Given a paragraph, generate a claim that is supported by the given paragraph. 1) The claim must contain information from within the paragraph. 2) A sentence within the paragraph can be used as a claim. 3) The claim should not have contradictions within the paragraph. 4) The claim should be at most one sentence long.

"There’s a new sheriff in charge of the U.S. Senate, and he’s eager to show how he’s shaking up the law of the land. We’re talking, of course, about new Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who took over the Senate’s top slot after the midterm elections bounced Democrats from power. And in this new world, Republicans are touting an eye-catching factoid as evidence of a functional Senate, one they say runs on fairness and order under GOP control. ""Amazing fact: Senate has already voted on more amendments in 2015 than Reid allowed ALL YEAR last year,"" tweeted Phil Kerpen, opinion-writer and president of conservative 501(c)(4) American Commitment, on Jan. 22, 2015. Kerpen, formerly of Americans for Prosperity, the Club for Growth and the libertarian Cato Institute, told us he heard the statistic from McConnell himself. We wanted to know if it was true that the Senate has already allowed more votes on amendments in less than one month than all of 2014. And why? On Senate stoppage and filled ‘trees’ The simple answer on the number of votes is that Kerpen is correct. But the reason behind it varies depending on your particular political lens. A simple search of Senate roll call votes on amendments in 2014 and 2015 backs up Kerpen’s statement. In 2014, there were 15 roll call votes on amendments. As of Jan. 22, 2015, the date of Kerpen's tweet, there were 16 roll call votes on amendments. There have since been 17 more votes on amendments to the bill to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, which passed a week later but will likely face President Barack Obama’s veto pen. Kerpen came at the tally a different way, counting ""real"" votes on amendments, a distinction that also includes roll call votes on motions to table amendments, which effectively kills them. By his math, there were 16 votes allowed on amendments in 2014 and 26 so far in 2015. By either count, the numbers work. What changed? In 2014, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., relied on a funny-sounding procedure called ""filling the amendment tree."" Basically, Reid filled the docket allowed for amendments by adding amendments with inconsequential changes that no one else could override. The procedural tactic prevented Republican-sponsored amendments from being heard on the floor. ""He did that more than any of his predecessors,"" Donald Ritchie, Senate historian, told PunditFact. Reid wasn’t doing this just to be a not-so-nice guy. To Democrats, it was to counter Republican tactics. Unlike the House, the Senate does not have strict rules for the substance of amendments that can be attached to bills (i.e., you could add a health care amendment onto a defense spending bill). And that’s exactly what happened in years past. Republicans began introducing off-topic amendments that, for example, cut off U.S. aid to Egypt or, a favorite of Sen. David Vitter, R-La., to eliminate health care subsidies for Senate staffers. No matter what the topic of the bill. Sometimes this was in effort to force difficult votes for Democrats back home. To Republicans, Reid’s style of blocking amendments emulated an uncooperative and off-the-rails leadership style -- one that is tremendously well-documented -- that stymied policymaking. To Democrats, it was necessary to get anything accomplished. Republicans were filibustering votes on the underlying bills and not committing to a vote in exchange for allowing some amendments, said Steven S. Smith, a political science professor at Washington University in St. Louis. ""Reid saw they were filibustering everything, bringing the place to a standstill,"" Smith told us. ""So he wondered why he should give them votes at all."" Reid’s office does not dispute the number of votes on amendments, but they do take issue with what they deem an ""empty talking point"" that neglects Republican responsibility for the gridlock. His spokesman argues that Republicans blocked their own share of amendments by not compromising on potential amendments to be heard on the floor and refusing to come to an agreement about when a bill should come to a vote. ""(Reid) makes no apologies for blocking what we all consider to be extremely pointless political amendments that were just designed not to improve the bills we were working on but to run 30-second political ads against Democratic senators,"" said spokesman Adam Jentleson. ""Republicans are entirely culpable in that number being what it is."" Reid’s style of blocking amendments irritated Republicans, sure, but it also flared up during the 2014 midterms with Republicans using it to attack Democrats. The GOP pounced on Alaska Democratic incumbent Sen. Mark Begich, for instance, for his lack of roll-call votes on his amendments. McConnell, conversely, said he would allow open amendments on the Keystone XL bill, hence the GOP celebrating its ""new management"" style. As political experts told us to expect, there have already been clashes with McConnell’s methods a few days after the initial celebration. During the Keystone debate, Democrats objected to McConnell tabling Democratic amendments and not letting Democrats debate their amendments for a minute. Reid, perhaps ironically, tweeted, ""I've never seen debate shut down as aggressively as when Sen. McConnell refused to allow Dems to debate their own amendments for just 1 min. ... and that’s saying something."" What the experts tell us Bottom line, experts said, voters shouldn’t take the new tactics as evidence that McConnell’s ""return to normal order"" will give the Democrats an easy path to voting on the amendments of their choice. ""It’s not going to happen,"" said Roy Meyers, University of Maryland, Baltimore County affiliate professor of public policy. University of Kansas political science professor Burdett Loomis agreed, saying, ""The overall idea isn’t trivial (‘regular order’), but the exact number isn’t very significant, especially if McConnell, as expected, runs the Senate almost completely to the (Republicans’) advantage."" It’s too early to know whether we have a ""sea change"" of order on our hands in the Senate, said Sarah Binder, George Washington University political science professor. ""In other words, the intense partisanship of the Senate that led Sen. Reid to all-but shut down the amendment process last year has not dissipated,"" Binder said. ""I think the question going forward is whether McConnell can find a way to conduct the Senate such that senators from both parties believe their legislative needs are being met."" Our ruling Kerpen, among others, tweeted, ""Amazing fact: Senate has already voted on more amendments in 2015 than (Harry) Reid allowed ALL YEAR last year."" On the numbers, that is right. But experts cautioned us that the claim falls more in the interesting factoid category than a sign of a different or more cooperative Senate leadership. The statement is accurate but needs clarification and additional information. That meets our definition of . Correction: An earlier version of this fact-check incorrectly described Sen. David Vitter's amendment."
Amazing fact: Senate has already voted on more amendments in 2015 than Reid allowed ALL YEAR last year.

Chances are low the situation will imperil other cattle herds or people, particularly since the herd in southeastern North Dakota’s Sargent County has been quarantined. But it could delay solving the mystery of how a strain of bovine TB similar to cases associated with cattle south of the U.S. border surfaced in cows near the northern border. “We are the workforce right now in the field, and we have limited staff,” State Veterinarian Susan Keller said Wednesday of the North Dakota Agriculture Department’s Animal Health Division, which has only a handful of workers. She said federal officials wanted to help but couldn’t because of the shutdown tied to a dispute over funding a southern border wall. President Donald Trump and congressional leaders on Friday struck a short-term deal to reopen the government for three weeks, ending a record, 35-day partial shutdown. Two cows from the Sargent County herd tested positive for bovine TB at slaughter plants in South Dakota and Minnesota, and the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Iowa confirmed the diagnosis late last year. The herd was then tested, and five more cows were confirmed to have the infectious disease that can be passed between cattle and people. The source is still unknown. The ranchers have not bought any cattle from Mexico, have no ties to the country and have no workers from south of the border, according to Keller. “It’s a very slow-growing organism. It could have been there (in the herd) for quite a while. We don’t know when it was introduced or where it came from,” she said. “Maybe it’s a strain that has been here (U.S.) for a while but it’s mutated.” Bovine TB is a public health concern worldwide, though the risk to people in developed countries is low given advances in prevention and control measures such as testing, culling of diseased animals and pasteurizing of milk, according to the National Institutes of Health. North Dakota is not alone in recently identifying a new strain of bovine TB — officials in Canada are investigating cattle infections in the province of British Columbia that involve a strain not previously documented in that country, according to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. “You can have mutations of TB, similar to influenza,” Keller said, stressing that a new strain is not comparable to a new disease — it doesn’t change measures in place to guard against bovine TB. The new case is still a concern to ranchers, according to Julie Ellingson, executive vice president of the North Dakota Stockmen’s Association. “The livestock industry is concerned about any and all cases of TB, no matter what the strain,” she said. “We have worked hard to maintain a healthy herd in our state, and identifying and addressing the situation as quickly as possible is our highest priority.” Responses to such animal disease cases are a cooperative effort of state and federal agencies, particularly the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and its Veterinary Services and Wildlife Services components. North Dakota’s Animal Health Division has received only limited help so far from those agencies and in particular is waiting on information that will help determine whether the entire herd of about 100 animals is slaughtered or whether the owners can continue managing the rest of the herd with ongoing testing. Officials also are working to determine where all of the animals in the herd originated, and to ensure that none ended up in other herds over the past five years. Keller said the likelihood of that is remote given that the ranchers raise cattle for beef, not to provide seed stock to other ranchers. It wasn’t clear how many APHIS officials have been available to work on the case. Agency spokeswoman Lyndsay Cole, who was herself furloughed but on call, said only that the agency “is assisting with diagnostic testing” and would provide further help “once the lapse in appropriations is over.” The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, which represents more than 175,000 cattle ranchers and feeders around the country, did not directly comment on the federal shutdown’s impact on the North Dakota investigation. Chief Veterinarian Kathy Simmons in a statement to The Associated Press expressed confidence that Keller and other North Dakota officials working in conjunction with federal officials “can manage a successful disease response.” Keller said the investigation could stretch out for several months, but she hopes to be able to say definitively by early summer that officials have taken all necessary actions to ensure no spread of the disease. “Neighbors, people in the community, neighboring states, they want to know — do you have things tied up?” she said. ___ Follow Blake Nicholson on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/NicholsonBlake
Federal shutdown affected probe into unique bovine TB case.

The results announced Wednesday are from the first human test of gene editing in the body, an attempt to permanently change someone’s DNA to cure a disease — in this case, a genetic disorder called Hunter syndrome that often kills people in their teens. In two patients who got a medium dose of the treatment, urine levels of large sugar compounds that are hallmarks of Hunter syndrome had fallen by half, on average, four months later — a possible sign the treatment is working. Two others who got a low dose have seen little change in these sugars so far. There’s no way to know yet whether the change in the middle-dose patients is due to the gene editing or something else, but the fact their sugars have declined consistently since treatment suggests it might be. “I cannot absolutely say it’s a treatment effect” but the drop is “really encouraging,” said the study leader, Dr. Joseph Muenzer of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The main goal of early treatment studies is to test safety, though researchers also look for hints that the therapy is working. Muenzer gave the results at a conference in Greece and consults for the treatment’s maker, California-based Sangamo Therapeutics. The company’s president, Dr. Sandy Macrae, said tests in about five months will reveal more, but the change in the middle-dose group so far “looks really good.” “The most rational explanation for this is that what we hoped was going to happen has happened,” he said. Several independent experts agreed. “The results are exciting” and suggest that the gene editing is working to some degree, without safety concerns so far, said Dr. Howard Kaufman, a Boston scientist and member of a National Institutes of Health panel that reviewed the study before it began. Dr. Matthew Porteus, a genetics expert at Stanford University who consults for two other companies developing gene therapies, said more time is needed to see how the patients’ immune system continues to react to the treatment and whether the effects last, but added, “I would be excited about continuing to push along” based on these results. HOW IT WORKS Gene editing is intended as a more precise way to do gene therapy, to knock out a bad gene or supply a good one that’s missing. Doctors hope it will give a way to address a host of diseases that can’t be treated well now. In November, a Phoenix-area man with Hunter syndrome, Brian Madeux, became the first person to test this inside the body. He lacks a gene that makes an enzyme that breaks down certain large sugar compounds called GAGs. These build up in cells and cause havoc throughout the body. Through an IV, Madeux received many copies of a corrective gene and a gene-editing tool called zinc finger nucleases to help put it in a precise spot in his DNA. He was one of the two patients given a very low dose of the treatment, because this first-in-human testing called for extreme caution. EARLY RESULTS In Madeux and the other low-dose patient, levels of the tell-tale sugar compounds in urine rose 9 percent on average after four months. Muenzer said it’s hard to know whether this is a significant change; little is known about the biology of these compounds, including whether they fluctuate during the day or before or after meals. A liver biopsy on one patient given a low dose of the therapy found no evidence that the gene editing had occurred, but Sangamo scientists said this dose is far below the level at which such signs had been detected in research on primates. Two other patients were given a middle dose that was twice what the first two patients received. Their GAG levels declined by 51 percent after four months, on average. Two of the main types of these sugars that accumulate in tissues declined 32 percent and 61 percent, respectively. It is not yet known if declines like these can improve patients’ health or slow the progression of the disease. “This is not proof that this is a successful therapy yet, that these patients had enough gene editing to now supply them with the enzyme they need for the rest of their life,” Muenzer said. But he said an important goal was met: the treatment seems safe. There were two serious side effects — one patient was hospitalized for bronchitis and another for an irregular heartbeat — but those were deemed due to their disease and pre-existing conditions, not the gene treatment. Blood tests did not detect the missing enzyme. Company scientists said this could be because any that was being made was rapidly used by cells rather than getting into the bloodstream — an explanation some outside experts agreed with. What counts, they said, was seeing the result of enzyme activity, the drop in sugars. NEXT STEPS Two more patients have been given the highest dose being tested — 10 times the starting dose — for a total of six patients in the study. The next step is to start taking patients off the weekly enzyme treatments they’ve been receiving to see if the gene therapy has changed their bodies so they make enough of the enzyme themselves. More results are expected at a medical meeting in February. “We need to see sustained levels for this to be practical. If this only works for six months, that’s not very beneficial,” Muenzer said. “Time’s going to tell.” In an interview at his home in Arizona last month, Madeux, 45, told The Associated Press he volunteered for the study in hope of being able to stop the weekly, three-hour enzyme infusions, but also to help find a treatment for future generations with the disease. “I’m old and having Hunter’s has done a lot of damage to my body,” Madeux said. “I’m actually pretty lucky I’ve lived this long.” ___ Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP . ___ This Associated Press series was produced in partnership with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Early results boost hopes for historic gene editing attempt.