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    Schumer faces backlash after calling for new Israeli elections to oust Netanyahu

    Chuck Schumer, the US Senate leader and a top ally of Joe Biden, on Thursday broke with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu over his handling of the invasion of Gaza and called for Israel to hold new elections, in comments that upset its ruling party and allies on Capitol Hill.The shift by Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader and the highest-ranking Jewish official in the United States, came as he continued to press lawmakers to pass a military assistance package for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, the countries Biden has named as America’s top national security priorities.In remarks from the Senate floor, Schumer said he had a longstanding relationship with Netanyahu but believed he “has lost his way by allowing his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel”.Noting the prime minister’s inclusion of far-right officials in his government, Schumer said Netanyahu “has been too willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza, which is pushing support for Israel worldwide to historic lows. Israel cannot survive if it becomes a pariah”.Israel’s ruling Likud party responded to Schumer by defending the prime minister’s public support and saying Israel is “not a banana republic”.“Contrary to Schumer’s words, the Israeli public supports a total victory over Hamas, rejects any international dictates to establish a Palestinian terrorist state, and opposes the return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza,” it said in a statement.“Senator Schumer is expected to respect Israel’s elected government and not undermine it. This is always true, and even more so in wartime.”The Republican Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, struck a similar tone. “Israel is not a colony of America whose leaders serve at the pleasure of the party in power in Washington. Only Israel’s citizens should have a say in who runs their government,” he said from the chamber’s floor, shortly after Schumer spoke.“Either we respect their decisions, or we disrespect their democracy.”Republican speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who has refused to allow a vote on the military assistance package despite its passage in the Senate, said Schumer’s remarks were “highly inappropriate” and accused him of playing “a divisive role in Israeli politics”.Schumer’s appeal comes amid rising concern among Biden’s Democratic allies over the civilian deaths in Gaza, which recently passed 30,000, according to health authorities in the Hamas-run administration. Biden threw his support behind Israel following Hamas’s 7 October terror attack, causing a domestic backlash that has seen protesters disrupt his speeches and tens of thousands of people cast protest votes in the Democratic primaries, including in swing states that will be crucial to his re-election in November.Biden says he supports the implementation of a temporary ceasefire in Gaza that would accompany the release of the remaining hostages taken by Hamas on 7 October. This month, US planes began airdrops of humanitarian aid into Gaza, and Biden says the military will construct a pier to deliver assistance by sea, as humanitarians warn the enclave could soon face a famine.Schumer has positioned himself as a strong ally of Israel’s government, visiting the country days after Hamas’s attack. But in a sign of how much his thinking has shifted, Schumer on Thursday declared: “The Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after October 7. The world has changed – radically – since then, and the Israeli people are being stifled right now by a governing vision that is stuck in the past.”He listed Netanyahu, who has long opposed Palestinian statehood, as among several roadblocks to implementing the two-state solution supported by the United States, alongside rightwing Israelis, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas.“These are the four obstacles to peace, and if we fail to overcome them, then Israel and the West Bank and Gaza will be trapped in the same violent state of affairs they’ve experienced for the last 75 years,” Schumer said.He added that the US could not dictate the outcome of an election in Israel, but “there needs to be a fresh debate about the future of Israel after October 7”.Netanyahu’s cabinet is dominated by ultranationalists who share the prime minister’s opposition to Palestinian statehood and other aims that successive US administrations have seen as essential to resolving Palestinian-Israeli conflicts in the long term.The US vice-president, Kamala Harris, Schumer and other lawmakers met last week in Washington with Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s war cabinet and a far more popular rival of Netanyahu – a visit that drew a rebuke from the Israeli prime minister.Gantz joined Netanyahu’s government in the war cabinet soon after the Hamas attacks. But Gantz is expected to leave the government once the heaviest fighting subsides, signaling that the period of national unity has ended. A return to mass demonstrations could ramp up pressure on Netanyahu’s deeply unpopular coalition to hold early elections.At the White House, the national security spokesperson, John Kirby, did not comment on Schumer’s statement, saying the Biden administration was concentrating on getting agreement on a temporary ceasefire.“We know Leader Schumer feels strongly about this and we’ll certainly let him speak to it and to his comments,” Kirby said. “We’re going to stay focused on making sure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself while doing everything that they can to avoid civilian casualties.” More

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    Israeli PM Netanyahu ‘obstacle to peace’ in Gaza, says US Senate majority leader – video

    The Democratic Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, has said Benjamin Netanyahu has emerged as a ‘major obstacle to peace’ in Gaza, in a further sign of growing tensions between the US and its ally Israel. Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish official in the US, accused Netanyahu of bowing to pressure from ‘extremists’ in his cabinet and appealed to Israel to ‘change course’, warning that the US would be prepared to use its leverage to shape Israeli policy if it failed to do so More

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    Is the US really preparing to ban TikTok?

    The House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday that would require TikTok owner ByteDance to sell the social media platform or face a total ban in the United States.The legislation now moves to the Senate, where its likelihood of passing is uncertain. But with a landslide of support in the House – 352 Congress members voted in favor of the bill and only 65 voted against – it’s clear that TikTok is facing its biggest existential threat yet in the US.Here’s what you need to know about the bill, how likely TikTok is to be banned, and what that means for the platform’s 170 million US users.Is the US really trying to ban TikTok, and why?The bill that passed in the House on Wednesday is the latest salvo in an ongoing political battle over the platform, which exploded in popularity after its emergence in 2017. It quickly surpassed Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube in downloads in 2018 and reported a 45% increase in monthly active users between July 2020 and July 2022.The platform’s meteoric rise alarmed some lawmakers, who believe that TikTok’s China-based parent company could collect sensitive user data and censor content that goes against the Chinese government.TikTok has repeatedly stated it has not and would not share US user data with the Chinese government, but lawmakers’ concerns were exacerbated by news investigations that showed China-based employees at ByteDance had accessed nonpublic data about US TikTok users.TikTok has argued that US user data is not held in China but in Singapore and in the US, where it is routed through cloud infrastructure operated by Oracle, an American company. In 2023, TikTok opened a data center in Ireland where it handles EU citizen data.These measures have not been sufficient for many US lawmakers, and in March 2023 the TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew was called before Congress, where he faced more than five hours of intensive questioning about these and other practices. Lawmakers asked Chew about his own nationality, accusing him of fealty to China. He is, in fact, Singaporean.Various efforts to police TikTok and how it engages with US user data have been floated in Congress in the past year, culminating in the bill passed on Wednesday.Is this bill really a TikTok ban?Under the new bill, ByteDance would have 165 days to divest from TikTok, meaning it would have to sell the social media platform to a company not based in China. If it did not, app stores including the Apple App Store and Google Play would be legally barred from hosting TikTok or providing web-hosting services to ByteDance-controlled applications.Authors of the bill have argued it does not constitute a ban, as it gives ByteDance the opportunity to sell TikTok and avoid being blocked in the US.“TikTok could live on and people could do whatever they want on it provided there is that separation,” said Representative Mike Gallagher, the Republican chair of the House select China committee. “It is not a ban – think of this as a surgery designed to remove the tumor and thereby save the patient in the process.”TikTok has argued otherwise, stating that it is not clear whether China would approve a sale or that it could even complete a sale within six months.“This legislation has a predetermined outcome: a total ban of TikTok in the United States,” the company said after the committee vote. “The government is attempting to strip 170 million Americans of their constitutional right to free expression. This will damage millions of businesses, deny artists an audience, and destroy the livelihoods of countless creators across the country.”How did we get here?TikTok has faced a number of bans and attempted bans in recent years, starting with an executive order by Donald Trump in 2020, which was ultimately blocked by courts on first amendment grounds. Trump has since reversed his stance, now opposing a ban on TikTok. Joe Biden, by contrast, has said he will sign the bill if it reaches his desk.Montana attempted to impose a statewide ban on the app in 2023, but the law was struck down by a federal judge over first amendment violations. The app was banned on government-issued phones in the US in 2022, and as of 2023 at least 34 states have also banned TikTok from government devices. At least 50 universities in the US have banned TikTok from on-campus wifi and university-owned computers.The treasury-led Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) in March 2023 demanded ByteDance sell its TikTok shares or face the possibility of the app being banned, Reuters reported, but no action has been taken.TikTok was banned in India in 2020 after a wave of dangerous “challenges” led to the deaths of some users. The ban had a marked effect on competition in India, handing a significant market to YouTube’s Shorts and Instagram Reels, direct competitors of TikTok. The app is not available in China itself, where Douyin, a separate app from parent company ByteDance with firmer moderation, is widely used.How would a ban on TikTok be enforced?Due to the decentralized nature of the internet, enforcing a ban would be complex. The bill passed by the House would penalize app stores daily for making TikTok available for download, but for users who already have the app on their phones, it would be difficult to stop individual use.Internet service providers could also be forced to block IP addresses associated with TikTok, but such practices can be easily evaded on computer browsers by using a VPN, or virtual private network, which re-routes computer connections to other locations.To fully limit access to TikTok, the US government would have to employ methods used by countries like Iran and China, which structure their internet in a way that makes content restrictions more easily enforceable.Who supports the potential TikTok ban?While Trump – who started the war on TikTok in 2020 – has reversed his stance on the potential ban, most Republican lawmakers have expressed support of it. The Biden administration has also backed the bill, with the press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre saying the administration wants “to see this bill get done so it can get to the president’s desk”. Biden’s campaign joined TikTok last month.Despite Trump’s opposition to the bill, many Republicans are pushing forward with the effort to ban TikTok or force its sale to an American company.“Well, he’s wrong. And by the way, he had his own executive orders and his own actions he was doing, and now … he’s suddenly flipped around on that,” said the representative Chip Roy, a Texas Republican and member of the far-right Freedom Caucus. “I mean, it’s not the first or last time that I’ll disagree with the former president. The TikTok issue is pretty straightforward.”Who opposes the TikTok bill?TikTok has vocally opposed the legislation, urging the Senate not to pass it. “We are hopeful that the Senate will consider the facts, listen to their constituents, and realize the impact on the economy, 7m small businesses, and the 170 million Americans who use our service,” TikTok spokesperson Alex Haurek said following Wednesday’s vote.Within the House, 50 Democrats and 15 Republicans voted against the bill, including the Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who cited her experiences of being banned from social media. House Democrats including Maxwell Frost of Florida and Delia Ramirez of Illinois joined TikTok creators outside the Capitol following the vote to express opposition to the bill. More

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    Brett Kavanaugh knows truth of alleged sexual assault, Christine Blasey Ford says in book

    The US supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh is not a “consummately honest person” and “must know” what really happened on the night more than 40 years ago when he allegedly sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford, his accuser writes in an eagerly awaited memoir.A research psychologist from northern California, Ford was thrust into the spotlight in September 2018 as Kavanaugh, a Bush aide turned federal judge, became Donald Trump’s second conservative court nominee. Her allegations almost derailed Kavanaugh’s appointment and created headlines around the world.Ford’s memoir, One Way Back, will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.“The fact is, he was there in the room with me that night in 1982,” Ford writes. “And I believe he knows what happened. Even if it’s hazy from the alcohol, I believe he must know.“Once he categorically denied my allegations as well as any bad behavior from his past during a Fox News interview, I felt more certainty than ever that after my experience with him, he had not gone on to become the consummately honest person befitting a supreme court justice.”Kavanaugh’s nomination became mired in controversy after a Washington Post interview in which Ford said Kavanaugh, while drunk, sexually assaulted her at a party in Montgomery county, Maryland, when they were both in high school.“I thought he might inadvertently kill me,” Ford, then 51, told the Post. “He was trying to attack me and remove my clothing.”Kavanaugh vehemently denied the accusation, helping fuel hearing-room rancor not seen since the 1991 confirmation of Clarence Thomas, a rightwinger accused of sexually harassing a co-worker, Anita Hill.Supported by Republicans and Trump, Kavanaugh rode out the storm to join Thomas on the court. Trump would later add another conservative, Amy Coney Barrett, tipping the court 6-3 to the right. That court has since passed down major rightwing rulings, most prominently removing the federal right to abortion.In her book, Ford says she thought Kavanaugh might “step down to avoid putting his family through an investigation or further scrutiny”, adding that she wanted to tell him he should “save us both the trouble”, because “I don’t want this as much as you don’t want this”.She has been asked, she says, what she would have done if Kavanaugh had “reached out and apologised”.She writes: “Who would he be apologising to – me? The country? What would he be apologising for – that night? The harassment [of Ford by Trump supporters] around the testimony?“All I can guess is that if he’d come to me, really leveled with me, and said, ‘I don’t remember this happening, but it might have, and I’m so sorry,’ it might have been a significant, therapeutic moment for survivors in general … I might’ve wobbled a bit. I might have thought, ‘You know what, he was a jackass in high school but now he’s not.’“But when my story came out and he flat-out denied any possibility of every single thing I said, it did alleviate a little of my guilt. For me, the question of whether he had changed was answered. Any misgivings about him being a good person went away.”Ford says she decided to press through the difficulties of coming forward – meeting Democratic senators opposed to Kavanaugh, being grilled by Republicans supporting him, becoming famous herself – because of the importance of the court.She writes: “Honestly, if it hadn’t been the supreme court – if my attacker had been running for a local office, for example – I probably wouldn’t have said anything.Calling this “a sad, scary thing to admit”, Ford adds: “But this was a job at one of our most revered institutions, which we have historically held in the highest esteem. That’s what I learned at school.”Saying she was “thinking and behaving according to principle”, she adds: “I was under the impression (delusion?) that almost everyone else viewed it from the same perspective.“Wasn’t it inarguable that a supreme court justice should be held to the highest standard? A presidency you could win, but to be a supreme court justice, you needed to live your perfection. These nine people make decisions that affect every person in the country. I figured the application process should be as thorough as possible, and perhaps I could be a letter of (non)reference.”Ford also describes occasions on which she discussed the alleged attack as Kavanaugh rose to prominence. As well as conversations in therapy reported by the Post, she cites others triggered by high-profile events.Among such moments, Ford says, were the 1991 Thomas hearings in which Hill was brutally grilled by senators of both parties; a 2016 criminal case in which a Stanford swimmer was convicted of sexual assault but given a light sentence; and the #MeToo movement of 2017, in which women’s stories of sexual assault led to convictions of prominent men.After Kavanaugh was named as a potential supreme court nominee, Ford contacted Anna Eshoo, her Democratic California congresswoman, and the Post. She may have inadvertently leaked her identity, she writes, by contacting a tip line using her own phone. Either way, she was soon at the centre of a political hurricane.“I never, ever wanted [Kavanaugh’s] family to suffer,” Ford writes, adding: “When my allegations came out publicly, the media started reporting that he was getting threats. It troubled me a lot.“Then I remembered that I’d already had to move to a hotel because of the threats to me and my family. Again and again I thought, ‘Why is he putting us all through this? Why can’t he call those people off? Say something – anything – to condemn the harassment happening on both sides?”Kavanaugh, she writes, was at the mercy of rightwing interests pushing for his confirmation. Ultimately, she says, he should have expected “a thorough review of [his] entire history to be part of” becoming a justice.“If you can’t handle that,” Ford writes, “then maybe you’re not qualified for the job.” More

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    Robert Hur won’t rule out future Trump admin role and denies exonerating Biden – video

    Special counsel Robert Hur said his report on declassified documents held by President Biden didn’t exonerate him, insisting ‘that is not a part of my task as a prosecutor’. Hur also didn’t rule out a possible future role in the Trump administration when pressed for an answer by Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell. ‘I’m not here to speak about what may or may not happen in the future,’ Hur told lawmakers More

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    Special counsel says he was doing his job when he criticized Biden’s memory

    Robert Hur, the justice department special counsel assigned to report on Joe Biden’s possession of classified documents, told Congress he was just doing his job when he shook up the US election campaign by criticizing the president’s apparent inability to recall certain events.In his report released in February, Hur, a Republican former US attorney under Donald Trump, recommended Biden not be charged for possessing classified documents. But he infuriated the president’s Democratic allies by making repeated references to Biden’s age and memory as one reason for not indicting him, saying jurors would see him “as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”.“My task was to determine whether the president retained or disclosed national defense information willfully,” Hur said in his opening remarks to the House judiciary committee. “I could not make that determination without assessing the president’s state of mind. For that reason, I had to consider the president’s memory and overall mental state, and how a jury likely would perceive his memory and mental state in a criminal trial.”He defended his comments about Biden’s recollections, saying: “I did not sanitize my explanation. Nor did I disparage the president unfairly. I explained to the attorney general my decision and the reasons for it. That’s what I was required to do.”Republicans are also unhappy with Hur’s finding that Biden should not be charged, arguing it was evidence of double standards at the justice department. A different special counsel, Jack Smith, has indicted Donald Trump for allegedly taking government secrets with him after leaving the White House and, unlike Biden, conspiring to keep them out of the hands of investigators. The justice department also decided last year not to bring charges against Trump’s former vice-president, Mike Pence, after classified documents were found at his home.Both men were appointed by Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, but operate independently, while justice department policy also prohibits the indictment of sitting presidents.The judiciary committee’s chair, Trump ally Jim Jordan, sought to focus public attention on Hur’s conclusion that Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency”.“Mr Hur produced a 345-page report, but in the end, it boils down to a few key facts. Joe Biden kept classified information. Joe Biden failed to properly secure classified information. And Joe Biden shared classified information with people he wasn’t supposed to,” Jordan said as the hearing began.Jerrold Nadler, the committee’s top Democrat, focused on how the special counsel cleared the president, and noted his cooperation with the investigation.“The Hur report represents the complete and total exoneration of President Biden,” Nadler said.“And how does that record contrast with President Trump, the documents he retained and the criminal charges pending against him in Florida?” Nadler continued, recounting the details of the former president’s alleged hoarding of classified materials at his Mar-a-Lago resort.Trump is facing charges “not because of some vast conspiracy, not because the so-called deep state was out to get him, but because former president Trump was fundamentally incapable of taking advantage of even one of the many, many chances he was given to avoid those charges”, Nadler said.Hur made clear later on that he does not consider his report to be an “exoneration” of the president, saying “that is not a word that I used”.A transcript of Hur’s interview with Biden, which lasted for hours over several days, was released shortly before the hearing began, and shows the president fumbled occasionally with the sequence of events and certain dates, but otherwise was sharp throughout, and also corrected Hur and others when they made errors.The Democratic congressman Adam Schiff seized on Hur’s insistence that he did not “disparage” Biden, saying he did just that by including details of the president’s ability to recalls details in his report.“You chose a general pejorative reference to the president. You understood when you made that decision, didn’t you Mr Hur, that you would ignite a political firestorm with that language, didn’t you?” Schiff asked.“Congressman, politics played no part whatsoever in my investigative steps,” Hur replied, saying he followed justice department policy in writing his report. More

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    ‘New text, same problems’: inside the fight over child online safety laws

    Sharp divisions between advocates for children’s safety online have emerged as a historic bill has gathered enough votes to pass in the US Senate. Amendments to the bill have appeased some former detractors who now support the legislation; its fiercest critics, however, have become even more entrenched in their demands for changes.The Kids Online Safety Act (Kosa), introduced more than two years ago, reached 60 backers in the Senate mid-February. A number of human rights groups still vehemently oppose the legislation, underscoring ongoing divisions among experts, lawmakers and advocates over how to keep young people safe online.“The Kids Online Safety Act is our best chance to address social media’s toxic business model, which has claimed far too many children’s lives and helped spur a mental health crisis,” said Josh Golin, the executive director of the children’s online safety group Fairplay.Opponents say alterations to the bill are not enough and that their concerns remain unchanged.“A one-size-fits-all approach to kids’ safety won’t keep kids safe,” said Aliya Bhatia, a policy analyst at the Center for Democracy and Technology. “This bill still rests on the premise that there is consensus around the types of content and design features that cause harm. There isn’t, and this belief will limit young people from exercising their agency and accessing the communities they need to online.”What is the Kids Online Safety Act?Sponsored by the Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal and the Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn, Kosa would be the biggest change to American tech legislation in decades. The bill would require platforms like Instagram and TikTok to mitigate online dangers via design changes or opt-outs of algorithm-based recommendations, among other measures. Enforcement would demand much more fundamental modifications to social networks than current regulations require.When it was first introduced in 2022, Kosa prompted an open letter signed by more than 90 human rights organizations united in strong opposition. The groups warned the bill could be “weaponized” by conservative state attorneys general – who were charged with determining what content is harmful – to censor online resources and information for queer and trans youth or people seeking reproductive healthcare.In response to the critiques, Blumenthal amended the bill, notably shifting some enforcement decisions to the Federal Trade Commission rather than state attorneys general. At least seven LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations that previously spoke out against the bill dropped their opposition citing the “considerable changes” to Kosa that “significantly mitigate the risk of it being misused to suppress LGBTQ+ resources or stifle young people’s access to online communities”, including Glaad, the Human Rights Campaign and the Trevor Project.To the critics who now support Kosa, the amendments by Blumenthal solved the legislation’s major issues. However, the majority of those who signed the initial letter still oppose the bill, including the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future, and the ACLU.“New bill text, same problems,” said Adam Kovacevich, chief executive of the tech industry policy coalition the Chamber of Progress, which is supported by corporate partners including Airbnb, Amazon, Apple and Snap. “The changes don’t address a lot of its potential abuses.” Snap and X, formerly Twitter, have publicly supported Kosa.Is Kosa overly broad or a net good?Kovacevich said the latest changes fail to address two primary concerns with the legislation: that vague language will lead social media platforms to over-moderate to restrict their liability, and that allowing state attorneys general to enforce the legislation could enable targeted and politicized content restriction even with the federal government assuming more of the bill’s authority.The vague language targeted by groups that still oppose the bill is the “duty of care” provision, which states that social media firms have “a duty to act in the best interests of a minor that uses the platform’s products or services” – a goal subject to an enforcer’s interpretation. The legislation would also require platforms to mitigate harms by creating “safeguards for minors”, but with little direction as to what content would be deemed harmful, opponents argue the legislation is likely to encourage companies to more aggressively filter content – which could lead to unintended consequences.“Rather than protecting children, this could impact access to protected speech, causing a chilling effect for all users and incentivizing companies to filter content on topics that disproportionately impact marginalized communities,” said Prem M Trivedi, policy director at the Open Technology Institute, which opposes Kosa.Trivedi said he and other opponents fear that important but charged topics like gun violence and racial justice could be interpreted as having a negative impact on young users, and be filtered out by algorithms. Many have expressed concern that LGBTQ+-related topics would be targeted by conservative regulators, leading to fewer available resources for young users who rely on the internet to connect with their communities. Blackburn, the bill’s sponsor, has previously stated her intention to “protect minor children from the transgender [sic] in this culture and that influence”.An overarching concern among opponents of the bill is that it is too broad in scope, and that more targeted legislation would achieve similar goals with fewer unintended impacts, said Bhatia.“There is a belief that there are these magic content silver bullets that a company can apply, and that what stands between a company applying those tools and not applying those tools is legislation,” she said. “But those of us who study the impact of these content filters still have reservations about the bill.”Many with reservations acknowledge that it does feature broadly beneficial provisions, said Mohana Mukherjee, visiting faculty at George Washington University, who has studied technology’s impact on teenagers and young adults. She said the bill’s inclusion of a “Kosa council” – a coalition of stakeholders including parents, academic experts, health professionals and young social media users to provide advice on how best to implement the legislation – is groundbreaking.“It’s absolutely crucial to involve young adults and youth who are facing these problems, and to have their perspective on the legislation,” she said.Kosa’s uncertain futureKosa is likely to be voted on in the Senate this session, but other legislation targeting online harms threatens its momentum. A group of senators is increasingly pushing a related bill that would ban children under the age of 13 from social media. Its author, Brian Schatz, has requested a panel that would potentially couple the bill with Kosa. Blumenthal, the author of Kosa, has cautioned that such a move could slow the passage of both bills and spoke out against the markup.“We should move forward with the proposals that have the broadest support, but at the same time, have open minds about what may add value,” he said, according to the Washington Post. “This process is the art of addition not subtraction often … but we should make sure that we’re not undermining the base of support.”The bill’s future in the House is likewise unclear. Other bills with similar purported goals are floating around Congress, including the Invest in Child Safety Act – a bill introduced by the Democratic senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and the representatives Anna G Eshoo and Brian Fitzpatrick – which would invest more than $5bn into investigating online sexual abusers.With so much legislation swirling around the floors of Congress, it’s unclear when – or if – a vote will be taken on any of them. But experts agree that Congress has at least begun trying to bolster children’s online safety.“This is an emotionally fraught topic – there are urgent online safety issues and awful things that happen to our children at the intersection of the online world and the offline world,” said Trivedi. “In an election year, there are heightened pressures on everyone to demonstrate forward movement on issues like this.” More

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    Republican senator renews push to make daylight savings permanent

    As Americans pushed their clocks forward an hour Sunday to implement daylight savings, US senator James Lankford doubled down on his commitment to eliminating seasonal time changes, saying he wanted to abandon what he described as an antiquated first world war convention.The Republican lawmaker from Oklahoma said he was devoted to proverbially locking the clock through his Sunshine Act, which unanimously passed in the Senate but was not taken up by the House. Speaking with CNN State of the Union host Jake Tapper on Sunday, Lankford said he wanted to “start the dialogue” back up partly because of an encounter with a military veteran who seemed to view ending daylight savings time as a dying wish.“As funny as this sounds, several years ago, I was walking in a Veterans Day parade, and a veteran … that was watching the parade, an older gentleman, gets up from his lawn chair – he actually walks into the parade route, shook my hand and said: ‘Before I die, would you end daylight savings time?’” Lankford recounted.“Of all the things I thought you would say to me today, that is not what I thought you would say,” Lankford recalled telling the veteran. “He said: ‘I hate it. I’m in my 80s. I want you to get rid of daylight savings time before I die.’”The politician said he assured the veteran he had a bill with fellow Republican US senator Marco Rubio to eliminate a time change that he said was “a relic” of the first world war, when the government wanted to add daylight hours to conserve energy.“We want to be able to lock this clock,” Lankford said to Tapper. “A lot of people are annoyed by it … Let’s actually flick our lights on, and we can do this.”Lankford alluded to how Arizona had chosen to stop moving its clocks up an hour in the spring and then back an hour in the fall. “They have done this for years, and, somehow, their kids are still getting to school on time, commerce is still happening,” Lankford said. “And today, in Arizona, they’re not – they’re not waking up with a clock that’s messed up.”Lankford’s comments come amid renewed discussion of daylight savings time and health. The American Heart Association recently said that there’s a “marked increase” in strokes and heart attacks in the days after clocks are set one hour ahead of standard time.The American Academy of Sleep Medicine has also called for abolishing seasonal time-changes due to its impact on circadian rhythms. “Mounting evidence shows the dangers of seasonal time changes, which have been linked to increased medical errors, motor vehicle accidents, increased hospital admissions and other problems,” the academy’s president, license clinical pscyhologist Jennifer Martin, said in a statement.Lankford’s criticism of the time-change came as he faced scrutiny from his own party over his efforts to secure passage of a failed bipartisan border security agreement. The Oklahoma county’s Republican party censured him Saturday, the Oklahoman reported.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe proposed measure would have meant the hiring of 1,500 more border security officers and agents, along with 100 more immigration judges as well as 4,300 more asylum officers to address a backlog of about 2m cases, the newspaper explained.When Joe Biden mentioned the proposed legislation during the State of the Union address on Thursday, Republicans booed. But Lankford appeared to mouth “that’s true” as the US president recounted what the bill would have accomplished. More