RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina Democratic Gov. Josh Stein is canceling Medicaid reimbursement rate reductions he initiated two months ago, a decision that protects short-term access to care for vulnerable patients while a political fight with Republican legislators to enact additional funding is resolved.

Stein and state Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Dev Sangvai announced Wednesday the state agency would restore reimbursement rates for doctors, hospitals and other medical providers of Medicaid services that otherwise generally had been cut by 3% to 10% starting Oct. 1.

The governor had said the reductions were needed to deal with a funding shortfall for Medicaid, which serves more than 3 million people in the ninth-largest state. But legal challenges to the reductions that have resulted recently in judicial rulings demanding some rates return to pre-October levels make maintaining the reductions untenable.

“What has not changed is the program doesn’t have enough money. What has changed is that the courts have made very clear that the rates have to go back,” Stein told The Associated Press in an interview.

The first-year governor had said the reductions, while painful for Medicaid patients and providers, were unavoidable because a stopgap spending measure the legislature approved in the summer fell $319 million short of what was needed to address population changes and rising health care costs.

“The legislature forced these cuts onto the program,” Stein said. “It was absolutely nothing that the department or I wanted to have happen.”

Republican legislators said Stein’s actions were unnecessary, unprecedented early in the fiscal year and politically motivated. Still, state House and Senate GOP leaders tried but could not work out this fall legislation to provide extra money that would sustain the program longer.

Stein attempted in recent weeks to pressure lawmakers to act — even by formally calling a special legislative session last month. But House Speaker Destin Hall and Senate leader Phil Berger refused to convene, saying Stein had failed to meet the qualifications for such an extraordinary session.

The governor was pushed to relent as Medicaid consumers such as children with autism and providers like adult care homes have successfully sued the health department so far and blocked certain rate reductions.

The plaintiffs accused the state of violating laws by reducing rates unilaterally and discriminating against those with disabilities. A host of groups representing thousands of doctors and other service providers filed their own challenges last week to block the rates more broadly.

As part of the reversal, Sangvai said, the providers will receive retroactively reimbursements for the difference between the reduced and full rates for claims that were filed after the reductions took effect.

The Medicaid shortfall continues, however, an offshoot of GOP leaders being unable to pass a conventional two-year budget — largely over differences about additional income tax reductions and teacher pay. North Carolina remains the only state without an enacted budget, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. A budget was supposed to be in place July 1.

House and Senate Republicans separately agreed in September they would provide an additional $190 million to the Medicaid program. But senators also wanted legislation to allocate previously received federal money to help build a standalone children’s hospital in Wake County by two university medical schools and for rural health investments. Despite previously spending toward these projects, House Republicans are now having second thoughts about completing these investments.

The legislature had already planned to convene next week, but any action or recorded votes is unlikely. Stein said restoring the rates only adds to the urgency for legislators to act and locate more funds.

“If the legislature would simply do its job and pass a budget that fully funded Medicaid, we never would have had to start this entire enterprise,” Stein said.

Sangvai acknowledged the program would not run out of money until the spring. But he said restoring the rates means his agency is left only with scaling back or eliminating programs and services to find significant savings.

“It’s really a situation we hate to consider because the consequences could in fact be catastrophic,” Sangvai said.

The popular online gaming platform Roblox, which hosts millions of user-created games, is being sued by families and state attorneys general who claim online predators can groom, extort and exploit kids they meet on the platform.

Steven, a father of two, is among those who have filed lawsuits as his family tries to rebuild their life after his son was allegedly targeted. 

He said that allowing his teen son to play Roblox seemed like a safe bet — at first.

“I set up every parental control I could find and did the best I could,” he told CBS News in an exclusive interview, asking that CBS News only use his first name for privacy reasons.

But despite the platform’s parental controls, an alleged sex offender posing as a 16-year-old befriended his 13-year-old son in the popular “Pet Simulator” game, according to the lawsuit. Steven alleged the predator offered his son Roblox gift cards in exchange for sexually explicit photos, which his son sent via Discord – a separate gaming and chat platform.

“At a certain point it was, ‘tell me what your address is’ and when he said no, he’s like, ‘Well, I have these photos of you, I’ll tell your parents,'” Steven said of the interaction between the predator and his son. “He was 30 feet down the hall from us and just— felt too trapped to … come and talk to us.”

It was “pure luck,” Steven said, that he found out — because of a threatening message from the perpetrator that allegedly popped up as he was replacing the screen on his son’s phone, which had cracked.

The person has since pleaded guilty to first-degree felony child endangerment.

Lawsuits against Roblox, Discord

Steven’s family is among dozens of families, as well as attorneys general in Kentucky and Louisiana, who are suing Roblox and other tech platforms, alleging they allowed sexual predators access to their children.

Kentucky announced a lawsuit against Roblox last month, and Louisiana filed a suit against the platform in August. 

“For years, Roblox has ignored this crisis so it could continue turning a profit,” Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman said in a statement. “Our responsibility is to protect Kentucky children from online exploitation by these predators and the companies like Roblox that knowingly facilitate it.” 

Steven said his family is suing Roblox as well as Discord, an instant messaging and social platform, because “at the end of the day, the thing they seem to care about the most is the bottom line, their profit.”

“It almost feels like they’re a haven for … predators, pedophiles, dangerous individuals and like they should do better,” he said.

Steven’s attorney Alexandra Walsh, with the firm Anapol Weiss, is currently investigating hundreds of cases of child endangerment and grooming that allegedly started on Roblox. 

“Roblox was the gateway. Roblox is the site that … in this case that gave this predator, this very dangerous man, the ability to find a target and groom this child,” Walsh said.

Steven has moved his family across the country to have a new start as he supports his son through depression and PTSD, he said.

“This thing happens so much faster than you can ever imagine,” Steven said. “You want to believe that like … you’ve done everything you can and that it’ll never happen to me and I thought the same thing until it did.”

Roblox and Discord respond

Matt Kaufman, the chief safety officer at Roblox, said the platform does not allow image sharing in filtered chats and has rolled out over 100 new safety features this year, including age estimation and increased chat monitoring.

“We have safety systems that are in place by default and a lot of these situations that you’re talking about, like extortion, people sharing, graphic images, they simply cannot happen on Roblox,” Kaufman said.

Until recently, Roblox did not verify players’ ages. By the end of the year, all users will have to pass its checks to communicate within the platform. According to Roblox, these checks will include “a combination of facial age estimation technology, ID age verification and verified parental consent.”

Currently, any communication between adult users and those between 13 and 17 is prohibited, unless a real life confirmed relationship can be proven.

“For users 13 to 17 who confirm their age through Facial Age Estimation, adding a Trusted Connection, whether a peer or an 18 or older user, requires an existing real-world relationship, verified by a QR scan or Contact Importer,” Roblox says on its site.

Roblox’s chief safety officer Kaufman said the company has caught and self-reported 23,000 incidents of potentially harmful content to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children so far this year.

“What’s really important about these cases that we report is: we report when we see signs of something that doesn’t look safe,” Kaufman said. “Any platform of our size … it draws bad actors and our job is to do the best that we possibly can to prevent anything from happening on our platform and to report those situations as quickly as possible.”  

Discord told CBS News it won’t comment on pending litigation, but said in a statement that it is “deeply committed to safety,” and works to “prevent the spread of sexual exploitation and grooming.”

Walt Disney Co., Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. Discovery on Tuesday sued a Chinese artificial intelligence firm called MiniMax for copyright infringement, alleging its AI service generates famous characters including Darth Vader, the Minions and Wonder Woman without the studios’ permission.

“MiniMax’s bootlegging business model and defiance of U.S. copyright law are not only an attack on Plaintiffs and the hard-working creative community that brings the magic of movies to life, but are also a broader threat to the American motion picture industry,” the companies state in their complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

The entertainment companies requested that MiniMax be restrained from further infringement. They are seeking damages of up to $150,000 per infringed work, as well as attorney fees and costs.

This is the latest round of copyright lawsuits that major studios have brought against AI companies over intellectual property concerns. In June, Disney and Universal Pictures sued AI firm Midjourney for copyright infringement. This month, Warner Bros. Discovery also sued Midjourney.

Shanghai-based MiniMax has a service called Hailuo AI, which is marketed as a “Hollywood studio in your pocket” and used characters including the Joker and Groot in its ads without the studios’ permission, the studios’ lawsuit says. Users can type in a text prompt requesting characters such as Yoda from “Star Wars” or DC Comics’ Superman, and Hailuo AI can pull up high quality and downloadable images or video of the character, according to the document.

“MiniMax completely disregards U.S. copyright law and treats Plaintiffs’ valuable copyrighted characters like its own,” the lawsuit states. “MiniMax’s copyright infringement is willful and brazen.”

“Given the rapid advancement in technology in the AI video generation field … it is only a matter of time until Hailuo AI can generate unauthorized, infringing videos featuring Plaintiffs’ copyrighted characters that are substantially longer, and even eventually the same duration as a movie or television program,” the lawsuit states.

MiniMax did not immediately return a request for comment.

Hollywood is grappling with significant challenges, including the threat of AI, as companies consolidate and reduce their expenses amid rising production costs. Many actors and writers, still recovering from strikes that took place in 2023, are scrambling to find jobs. Some believe the growth of AI has threatened their livelihoods as tech tools can replicate copyrighted characters with text prompts.

Although some studios have sued AI companies, others are looking for ways to partner with them. For example, Lionsgate has partnered with AI startup Runway to help with behind the scenes processes such as storyboarding.