Texas Bans Gender-Affirming Care for Minors After Governor Signs Bill

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas has become the most populous state to ban gender-affirming care for minors after Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation on Friday.

Texas joined at least 18 other states that have enacted similar bans.

Every major medical organization, including the American Medical Association, has opposed the bans and supported the medical care for youth when administered appropriately. Lawsuits have been filed in several states where bans have been enacted this year.

Last year, Abbott became the first governor to order the investigation of families who were receiving care. The investigations were later halted by a Texas judge.

The GOP-controlled Legislature sent the bill to Abbott last month. Republicans in the Senate took the final vote over the objections from Democrats, who used parliamentary maneuvers to delay passage but could not derail it entirely.

Transgender rights activists have disrupted the Texas House with protests from the chamber gallery, which led to state police forcing demonstrators to move outside the building.

 

source https://time.com/6284711/texas-bans-gender-affirming-care/

Indian Railways Official Says Error in Signaling System Led to Crash that Killed 275 People

BALASORE, India — The derailment in eastern India that killed 275 people and injured hundreds was caused by an error in the electronic signaling system that led a train to wrongly change tracks and crash into a freight train, officials said Sunday.

Authorities worked to clear the mangled wreckage of the two passenger trains that derailed Friday night in Balasore district in Odisha state in one of the country’s deadliest rail disasters in decades.

An Odisha government statement revised the death toll to 275 after a top state officer put the number at over 300 on Sunday morning. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to reporters.
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Jaya Verma Sinha, a senior railway official, said the preliminary investigations revealed that a signal was given to the high-speed Coromandel Express to run on the main track line, but the signal later changed, and the train instead entered an adjacent loop line where it rammed into a freight loaded with iron ore.

The collision flipped Coromandel Express’s coaches onto another track, causing the incoming Yesvantpur-Howrah Express from the opposite side also to derail, she said.

The passenger trains, carrying 2,296 people, were not overspeeding, she said. Trains that carry goods are often parked on an adjacent loop line so the main line is clear for a passing train.

Verma said the root cause of the crash was related to an error in the electronic signaling system. She said a detailed investigation will reveal whether the error was human or technical.

The electronic interlocking system is a safety mechanism designed to prevent conflicting movements between trains. It also monitors the status of signals that tell drivers how close they are to a next train, how fast they can go and the presence of stationary trains on the track.

“The system is 99.9% error free. But 0.1% chances are always there for an error,” Verma said. To a question whether the crash could be a case of sabotage, she said “nothing is ruled out.”

On Sunday, a few shattered carriages, mangled and overturned, were the only remnants of the tragedy. Railway workers toiled under the sun’s glare to lay down blocks of cement to fix the broken tracks. A crew with excavators was removing mud and the debris to clear the crash site.

At one of the hospitals nearly 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the site, survivors spoke of the horror of the moment of the crash.

Pantry worker Inder Mahato could not remember the exact sequence of events, but said he heard a loud bang when the Coromandel Express crashed into the freight. The impact caused Mahato, who was in the bathroom, to briefly lose consciousness.

Moments later when he opened his eyes, he saw through the door that was forced open people writhing in pain, many of them already dead. Others were frantically trying to get out from the twisted wreckage of his rail car.

For hours, Mahato, 37, remained stuck in the train’s bathroom, before rescuers scaled up the wreckage and pulled him out.

“God saved me,” he said, lying on the hospital bed while recuperating from a hairline fracture in his sternum. “I am very lucky I am alive.”

Mahato’s friends weren’t so lucky. Four of them died in the crash, he said.

Meanwhile, many desperate relatives were struggling to identify the bodies of their loved ones because of the gruesomeness of the injuries. Few others were searching hospitals to check whether their relatives were alive.

In the same hospital where Mahato was recovering from his injuries, Bulti Khatun roamed outside the premises in a dazed state, holding an identity card of her husband who was onboard the Coromandel Express and traveling to southern Chennai city.

Khatun said she visited the morgue and other hospitals to look for him, but was unable to find him.

“I am so helpless,” she said, sobbing.

Fifteen bodies were recovered on Saturday evening and efforts continued overnight with heavy cranes being used to remove an engine that settled on top of a rail car. No bodies were found in the engine and the work was completed on Sunday morning, said Sudhanshu Sarangi, director-general of fire and emergency services in Odisha.

The crash occurred at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi is focusing on the modernization of the British colonial-era railroad network in India, which has become the world’s most populous country with 1.42 billion people. Despite government efforts to improve safety, several hundred accidents occur every year on India’s railways, the largest train network under one management in the world.

Modi visited the crash site on Saturday and talked to rescue officials. He also visited a hospital to inquire about the injured, and spoke to some of them.

Modi told reporters he felt the pain of the crash victims. He said the government would do its utmost to help them and strictly punish anyone found responsible.

In 1995, two trains collided near New Delhi, killing 358 people in one of the worst rail accidents in India. In 2016, a passenger train slid off the tracks between the cities of Indore and Patna, killing 146 people.

Most such accidents in India are blamed on human error or outdated signaling equipment.

About 22 million people ride 14,000 trains across India every day, traveling on 64,000 kilometers (40,000 miles) of track.

source https://time.com/6284708/indian-railways-crash-signal-problem/

Biden Signs Debt Ceiling Bill that Pulls U.S. From the Brink of Default

WASHINGTON — With just two days to spare, President Joe Biden signed legislation on Saturday that lifts the nation’s debt ceiling, averting an unprecedented default on the federal government’s debt.

The White House announced the signing, done in private at the White House, in an emailed statement in which Biden thanked congressional leaders for their partnership.

The Treasury Department had warned that the country would start running short of cash to pay all of its bills on Monday, which would have sent shockwaves through the U.S. and global economies.

Republicans refused to raise the country’s borrowing limit unless Democrats agreed to cut spending, leading to a standoff that was not resolved until weeks of intense negotiations between the White House and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.
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The final agreement, passed by the House on Wednesday and the Senate on Thursday, suspends the debt limit until 2025 — after the next presidential election — and restricts government spending. It gives lawmakers budget targets for the next two years in hopes of assuring fiscal stability as the political season heats up.

Raising the nation’s debt limit, now at $31.4 trillion, will ensure that the government can borrow to pay debts already incurred.

“Passing this budget agreement was critical. The stakes could not have been higher,” Biden said from the Oval Office on Friday evening. “Nothing would have been more catastrophic,” he said, than defaulting on the country’s debt.

“No one got everything they wanted but the American people got what they needed,” Biden said, highlighting the “compromise and consensus” in the deal. “We averted an economic crisis and an economic collapse.”

Biden used the opportunity to itemize the achievements of his first term as he runs for reelection, including support for high-tech manufacturing, infrastructure investments and financial incentives for fighting climate change. He also highlighted ways he blunted Republican efforts to roll back his agenda and achieve deeper cuts.

“We’re cutting spending and bringing deficits down at the same time,” Biden said. “We’re protecting important priorities from Social Security to Medicare to Medicaid to veterans to our transformational investments in infrastructure and clean energy.”

Even as he pledged to continue working with Republicans, Biden also drew contrasts with the opposing party, particularly when it comes to raising taxes on the wealthy, something the Democratic president has sought.

It’s something he suggested may need to wait until a second term.

“I’m going to be coming back,” he said. “With your help, I’m going to win.”

Biden’s remarks were the most detailed comments from the Democratic president on the compromise he and his staff negotiated. He largely remained quiet publicly during the high-stakes talks, a decision that frustrated some members of his party but was intended to give space for both sides to reach a deal and for lawmakers to vote it to his desk.

Biden praised McCarthy and his negotiators for operating in good faith, and all congressional leaders for ensuring swift passage of the legislation. “They acted responsibly, and put the good of the country ahead of politics,” he said.

Overall, the 99-page bill restricts spending for the next two years and changes some policies, including imposing new work requirements for older Americans receiving food aid and greenlighting an Appalachian natural gas pipeline that many Democrats oppose. Some environmental rules were modified to help streamline approvals for infrastructure and energy projects — a move long sought by moderates in Congress.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates it could actually expand total eligibility for federal food assistance, with the elimination of work requirements for veterans, homeless people and young people leaving foster care.

The legislation also bolsters funds for defense and veterans, cuts back some new money for the Internal Revenue Service and rejects Biden’s call to roll back Trump-era tax breaks on corporations and the wealthy to help cover the nation’s deficits. But the White House said the IRS’ plans to step up enforcement of tax laws for high-income earners and corporations would continue.

The agreement imposes an automatic overall 1% cut to spending programs if Congress fails to approve its annual spending bills — a measure designed to pressure lawmakers of both parties to reach consensus before the end of the fiscal year in September.

In both chambers, more Democrats backed the legislation than Republicans, but both parties were critical to its passage. In the Senate the tally was 63-36 including 46 Democrats and independents and 17 Republicans in favor, 31 Republicans along with four Democrats and one independent who caucuses with the Democrats opposed.

The vote in the House was 314-117.

source https://time.com/6284702/biden-signs-debt-ceiling-bill/

Connecticut Governor Poised to Sign State’s Most Sweeping Gun Measure Since Post-Sandy Hook Laws

HARTFORD, Conn. — A slate of gun control measures was headed Saturday to Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont’s desk, after an all-night state Senate debate and early morning vote to approve the state’s most wide-ranging gun legislation since the laws that followed the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting.

Lamont, a Democrat, plans to sign the measure. He said in a statement that the legislation would “modernize our firearm safety laws in a smart and strategic way to help prevent tragedy from happening.”

Among other things, the changes would ban openly carrying firearms and prohibit selling more than three handguns within 30 days to any one person, with some exceptions for instructors and others.
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Other provisions include expanding Connecticut’s current assault weapon ban to include some other similar weapons; stiffening penalties for possession of large-capacity magazines; expanding safe-storage rules to more settings; and adding some domestic violence crimes to the list of disqualifications for having a gun.

The measure passed the Senate 24-11, following a 96-51 House vote last week. Democrats control both chambers.

The measure comes as mass killings occur at a record pace in the United States.

Nearly half the states have passed legislation addressing guns or school safety this year, but the measures differ sharply depending on legislatures’ partisan makeup.

Democratic-led states have enacted new laws to restrict semiautomatic weapons and expand background checks and waiting periods to buy guns. Republican-controlled states have backed the right to carry concealed guns without permits or for trained staffers to bring guns to school.

In Connecticut, Republican lawmakers have complained that majority Democrats are punishing law-abiding gun owners, not targeting criminals who commit gun violence.

Lamont, however, maintained that “the overwhelming majority of Connecticut residents” supports the changes.

“They want to live in a community that has common-sense measures that encourage gun safety and prevent harm from impacting our neighborhoods and homes,” he said.

source https://time.com/6284696/connecticut-governor-poised-to-sign-states-most-sweeping-gun-measure/

Twitter Executive Responsible for Content Safety Resigns after Elon Musk Criticism

SAN FRANCISCO — A top Twitter executive responsible for safety and content moderation has left the company, her departure coming soon after owner Elon Musk publicly complained about the platform’s handling of posts about transgender topics.

The departure pointed to a fresh wave of turmoil among key officials at Twitter since Musk took over last year.

Ella Irwin, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, confirmed her resignation in a pair of tweets late Friday. She did not say in the message why she was leaving, but her departure came shortly after Musk criticized Twitter’s handling of tweets about a conservative media company’s documentary that questions transgender medical treatment for children and teens.
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Musk was responding to complaints by Jeremy Boreing, co-CEO of the media company, the Daily Wire. Boreing said in tweets and retweets of conservative commentators Thursday that Twitter was suppressing the movie by flagging posts about it as hate speech and keeping the movie off lists of trending topics.

Boreing tweeted that Twitter canceled a deal to premiere “What is a Woman?” for free on the platform “because of two instances of ‘misgendering.’” Twitter rules prohibit intentionally referring to transgender individuals with the wrong gender or name.

“This was a mistake by many people at Twitter. It is definitely allowed,” Musk tweeted back. “Whether or not you agree with using someone’s preferred pronouns, not doing so is at most rude and certainly breaks no laws.”

Irwin tweeted Friday that “one or two people noticed” she left the company the day before, and she noted speculation about whether she was fired or quit. She teased that she would post 24 tweets to explain her departure.

Then she posted that she was just kidding about the long narrative.

“In all seriousness, I did resign but this has been a once in a lifetime experience and I’m so thankful to have worked with this amazing team of passionate, creative and hardworking people. Will be cheering you all and Twitter as you go!”

Next to Musk, Irwin had been the most prominent voice of the company’s ever-changing content policies in recent months.

Twitter has struggled to bring back advertisers turned off by Musk’s drastic changes and loosening of rules against hate speech since he bought Twitter for $44 billion in October. Twitter also has an incoming CEO, Linda Yaccarino, known for decades of media and advertising industry experience, but she hasn’t started yet.

Irwin and Twitter didn’t respond to requests from The Associated Press for comment.

Twitter has been in turmoil including mass layoffs and voluntary departures since the billionaire Tesla owner bought the San Francisco company and took it private. The company’s head of trust and safety left shortly after the takeover, and turnover in the top ranks has continued. Last month, Twitter fired two more top managers.

source https://time.com/6284691/twitter-executive-responsible-for-content-safety-resigns/

When Summer Camp Doesn’t Work For Your Kid

My son, M., is seven years old. His favorite activity is to play with Legos by himself. He likes baseball, tolerates swimming, and while most kids run in spurts or dashes, he prefers the quiet solitude of distance running, and runs two miles with a sub-9 minute mile split. He goes to school willingly each morning and has a small group of friends there, whom he plays with at recess.

Yet for M, summers are the worst. He’s sensitive to big groups, noisy kids, and does poorly with too much overstimulation with too little downtime. He has no interest in sharing Legos with anyone. There is no readily-available summer camp that can meet his needs that he is willing to attend. At the start of each calendar year, the battle begins of where will he go to camp – what are the fewest hours he needs to actually do something, and what are the handful of places in which he will want to attend? Which are the ones that aren’t packed with kids and managed by a handful of underprepared teenagers? And the biggest question – which one of his parents cuts back on work hours and stays home with him if whatever chosen camp we’ve selected turns out to be an epic fail? And then what do we do?
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The summer camp conundrum is an offshoot of the child care crisis, a problem exacerbated in America by the lack of any federal infrastructure to support parents of young children. The child care crisis has several branches but the most important is the lack of year-round federal support for children ages zero to five, too young to go to school. There are very limited options for school age children for childcare in the hours when school is not open, and the options for kids, like M, who can’t readily participate in group environments without additional support is even more limited. The contrast, of course, is the public school system infrastructure – designed to support every child no matter the need. M, like 7.2 other children or 15 percent of U.S. public school kids, has sufficient challenges that qualify him for an Individualized Education Program, or an “IEP” as they’re commonly referred to. IEPs are part of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1990, that mandates public schools to meet the educational needs of children with disabilities. This can mean anything from dyslexia, to ADHD, to mental health disorders including anxiety and depression if they impact behavior and learning, and including kids with even more severe difficulties.

But summer camps – like American private and parochial schools and much of our patchwork childcare systems – have no such requirement. The very safeguards in place to allow schools to accommodate a child’s unique needs evaporate during the summer months. Sure, the camp registration forms may have a few lines of “tell me more about your child,” but those won’t do such complications justice. It’s not the intricate, involved process an IEP is – how can it be, when there is no infrastructure in place to support it.

Summer camps were not designed to be a stand-in for public education. Camps became increasingly popular during the Industrial Revolution, as a way to give wealthier kids more time outdoors in nature when otherwise they would be spending time inside with little to do on the summer break. Child care at this time was nonexistent – stories exist of children tied to tables with a snack and another child to watch over them while parents worked, and plenty of children worked alongside their parents in factories or mines. The only group child care options available were “day nurseries” and they were largely custodial: wiped noses and cleaned tushes – nothing about ABCs or academic enrichment. It wasn’t until the late 20th century when the perception of children as young learning vessels started to catch on.

The initial shift toward academics in early childhood education was precipitated by a Reagan administration report in the early 1980s about the failure of the current education system. By 2010, a growing body of research had indicated that children learn better through engaged play rather than rote instruction. Around the same time, advances had been made in neuroscience, to create less invasive ways to study the way a child’s mind worked. “Parenting” became more of a verb and less of a noun, and the demand for better child care – including summertime options – increased. Where child care is a $60 billion industry, summer camps are an $18 billion one.

The majority of kids (like my own), live in families where both parents work. And while work can ebb and flow during the calendar year, many adult jobs (like ours) are year-round without three month summer breaks. As a country without a national paid leave policy, employees hardly have the ability to take time off for having a baby or caring for a loved one – where does the “summertime break” conundrum fit in within excused absences? And as any parent knows who has ever been called midday to pick up a recalcitrant child – the problem with a child who doesn’t like summer camp is that the feeling is often mutual. And which working parent has enough flexibility to go pick him up?

The summer camp and child care situation is exacerbated for single parents, with whom there may be no co-parent to juggle the responsibilities, and families of color. Even with IEPs and public school support, the grim statistic from the Departmentment of Education is that Black children with disabilities in the public school system are more likely to receive a disciplinary removal than all students with disabilities, and face the same higher expulsion rates in child care settings too where Black boys make up half of all preschool expulsions and suspensions. The “summer slide” where kids fall behind in math and reading is estimated to account for half the overall achievement gap between lower and higher income students. High quality summer programs could help fill those gaps, but such camps are not always affordable, accessible, or available to children with additional challenges.

Outside of the public school system, our country has no federal infrastructure to support working parents – we don’t help with child care, we don’t give paid time off for caregiving, and we place too high of a burden on parents to figure it out on their own. IDEA was a landmark piece of legislation. It changed public school from a right for most people to a right for everyone. But most public school systems close in June and reopen in August or September – leaving far too wide of a gap for most families, including those whose kids need extra support to function in group settings.

For many, summer camp can be a workable band-aid. There are summer care options for kids like M that we’ve tried: special needs camps (pricey), inclusion programs (waitlists), babysitters (sporadic). Families can cobble together some solutions, but even that cobbling together takes financial resources, stable jobs and time. And the “invisible labor” of planning and organizing is disproportionately borne by women, often to the detriment of our careers and wages, and peace of mind.

We need the federal infrastructure for a child care system that operates year round and is modeled on the K-12 education system. Doing so brings other positive benefits: stable and better salaries for the teachers, reliable and safe options for parents, and a better educational experience for the child. Moving away from a piecemeal, individualized approach can also provide more for kids in those long summer months, including kids like M., who need the additional assistance that regular camp models cannot always provide. States like New Mexico and Vermont are making significant headway in creating the necessary child care infrastructure – when child care switches from a “nice to have” to a “right to have” then more space will be made for the kids who are otherwise left out.

Until then, some of us are left scrambling each summer for the options that work best for our kid and family, feeling mentally and financially depleted coming up with a workable option – if we can find one. And then we put our heads down and barrel through three long months only to do it all again one year later.

source https://time.com/6284396/when-summer-camp-doesnt-work-for-your-kid/

In Oval Office Address, Biden Says U.S. Averted ‘Economic Collapse’ With Debt Ceiling Deal

Hoping to impress upon the country how closely the nation veered toward an economically devastating default on its debt, President Biden delivered a live address from the Oval Office to praise the passage of a bipartisan budget deal, making use of one of the most powerful platforms of the presidency for the first time.

Biden broke into primetime television less than 24 hours after Congress had passed the measure to raise the government’s debt ceiling, which he said “averted an economic crisis and an economic collapse.” The legislation, which his administration negotiated over several weeks with House Republican leaders, limits some spending and punts the next time the debt limit is likely to be an issue to the beginning of 2025, after his current term in office is over.
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The Senate passed the budget deal late Thursday, after Speaker Kevin McCarthy earlier in the week held together enough House Republicans to pass it. In both chambers, the support for the measure was bipartisan, as was the opposition. Some Democrats thought the deal gave Republicans too much, and in particular expressed frustration at the imposition of new work requirements on people aged 50 to 54 in order to receive food stamps. Some Republicans complained the bill underfunded the military. Others thought that, in general, McCarthy had let Biden off too easily given that the GOP controlled the House.

“No one got everything they wanted but the American people got what they needed,” Biden said.

Along with burnishing Biden’s credentials as a deal maker, the address allowed Biden to remind voters he was following through on his promise to work with Republicans to solve the country’s thorniest problems.

“I want to commend Senator—Speaker McCarthy,” Biden said, briefly flubbing McCarthy’s title. “You know, he and I and our teams, we get along,”

Biden said that when he ran for President, he “was told the days of bipartisanship were over, that Democrats and Republicans no longer worked together. But I refused to believe that.”

“The only way American democracy can function is through compromise and consensus,” he continued. “And that’s what I want to do as your President.”

Read more: Here’s What’s in the Debt Ceiling Deal

As Biden spoke to the nation for 13 minutes, Senior Adviser Anita Dunn seemed to follow along with a copy of the speech on her lap, occasionally taking notes with a pen and taking pains to turn the pages without making a sound that could be picked up by the President’s microphone.

Much of the Oval Office’s furniture had been removed ahead of the live address, and replaced with television cameras and lights, which surrounded the historic Resolute Desk, made from the oak timbers of a British ship and given to President Rutherford B. Hayes by Queen Victoria.

When he was finished and no longer transmitting into homes across the nation, someone said “Clear.” Aides in the room clapped, and the President smiled broadly.

Oval Office addresses are often associated with weighty moments in American history, particularly times of crisis or tragedy. Donald Trump spoke from behind the Resolute Desk when the spread of COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic in March 2020.It was where Ronald Reagan told the country the future “belongs to the brave” after the space shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986.

After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, George W. Bush pledged to “make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.” President Obama addressed the nation from the Oval Office after the San Bernardino terror attacks in 2015, the end of U.S. operations in Iraq, and the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. (After Osama Bin Laden was killed by Navy SEALS, Obama forgoed the cramped Oval, and addressed the country from the East Room, which can hold more people.)

Biden could have chosen to speak from the Oval Office earlier in his presidency, when a CIA drone strike killed al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri in Kabul, Afghanistan in July 2022. But that live address was given instead from the Truman Balcony of the White House, with a view of the Washington Monument behind him.

Biden picked the Oval Office to discuss the debt ceiling deal because he believes there is a “gravity” to the moment and “he wanted to make sure that the American people understood how important it was to get this done, in a bipartisan way,” said White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

Along with praising the budget deal, Biden made a point of noting that he has signed 350 bipartisan bills so far during his presidency, and touted his work to pass large investments in the nation’s infrastructure project and incentivize microchip manufacturers to open factories in the US.

Biden said he expects to sign the bill lifting the debt limit on Saturday.

source https://time.com/6284661/biden-oval-office-address-debt-ceiling/