Tag Archives : Build House

McCarthy to give prebuttal to Biden in Scranton speech

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) will counter a planned prime-time address from President Joe Biden on Thursday with a speech ahead of time – in Biden’s hometown of Scranton, Pa. 

McCarthy, who has traveled the country campaigning with and fundraising for Republican House candidates during the August House recess, will “talk about what he has heard from the American people this summer regarding rising crime, record high inflation and other hardships brought on by the Democrats’ harmful policies,” according to a release announcing the speech.

The event will also feature Jim Bognet, the Republican nominee for Pennsylvania’s competitive 8th Congressional District seat challenging incumbent Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.). 

The release from McCarthy accused Biden of planning to use his speech to “disparage hard working Americans and offer no plan to turn our country around from the disaster Democrats have created.” In a spin on Biden’s 2020 campaign theme of a “battle for the soul of the nation,” the release said McCarthy will respond to “Biden’s Assault on the Soul of America.”

Biden’s Thursday evening address, which he will deliver from Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, Pa., will cover “how the core values of this nation — our standing in the world, our democracy — are at stake,” according to a White House official. 

The president has been increasingly critical of Republicans as campaign season kicks into full gear, saying in a fundraiser last week that the “extreme MAGA philosophy” in the wing of the party aligned with former President Trump is “like semi-fascism.”

McCarthy’s visit to Scranton on Thursday will come after Biden traveled to nearby Wilkes-Barre, Pa. on Tuesday, where he criticized Republican members of Congress over Jan. 6 and criticism of the FBI.

“Let me say this to my MAGA Republican friends in Congress: Don’t tell me you support law enforcement if you won’t condemn what happened on the 6th. Don’t tell me. Can’t do it. For God’s sake, whose side are you on?” Biden said.

He added that it is “sickening to see the new attacks on the FBI” in light of a search warrant being executed at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate as part of an investigation of his handling of presidential records and classified documents.

Source: TEST FEED1

DeSantis sues FDA in push to import prescription drug from Canada

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) announced Wednesday that he had filed a lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), claiming the federal agency has unlawfully delayed approval of a state program that would allow the state to import prescription drugs from Canada to lower medication costs for Floridians.

DeSantis said the FDA has violated federal law by dragging out the approval of the Canadian Prescription Drug Importation Program, which he first requested approval for in November 2020.

“It’s our view that we’ve waited long enough,” DeSantis said at a press conference in Lakeland, Fla., announcing the lawsuit. “The clock’s been ticking. We have a right to know what the FDA has been doing the last two years to ensure [whether] they are putting politics over patients [or] putting the interests of Big Pharma over the interests of average Floridians.”

The State of Florida and the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration filed a lawsuit in a Tampa federal court after DeSantis said the FDA failed to respond in time to a July Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for information on the drug approval process.

The 42-page lawsuit claims the FDA has violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how federal agencies operate, as well as violations of FOIA laws.

The Hill has reached out to the FDA for comment.

Prescription drugs carry abnormally high costs in the U.S., although the recently-passed Inflation Reduction Act allows Medicare to negotiate the price of drugs and cap out-of-pocket costs for medications at $2,000 starting in 2025.

DeSantis signed a law authorizing the Canadian Prescription Drug Importation Program in July 2019, becoming the first state to seek authorization from the FDA to import medications from Canada, where the same prescription drugs can be up to 80 percent cheaper.

Several other states have also moved to import drugs from the country, including New Mexico and Colorado.

The first phase of Florida’s program includes importing drugs used to treat HIV, diabetes, hepatitis C and mental illness. The governor’s office estimates that Floridians will save $150 million annually under the program.

But a 1987 law known as the Prescription Drug Marketing Act prohibits anyone but the pharmaceutical manufacturer from importing drugs from outside of the country, unless the Department of Health and Human Services specifically approves it.

Former President Trump signed an executive order in 2020 to import some prescription drugs from Canada, but the nation’s health agency later that year blocked bulk exports, warning of shortages.

In July 2021, President Biden issued an executive order directing the FDA to work with states on the drug approval process.

Over the spring, the FDA submitted an update on the approval process, but only said it has met with state officials and was “working to implement a statutory pathway” for Canadian drug imports.

DeSantis in his lawsuit claims Florida’s health agency has complied with all FDA requests and yet remains in the dark as the process drags on, only getting vague statements from federal agents including that the “information is currently under evaluation.”

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody on Wednesday said the state has been “waiting and waiting” for approval on the program.

“This [Biden] administration is not quick to act to get things done for Florida,” she said. “An agency of the administration cannot just sit on applications. They have to act with reasonable timeliness.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Upset about the student loan debt transfer? Blame the Global War on Terror

However, many criticizing the action fail to consider that the authority for President Biden’s mandate is rooted in the frantic expansion of executive power that consumed Washington, D.C. in the years that followed 9/11.  

In March 2003, Republican Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.) introduced the so-called “Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act,” or HEROES Act. The bill was primarily sold as a vehicle to give student loan repayment relief to military reservists who were activated in support of the new wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, there was also a section buried in the legislation that gave the secretary of Education the authority to “waive or modify” student loan obligations during undefined “national emergencies”.  

After an orgy of self-congratulation in the House amid the Iraq War frenzy, the bill passed by a vote of 421-1. Future Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wis), fretting that the global war on terror “now may stretch to 2 years or to 3 years,” deemed the measure “altogether fitting and proper.” Future House Armed Services Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) declared that “another important aspect of the HEROES Act is that it allows the Secretary of Education to act quickly should a situation arise that has not been considered.” 

Last week, President Joe Biden announced the federal government would forgive up to $20,000 in student loan debt and make repayment of remaining balances more favorable to the borrower. Not surprisingly, many political commentators and policy-makers were critical of the move, which essentially transfers debt from one group of Americans to another.   

Boy did it. 

It was this law—passed in the aftermath of 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq to assist military reservists whose lives were disrupted by deployments—that President Biden would ultimately use to justify his debt forgiveness scheme.   

The Biden administration’s Office of Legal Counsel wrote a memo advising the executive that the HEROES Act clearly authorizes the president to “address the financial hardship arising out of the COVID-19 pandemic by reducing or canceling the principal balances of student loans for a broad class of borrowers.”  

Yet again, we find ourselves in a situation in which a law passed during a period of war has been expanded and used to justify policies that were not debated or even contemplated at the time of its passage. 

Unfortunately, it’s a story as old as time. This country’s wars helped produce the modern American welfare state. As the antiwar writer Randolph Bourne declared during World War I, “war is the health of the state.” The libertarian scholar Robert Higgs would later describe the growth of government during wartime as having a “ratchet effect.” Each expansion of government would never click back to the pre-war normalcy. The wrench only turns in one direction: toward more government power. 

For example, Union military pensions during the Civil War were initially limited to disabled veterans and their widows and orphans, but expanded further to cover “dependent fathers and brothers.” These same benefits were later broadened to include veterans who had served at least 90 days and were disabled, whether their disability was due to the war or not. As the war ended, Republicans found the pension system—initially intended to repay soldiers wounded in battle—to be a useful tool for party-building. 

Similarly, the United States did not have federal income tax withholding until World War II. One of the leaders of the working group at the Treasury Department that implemented the policy would later remark that he wished “there were some way of abolishing withholding now,” and that withholding taxes via payrolls was “a great mistake for peacetime, but in 1941-1943, all of us were concentrating on war.” His name? Milton Friedman. 

That a libertarian icon helped pave the way for one of the greatest expansions of state power in the 20th century should tell us how powerful the tractor beam of government growth is during wartime and national emergencies. When legislators wave the bloody shirt of wars and national emergencies to pass new expansions of government power, those of us who favor limited government must examine these bills with a gimlet eye. 

The Biden administration faces political attacks from Republicans for turning the HEROES Act into a check-writing scheme they can use to curry favor in the upcoming midterm elections. They deserve those attacks. 

But if Republicans are serious about preventing this process from repeating itself, they need to take a long, hard look in the mirror and consider the massive expansion of executive power that their party championed in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Fanning the flames of war and emergency almost always opens the door for the growth of government. It certainly did in this case. 

Dan Caldwell (@dandcaldwell) is vice president for foreign policy at Stand Together. Justin Logan (@justintlogan) is director of defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. 

Source: TEST FEED1

California to become refuge for transgender youth seeking gender-affirming health care

A California bill that would make the state a safe haven for transgender children and their families is on its way to the governor’s desk after receiving final approval from the legislature Wednesday afternoon.

The measure, introduced in May by California Sen. Scott Wiener (D), would shield transgender minors that have traveled to California to receive gender-affirming health care, as well as their families, from legal actions taken by other states where treatments including puberty blockers and hormones are illegal or heavily restricted.

In February, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) ordered state agencies to open child welfare investigations into the parents of transgender children that had received gender-affirming medical care, responding to a non-legally binding opinion issued by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) that claimed some forms of gender-affirming health care amount to “child abuse” under state law.

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Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) in April signed into law a measure making it a felony – punishable by up to a decade in prison – for doctors and others to provide gender-affirming medical care to transgender youth under 19, writing in a signing statement that children need to be protected from “these radical, life-altering drugs and surgeries when they are at such a vulnerable stage in life.”

In March, Arizona also enacted a measure to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth, but limited its scope to gender-affirming surgeries, which are not recommended for minors.

Other states including Idaho this year introduced – but failed to pass – legislation that would have made it a felony to provide gender-affirming health care to a minor or to leave the state for the purposes of obtaining gender-affirming care.

Major medical organizations including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association and the American Medical Association have said gender-affirming health care for both transgender minors and adults is safe, medically necessary and often life-saving.

Under Wiener’s legislation, California health care providers, insurance companies and contractors will be prohibited from releasing information related to an individual or entity that provides gender-affirming medical care to a minor in response to a “criminal or civil action” based on the laws of another state.

“California must stand with LGBTQ kids and their families, especially when they’re under attack across the country,” Wiener said earlier this month in a statement. “Parents should never be separated from their kids or criminalized for simply allowing them to be who they are. We need to hold firm in our support for the LGBTQ community and stand with LGBTQ youth.”

The measure, which is co-sponsored by the nonprofit groups Equality California and Planned Parenthood and Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis (D), now heads to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) desk for final approval.

If enacted, the legislation would limit the ability of state law enforcement to make an arrest or participate in the extradition of a parent that has traveled to California with their minor child to receive gender-affirming health care from a state where it is illegal.

“An out-of-state arrest warrant for an individual based on violating another state’s law against providing, receiving, or allowing their child to receive gender-affirming health care or gender-affirming mental health care is the lowest law enforcement priority,” the bill reads.

State law enforcement will also be prohibited from enforcing orders from other states that authorize a child to be removed from their parent or guardian because they were permitted to receive gender-affirming health care in California.

At least 16 other states have committed to introducing similar legislation.

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R) last month enacted a law that protects access to gender-affirming health care under the state constitution and prevents state agencies from complying with extradition requests from other states pursuing criminal charges against individuals who received, assisted with or performed medical care that is legal in Massachusetts.

Source: TEST FEED1

Three House Democrats call for tighter carbon offset standards

Three House Democrats in environmental leadership positions on Tuesday called on the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to strengthen standards for voluntary carbon offsets. 

In the letter, Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee; Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Natural Resources Water, Oceans and Wildlife Subcommittee; and Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), the chairwoman of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, noted that there is no single standard for voluntary carbon offset programs. 

“We must do all we can to implement meaningful solutions to the climate crisis. As natural climate carbon offsets gain popularity, it is essential we understand (1) the current market environment and (2) gaps in protocols for assessing market quality and credibility in order to provide clarity for market operators and transparency for offset purchasers,” the members wrote. 

The members requested a full GAO study on federal coordination with offset markets, how the actual determination of carbon reductions is quantified, what federal agencies can do to increase transparency in the market and how to prevent fraud and abuse in the market. 

Demand has increased recently for carbon offset projects, in which people and institutions reduce carbon emissions elsewhere to compensate for emissions. However, some environmentalists have criticized the process as a form of greenwashing, or marketing that exaggerates environmental friendliness.

Greenpeace International has criticized offsets as “a bookkeeping trick intended to obscure climate-wrecking emissions.”  

Lack of oversight is another common criticism. Huffman tweeted on Tuesday that “we must ensure transparency so that when folks sign up to help the environment, it actually happens.” 

“Metrics to gauge the efficacy of offsets — including measuring, reporting, and verification — vary from program to program, making it difficult for consumers to understand their purchase and for policymakers to quantify the impact of these markets,” the members wrote.

“Markets thrive with transparency, while a lack of transparency carries inherent market risk. Consumers of voluntary climate offsets require transparency and well-defined standards in the natural carbon offsets market given the wide variety and possibility for fraud.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Increased telehealth use during pandemic linked to reduced overdose risk: study

A new study published on Wednesday found that the expanded use of telehealth services during the coronavirus pandemic was associated with a reduced risk of opioid overdoses.

Researchers from multiple federal agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) looked at data from more than 170,000 Medicare beneficiaries.

They analyzed receipts for telehealth services, medications for opioid use disorder (OUD) as well as medically treated overdoses.

The study split the observed beneficiaries into two groups — one that initiated OUD care before the pandemic and another that initiated care after the outbreak began.

When the pandemic began, concerns were raised among the medical community that stressors like the outbreak and the related stay-at-home orders would raise the risk of overdoses individuals with OUD.

The researchers found that beneficiaries in the COVID-19 pandemic group were likely to receive OUD-related telehealth care and were also more likely to receive corresponding medications.

Those who received OUD-related telehealth care were more likely to retain medical treatments for their conditions and had a lower risk of experiencing a medically treated overdose.

“The findings showed that telehealth improved the receipt and retention of MOUD, suggesting that this method of healthcare delivery may address common barriers to OUD-related treatment such as transportation and perceived stigma associated with OUD,” said Carla Shoff, a social science research analyst at CMS.

Despite these benefits, the study noted there were some irregularities in who was receiving telehealth care. Beneficiaries who were Black or lived in the South were less likely to receive telehealth services.

These findings come shortly after a study published in the International Journal of Drug Policy found that the large majority of people with OUD — 86.6 percent — do not receive the treatments they need.

Source: TEST FEED1

Lyft passengers, drivers allege company fails to protect users from assault

Lyft passengers and drivers who say they were sexually and physically assaulted during Lyft rides sued the rideshare company Wednesday alleging it fails to ensure user safety. 

Seventeen new lawsuits were filed against the company from drivers and passengers across the country, including from 13 sexual assault survivors and four physical assault victims. 

“Part of the reason that we’re filing so many of these cases today is to highlight this issue so that there can be a change. This is the first time this many cases [were] filed the same time across the country on behalf of both riders and drivers, as well as sexual assault survivors and victims of physical assault,” said Adam Wolf, an attorney representing the cases. 

Survivors who spoke at a press conference Wednesday said Lyft did not have adequate safety measures in place, and did not take adequate measures in response to reports of the attacks. 

A spokesperson for Lyft did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

According to Lyft’s safety page, the company requires all drivers to pass a background check before driving with Lyft and every year after that. Lyft also has features for riders, including one that allows riders to connect with an ADT security professional through the app to provide live support.

Katherine Rasta, a Lyft passenger from Phoenix, Ariz., said she was sexually assaulted during a ride last year by a driver who made inappropriate comments and sexual advances throughout the ride. When they arrived at her destination, she said he locked the doors, grabbed her phone out of her hand and sexually assaulted her. The driver threatened her, letting her know that he knows where she and her friends live now, she said. 

Rasta said when she contacted Lyft, the company said it would disable the driver’s account, but she said Lyft never got back to her after that. 

“I felt like they didn’t even care what happened to me, and I didn’t matter,” Rasta said. “Since then I moved into a different house and changed my number just so he wouldn’t find me. But that doesn’t make me feel any better. He’s still out there. I hope by sharing my story I can make Lyft understand how this impacted me and how dangerous this platform is.”

Rasta and other assault survivors who shared their stories publicly said Lyft needs to invest in more safety features, including installing cameras to capture rides. 

“The best outcome from this lawsuit would really be if Lyft took the steps it knows it needs to take to make everyone safe,” said attorney Tracey Cowan.

In addition to installing cameras, she said Lyft should be doing more comprehensive background screenings on drivers and ensuring information about people applying to be drivers is accurate.

Stuart Berman, a former Lyft driver from Connecticut, said he was physically assaulted by a passenger last year who punched him in the head and face repeatedly, and then ran out of the car. Berman said he called the police and was taken to an emergency room, and was told he had a broken nose and a blood vessel in his brain was bleeding. 

Berman said he required two brain surgeries after the attack. When he reported the incident to Lyft, Berman said he was told the company would put $750 in his account.

“To this day I’m still unable to walk or climb stairs normally, now I have a large, prominent scar in my head due to the surgery. It also serves as a constant reminder of the assault that I received,” he said. 

“In addition to the physical injury and ongoing recovery, I’ve been suffering from severe anxiety. Mentally I haven’t yet returned to normal,” he added. 

Berman said when he sits down or is in an elevator, he always has his back to the wall. If he’s unable to get to the back of the elevator, he said he waits for the next.

“I’m here to tell you Lyft must do way more to prevent these types of incidents from happening,” he said. 

In addition to the five sexual assault survivors and physical assault victims that spoke Wednesday, 12 more filed lawsuits and arbitration demands but chose to keep their stories private.

Wolf called the issue a “nationwide crisis.” 

“It’s unconscionable that Lyft was aware of the ongoing problem for years and did virtually nothing,” Wolf said. “Lyft spends massive amounts of money on woke marketing messages and lobbying, but it refuses to protect its drivers and passengers. In reality, the thing Lyft is concerned about protecting is its own profit margins.”

Source: TEST FEED1

The Taliban is seeking global acceptance while committing gender apartheid

In 2021, women’s equality had a banner year in most of the world, except in Afghanistan. There, women and girls lost many of the basic and fundamental rights that they had prior to the fall of the republic, an injustice that continues today. 

In June, United Nations Human Rights Chief Michelle Bachelet observed that “we are witnessing the progressive exclusion of women and girls from the public sphere and their institutionalized, systematic oppression.” A July Amnesty International report captures the shocking extent to which the Taliban were able to quickly implement a series of authoritarian policies that amount to a full-blown “gender apartheid.” 

Meanwhile, a summit on regional and global cooperation with Afghanistan, hosted by the Government of Uzbekistan in late July, featured representatives from more than 30 nations including the United States, the European Union, the U.N. and Russia. Those representatives met with Taliban representatives to discuss plans for bolstering mutual cooperation with the rogue regime, unmindful of the fact that soon Afghanistan would return to the front pages due to the drone strike that would kill al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. 

The summit may have produced divergent policies, but surely did not safeguard Afghan women. U.S. officials and their allies issued strong statements in support of Afghan women and nearly all countries called on the Taliban to reopen girls’ schools, but the ongoing gender apartheid was not discussed at the summit or any other major public forum.

The Taliban weaponizing gender apartheid into a theocratic totalitarian cudgel should come as no surprise, given its track record from 1996-2001. What is surprising, however, is the speed and efficiency with which the Taliban has been able to exercise the authority of the state to subjugate half of the population. 

Since seizing power last August in the aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal, the Taliban has issued a staggering 31 decrees rolling back the rights of women and girls. In comparison, they have issued few decrees to cope with the real challenges the country faces such as poverty, massive unemployment, economic freefall, public health crises and natural disasters — even when the warnings like The World Bank’s ‘Afghanistan Development Update highlight the significant increase in household hardship and per-capita income that has fallen by one-third of its previous levels. Such purposeful action suggests coordination at the highest levels of the Taliban regime and a great deal of importance being placed on enacting and enforcing gender apartheid policies. 

Afghan women and girls have become a high-stakes bargaining chip for the Taliban as it seeks international recognition and legitimacy, the lifting of crippling U.S. sanctions, foreign aid, direct investment in infrastructure projects and, most importantly, access to billions of dollars in Afghan central bank reserves currently frozen in U.S. and European banks. With so much to gain and very little to lose, the Taliban could, as many pundits predict, decide to use the reopening of girls’ schools in grades 7-12 as a bargaining chip in return for their bold demands. Given the extent to which its gender apartheid state has taken hold, allowing girls in grades 7-12 to return to school will have little impact on their overall outlook if the other apartheid conditions remain in place. 

Reports such as the World Bank’s economic recovery study advocate for policies that provide significant sums of money to the Taliban and further integrate the regime into the international finance and banking community, without making much mention at all about the nearly half  of the population that remains out of work by force. Given Afghanistan’s relatively tiny economy and the large impact that foreign aid can have on GDP growth, Taliban “economists” could be forecasting a future without women in the workforce.

No one can deny the current catastrophic humanitarian crisis that Afghanistan is grappling with, nor could one ignore the extreme poverty and despair Afghan women and men are facing. International humanitarian efforts should not be done in a way to directly or indirectly enrich and legitimize the Taliban regime. The basic rights of Afghan people, particularly Afghan women, are as important as the ongoing humanitarian disaster.  These two are not mutually exclusive, and if anything, the regime is responsible for both crises. 

In other words, in trying to mitigate a Taliban-made humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, the world community must not sacrifice the fundamental rights of Afghan women and girls.

Whatever the Taliban’s endgame is, the international community must prioritize the rights of Afghan women and girls. The world has a moral responsibility to continue the initiatives it began with Afghan women in 2001. At the very least, Afghan women deserve rights that are enshrined in generations of international norms and standards, codified in Article 1 of the U.N. Charter, and the U.N. adopted Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women — described as an international bill of rights for women. As much as Afghanistan’s neighbors and the international community do not want to upset an already volatile and violent regime, recent history has proven time and again that there can be no security and economic development while half of a population remains oppressed. 

Until the Taliban reverses its policies of gender apartheid and human rights crimes directed against Afghan women and girls, the international community should take the following actions: 

1. Demand the full rights of Afghan women and girls as a non-negotiable starting point for all other negotiations; 
2. Maintain all economic sanctions against the Taliban regime and conditionalized humanitarian assistance; 
3. Preserve all 183 Taliban leaderships on the U.N. blacklist  
4. Continue to freeze Afghan central bank reserves;  
5. Deny the Taliban the opportunity to seat its representatives at the United Nations Assembly; 

6. Reinstate a total travel ban on all Taliban leaders, and  
7. Provide the same dialogue space Taliban occupied for those groups that represent real Afghanistan. 

Failure to act in this regard amounts to capitulation to gender apartheid and an acknowledgment that Afghan women’s rights are indeed an effective barging chip. 

Naheed A. Farid is an Afghanistan parliamentarian (in-exile) and a fellow at Princeton University’s SPIA Afghanistan Policy Lab.

Source: TEST FEED1

First AP African American Studies classes to begin

Some high school students will have the chance to take a new Advanced Placement course this school year.  

The College Board, which oversees the instruction of college-level courses in high schools, is introducing an AP African American Studies course this fall.  

The course will only be offered to students at 60 schools across the country as part of a pilot program the organization announced earlier this year.   

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“AP African American Studies will introduce a new generation of students to the amazingly rich cultural, artistic, and political contributions of African Americans,” said Trevor Packer, senior vice president of AP and instruction at the College Board. “We hope it will broaden the invitation to Advanced Placement and inspire students with a fuller appreciation of the American story.” 

If all goes well this fall, the College Board plans to offer the AP course to more students next school year. College Board officials expect that the course will be available to all interested high schools in the U.S. during the 2024-25 school year.  

The course is interdisciplinary and will draw from literature, political science, geography and the sciences to delve into the contributions and experiences of African Americans. 

The course comes during a critical time in the country’s culture war where the idea of instructing critical race theory in schools has become a flashpoint for conservative lawmakers.  

Since the beginning of the year, lawmakers have introduced 137 educational gag order bills in 36 states, according to the free speech group PEN America. Those bills mainly target the instruction on race in the United States and LGBTQ+ history.  

That number represents a significant increase in efforts to censor what is being taught in schools from last year. In 2021, lawmakers introduced 54 similar educational gag order bills in 22 states, according to the organization.  

No course syllabus has been shared by the College Board but a “course framework” will be posted on the AP Program website so that “anyone can read the course material directly and see the evidence-based content and skills” students lean in the course, according to a College Board spokesperson.  

High school teachers who helped craft the pilot program met at Howard University this summer to review its framework.  

 
“A solid understanding of how African Americans have shaped America, its history, laws, institutions, culture and arts, and even the current practice of American democracy, sharpens all knowledge about our nation,” Nikki Taylor, chair of the Howard University History Department said in a statement to Changing America.  

Source: TEST FEED1

Biden assures Israeli prime minister US won't allow a nuclear Iran

President Biden sought to assure Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid on Wednesday that the U.S. would not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon, as talks about reviving the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran show signs of progress.  

“The President underscored U.S. commitment to never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon,” the White House said in a readout of the call between the two leaders on Wednesday afternoon.  

“The President expressed appreciation for the warm reception during his July trip to Israel, a visit that illustrated the unbreakable bonds and friendship between our two countries,” the readout continued. “The President also emphasized the importance of concluding the maritime boundary negotiations between Israel and Lebanon in the coming weeks.”  

Lapid tweeted that the two leaders discussed threats from Iran’s nuclear program and Tehran’s support for terror groups, adding that the U.S. and Israel are “resolute in our shared commitment to prevent a nuclear Iran.”  

Israel has opposed a nuclear deal with Iran, and that difference of opinion between Biden and Lapid was on display when the president visited Israel last month. 

More recently, Lapid called the prospective agreement a “bad deal” and argued it would not, in fact, prevent a nuclear Iran.  

“The countries of the West draw a red line, the Iranians ignore it, and the red line moves,” Lapid said at a press conference last week, according to The Associated Press. 

After months of little progress, negotiations between world powers and Iran have picked up steam in recent weeks. The White House has voiced optimism, as Iran has dropped some key demands that had previously snarled hopes of reviving the 2015 deal, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).  

Former President Trump withdrew from the nuclear agreement in 2018. Biden vowed to rejoin the accord with Iran during his campaign, describing it as the best path to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.  

The U.S. recently filed a response with European Union mediators and is still waiting to hear a reply from Iran and the EU, White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Wednesday.  

“We still remain hopeful that we can get a reimplementation of the JCPOA. We do believe we’re closer now than we have been in certain recent weeks and months due in large part to Iran being willing to drop some of their demands that were not related to the deal at all,” Kirby said. “So, we’re cautiously optimistic that things can continue to move in the right direction.” 

Source: TEST FEED1