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.
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Question: Senators Richard Burr and Thom Tillis issued statements saying they will vote against Dourson to serve as head of EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. Environmentalists and Senate Democrats have vehemently opposed Dourson, a toxicologist with close ties to the chemical industry. That means only one more Republican “no” vote would likely be needed to torpedo his nomination. Moderate GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine told reporters Thursday she is also leaning against supporting Dourson, but has not yet made a final decision. The White House and EPA did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday or Thursday. Despite the fact he hasn’t yet been confirmed by the Senate, Dourson has already been working at the agency as a senior adviser to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. The agency’s press office did not respond to emails seeking how much he is being paid. The Associated Press reported in September that Dourson has for years accepted payments for criticizing studies that raised concerns about the safety of his clients’ products, according to a review of financial records and his published work. Past corporate clients of Dourson and of a research group he ran include Dow Chemical Co., Koch Industries Inc. and Chevron Corp. His research has also been underwritten by industry trade and lobbying groups representing the makers of plastics, pesticides, processed foods and cigarettes. Burr and Tillis, both of whom are considered reliably pro-business conservatives, cited Dourson’s past work and worries among their home-state constituents about tainted drinking water in opposing his nomination. “Over the last several weeks, Senator Tillis has done his due diligence in reviewing Mr. Dourson’s body of work,” said a statement from Tillis’ office. “Senator Tillis still has serious concerns about his record and cannot support his nomination.” Marine veterans and their families blame decades-old contamination of wells at a North Carolina base with solvents and dry-cleaning chemicals for infant deaths and serious health problems that include cancer. More recently, concerns have been raised about undisclosed discharges of chemicals used to manufacture Teflon and GoreTex into the Cape Fear River, a source of municipal drinking water for Wilmington and other southeastern North Carolina communities. Dourson worked at the EPA for more than a decade, leaving in 1994 as the manager at a lab that assessed the health risks of exposure to chemicals. The following year, he founded Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment, a private toxicity evaluation nonprofit organization that tests chemicals and produces reports on which chemicals are hazardous in what quantities. Dourson’s views toward industry are consistent with others Trump has selected as top federal regulators. Among them is Pruitt, who in March overruled the findings of his agency’s own scientists to reverse an effort to ban chlorpyrifos, one of the nation’s most widely used pesticides. Court records show Dourson and his work have often been called on when his corporate clients are seeking to fend off lawsuits. DuPont was accused of polluting a West Virginia town with Perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, a chemical that the company’s internal tests had long ago concluded was toxic. Corporate officials discussed hiring Dourson as part of a strategy to defend themselves. Dourson led a team that found in 2002 that PFOA levels up to 150 parts per billion were safe, a level higher than was found in testing of 188 private wells and springs. That was also well above the 1 part per billion that Dupont’s own scientists had concluded could be considered safe years before. The EPA now says that only 70 parts per trillion of PFOA are acceptable — or only 0.05 percent of what Dourson’s team said was safe. DuPont and a former subsidiary, Chemours Co., later paid $761 million to settle 3,550 lawsuits stemming from its use of the chemical. Chemours is the company whose spills of a chemical called GenX, a replacement for PFOA, are now at issue in North Carolina’s Cape Fear River. “I will not be supporting the nomination of Michael Dourson,” said Burr, the state’s senior senator. “With his record and our state’s history of contamination at Camp Lejeune as well as the current GenX water issues in Wilmington, I am not confident he is the best choice for our country.” The stand was quickly praised by environmental advocacy groups that rarely find common ground with the two Tarheel Republicans. “No one who has spent decades arguing on behalf of the chemical industry for weaker safety standards should be charged with reviewing chemicals for the EPA,” said Scott Faber, a senior vice president for government affairs at the Environmental Working Group. “It would be like putting an arsonist in charge of the fire department.” ___ Follow Associated Press environmental reporter Michael Biesecker at http://twitter.com/mbieseck

Answer: Trump EPA nominee opposed by GOP senators from NC.


Question: Evolocumab met the main goal of a late-stage trial titled RUTHERFORD-2 by lowering “bad” LDL cholesterol levels when tested against a placebo on 329 patients. Amgen, the world’s biggest biotechnology company, is testing evolocumab widely on a variety of subpopulations. The RUTHERFORD-2 study included patients with familial hypercholesterolemia, an inherited condition that causes high levels of “bad” LDL cholesterol starting at birth. Specifically, patients in the study had heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia, which is one of the most common genetic disorders affecting about one out of every 300 to 500 people worldwide, according to Amgen. The company on Tuesday reported positive results from a fourth late-stage study of evolocumab, for which it plans to begin seeking approvals this year. The drug is intended for people who cannot tolerate widely used statins, or who are unable to get their LDL levels low enough despite using high potency statins, such as AstraZeneca’s Crestor. Amgen’s shares closed at $120.89 on the Nasdaq on Thursday.

Answer: Amgen's cholesterol fighter succeeds in fifth late-stage study.


Question: "During ongoing controversy over United States Postal Service slowdowns and mail-in voting in August 2020, historian Heather Cox Richardson posted a status update to Facebook quoting United States President Donald Trump as saying that withholding USPS funding meant “they can’t have universal mail-in voting”:The post began:August 13, 2020 (Thursday)Today was another one for the history books.This morning, in an interview with Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo, Trump came out and said it: he wants to starve the United States Postal Service to destroy mail-in voting. Claiming that mail-in voting favors Democrats, he said: “Now they need that money in order to make the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots… Now, if we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting, they just can’t have it.”It was fairly easy to determine the veracity of the quote; myriad news outlets in the United States and abroad covered the interview between Trump and Bartiromo on August 13 2020. A clip of the comments also circulated on Twitter:Trump this morning why he won’t fund US Postal Service. “Now they need that money in order to make the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots … But if they don’t get those two items that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting.” pic.twitter.com/73NBmSnoNC— The Recount (@therecount) August 13, 2020That video clip started with Trump saying “they want,” with no previous context about the “they” he referenced. Those comments appeared after memes began circulating, warning voters to avoid using USPS to submit ballots in November 2020:‘Don’t Mail Ballots In, Drop at Board of Elections, This is an Inside Tip from a Postal Worker, Can’t Say More than That’Both controversies occurred against the backdrop of comments made by Trump in March 2020, in which he appeared to express disapproval of broader access to voting:Trump openly admitting if we made voting easier in America, Republicans wouldn't win electionsTrump: ""The things they had in there were crazy. They had levels of voting, that if you ever agreed to it you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again."" pic.twitter.com/x5HmX6uogo— Lis Power (@LisPower1) March 30, 2020With respect to the August 13 2020 Bartiromo interview on Fox Business, most clips and transcripts started with “they,” making it not entirely clear which “they” Trump referenced. However, Slate published a partial transcript of the portion of the video about USPS funding and mail-in voting. Bartiromo asked what specifically Democrats were seeking that was “causing a breakdown in any deals”:Bartiromo: What specifically are they pushing for that is causing a breakdown in any deals? Nancy Pelosi said that the Democrats and the White House are still miles apart on any stimulus.Trump responded, indicating “they” were congressional Democrats:Trump: Well they’re right. And it’s their fault. They want $3.5 billion for something that’ll turn out to be fraudulent. That’s election money, basically. They want $3.5 billion for the mail-in votes. Universal mail-in ballots. They want $25 billion—billion—for the post office. Now they need that money in order to have post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots. Now, in the meantime, they aren’t getting there. By the way, those are just two items. But if you don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting. Because they’re not equipped to have it. And you see how bad it’s been with this Carolyn Maloney scam. She scammed her way into an election she probably lost. But they said mail-in ballots, its all mixed up. Paterson, New Jersey, same thing. Yesterday Virginia, 500,000 applications for ballots got sent to everybody, nobody even knows. Got sent to dogs. Got sent to dead people. Nobody has no idea what happened. They said, Oh we made a mistake, I’m sorry. Five hundred thousand ballots sent in Virginia. How do you feel about Virginia going in there when you have 500,000 phony ballot applicants? And this is all over.Bartiromo asked about whether quibbling over USPS funding and infrastructure for mail-in voting was “holding up money for the American people,” referring to stimulus payments during the COVID-19 pandemic. In his second response, Trump confirmed that funding for mail-in voting was at issue in broader negotiations:Bartiromo: This is what’s holding up money for the American people? They want mail-in voting and they want money for the post office? This is one of the sticking points that’s holding back stimulus for Americans during this coronavirus?Trump: That’s one of them. [Cross talk]Trump: That’s one of them. That’s right. Maria, how would you like to have $3.5 billion for mail-in voting. Billion! You know how much that is? Nobody has any idea, you people, Oh, you know, 3½ billion. They want $25 billion for the post office, because the post office is going to have to go to town to get these ridiculous ballots in. You know, there’s nothing wrong with getting out and voting. They voted during World War I and World War II. And they should have voter ID, because the Democrats scam the system. But two of the items are the post office, and $3.5 billion dollars for mail-in voting. Now, if we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting. They just can’t have it. So, you know.As such, the comments Heather Cox Richardson shared were accurate; Trump said Democrats sought money in order to have the post office functioning “so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” and “if we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money,” and “they can’t have universal mail-in voting … they just can’t have it.” The commentary occurred across exchanges with Bartiromo, in the same short section of an interview on Fox Business. The segment in its entirety can be viewed here.Comments"

Answer:
"On August 13 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump said: ""They need that money in order to make the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots... Now, if we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting, they just can’t have it.”"