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Steven Seagal visits destroyed Ukrainian prison in support of Kremlin

Actor Steven Seagal visited an eastern Ukrainian prison where a deadly strike killed dozens of prisoners of war, in support of the Kremlin’s claims that Ukraine is responsible for the attack, according to Russian state media.

Zvezda, a Russian state-owned television network, published a video of Seagal at the Olenivka Prison repeating the Kremlin’s narrative of the recent attack that killed 53 and wounded dozens of others on July 29, arguing Ukrainians carried out the strike using U.S.-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS).

The Ukrainian military has claimed the prison, which housed Ukrainian prisoners of war captured at the Azovstal steel mill during the fall of Mariupol, was blown up from the inside by Russia’s military.

“It definitely looks like a rocket,” Seagal said in the video. “If you look at the burning and other details, of course it’s not a bomb. Not to mention the fact that Russia really has a lot of artifacts from HIMARS.”

The Hill has not independently verified the footage.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby last Thursday said U.S. intelligence indicates Russia is seeking to plant evidence to portray Ukrainian forces as the aggressors in the attack, potentially including ammunition from HIMARS. Moscow has denied those claims.

HIMARS have been a key component of recent U.S. security assistance to Ukraine, since the GPS-guided missiles can reach targets up to 50 miles away, and then the system can change position quickly to avoid counterattacks.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres last week announced he was appointing a fact-finding mission in response to requests from the two countries for an investigation into the attack on Olenivka Prison.

Denis Pushilin, leader of the pro-Kremlin separatists in the Donetsk region, posted on Telegram that Seagal was filming a documentary about the war.

“At the meeting, Steven noted that 98 percent of those who talk about the conflict in the media have never been here,” Pushilin wrote. “Therefore, the world does not know the truth. He wants to change the way we look at this war.”

Seagal, who supported Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea in Ukraine’s south, was later granted Russian citizenship by President Vladimir Putin. Seagal was appointed as Russia’s special envoy to the U.S. in 2018.

Russian politician and TV host Vladimir Solovyov wrote on Telegram that Seagal “personally got acquainted with the evidence,” claiming it confirmed the pro-Kremlin viewpoint.

Source: TEST FEED1

Multiracial LGBTQ+ youth face heightened suicide risk: report

Multiracial LGBTQ+ youth face unique challenges that can put them at greater risk of negative mental health outcomes including suicide, according to new research from The Trevor Project, a national LGBTQ+ youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention group. 

At the same time, multiracial LGBTQ+ young people also have a distinctive slate of protective factors, like family support, on their side that uplift their wellbeing and help prevent self-harm.

In a report published Thursday by The Trevor Project, nearly half of multiracial LGBTQ+ youth, 48 percent, said they had seriously considered suicide sometime in the last year, compared with 45 percent of LGBTQ+ youth overall.

Nearly one in five multiracial LGBTQ+ youth, 17 percent, said they had attempted suicide in the last 12 months, according to the report, which uses data from The Trevor Project’s 2022 National Survey on LGBTQ Mental Health – a study of nearly 34,000 LGBTQ+ 13- to 24-year-olds in the U.S.

Overall, 14 percent of LGBTQ+ youth reported attempting suicide sometime in the last year.

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According to the report, multiracial transgender and nonbinary youth are at greater risk of suicide, with 55 percent “seriously considering” suicide and 22 percent attempting suicide at least once over the last year. That’s in line with prior findings, which have highlighted a heightened risk of suicide and self-harm among transgender and gender non-conforming young people, regardless of their race or ethnicity.

Nearly 60 percent of multiracial LGBTQ+ youth identify as transgender or nonbinary, The Trevor Project said Thursday, compared with just over half of LGBTQ+ youth overall.

Multiracial LGBTQ+ youth also reported higher rates of mental health challenges like anxiety and depression and are at greater risk of suicide than their monoracial LGBTQ+ peers due to elevated rates of homelessness, food insecurity and compounded discrimination based on their race and sexual orientation or gender identity.

Multiracial LGBTQ+ youth who are exclusively youth of color reported higher rates of both seriously considering, 52 percent, and attempting suicide, 21 percent, in the past 12 months compared with LGBTQ+ youth who are white and another race or ethnicity, according to The Trevor Project.

“These findings shine a light on the unique mental health challenges and suicide risk of young people living with the distinctive identities of being multiracial and LGBTQ,” Myeshia Price, The Trevor Project’s director of research science, said Thursday in a statement. “The research world has largely overlooked this group of young people and how they might experience various risk and protective factors.”

Price said Thursday’s findings highlight an urgent need to invest in mental health services and suicide prevention programs aimed at affirming the identities of multiracial LGBTQ+ youth and are “attuned to the nuances of how they navigate and experience the world.”

“Researchers and stakeholders must do more to examine and dismantle systematic racism and to prioritize the wellbeing of multiracial LGBTQ youth to inform best practices for working with this population,” the report’s authors wrote Thursday. “Youth-serving organizations must create supportive and accepting environments where multiracial identities are validated and LGBTQ identities are affirmed.”

The Trevor Project also identified a number of protective factors for multiracial LGBTQ+ youth suicide, including high levels of social support from family and friends. 

Multiracial LGBTQ+ youth who reported attending an LGBTQ+ affirming school were 33 percent less likely to have attempted suicide sometime in the last year compared with those who did not attend a school that affirmed their sexual orientation or gender identity.

If you or someone you know are having thoughts about self-harm or suicide, you can reach the Trevor Lifeline, a free and confidential service that offers trained counselors 24/7, at 1-866-488-7386.

Source: TEST FEED1

The US is filled with voter turnout deserts, pushing inequalities: study

Minority citizens, young people and those who support the Democratic Party are much less likely to go out and vote, according to a new study that analyzed millions of voter records from across the country. 

Researchers at Brigham Young University (BYU) and the University of Virginia analyzed voter registration lists from all 50 states that equated to about 400 million voter records across two election cycles—the 2014 midterm elections and the 2016 presidential election. 

Their analysis found that there are large and persistent gaps in voter turnout in the U.S. by race, age and political affiliation. Their data found that in 2016, white Americans voted at a rate of between nine to 15 percentage points higher than Black, Asian and Hispanic Americans. 

In 2014, the gaps were even deeper—with white Americans voting at a rate between nine to 18 percentage points higher than Black, Asian and Hispanic Americans.  

Overall, Republicans were also more likely to vote than Democrats in both 2014 and 2016. 

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The results of the study come on the heels of the midterm elections and during a time where many states have developed new voting maps—a process that only happens once every 10 years and involves redrawing political lines that can determine the balance of power in Congress for the following decade. 

The analysis done was different than historical voter turnout studies, which have relied on survey data. However, most surveys measure self-reported levels of voter turnout and become susceptible to social desirability bias—where people tend to present themselves in a favorable way rather than give accurate answers. 

Researchers argued that surveys are also rarely large enough to provide thorough representation at the local level—with most designed to represent voters more broadly at the state level. 

Instead, researchers at BYU and the University of Virginia looked at voter files over survey data, since whether a citizen votes is considered public record in the U.S. By using this approach, researchers were able to access a snapshot of over 200 million individuals in a single year, by vote history, age, gender, race, geographic location and political party. 

Their results found that much of the country has large pockets of turnout deserts—a local community where comparatively few people vote. Black, Hispanic and Asian individuals are more likely to live in a turnout desert than white Americans, and Democrats are 2.5 times more likely to live in a turnout desert than Republicans. 

“Given the social component of voting, we have strong reason to suspect that turnout deserts are socially stratified in the United States and are self-reinforcing—thus perpetuating political inequality in the United States,” researchers wrote. 

Young people are also much more likely to live in a turnout desert than older citizens—with older citizens over the age of 60 voting roughly at a rate 40 percentage points higher than people 30 years of age or younger. 

“Turnout deserts are located all across the country. It’s not as easy as simply saying they’re ‘only in rural or urban areas,’” says Michael Barber, professor at BYU and co-author of the study. 

“People tend to live around people who are like them. If racial minorities are less likely to vote and they live around other minorities then the whole neighborhood is going to be less likely to vote.”  

Leaving turnout deserts unaddressed could allow political power to be unequally distributed across the U.S., leaving the nation far from its democratic aspirations.  

Source: TEST FEED1

Forget the optics: Trump must be held accountable

Should the letter of the law be overlooked if it means preserving the rule of law?

I’m talking about concerns by Democrats and Republicans alike that the piling on of investigations against former President Trump for alleged violations of multiple state and federal laws may backfire by creating a martyrdom that could arouse the sympathies of swing voters, incite his base and bring him back for a second term that makes the first seem blasé. 

For much of the year, tiny cracks have spread across Trump’s Teflon. Republicans seem more open to considering other presidential candidates; and those potential candidates seem to be more willing to poke, carefully, at his vulnerabilities. The damning testimony of Trump’s own former allies to the Jan. 6 Committee is sticking, So, I have been asked, why redeem him by unifying Republicans around the narrative that he’s the victim of a politicized Justice Department?

Let’s dispense with the argument about inciting the base. How much more incited could it get after many of its members condoned or participated in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol? Folks, that fuse is lit and inextinguishable. You can’t calm the zombie apocalypse.

The better question is whether the narrative that Trump is being persecuted rather than prosecuted will somehow lure more moderate voters back into his camp, the ones in battleground states who voted for Trump in 2016 then switched to Biden in 2020. The next election largely rests with them.

That’s the concern of one friend — an ideological conservative who donated generously to Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) presidential campaign, takes a hardline against Democrats such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) but twice voted against Trump.

When I represented him in Congress, my friend was an outspoken (sometimes acerbic) critic of my positions as a member of the House Democratic leadership. He often reminds me that being a conservative means supporting change when it is incremental, measured and modest, rather than the policy wrecking ball of the Trump administration. He wants Trump to disappear from the political theater so he can return to backing conventional Republicans who support free markets and the rule of law.

But the recent raid by the FBI on Mar-a-Lago bothered him. In an email, he wrote, “From a Machiavellian perspective I find it somewhat confounding – at least the timing. If a real smoking gun is found, then Trump is greatly discredited, boosting the fortunes of moderate Republicans. If no smoking gun is found, then Trump and his acolytes get an enormous public relations boost.”

One pro-Trump commentator, Jack Posobiec, was less nuanced: “Trump just won the 2024 primary,” he told the Associated Press after the warrant at Mar-a-Lago was executed.

Let’s forget, for the moment, that a federal judge approved the search based on the potential criminal misconduct. Or that FBI Director Christopher Wray served as a high-ranking official in a Republican-led Justice Department. Or that President Clinton’s national security adviser, Sandy Berger, pled guilty, paid a $50,000 fine and received probation for a not too dissimilar offense: removing classified documents from the National Archives in 2003 to prepare for his testimony to the 9/11 Commission.

The political question is this: Should law enforcement allow partisan optics to color their judgements about whether to proceed with inquiries, investigations or prosecutions?  

What if my friend is correct? What if this investigation and the next one and the one after that generate a narrative among swing voters that Trump is not venal but victim? What if scrupulous obedience to upholding the letter of the law does, in fact, backfire, and abets the election of an unscrupulous, lawless administration? 

Here, I am a purist. Forget the optics. I go back to Henry of Bracton, a 13th century cleric and jurist, who wrote, “The king himself ought to be subject to God and the law, because law makes him king.”

Or, more familiarly, my personal political hero, Theodore Roosevelt. In his third annual address to Congress in 1903, he stated: “No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man’s permission when we require him to obey it. Obedience to the law is demanded as a right; not asked as a favor.”

The rule of law demands not blind but careful obedience to the letter of the law. More importantly, it undergirds the notion of justice itself. Once we begin making exceptions based on electoral optics, no matter how worthy they may seem, we have entered the realm where both law and justice become soft, spongy and as credible and transient as the most recent poll.

Steve Israel represented New York in the U.S. House of Representatives over eight terms and was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee from 2011 to 2015. He is now director of the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy Institute of Politics and Global Affairs. Follow him on Twitter @RepSteveIsrael. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Facebook plummets in popularity among teens

Facebook, and parent company Meta, is no stranger to controversies. Recent headlines include such scandals as the site profiting from ads on searches for hate group pages and handing over data implicating a Nebraska teen and her mother for illegally self-managing an abortion. 

Amid all the negative press, a subsequent decline in revenue, and the company’s own chatbot claiming it ‘exploits people,’ new data from the Pew Research Center now shows Facebook’s reach among teens has fallen dramatically in the past few years, especially compared to new social media star, TikTok. 

Pew surveyed 1,316 pairs of American teenagers between the ages 13 and 17 and one parent of each teen between April and May 2022. The majority of teens surveyed were white boys between the ages 15 and 17. Respondents also mostly lived in suburban environments and reported a household income of $75,000 or more per year.

Of those surveyed, 67 percent of teens said they use TikTok, with 16 percent reporting they use the app “constantly.” Meanwhile, just 32 percent said they use Facebook, a sharp decrease from the 71 percent who reported using the platform in a similar survey carried out from 2014 to 2015. Additional data show the platform remains popular with adults. 

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More teens also report using Instagram and Snapchat since the previous survey, while two platforms assessed at the time — Vine and Google + —  are no longer in existence. 

In the current report, YouTube was ranked as the most popular platform of choice, with 97 percent of respondents saying they use it. Instagram and Snapchat followed TikTok with about 60 percent of teens saying they use each of the services. 

But Facebook usage was still higher compared with Twitter, Whatsapp, Reddit and Tumblr, respectively, data showed. 

Results also demonstrate differences based on economic status with regard to Facebook use: “44% of teens living in households earning less than $30,000 a year and 39% of teens from households earning $30,000 to less than $75,000 a year say they ever use Facebook, while 27% of those from households earning $75,000 or more a year say the same,” authors wrote. 

Among those who do use Facebook, they reported using the platform less often than other apps, although nearly 60 percent of users said they still check the app daily.

Social media platforms in general have received their fair share of scrutiny in recent years from allegations they perpetuate eating disorders and other mental health issues among teens, to data showing the spaces are breeding grounds for online discrimination against LGBTQ+ individuals.

The Pew report noted demographic differences among teens’ social media diets. “For example, teen boys are more likely than teen girls to say they use YouTube, Twitch and Reddit, whereas teen girls are more likely than teen boys to use TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat,” authors wrote. 

Black and Hispanic teens are also more likely to use TikTok, Instagram, Twitter and WhatsApp than their white counterparts. 

Data underscore the level to which teens engage with platforms as 35 percent reported using at least one of them “constantly.” Rates of use were highest among TikTok, SnapChat and YouTube users, while nearly 40 percent of teens felt they spent too much time on any of the social media apps.

Teen girls were also more likely to say it would be difficult to give up social media compared with boys. Around 25 percent of boys said it would be very easy to kick the habit.

The data reflect growing rates of internet use among this age group overall. Currently, 97 percent of teens report using the internet on a daily basis compared with 92 percent in 2014-15. “The share of teens who say they are online almost constantly has roughly doubled since 2014-15 (46% now and 24% then),” authors added. 

Studies remain largely inconsistent when it comes to proving social media leads to detrimental effects on teens’ mental health, while others suggest individuals’ age may play a more important factor in the association.

Source: TEST FEED1

FTC launches effort to review, update data privacy rules

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will launch an effort to review and update rules over how companies collect and use data, the agency announced Thursday. 

The FTC said it will explore rules to “crack down on harmful commercial surveillance and lax data security,” expanding on Democratic Chair Lina Khan’s aggressive action targeting tech companies. 

“The growing digitization of our economy—coupled with business models that can incentivize endless hoovering up of sensitive user data and a vast expansion of how this data is used—means that potentially unlawful practices may be prevalent,” Khan said in a statement.

“Our goal today is to begin building a robust public record to inform whether the FTC should issue rules to address commercial surveillance and data security practices and what those rules should potentially look like,” she added.

The FTC commissioners voted 3-2 to start the process, which will begin by collecting public comments, with the two Republicans opposing the Democratic majority. 

The agency is expected to share more information about the effort during a news conference at noon Thursday. 

The FTC’s decision to move forward with a process to review and update data privacy protections comes as Congress is weighing proposals aimed at creating a comprehensive federal data privacy law. 

The House Energy and Commerce Committee advanced the American Data Privacy Protection Act (ADPPA) last month with bipartisan support. A version of the bill has been introduced in the Senate, but it lacks support from Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), hindering its chances of moving forward. 

Despite the bipartisan support for updating data privacy laws, the FTC’s decision faced a mixed reaction from leading lawmakers in Congress pushing to revamp the protections. 

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), the ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee and sponsor of the ADPPA, said the process to create those new protections should be carried out through Congress and not the FTC.

“I strongly share the goal of enacting robust privacy protections for Americans. That should be achieved by the American people speaking through their elected representatives and not through executive action,” Rodgers said in a statement. 

“Unlike a FTC rule, it includes a national privacy standard. One standard—clearly directed by Congress—is paramount to minimizing the amount of peoples’ information companies are allowed to collect, process, and transfer,” she added. 

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a leading voice pushing for updates to data privacy, especially for kids and teens, cheered the FTC’s action. 

“This announced rulemaking is a tremendous win for consumers, promising strong protections for privacy rights and personal data, and accountability for violating them,” Blumenthal said in a statement. “Big Tech’s exploitation of Americans’ private information, anti-competitive behavior, and data breaches have created a crisis that demands action. I’ve long urged the FTC to use this essential tool to implement strong and enforceable consumer safeguards and rights. This rule is a major step forward in helping give power back to consumers.” 

Source: TEST FEED1

Mulvaney says he never saw 'intentional destruction of documents' at Trump White House

Former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney on Thursday said that he saw former President Trump rip up documents but never saw the intentional destruction of important papers.

The remarks from Mulvaney, who has been critical of Trump, come days after the FBI conducted a search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate that is linked to a probe on classified documents.

“I never saw the intentional destruction of documents for the purpose of keeping anything for the National Archives, or the public in the future,” Mulvaney told CNN’s “New Day” host Brianna Keilar 

Mulvaney said that everyone in the administration knew the importance of preserving documents and that everyone including himself sometimes ripped up documents. 

“And we knew the rules and yes, we taped them back together and yes, we made copies and keep in mind that’s important,” Mulvaney told Keilar.

“As long as copies are preserved, you can pretty much do whatever you want to with the other documents,” he added. “But we all knew the rules and I never saw the intentional destruction of documents whatsoever.” 

Mulvaney reiterated that he saw documents being “handled in the ordinary course of business,” stating that every prior administration has fixed defaced documents. 

“You never heard about him ripping and flushing documents,” Keilar asked Mulvaney. 

“I saw him rip documents. I mean we did,” Mulvaney replied back. 

“The flushing, you never heard about him flushing documents,” Keilar asked Mulvaney. 

New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman earlier this week released a pair of photos from her forthcoming book to back up her reporting that White House staffers regularly found ripped-up printing paper in the toilet of the presidential residence during Trump’s term in office. 

“Not a single time,” Mulvaney said. 

Mulvaney’s remarks come after the FBI executed a search warrant at Trump’s Florida based residence on Monday. The raid was reportedly as part of an investigation into whether Trump brought classified documents with him when he left the White House.

Source: TEST FEED1

Let’s honor Social Security’s 87th anniversary by strengthening and expanding it

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Social Security into law 87 years ago on Aug. 14, 1935, he did not intend for it to remain frozen in place. He knew that his landmark social insurance program — enacted during the depths of the Great Depression — would need to be expanded to meet Americans’ needs as times changed. The Social Security Act of 1935, he said, “represents a cornerstone in a structure which is being built but is by no means complete.”      

“FDR obviously couldn’t anticipate exactly what would happen in the future,” says his grandson, James Roosevelt, Jr., vice-chair of the advisory board of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.  “But he realized that society would change, demographics would change, and he wanted Social Security to be nimble and flexible.”    

In fact, during the first 40 years of Social Security, Congress expanded the program no less than 15 times  — mostly to broaden coverage and increase benefits.  In 1950, Social Security was expanded to cover domestic and agricultural workers. In 1956, Congress added monthly disability benefits, which is why millions of workers with disabilities collect Social Security today. The 1972 amendments provided annual cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) to help beneficiaries keep up with inflation.     

Sadly, benefits have not been significantly improved since then. Instead, lawmakers have prioritized keeping the program’s trust fund solvent amidst waves of retiring baby boomers.  In 1983, Congress increased the payroll tax and raised the retirement age gradually from 65 to 67, which was, in effect, a benefit cut. It was ‘hard medicine’ that affects retirees four decades later. At the time, Congress had little choice because it waited so long to act that Social Security was just months away from being unable to pay full benefits.    

Today, Social Security’s finances once again need strengthening.  The program’s trustees project that the combined retirement and disability trust fund will become depleted by 2035.  That does not mean Social Security will be “bankrupt,” as some claim. But it is a serious shortfall that Congress must address. At the same time, lawmakers must increase benefits to reflect the realities of making ends meet in 21st century America by bringing more revenue into the system.  Many seniors are struggling to get by on monthly Social Security payments averaging about $1,600 — only slightly above the federal poverty line.     

It’s no mystery why they are struggling. Even before this year’s record-high inflation, the cost of growing old in America had been steadily rising. The price of everything from health care to housing to prescription drugs has soared beyond many seniors’ means. Cost-of-living adjustments, which may hit a 40-year high next year, still have not adequately kept pace with retirees’ true living expenses. Retirement savings and employer-provided pensions have dwindled, leaving some 40 percent of seniors reliant on Social Security for all or most of their income.

COVID-19 has taken a disproportionate toll on seniors and exacerbated their financial insecurity.  The chairman of the House Ways and Means Social Security Subcommittee, Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) says the older generations have been struck by “the double-edged sword of pandemic and inflation.”  While Social Security retirement, disability and survivor’s benefits have been a lifeline for millions of Americans during the pandemic, benefits must be boosted to help beneficiaries cope with the ongoing crisis.

Conservatives claim that we can’t increase benefits and protect Social Security’s finances. But that’s not true. Larson has introduced legislation, the Social Security 2100 Act, that expands benefits and extends the life of the trust fund. Under Larson’s bill, all beneficiaries would receive a 2 percent boost in benefits — with special increases for widows and widowers, lower-income workers, and retirees over 85 years of age. Future COLAs would be based on an inflation formula — the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly — that more accurately reflects seniors’ spending patterns. 

Larson’s bill also would increase the flow of revenue into Social Security. Currently, high earners do not contribute to Social Security on wages exceeding $147,000. Under the Social Security 2100 Act, wages above $400,000 also would be subject to payroll taxes. This is a fair and just reform that helps to compensate for increasing income equality. As Larson says, “We should all pay our fair share so that no one is left behind.”  

The Social Security 2100 Act has more than 200 cosponsors in the House. But not a single Republican supports it, and some moderate Democrats still haven’t endorsed the bill. All Democrats should support legislation to expand Social Security for the first time since 1972, reversing what Larson calls “more than 50 years of Congressional neglect.”  

It’s not only the right thing to do, but a politically wise move. Polling continually demonstrates that majorities of Americans want the kinds of improvements in Larson’s bill. In a new survey from Data for Progress, 83 percent of likely voters support expanding Social Security, including 84 percent of Republicans and 79 percent of independents. Seventy-six percent of likely voters across party lines support adjusting the payroll wage cap.  

This may be the Democrats’ last opportunity for the foreseeable future to expand Social Security. Republicans have their own plans should they regain power on Capitol Hill, and those plans do not include improving benefits. In fact, the GOP wants to cut and privatize Social Security — basically, to end the program as we know it.  Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), chair of the party’s committee to re-take the Senate, proposed a plan where Social Security would have to be renewed by Congress every five years.     

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) has been pushing a bill, the TRUST Act, which could fast-track legislation to cut Social Security benefits.  Just last week, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said that Social Security spending should be considered “discretionary spending” and subject to routine budget negotiations, even though the program is self-funded by workers.       

“The GOP basically says we have to destroy the promise of Social Security in order to save it,” says Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Progressive Caucus in the House and a co-sponsor of Larson’s bill.     

Bringing the Social Security 2100 Act to the floor for a vote would show the American people where their elected representatives truly stand on this crucial issue.  It would force Republicans to go on the record ‘for or against’ improving benefits — a vote they have managed to shirk for more than half a century.      

James Roosevelt, Jr. believes that his grandfather would have wholeheartedly supported this legislation. “I think President Roosevelt surely would agree with updating the program to reflect the realities of this century, just as he supported updating it to include agricultural and domestic workers in the middle of the 20th Century.”

When Congress returns from summer recess, Democrats have a limited window to enact the Social Security 2100 Act before the midterm elections and subsequent lame duck session.  “Let’s get this bill to a mark-up, get it to the House floor, and get this done,” says Larson. We in the advocacy community will do everything in our power to make that happen. Voters must do their part, too, by demanding that their members of Congress expand and strengthen Social Security while they still have the chance. After all, there is no better way for us to honor the program’s anniversary than to continue building on the cornerstone President Roosevelt and the U.S. Congress put in place 87 years ago. 

Max Richtman is president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. He is former staff director of the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Matt Damon, José Andrés, Lin-Manuel Miranda to speak at return of Clinton Global Initiative

The Clinton Global Initiative is giving a star-studded boost to its first meeting since 2016, with actor Matt Damon, “Hamilton’s” Lin-Manuel Miranda and famed chef José Andrés all announced as participants this year.

The lineup of famous faces will join former President Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and author and health advocate Chelsea Clinton at the two-day event beginning Sept. 19 in New York, the Clinton Foundation announced on Thursday.

Other prominent figures who are poised to appear include: New York Mayor Eric Adams (D), New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Laurene Powell Jobs, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R) and Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan.

The Clinton Global Initiative ended six years ago, reportedly amid concerns over a possible conflict of interest during Hillary Clinton’s 2016 White House bid. The Clinton Foundation announced in March that it was reconvening the high-profile gathering in order to address “steep” challenges.

The theme for this year’s meeting is “The Business of How,” focusing on “[driving] action on climate, health equity, economic growth, the refugee crisis and more.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Russia confirms negotiations with US on prisoner exchange

Russian officials confirmed on Thursday they are negotiating with the United States over a prisoner swap.

U.S. officials have reportedly proposed exchanging WNBA star Brittney Griner and former Marine Paul Whelan for notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.

Russian foreign ministry deputy spokesman Ivan Nechayev said at a news briefing that “corresponding competent authorities have been instructed to negotiate the issue” and “are in talks” on the matter, according to Russian news outlet Tass.

Nechayev also urged reporters and the public “not to speculate on the sensitive issue affecting specific individuals.”

“We would recommend abandoning futile attempts to put pressure on us and we are calling on them to concentrate on practical work along the available channels,” he said, according to Tass. “We proceed from the fact that the negotiations should take the interests of both sides into account.”

Earlier this month, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the Kremlin was ready to negotiate with the U.S. after the Biden administration reportedly offered the two-for-one swap involving Griner and Whelan.

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson, who has been talking to both sides, predicted Sunday that Whelan and Griner will be freed in a “two-for-two” swap with Moscow.

Griner was arrested in Russia in February for bringing cannabis oil cartridges into the country, where marijuana is illegal. She was sentenced to nine years in prison last week.

Whelan was detained in Russia in 2018 on spying charges he denies and sentenced to 16 years in prison.

President Biden last week said he was “hopeful” and “working hard” to secure the release of the prisoners.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters last week the president “has to feel hopeful” because the exchange was something “important to him.”

“We have made a substantial offer to bring Brittney and Paul Whelan home,” she said. “They need to be home. They should be home. They are being wrongfully detained.”

Source: TEST FEED1