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Debate heats up over bill targeting Google, Facebook’s power over local news

The debate around a proposal that aims to give news outlets the power to negotiate with tech giants to distribute their content is heating up ahead of a Senate markup of the bill slated for Thursday. 

Bipartisan sponsors of the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act in the House and Senate released a revised version of the bill in August, which kicked off campaigns from advocacy groups for and against the legislation.

Chamber of Progress, Public Knowledge and 19 other advocacy groups sent a letter on Friday to top senators of the Judiciary Committee against the bill, arguing the revised version would force tech platforms to carry digital content “regardless of how extreme” it is. 

But the News Media Alliance, a trade association that represents newspapers across the U.S., dismissed the arguments made against the legislation and said it would help even the playing field after years of tech platforms decimating local news.

“This is expected opposition based on the organizations asserting these claims,” Danielle Coffey, executive vice president and general counsel for the News Media Alliance, told The Hill. 

“The attacks themselves, frankly, are just not substantiated by the text of the document, nor do they solve the problem that the legislation is trying to solve, which is to ensure fair compensation for high quality journalism,” she added. 

The bill would allow digital journalism providers with fewer than 1,500 full time employees and nonnetwork news broadcasters to form joint negotiation entities to collectively negotiate with dominant tech platforms, such as Google and Facebook, over the terms associated with access to their digital news content. 

It would also create a limited safe harbor from federal and state antitrust laws for eligible digital journalism providers that would allow them to participate in joint negotiation and arbitration to jointly withhold their content from a covered platform.

The bill’s supporters say it is intended to help build back local news infrastructure after revenues have been cut into by tech giants sharing digital news content. 

“To preserve strong, independent journalism, we have to make sure news organizations are able to negotiate on a level playing field with the online platforms that have come to dominate news distribution and digital advertising,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), chair of the Senate antitrust subcommittee, said in a statement when releasing the revised bill. 

The bill is also sponsored by Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) and Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). In the House, Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) is a lead sponsor, along with antitrust subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline (D-R.I.) and ranking member Ken Buck (R-Colo.).  

Adam Kovacevich, CEO and founder of the tech industry group Chamber of Progress, said his primary concern is that the bill would “effectively force online platforms to both fund and link to” right wing outlets, such as Infowars, Newsmax and One America News Network. 

“Our concern is that the JCPA would turn Big Tech platforms into kind of a guaranteed ATM and billboard for right wing news delivering funding and guaranteed links and traffic from their services,” Kovacevich told reporters on a call Wednesday. 

Google and Facebook’s parent company Meta are both corporate partners that support the Chamber of Progress. 

The core of the argument from advocacy groups opposing the bill is centered around a provision in the revised text of the bill that says a covered platform, referring to the dominant tech companies, may not “discriminate against any eligible digital journalism provider that is a member of a joint negotiation entity.” 

The letter sent by Chamber of Progress, Public Knowledge and other groups also argues that large media conglomerates will still be able to “dominate negotiations” and that “small outlets would be unheard,” because the proposal would apply to all outlets that employ fewer than 1,500 full time employees, a cap which only excludes the nation’s three largest newspapers. The limit could also “create unintended consequences such as layoffs or transitions to more part-time or freelance employees,” the groups said. 

“I think those members of Congress who are supporting this see their local news outlets, they see the struggles that they’re going through, and they want to do something good. And I think they need to take more time to look at the details of this bill, and the unintended consequences,” Chris Lewis, president and CEO of Public Knowledge, told reporters on the same Wednesday call. 

The News Media Alliance, however, dismissed the argument about potential layoffs and said that the “opposite” will happen. In Australia, where a similar proposal was passed last year, the News Media Alliance said some newsrooms doubled in size after the change. 

“The information that we provide to communities is critical — whether it be health care, education, or what’s going on that nobody else will cover. There will be no other entity that comes in and covers a community, and attends a city hall meeting, or listens to a school board. It’s not going to happen,” Coffey said. 

“I’ve seen these newspapers go away and nothing replaces them, and the reason isn’t an audience problem. It’s a revenue problem,” she said. 

The change in the news industry, she said, is “directly caused by the revenue that’s extracted by the platforms that do not come back to those who create the content.” 

“It’s not coincidental,” she said.

Source: TEST FEED1

Trump special master ruling ‘troubling,’ legal experts say

A federal judge’s ruling granting former President Trump’s request for a special master has generated a range of intense reactions from legal experts, who have called it unusual, lacking in legal reasoning, “absurd” and offering undue favoritism to a former president.

The ruling in favor of Trump by federal district court Judge Aileen Cannon has been a head-scratcher for many attorneys, who say the court left behind many unanswered questions while also blocking an unprecedented investigation of a former president.

“It does seem to reflect a fair amount of bending and stretching of the law in numerous different respects,” said Jeff Robbins, a former federal prosecutor and congressional investigative counsel.

Cannon surprised observers by indicating last month before she had heard any arguments in the case that she was inclined to grant Trump’s request.

It’s a detail that has gotten renewed attention, as experts say the ruling fails to deliver meeting the legal tests lawyers are trained to analyze while asking the special master to resolve major legal questions as Trump argues executive privilege should allow him to withhold executive branch documents from the current administration.

In her Labor Day ruling, Cannon repeatedly stressed optics as a rationale for having a third-party special master review the more than 10,000 documents taken during the search.

“A commitment to the appearance of fairness is critical, now more than ever,” she wrote, noting that Trump may gain little from the exercise.

“Plaintiff ultimately may not be entitled to return of much of the seized property or to prevail on his anticipated claims of privilege. That inquiry remains for another day,” she wrote.

The order puts the DOJ’s investigation on ice, barring investigators from reviewing any evidence until the special master is appointed and completes their review.

Robbins said in order to grant an injunction to block a party from taking an action, the plaintiff must show not only a likelihood of ultimately succeeding in the case, but that they would be irreparably harmed if the request was not granted.

“There was essentially not even lip service paid for these requirements. … That’s sort of, you know, frankly, injunction law 101,” he said. 

Much of Cannon’s ruling focused on potential damage to Trump’s reputation that could stem from the investigation, musing that details about the investigation could be leaked to the media.

But much of what the public knows about the investigation has been through court-ordered unsealing of DOJ records as well as from Trump himself.

“And matter of fact, the only leak that has occurred in this is a leak by the former president himself of the existence of the search. So that to me is a glaring example of just ignoring the standards for granting an injunction,” Robbins said.

Others see the consideration of his status as a former president as inappropriately elevating Trump compared to others who would be unlikely to get similar treatment if their home were searched in the course of a criminal investigation.

“The judge said that she thought that the fact that Donald Trump is a former president gives him heightened reputational interests, that there’s more reason in this case to be worried about the reputational damage that a criminal charge could inflict than there is in a normal case. That strikes me as wrong and troubling in a country where nobody’s supposed to be above the law,” said David Alan Sklansky, a professor at Stanford Law School and an expert in the Fourth Amendment and constraints on prosecutorial power.

Sklansky said Trump has a greater ability than most people caught up in criminal investigations to air their side of the story. 

“His brand at this point is kind of tied up in his battles against the government. So I think that he’s suffering less reputational injury than most people do when it’s announced that they’re the subject of a criminal investigation,” he added.

While the order spends ample time considering Trump’s arguments it spends relatively little considering the government’s argument that a special master would seriously hamper its investigation, covering one of the Department of Justice’s principal objections with just a few sentences.

But experts say some of the more perplexing aspects of the order are those surrounding executive privilege, warning the ruling sets a dangerous precedent for allowing a former executive to hamstring a successor.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) argued that Trump’s very claim that some of the documents were protected by executive privilege proves their point — that they are government property and must be maintained by the National Archives.

But Cannon said the DOJ “arguably overstates the law” on the limits a former president has, leaving it to the special master to review the documents for both attorney-client protected materials — a relatively common service they provide to the court — and materials covered by executive privilege, which is an entirely unprecedented role. 

“It’s the kind of legal issue that courts and judges resolve generally, not special masters,” said Slansky, who himself has served as a special master.

While Cannon’s ruling directs the special master to consider executive privilege, she does not lay out how.

“Why would you outsource it? If you’ve got some basis for believing that these documents are protected by executive privilege, let’s lay out what the standard is,” Robbins said.

“It’s not enough to say ‘I’m not persuaded that that executive privilege can never be invoked by a former president.’ Okay. That’s fine. So what are the standards that you’re giving to a special master?” 

Peter Shane, a law professor at New York University and an expert in executive privilege said he’s unsure what exactly the special master is supposed to assess.

“You don’t need a special master to identify whether the documents are potentially the subject of executive privilege. All of these documents, I assume, were communicated to the president or he wouldn’t have them,” he said. 

But he and Sklansky also see major risks to allowing a former president to withhold documents from the current administration.

“That strikes me as completely wrongheaded because the government continues. And when we have a new administration come in, they have to continue the work of governing. And it strikes me as completely unworkable to say that when a new administration comes into office, they’re restricted from knowing what kinds of discussions went on in the previous administration, that official government documents can be shielded from the current administration. That just strikes me as completely unacceptable,” he said, adding that’s something courts should not be eager to take ownership of.

He noted that even Cannon doesn’t offer a wholesale endorsement of the idea, allowing the intelligence community to access the records so they can do their own damage assessment.

Shane said the issues are even more pressing when considering the national security information Trump has in the tranche of records.

He said it’s the constitutional duty of the president “to protect the national security from the moment of inauguration to the last minute of that person’s term.” 

“Protecting the national security right now is not Donald Trump’s job; it is Joe Biden’s job. And the idea that he might be shielding information relevant to our national security from the current administration, whose constitutional job it is to protect the national security, is absurd. It’s an absurd claim,” Shane said. 

The damage that could result from affording Trump any right to executive privilege in this case is something that could unfold for years, he said.

“It creates the idea that privilege belongs to a human being as opposed to the institution and the office of the presidency. That somehow the constitution imbues individual human beings with power in perpetuity — which is itself opposed to the idea of the rule of law and the idea that no one is above the law,” he said.

“The responsibility of taking care that the law be faithfully executed is a job that belongs to whoever is president now. Not who was president four or 12 or 16 or 40 years ago … It needs to be available to the current president to see the records of prior administrations in order that they can do their job to the fullest.”

Source: TEST FEED1

New Biden midterm strategy over Democracy comes with risks

When Joe Biden entered the race for president in 2019, he declared that the “soul of the nation” was at stake.

Now Biden is amping up that narrative as president, making the case that democracy and former President Trump’s election lies will be on the ballot in this fall’s midterm elections.  

The new rhetoric makes sense politically. It gives Biden a chance to motivate Democrats into coming out to support the party in the midterms, when congressional majorities will be a stake.  

Yet it also comes with some risks, as it requires the president to drop the unifying tone that has been a big part of his first-term messaging.  

In castigating Trump and the Republicans aligned with him, Biden hopes to animate the Democratic Party’s liberal base while putting the former president on the ballot.  

It’s a strategy Democrats sought to use in Virginia in 2021, when the party lost the state’s governorship.  

The White House and Biden’s party are hoping for a better outcome this fall.  

Biden’s messaging has been elevated by the FBI’s search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence one month ago, which has dominated headlines ever since.  

The fight between Trump and the Department of Justice has worried Republicans, as it has given Democrats an opportunity to make the elections more about Trump.  

Democrats say the idea of protecting Democracy — and of casting Trump and his allies as threats to it — can be effective. Even if Trump is not on the ballot, Republicans closely tied to the ex-president, including Senate candidates Herschel Walker in Georgia, Blake Masters in Arizona and J.D. Vance in Ohio, will be.   

“The idea that there are folks that are unfit to hold public office and should not be in power is an issue that can be layered over whatever other policy issues are at play,” said Democratic strategist Rodell Mollineau.  

Polling suggests Biden could be on to something.  

A Quinnipiac University poll released late last month found that 67 percent of American adults believe U.S. democracy is in danger of collapsing, while an NBC News poll released the same month found that a larger percentage of voters ranked threats to democracy as the most important issue facing the country than did cost of living.  

Biden reintroduced the theme during a prime-time speech Thursday from Philadelphia, assailing Trump and Republicans aligned with him as threats to equality and democracy in the United States.  

“Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal. Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” Biden said, referring to the former president’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.  

Biden carried forward that message in speeches from Milwaukee and Pittsburgh on Labor Day, arguing that democracy is at stake in the midterm elections. In Wisconsin, Biden accused Trump-aligned Republicans of embracing political violence and defending “the mob that stormed the Capitol” on Jan. 6, 2021. 

The theme is hardly brand new for Biden. In 2019, Biden said giving Trump eight years in the White House “will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation, who we are, and I cannot stand by and watch that happen.”  

Biden’s attack lines have been met with criticism from Republicans, including those who have rebuked Trump and his falsehoods about his 2020 election loss.  

Some have characterized Biden’s words as divisive and accused him of alienating a broad swath of voters who cast ballots for Trump during the last presidential election. 

“Biden is making the political bet that talking about Trump enough will rev up his base and help voters forget inflation and rising crime,” said Doug Heye, a former spokesman for the Republican National Committee. “But despite being blue-collar Joe, he failed to try to bring in those people who may have only reluctantly voted for Trump because they felt the Democrats have moved too far left.” 

“And in just branding everything ‘MAGA Republicans,’ it regurgitates the same rhetoric they used to call Mitt Romney too extreme,” Heye added, pointing to a tweet sent from Biden’s presidential Twitter account that suggested “MAGA Republicans” are aligned with Wall Street interests.  

“What does that have to do with elections, democracy, Jan. 6?” Heye asked.  

Biden and other White House officials have defended his remarks, saying the president is distinguishing between “MAGA Republicans” and “mainstream” Republicans. 

Democrats say the narrative driven by Biden isn’t just tailored to the 2022 midterms. They say he’s offering a preview of shorts of his rhetoric in the upcoming presidential race as well. In recent months, Biden has said, both publicly and privately, that he plans to run for reelection in 2024. Trump is also weighing another bid for president, raising the prospect of a rematch between the two men. 

Democratic strategist Joel Payne said Biden’s message — including the major address he delivered last week in Philadelphia — is “more about 2024 than it is about 2022.” 

“I viewed the speech last week as laying a predicate for 2024,” Payne said. “Why he’s essential for another term, why he’s relevant. It’s a bookend for the ‘soul of the nation’ speech he delivered in Charlottesville” at the start of his presidential campaign in 2019.  

One Democratic strategist put it this way: “It almost feels like Biden has divorced himself from the outcome of the midterms a little bit. Obviously, he cares about the outcome, but I think a big part of his message right now is catered to the general election.”  

Nayyera Haq, a former Obama administration official, said the rhetoric is also about Biden solidifying his legacy.  

“Even if there are zero electoral benefits, there is the idea of legacy and what the history books will say about you,” Haq said. “You take Biden at face value. This is about the soul of the nation and the trajectory of our nation. “  

Source: TEST FEED1

GOP touts 5,000 events at minority community centers

The Republican Party on Thursday announced it has hosted more than 5,000 separate events at its minority community centers, 38 multipurpose voter outreach spaces spread around 19 states.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) community centers have been at the center of the party’s outreach to minority and disadvantaged communities around the country ahead of the 2022 midterms.

“The RNC’s purposeful engagement forges the way for stronger relationships with minority communities and a stronger Republican Party. Unlike Democrats, Republicans do not take minority communities for granted, and we will continue to work to earn each vote ahead of November,” RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel told The Hill in an email.

Events held at the community centers include everything from business roundtable discussions to food and toy drives, and educational or training events.

The centers also host the Republican Civics Initiative, an education program for immigrants who are eligible for naturalization.

The community center strategy seeks to engage minority voters directly with the Republican Party, in an attempt to cut into long-held Democratic electoral advantages among non-white voters.

The strategy also exploits a weakness in Democratic outreach to many minority communities, as criticism over that party’s intermittent voter contact, particularly with Hispanic voters, has received significant attention.

And the community centers are likely to serve as staging grounds for get-out-the-vote efforts in key districts.

A majority of the GOP’s community centers are set up to serve Black and Hispanic communities, but there are also five centers dedicated to Asian and Pacific American voters, one for Native American voters in North Carolina, a Jewish community center in Boca Raton, Fla. and a veterans’ community center in Virginia Beach, Va.

Source: TEST FEED1

States wasting billions on new highways, rather than fixing old ones: report

State use of federal infrastructure dollars to prioritize highway expansions over repairs could waste billions of dollars and worsen the impacts of climate change, a new report has found.

The report, published on Thursday by the U.S. Public Interest Research Groups (U.S. PIRG), urged state lawmakers to reexamine proposed highway expansion projects — while taking into account the evolving transportation needs of the American public. 

“Every time we spend money on infrastructure, we have an opportunity to re-envision the future,” Matt Casale, director of U.S. PIRG Education Fund’s environment campaigns, said in a statement. 

“We should not invest in highway boondoggles that will exacerbate our pollution and global warming problems,” Casale continued. “The projects that we choose to invest in should be ones that are going to make American lives better.”

States have found themselves with funds to make such decisions following November’s passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which seeks to modernize transportation across the U.S. 

But the infrastructure law, the report authors noted, gives states the flexibility to choose how best to spend much of the funds they receive. Many states are advancing billions of dollars’ worth of highway expansion projects, funds for which the authors argued would be better spent on attending to maintenance backlogs. 

After highlighting 66 highway boondoggles in seven previous reports, U.S. PIRG Education Fund focused in Thursday’s edition on seven new highway projects that would cost a total of more than $22 billion. 

“America can’t afford to squander our historic investment in infrastructure on boondoggle projects,” lead author James Horrox, a policy analyst at the Frontier Group, a Denver-based nonprofit organization, said in a statement. 

“And yet, across the country, wasteful and damaging highway expansion projects are often first in line for public dollars,” Horrox added. 

The most expensive project is a $16 billion proposal to widen the New Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway — plans that would result in the addition of hundreds of miles of new lanes on two of the country’s busiest roads, according to the report.

Realizing these ambitions could mean “undermining New Jersey’s emissions reduction goals,” the authors argued. 

A $2.8 billion plan to construct a 10-lane, double-decker bridge across the Ohio River could “exacerbate congestion at one of the country’s worst traffic bottlenecks,” the report stated.

Another $1.3 billion would go to Maryland’s proposed Montgomery County M-83 highway, which has been discussed since the 1960s. 

The construction of this highway would “pose a a direct threat to 25 residential neighborhoods, 100 acres of public forest, 14 wetlands, six streams, natural floodplains and 60+ acres of agricultural reserve,” the authors contended.  

Widening the I-205 in Oregon would cost $900 million and could endanger “the long-term financial security of the region’s transportation system,” while contradicting the state’s climate goals, according to the report.

A proposed $750 million eight-mile bypass in southwestern Virginia would threaten hundreds of acres of forest, wetlands and farmlands, and force 21 households to relocate, the authors stated.

Another contentious project is the $510 million reconstruction of I-35 in Minnesota, which would be the first of a series of major highway projects in downtown Duluth, the report explained.

The final project of focus is the $66 million-$100 million redesign of the Erie Bayfront Parkway in Pennsylvania, which the authors argued would attract more traffic to Erie’s developing bayfront and fail to meet community demands for improved pedestrian access. 

The authors recommended that instead of investing in such projects, state and local governments should finance solutions that minimize dependence on automobile travel. 

They also stressed the importance of directing funding toward repairing existing roads and granting priority to projects that decrease growth in vehicle-miles traveled. 

“State bureaucrats still have a misplaced appetite for costly, polluting and ineffective highway expansion projects,” Casale said. 

“Rather than costly highway boondoggles, we need to start using our money more wisely by investing in public transit, walking and biking instead,” he added. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Cardona says states hiring unqualified teachers 'a slap in the face to the profession'

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona on Wednesday said lowering standards and changing pathways to qualify educators is disrespectful to the profession. 

“Look, I’m all for veterans becoming teachers… but let’s remember, when the nation’s report card is showing that our students have dropped drastically, to provide educators who are not qualified or trained in the pedagogy of teaching is a slap in the face to the profession,” Cardona told reporters at “The Monitor Breakfast,” hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. 

Cardona acknowledged that many educators are leaving the field, forcing standards to change to make up for teacher shortages, and suggested other ways to work around the issue.

“We have to be creative. We have to create pipeline programs,” Cardona said. 

The secretary advocated for better working conditions and more competitive salaries to attract and retain teachers in the profession — and suggested different uses of American Rescue Plan funding to compel new teachers to the field.

“We have to look at our current students as future teachers and give them a pathway in high school. We have to take our paraeducators, who work extremely hard meeting the needs of our students, making $12 an hour, and say ‘Listen, I’m going to provide some [American Rescue Plan] funding now because we’re in a crisis for you to go on and get your degree and then you’re gonna come back and you’re gonna get a job here.’”

Cardona also suggested ARP funding could be used to bring retired teachers back to the profession without risking the loss of their retirement benefits. 

“There are solutions out there lowering standards is not one of them. We need to raise the bar,” Cardona said.

Source: TEST FEED1

Police: Memphis shooter in custody after live-streaming attack

A 19-year-old man is in custody after he shot up multiple locations Wednesday night and live-streamed the attack on Facebook before fleeing in an SUV, according to police.

The Memphis Police Department tweeted around 10:26 p.m. that officers have arrested Ezekiel Kelly, who allegedly fled in a grey Toyota before he was apprehended.

The Memphis Police Department first issued a statement Wednesday around 8 p.m., warning residents to stay indoors and to be on the lookout for a Black male who allegedly is responsible for multiple shootings.

“We are getting reports that he is recording his actions on Facebook,” police had said.

The Hill has reached out to the police department for further comment.

Source: TEST FEED1

Dems stumble on GOP data mine from Snap: Axios

An internal error on the social media platform Snap allowed partisan organizations to target political ads with data from across-the-aisle firms, according to a new report from Axios. 

According to the report, the error allowed the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Committee and other left-leaning groups to target ads using data from i360, owned by GOP mega donor Charles Koch.

Data from Democrat-affiliated TargetSmart was also accessible to conservative media, the report notes. 

Snap, which primarily pulls from i360 and TargetSmart for its political ad-targeting, has a system in place to prevent unauthorized use of each vendor’s data — but an internal error did away with this protection, a Snap spokesperson confirmed to The Hill.

The mistake reportedly affected a small number of ads. No individual Snap user data was compromised, the spokesperson said, and advertisers were not able to directly access the i360 and TargetSmart generalized data.

There is no indication that any involved party knowingly exploited the Snap slip-up, according to the Axios report.

The Hill has reached out to i360 and TargetSmart for comment.

Source: TEST FEED1

Biden administration 'reviewing' Texas judge's decision on HIV drug coverage

The Biden administration announced Wednesday night it was reviewing a Texas judge’s ruling that declared a part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) requiring that health care employers provide HIV preventive drugs unconstitutional.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre tweeted the administration was reviewing the decision because the ACA “has been the law of the land for over 10 years.”

“That guarantee is critical to the health and wellbeing of millions of Americans, particularly LGBTQI+ Americans, people of color, pregnant women, and others,” Jean-Pierre wrote in a thread. “The Administration is committed to protecting Americans’ access to free preventive health care and building upon the successes of the Affordable Care Act.”

Judge Reed O’Connor, a notorious Republican and Bush appointee for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, ruled ObamaCare violated the religious freedom of a Christian company because the 2010 law required that private health insurers and companies provide HIV preventive drugs, known as PrEP, against their beliefs and values.

The ruling was a victory for Christian businesses Braidwood Management and Kelley Orthodontics and a defeat for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 

The religious Texas employers had argued the ACA violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act because it forced them to pay for coverage that conflicts with their beliefs, including supporting the use of drugs and “sexual activity outside of marriage between one man and one woman.”

The U.S. has approved two PrEP pills, Truvada and Descovy, which are 99 percent effective at preventing the transmission of HIV, a virus that causes the disease AIDS.

The World Health Organization says HIV is still a “major” global public health emergency and has killed more than 40 million people.

The ACA requires that most private health insurers cover the cost of preventive medicine and services at no cost to the patient. To determine which of those are covered under the health care law, advisory groups such as the U.S. Preventive Task Force (USPSTF) make recommendations.

O’Connor also ruled against a broad range of preventive services recommended by USPSTF, saying the task force’s system for deciding which services should be fully covered under the ACA is unconstitutional.

Among those preventive services the judge struck down for coverage under the ACA are colorectal screenings, depression screenings and hypertension screenings.

Source: TEST FEED1

Turkey's president warns West: 'Russia is not a country that can be underestimated’

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Wednesday criticized the West for its “provocation-based policy” toward Russia.

“I say to those who underestimate Russia, you are doing it wrong. Russia is not a country that can be underestimated,” Erdoğan said at a press conference in Belgrade, Serbia, per translations in the news outlet Anadolu Agency.

“I can clearly say that I do not find the attitude of the West [toward Russia] right. Because there is a West that follows a policy based on provocation,” he added.  

The Turkish president noted that he doesn’t see an end in sight to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which has now waged on for more than half a year.

Erdoğan maintained Wednesday that the country is following a “balanced foreign policy between Russia and Ukraine,” according to video and translations from TRT World.

Earlier this year, Turkey resisted NATO membership bids from Finland and Sweden, a unity move for the alliance in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Turkey also worked with Putin to facilitate exports through the blockaded Black Sea. 

The government of Greece recently asked NATO, the European Union and the United Nations to formally condemn aggressive rhetoric from Turkey as tensions between the neighboring countries heighten.

Source: TEST FEED1