In Divide Over Health Care Overhaul, 2 Major Unions Withdraw From a Coalition

By ROBERT PEAR

Two labor unions have pulled out of a broad coalition seeking agreement on major changes in the health care system.

The action, by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the Service Employees International Union, shows the seeds of discord behind the optimistic talk at a White House conference on health care this week.

It also illustrates the difficulty of reaching agreement on two of the knottiest issues in the health care debate: whether to offer a new government-sponsored insurance option, and whether to require employers to help pay for employee health benefits.

Labor unions and leading Democrats in Congress support both ideas. But insurers and many employers oppose them.

The coalition, known as the Healthcare Reform Dialogue, is led by the president of the American Hospital Association, Richard J. Umbdenstock, and includes representatives of doctors and nurses, patients and consumers, insurers, drug companies and employers of all sizes.

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~Sandy G.

By ADAM LIPTAK

The Supreme Court on Friday erased a lower-court ruling on perhaps the most fundamental national security question of all: Does the president have the power to order the indefinite military detention of legal residents of the United States?

The court’s action, which had been urged by the Obama administration, wiped away one of the Bush administration’s greatest victories in the lower courts, a 2008 ruling that expanded the limits of executive authority to combat terrorism by allowing such detentions.

But the one-paragraph Supreme Court ruling leaves open the question of whether the military detention of legal residents as enemy combatants can ever be constitutional. The ruling came in the case of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar who was lawfully in the United States as a student when he was arrested in 2001. The court, which had agreed to hear Mr. Marri’s challenge to his detention in December, said it would not hear the case after all in light of his indictment last week on criminal charges in federal court.

More significantly, the court erased the lower-court ruling in the case, al-Marri v. Spagone, 08-368. Last year, in a fractured decision, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., said the president had the legal authority to detain Mr. Marri, subject to a court hearing on whether he was properly designated an enemy combatant.

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~Sandy G.

By DAVID STOUT and GARDINER HARRIS

President Obama will announce Monday that he is reversing Bush administration limits on federal financing for embryonic stem cell research as part of a pledge to separate science and politics, White House officials said Friday.

As a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama spoke out in favor of stem cell research, so his intention to undo the curbs put in place by President George W. Bush is not surprising. But the decision is nonetheless of great interest, involving a long-controversial intersection of science and personal moral beliefs.

The officials said that advocates of unfettered stem cell research, as well as about 30 Democratic and Republican lawmakers who support it, had been invited to a White House ceremony scheduled for 11:45 a.m. Eastern time, when Mr. Obama is expected to make an announcement.

One person familiar with planning for the event said the president would also speak about a general return to “sound science” in his administration, as a fulfillment of his campaign promise to draw a demarcation line between politics and science. The Bush administration was often accused of trying to shade, or even suppress, the findings of government scientists on climate change, sex education, contraceptives and other issues, as well as stem cells.

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~Sandy G.