator Justin Roiland became a titan of the animation and video game industry and a rock star of youth counterculture. His artistic style and caricatures became ubiquitous in cannabis culture, and his career expanded into producing other animated series, creating NFTs and leading a virtual reality gaming studio. In 2017, a “Rick and Morty” collaboration with McDonald’s led to such a viral frenzy that police had to be called to at least two locations.

But as he partied with Los Angeles’ superstars and traveled the country for conventions, he also found he could use his fame to strike up conversations and develop relationships with young fans, including some who were underage. This is according to interviews with 11 women and nonbinary people who shared thousands of messages with Roiland from 2013 to 2022 — with nine of the people saying he turned the exchanges sexual. Of those nine people, three said they were 16 when they started talking to Roiland. To corroborate their stories, the 11 women and nonbinary people also shared pictures, videos, social media posts, emails, and plane ticket and Uber receipts with NBC News.

Warning: Lengthy and graphic details

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin – the Russian mercenary leader whose plane crashed weeks after he led a mutiny against Moscow’s military leadership – shows what happens when people make deals with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

As Ukraine’s counteroffensive moves into a fourth month, with only modest gains to show so far, Zelensky told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria he rejected suggestions it was time to negotiate peace with the Kremlin.

“When you want to have a compromise or a dialogue with somebody, you cannot do it with a liar,” Volodymyr Zelensky said.

Republican strategists are exploring a shift away from “pro-life” messaging on abortion after consistent Election Day losses for the GOP when reproductive rights were on the ballot.

At a closed-door meeting of Senate Republicans this week, the head of a super PAC closely aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., presented poll results that suggested voters are reacting differently to commonly used terms like “pro-life” and “pro-choice” in the wake of last year’s Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, said several senators who were in the room.

The polling, which NBC News has not independently reviewed, was made available to senators Wednesday by former McConnell aide Steven Law and showed that “pro-life” no longer resonated with voters.

“What intrigued me the most about the results was that ‘pro-choice’ and ‘pro-life’ means something different now, that people see being pro-life as being against all abortions ... at all levels,” Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., said in an interview Thursday.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said the polling made it clear to him that more specificity is needed in talking about abortion.

“Many voters think [‘pro-life’] means you’re for no exceptions in favor of abortion ever, ever, and ‘pro-choice’ now can mean any number of things. So the conversation was mostly oriented around how voters think of those labels, that they’ve shifted. So if you’re going to talk about the issue, you need to be specific,” Hawley said Thursday.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) on Wednesday said 2024 will be the last election “decided by ballots rather than bullets” if former President Trump doesn’t win the presidential race because of his various legal battles.

In the latest episode of his show on TBN, Huckabee argued the legal woes now facing Trump are part of a politically motivated scheme from the Biden administration, an argument touted by many in the former president’s orbit.

“If these tactics end up working to keep Trump from winning or even running in 2024, it is going to be the last American election that will be decided by ballots rather than bullets,” Huckabee warned in his opening monologue.

Huckabee accused President Biden and his team of trying “to make sure that Donald Trump is not his opponent in 2024″ and “to destroy Trump in the courthouse rather than at the ballot box.” He also alleged the Justice Department, the IRS and the FBI are “conspiring to hide the Biden family crimes, while all the time being obsessed with charging Donald Trump with crimes.”

Ruby Franke, the mother of six behind the family YouTube channel "8 Passengers," has been charged with six counts of felony child abuse by the Washington County Attorney in Utah, a spokesperson for the attorney’s office confirmed to NBC News on Tuesday.

Franke and her business partner, Jodi Hildebrandt, were arrested last week after law enforcement found Franke’s 12-year-old son emaciated and with open wounds and duct tape on his wrists and ankles. The boy had climbed out of a window of Hildebrandt’s home and ran to a neighbor house for help, according to a probable cause affidavit acquired by NBC News.

Franke’s 10-year-old daughter was found at Hildebrandt’s home in a similar malnourished condition, according to the affidavit. Officials said the condition of the children was so severe that they were transported to a local area hospital. Franke’s other four children were taken into the care of Utah’s Division of Child and Family Services.

Hildebrandt was also charged with six counts of felony child abuse. Each count carries a prison sentence of up to 15 years and a fine of up to $10,000, the county attorney told NBC News in an emailed statement.