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The Biden administration legal team has decided that thousands of federal convicts who were released to home confinement to reduce the risk of spreading Covid-19 will be required by law to return to prison a month after the official state of emergency for the pandemic ends, according to officials. The administration has come under pressure from criminal justice reform activists and some lawmakers to revoke a Trump-era memo by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which said inmates whose sentences lasted beyond the “pandemic emergency period” would have to go back to prison. (Savage and Kanno-Youngs, 7/19)

A bipartisan group of criminal justice advocates asked President Joe Biden to grant clemency to federal prisoners who were allowed to serve their sentences at home because of the pandemic but face the possibility of going back to prison. "This is your opportunity to provide second chances to thousands of people who are already safely out of prison, reintegrating back to society, reconnecting with their loved ones, getting jobs and going back to school," said the letter Monday from 20 advocacy groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International and NAACP, which asked Biden to exercise his broad presidential powers by commuting the inmates' sentences.  (Phillips, 7/19)

The Biden administration is investigating a recent rash of mysterious health incidents reported by American diplomats and other government employees in Vienna, Austria, U.S. officials said Friday. Some of the symptoms are similar to those first reported by U.S. diplomats and spies in Havana, Cuba, in 2016 and 2017 for which no definitive cause has yet been determined, according to the officials, who said more than 20 new cases were being looked at by medical teams at the State Department and elsewhere, including the Pentagon and CIA. "In coordination with our partners across the U.S. government, we are vigorously investigating reports of possible unexplained health incidents among the U.S. Embassy Vienna community," the State Department said. "Any employees who reported a possible UHI received immediate and appropriate attention and care." (7/19)

As many as 200 Americans have come forward to describe possible symptoms of directed energy attacks, part of a wave of fresh reports that includes newly identified incidents around the world, Western officials say. A U.S. official with knowledge of new potential cases of so-called Havana Syndrome said a steady drumbeat of cables has been coming in from overseas posts reporting new incidents — often multiple times each week. (Dilanian, Lederman and Kube, 7/20)

As the White House readies to name a new head of the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, a coalition of advocacy and nonprofit groups see an opportunity to overhaul the approach to issuing patents that may sometimes prevent Americans from accessing needed medicines. For the past several years, patent protection has become a flashpoint in the wider debate over the rising cost of prescription medicines in the U.S. The issue reflects concerns that drug makers have increasingly been granted patents that arguably add little to medical innovation, but extend monopolies that not only forestall lower-cost competition but also permit ongoing price hikes. (Silverman, 7/19)

The White House isn’t worried about Congress underfunding the new biomedical research agency President Biden has pitched as a way to “end cancer as we know it.” Not yet, anyway, according to Tara Schwetz, the biophysicist who the administration has tasked with getting the new agency off the ground. In an interview, Schwetz said the $3 billion that House Democrats plan to spend on the new agency, to be known as ARPA-H, is “a substantial amount,” even though it’s less than half of the $6.5 billion the Biden administration had requested. (Facher, 7/20)