The Meaning of Marine Le Pen’s Conviction

March 31 will go down as a terrible day for Marine Le Pen—and a good one for French democracy.

A French court on Monday found Le Pen and more than 20 officials from France’s far-right National Rally (RN) guilty in a sprawling embezzlement scheme that prosecutors said involved siphoning off €2.9 million ($3.1 million) in E.U. funds over a decade. Judges applied the French law as written: they barred the nine politicians involved from running for office from three to five years. And presiding judge Bénédicte de Perthus offered a clear explanation for why the court decided to apply the condition of automatic ineligibility to the plot’s ringleader Le Pen: the gravity of the case coupled with the RN’s longstanding refusal to take the allegations seriously suggested the far-right party was at risk of repeat offense.

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The message was clear: Nobody is above the law, not even a popular presidential contender who stood at the gates of power.

The verdict significantly complicates Le Pen’s chances of standing in the 2027 presidential election, to say nothing of the four-year prison term she faces (two suspended and two that could be served under house arrest). But despite her claims of being targeted for misusing public funds, her case isn’t all that unique. Former President Jacques Chirac and former Prime Minister Alain Juppé were both found guilty for similar cases, while former President Nicolas Sarkozy has also been convicted for corruption and influence-peddling. And following new laws in 2016 and 2017, French courts have routinely barred politicians found guilty of corruption from running for office. Like everyone else, Le Pen retains the right to appeal.

The RN’s temper-tantrum—Le Pen stormed out of court before the full verdict was read—is rich from a party that likes to paint itself as tough on crime. And as many observers in France have noted, it smacks of hypocrisy. Back in 2013, Le Pen herself called for all politicians found guilty of misusing public funds to be barred from running for office for life.

But more generally, those complaining about the verdict should ask themselves the following: Is it a sign of democratic vitality to allow political corruption to go unpunished? Or should elected officials be held accountable when they are convicted for breaking the law?

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The political fallout of Le Pen’s conviction will play out over the coming months. But at this stage, it seems fair to state the obvious. Le Pen’s conviction doesn’t necessarily reduce the chances of her party winning the next presidential election.

While Le Pen’s supporters from MAGA-world may think of her as the French Donald Trump, this view fundamentally misreads the source of the RN’s popularity. The party’s strength has less to do with a cult of personality around its leader than the mainstream appeal of its platform. It’s the product of ideological victories that are years in the making—and they won’t vanish without her.

Read More: Jordan Bardella Is the New Face of Europe’s Far Right

In fact, last year’s snap legislative elections were a prime demonstration of the RN’s ability to excel without Le Pen. Her name appeared only once on the ballot—in her parliamentary district in northern France—but that didn’t stop millions from endorsing the RN’s anti-establishment, anti-immigrant message across the country. Detailed opinion polls revealed the impressive scope of the party’s electorate, stretching from disaffected working-class voters to radicalized upper-middle-class conservatives ditching the mainstream right in droves.

Th RN’s mainstream success also flows from an increasingly sympathetic media landscape. Following in the footsteps of Rupert Murdoch, billionaire Vincent Bolloré has built a powerful media empire in service of a hard-right agenda. His properties like newspaper Le Journal du dimanche, radio network Europe 1, and TV channel CNews (now France’s most-watched 24-hour news network) pump out right-wing content on a daily basis, devoting outsized attention to crime, immigration, and Islam. And sure enough, journalists, panelists, and interview subjects at Bolloré outlets were quick to denounce the verdict.

Much like the Republican Party in the U.S., France’s RN also benefits from the weakness of its rivals. Politicians associated with President Emmanuel Macron will be fighting an uphill battle to overcome his broadly unpopular legacy, and the palpable anger at incumbents around the globe. Under Macron’s presidency, French authorities have failed to address voter concerns over the rising cost of living or meet the public’s relatively high expectations of state services. His top-down governing style has further complicated matters.

And despite joining forces last summer to win more seats in the National Assembly than any other coalition, France’s left-wing parties are once again divided over minor differences and competing strategies over the next presidential election. These divisions were even visible in their reactions to Le Pen’s conviction. While leaders of the Greens, Socialists, and Communists all applauded the ruling, Jean-Luc Mélenchon of left-populist La France Insoumise said he disagreed with the principle of courts preventing politicians from running for office.

Of course, the RN has another huge advantage. If Le Pen exhausts the appeals process and truly cannot run for the presidency in 2027, the party already has an obvious candidate-in-waiting in Jordan Bardella. Groomed to run for office, the 29-year president of the party can already count on support from the RN base. And if anything, the absence of the controversial Le Pen family name is a plus for the rest of the French electorate. While Bardella lacks experience, expertise, and mastery of the subjects at-hand, these may not be such flaws in today’s climate.

Ultimately, the RN will still need to be defeated politically one way or the other—with or without Le Pen. And this won’t be an easy task for its opponents. But the RN’s criticism of the verdict—and call for nationwide protests—is a reminder of what’s at stake in France. Like the Kremlin, Trump, and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán who’ve all rallied to the RN’s defense, the party shares a deep mistrust for the rule of law—and a healthy democratic society should be capable of rejecting it at the polls.

source https://time.com/7273307/france-le-pen-conviction/

South Carolina Wants to End Medicaid for Planned Parenthood

The latest effort by conservative politicians to attack Planned Parenthood has the potential to strip the group of its ability to provide health care for the poorest Americans. On April 2, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments over whether South Carolina can prohibit Medicaid funding for any health care services provided by Planned Parenthood.

The case, Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, stems from a 2018 order by South Carolina Republican Gov. Henry McMaster, declaring that any clinic offering abortion services would be barred from the state’s Medicaid program. Medicaid is a state-federal program that provides health insurance coverage for people who are low income, and in the majority of states—including South Carolina—it doesn’t provide coverage for abortions, with very limited exceptions. In South Carolina, abortion is banned after about six weeks of pregnancy.

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After McMaster issued the order, Planned Parenthood and one of its patients filed a lawsuit, arguing that the order violates a provision of the Medicaid Act that allows recipients to choose any qualified health care provider. Lower courts blocked the governor’s order, and the U.S. Supreme Court agreed in December to hear the case.

Planned Parenthood South Atlantic (PPSAT)—which serves South Carolina, as well as North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia—has two clinics in South Carolina: one in Columbia and the other in Charleston. Planned Parenthood clinics in the state provide abortion services before week six of pregnancy, in accordance with state law, but they also offer many other health care services including birth control, STI testing and treatment, and cancer screenings.

“It’s completely clear that the case is motivated by the anti-abortion views of the South Carolina government,” says Dr. Katherine Farris, chief medical officer of PPSAT. “But the problem is what the case is actually about is not abortion—what it’s about is people being able to access preventative health care.”

Read More: A Texas Bill Claims to Clarify Near-Total Abortion Bans. Advocates Say It Won’t

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a conservative Christian and anti-abortion legal advocacy group, is representing South Carolina in the case. John Bursch, vice president of appellate advocacy for ADF and lead counsel for South Carolina on the case, says the state does “not want to use its tax dollars to prop up the abortion industry.” He adds that there are “many other publicly funded health care clinics in South Carolina [that] provide more comprehensive and real health care” that receive Medicaid funding, and claims that South Carolina is “not denying choice to anybody” to choose their medical provider.

More than a million people in South Carolina were enrolled in Medicaid as of June 2024, according to KFF. Many Medicaid recipients are people of color—in South Carolina, nearly three in five people enrolled in Medicaid identify as non-white, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Many of the patients who visit Planned Parenthood clinics are Medicaid recipients. 

Farris says that if the state bars Medicaid coverage of Planned Parenthood services, that could lead to many patients not receiving care or their care being delayed. That could have “major health ramifications,” Farris says, such as unintended pregnancies or worsening health outcomes—for instance, if screenings and treatment for STIs or cancer are put off.

“The vast majority of health care providers either decline to accept Medicaid patients or severely restrict the number of new Medicaid patients that they will accept,” Farris says. “So functionally, those patients can’t get in and don’t have a provider. And at Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, we do not limit the number of Medicaid patients that we will see, which is fairly rare in the medical world.”

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear the case at a time when three other states—Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri—have already removed Planned Parenthood from their Medicaid programs.

Read More: Here Are Trump’s Major Moves Affecting Access to Reproductive Healthcare

Many reproductive rights organizations—including the Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed an amicus brief for the case—have urged the court to side with PPSAT.

“We all know what a personal decision it is to decide what doctor to see and what doctor to visit, and you want somebody that you feel comfortable with, and that is even more important and essential when you are seeking sexual and reproductive health care,” says Autumn Katz, interim director of U.S. litigation for the Center for Reproductive Rights.

Bursch says that the Medicaid Act dictates that a state can disqualify a provider if it doesn’t provide services in compliance with state law. He says that PPSAT still provides abortion services before six weeks of pregnancy (which is legal in South Carolina) and that the group advocates against South Carolina’s abortion restrictions. When asked about Bursch’s comments in a press briefing, Catherine Peyton Humphreville, senior staff attorney for Planned Parenthood Federation of America who is representing PPSAT in this case, said that the organization “complies with all South Carolina laws—this includes South Carolina’s very draconian abortion ban.”

“PPSAT does provide the very limited number of abortions it’s able to provide under the state’s abortion ban,” Humphreville says. “The idea that [South Carolina] can punish PPSAT for advocating—simply advocating for abortion, not just providing abortion, but advocating for abortion—has serious First Amendment issues.”

On March 31, Planned Parenthood said that nine of its affiliates received notice from the Trump Administration that starting April 1, the government would freeze funding under a federal program known as Title X, which makes millions of dollars available to clinics that provide family planning services for people who are low income. Planned Parenthood receives more Title X funding than any other provider. 

Reproductive rights advocates say that the impact of Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic could be far-reaching. Katz says that if the U.S. Supreme Court was to side with South Carolina, other states that have implemented abortion restrictions or bans could follow suit, and that it could even open the door to states disqualifying other providers from the Medicaid program for arbitrary reasons. “They could try to exclude providers who provide other forms of health care that a state politician disagrees with or finds offensive,” Katz says. “I think that that is really what’s at stake.”

“This is not the first time that a state has tried to exclude Planned Parenthood from participating in the Medicaid program,” she says, “but other states will certainly try to do the same.”

source https://time.com/7273333/south-carolina-planned-parenthood-medicaid-scotus/

A Brain Implant Can Convert Thoughts to Speech

Scientists have developed a device that can translate thoughts about speech into spoken words in real time.

Although it’s still experimental, they hope the brain-computer interface could someday help give voice to those unable to speak.

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A new study described testing the device on a 47-year-old woman with quadriplegia who couldn’t speak for 18 years after a stroke. Doctors implanted it in her brain during surgery as part of a clinical trial.

It “converts her intent to speak into fluent sentences,” said Gopala Anumanchipalli, a co-author of the study published Monday in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

Other brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs, for speech typically have a slight delay between thoughts of sentences and computerized verbalization. Such delays can disrupt the natural flow of conversation, potentially leading to miscommunication and frustration, researchers said.

This is “a pretty big advance in our field,” said Jonathan Brumberg of the Speech and Applied Neuroscience Lab at the University of Kansas, who was not part of the study.

Read More: 9 Things You Should Do for Your Brain Health Every Day, According to Neurologists

A team in California recorded the woman’s brain activity using electrodes while she spoke sentences silently in her brain. The scientists used a synthesizer they built using her voice before her injury to create a speech sound that she would have spoken. They trained an AI model that translates neural activity into units of sound.

It works similarly to existing systems used to transcribe meetings or phone calls in real time, said Anumanchipalli, of the University of California, Berkeley.

The implant itself sits on the speech center of the brain so that it’s listening in, and those signals are translated to pieces of speech that make up sentences. It’s a “streaming approach,” Anumanchipalli said, with each 80-millisecond chunk of speech—about half a syllable—sent into a recorder.

“It’s not waiting for a sentence to finish,” Anumanchipalli said. “It’s processing it on the fly.”

Decoding speech that quickly has the potential to keep up with the fast pace of natural speech, said Brumberg. The use of voice samples, he added, “would be a significant advance in the naturalness of speech.”

Though the work was partially funded by the National Institutes of Health, Anumanchipalli said it wasn’t affected by recent NIH research cuts. More research is needed before the technology is ready for wide use, but with “sustained investments,” it could be available to patients within a decade, he said.

source https://time.com/7273155/brain-computer-implant-stroke-survivor/

We Must Stop Blaming Law Firms Attacked by President Donald Trump

This past month, President Donald Trump issued executive orders targeting the business of several big law firms and launched investigations into the human resource practices of many more. Some have rushed to condemn the law firms that were the victims of the President’s recent threats for giving in to his demands. However, not enough focus has been placed on the real actor behind this vindictive act: Trump.

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Three of the targeted firms—Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, and Perkins Coie—challenged the President in court and won, obtaining restraining orders against their respective executive orders. Another firm, Covington & Burling, took no action in response to a more limited executive order, while two others, Paul, Weiss and Skadden Arps, reached cosmetic settlements with the President, allowing Trump to back down from his threats. As Paul Weiss chairman Brad Karp outlined to his colleagues, the firm’s deal resolved an existential threat to the firm without compromising its policies or cultural principles. This letter also revealed that Paul Weiss became a target after Brad Karp had tried to rally the other major firms to support the early targeted peer firms. In fact, some rival firms responded just the opposite way trying to poach Paul Weiss attorneys and clients sensing vulnerability.

Paul Weiss’ and Skadden Arps’ agreements with the President have included offers of substantial pro bono legal work on causes such as veterans’ rights, anti-Semitism, and promoting fairness in the legal system. These are causes the firms have long supported and in dollar amounts that are a fraction of what the firms already dedicate to pro bono work. Plus, Karp maintains that Paul Weiss’ settlements did not include condemnation of previous firm engagements or HR practices, nor does it impose any formal limits on future representations, including representations against the Trump Administration. Such a deal seems like a great way to calm anxious major clients and potentially poached top attorneys.

In our legal system, conflict resolution balances protracted, expensive litigation against faster negotiated settlements. The choice depends on the strategic positions of each party. The President is unlikely to prevail in litigation challenging his executive orders. Thus, he is motivated to settle with face-saving ways of backing down, which Paul, Weiss and Skadden Arps realized. Plus, as my Yale colleague John Morley wrote in the Wall Street Journal, the firms that quickly settled had much larger corporate transaction practices, with a higher propensity of flight risk, than those firms that have larger litigation practices. It is understandable that law firms with different business models would approach this same crisis differently. With the perishable quality of law-firm assets and firms’ fiduciary duties to their clients and employees, firms can make different business choices while still securing their futures with honor.

The continuing complex situation at Wilmer Hale shows further why the settlements of Paul Weiss and Skadden Arps are attractive. Wilmer Hale was granted partial relief, but the judge expressly denied relief on seeing security clearance block seeing that discretion of the purview of President Trump’s executive authority requiring ongoing litigation. Clients who require their lawyers to have security clearances may not be comfortable if there is some urgency in representation.

Attacks on the actions of Paul Weiss and Skadden Arps have missed the real story. The President’s motive was to attack virtually every leading law firm that has represented or hired those who challenged the President’s actions in court. It is noteworthy that not among the firms he attacked were such Trump-friendly firms as Jones Day, Quinn Emanuel, and Sullivan & Cromwell. In fact, one of the most disturbing aspects of this saga was that the President sought advice from the co-chairman of Paul Weiss rival, Sullivan & Cromwell, Trump’s personal attorney in his appeal of his conviction on 34 counts for falsifying business records, as he was negotiating with Karp, the Wall Street Journal and others reported. It is extraordinary that this involvement has not been the subject of greater scrutiny and criticism.

The leaders in the legal profession could take a page from their peers in other fields. After financial firms were devastated by the loss of their colleagues in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, their competitors rushed to offer assistance. Clients were not stolen and talent was not poached from the firms most affected by the attacks.

Similarly, during the 2008 financial collapse, leaders of top financial firms worked together to develop support for the TARP program, even though those firms were in competitively healthy positions to take advantage of their fallen rivals. Rivals such as UPS or FedEx routinely do not try to benefit from each other’s misfortunes but instead offer assistance to one another in the face of operational failures, labor strife, and other interruptions.

When in 2021, Delta Airlines expressed concern for the restrictive new voting laws, the President called for a boycott of Delta. I called the chief executives of American and United, who instantly expressed public support for Delta and joined a virtual forum of 100 CEOs hastily called for that purpose.

Collective action by chief executives in the business world has had a profound impact on blunting unchallenged authoritarian erosion of American democratic institutions. The legal industry stands apart—and the resulting spotlight is not flattering. The hypocritical chest pounding of attorneys condemning those law firms who settled is noteworthy, because many of those same attorneys previously failed to join the efforts to support those firms from the President’s attacks. Instead, they blame the victim here.

Hopefully, the leaders in the legal world can learn from bolder leaders in other fields. Already 80 deans of law schools have spoken out in unison in denouncing the President’s attack on law firms, while smaller firms such as Munger, Tolles & Olson and Keker, Van Nest & Peters have spoken out in defense of their larger rivals, suggesting “friend of the court” briefs.

Monday, the American College of Trial Lawyers joined the condemnation of President Trump’s coercive partisan executive orders attacking these law firms, while the American Bar Association has condemned this attack on the rule of law. Perhaps the big firms can join with the scrappy little firms out of enlightened self-interest. It wouldn’t hurt to hear from their clients now, either. It is not too late for the legal industry to redeem itself in this perilous moment.

source https://time.com/7273100/stop-blaming-law-firms-attacked-by-president-donald-trump/

An Alzheimer’s Blood Test Might Predict Advanced Disease

With two new treatments for Alzheimer’s disease approved in recent years, there’s growing hope for people at risk of the memory-robbing condition. But tests to detect the condition still lag behind. Earlier diagnosis would mean that people could take advantage of the drugs sooner, when the medicines are most effective.

Detection is currently tricky. Brain scans like PET can pick up amyloid plaques, the clumps of protein that are the hallmark of the disease, but by the time these form, people’s brain function is already declining. The scans are also expensive and not available at all hospitals. More sensitive ways to detect amyloid and tau, another protein related to the disease, are possible by analyzing spinal fluid, but that requires a painful and potentially dangerous spinal tap. Blood tests for the two proteins have not yet been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration—although they have received breakthrough designation from the agency, which means they are getting expedited review as studies of the tests are completed.

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In a new study published in Nature Medicine, researchers led by a group at Washington University in St. Louis report promising results of a blood test they developed to detect a different from of tau than the one that existing tests target. This form, they say, is a better indicator of how much of the damaging protein has built up in patients’ brains—and those levels correlate with the severity of a person’s disease. By comparing the results from the blood test to those from brain scans, the team determined that the blood test was 92% accurate in its readings of tau.

Read More: 5 Ways to Keep Your Brain Sharp As You Age

Dr. Randall Bateman, professor of neurology at Washington University and senior author of the paper, says that the presence of both amyloid and tau proteins in patients’ brains is essential to diagnosing Alzheimer’s. Amyloid plaques take years to develop, and it’s not until sufficient clusters of the protein have formed that symptoms like memory loss, confusion, and disorientation occur. Once amyloid aggregates form, then tau starts to develop abnormally both inside and outside of brain neurons.

Outside of the cell, tau forms what scientists call phosphorylated tau—what current tests can detect. But inside of brain neurons, tau in Alzheimer’s patients breaks down further, and instead of adopting neat, linear forms as it does in people without Alzheimer’s, it becomes crystalized and forms a mess of protein resembling tangled yarn. “Tau tangles are most associated with a person’s dementia symptoms,” says Bateman. “Plaques are like the fuel driving a lot of changes that we observe [in patients] over time. But not until the fire ignites, with the spread of tau tangles, does the brain really fall apart.”

He says that the crystalized form of tau is more strongly linked to cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer’s, so detecting the first signs of this form of tau would help doctors to identify patients on the brink of developing more severe memory and cognitive problems. “This is the first report of a tau tangle marker in the blood,” he says.

Read More: Changing Your Diet and Lifestyle May Slow Down Alzheimer’s

In 2023, Bateman and his team developed the first test for this crystalized form of tau, but in the spinal fluid. Because of the inconvenience and risk of spinal taps, the team then focused on looking for the same telltale signs of crystalized tau in the blood. After tediously screening a variety of blood markers, they finally found it. “We went through molecule by molecule, atom by atom, looking for the exact structure of the forms of tau that [we knew] existed, and then discovered the form that was uniquely identified with the presence of tangles.”

Bateman founded a company, C2N Diagnostics, to manufacture and provide the test to researchers for use in clinical trials. The blood-based test could speed development of anti-tau treatments for Alzheimer’s, since drug developers can fairly quickly determine whether a compound they are testing is having any effect on the amount of tau building up in a patient’s brain from a vial of blood. “A lot of us think that if we can slow down or reverse the formation of tau tangles, then it’s a good strategy to slow down or reverse Alzheimer’s,” says Bateman. “[The test] can accelerate how quickly new treatments are developed.”

Having a relatively easy way to track tau levels in Alzheimer’s could also provide new clues about how the disease progresses, and potentially provide new targets for drugs.

It’s not clear yet how the phosphorylated forms of tau that exist outside of neurons are related to the crystalized forms that cells generally harbor inside, but it’s possible that at some point, the buildup of phosphorylated tau triggers the formation of destructive crystalized tau inside neurons. Another unanswered question is why some fragments of the crystalized tau make their way outside of the nerve cells. Understanding that process could lead to new strategies for controlling tau and perhaps slowing the progression of the disease. “If we want better treatments for patients,” says Bateman, “then we have to understand what causes the disease.”

source https://time.com/7273006/alzheimers-disease-blood-test-tau/

Chella Man: I Am Choosing Deaf Trans Joy Without Conditions

I wake up from the anesthesia and a black tide washes over me. The world seeps slowly back. A hospital room. The face of a doctor and two nurses mouthing something I can’t understand. 

This is not the first time I’ve woken up from surgery. The first ones I had gave me my cochlear implants. The last one I had gave me my chest scars. This time, seven new bolts of metal have been added to my left arm—I took a fall while bike training for an upcoming ride this summer with a deaf bike group from San Francisco to LA in support of the San Francisco AIDs Foundation and the Los Angeles LGBT Center.  

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My best friend pushes open the door and walks toward me, her eyes soft. Gazing at her with heavy lids, I allow myself to fall apart. Anesthesia, I later learned, has a way of bringing your subconscious, deepest thoughts to the surface. 

“I’m having such scary thoughts,” I keep saying, over and over, between sobs. “You know how I can’t ever seem to imagine my future…” I hesitated. Saying it out loud would make it real. “It’s clear now that I was never planning to kill myself,” I admitted. “I thought someone else was going to.”

We exhaled together. Her expression remained unchanged, like she already knew something I was only now beginning to realize myself.

Growing up in rural Pennsylvania, I spent so many years being invalidated for being a deaf, trans person of color. I spent my last few years of high school listening to my peers chant “Electrocute the gays” and attach Trump stickers to every locker during Donald Trump’s first administration. I felt very stuck—I couldn’t vote because I was underage, and while I was out, I hadn’t yet realized that I was trans. I certainly didn’t feel safe enough to share that with my classmates, and I didn’t know how I could tangibly contribute to the fight against the hatred I was seeing around me. Every day, I was trying to do what I could to hold on to my soul—to survive.

Now, Trump is in office once again, but despite his full-scale assault on trans lives, something within me is different this time: I have a kind of joy I only felt as a young child—joy without conditions.

This concept is a bit new to me—it wasn’t always this way. For so long, I thought my joy had to be in resistance to those who want to erase me. Years ago, I had made a deal with myself: I made a choice to give my life to fighting for a just world. I wrote down, full of love for who I was and my communities: I am willing to fight until I die against the unfathomable injustices that pervade our society. I moved forward knowing I had set a timer for my own life,  anticipating that one day someone would be saying my name in memoriam.

That was the only ending I could see at the time. Not because of anything I did, but because of who I was: Deaf, trans, Asian, Jewish, and highly visible as these identities. Because people like me don’t survive the systems we live in. I never had a death wish. I just figured it was inevitable.

For years after that, I went to protests, sat on panels, and gave talks all across the country to universities and at brand headquarters. At various points, I imagined someone standing in the crowd and pulling a gun on me, making that day my last. But I showed up anyway because I had made my choice. 

In the end, I found myself in situations where my heart broke again and again. I fought so hard, thinking the world would change. I thought if I was a martyr—if I gave my life to the cause—it would catalyze the world I want to live in. 

That was the story I told myself. Until now. For the past few years, I’ve been making space to listen to my grief—letting it settle in my chest, listening to what it has to say. I’ve committed to meditation with relentless discipline. I’ve learned that stillness is a crucial part of our fight for liberation and is the balance that our movements need. I can’t offer authenticity to others if I’m not rooted in myself first. Showing up for myself isn’t a betrayal. It’s the only way I can truly show up at all.

Turning inward, I found myself sifting through thousands of diaries from the past two decades to jog my memory of who I was and who I’ve grown into. I see how much I endured for so many years, in part because I felt like I was in the dark for so long. No single person, place, or resource held the full truth of my lived experience. I found fragments of myself in different places. I had to be my own representation, my own role model, my own life-saving resource. I see why I had to fight so hard. I had to grieve that so many people did not know how to fight for my freedom, even if they tried. Unlearning martyrdom can be unsettling that way—but necessary.

Now, the moments that feel like the world is changing are unexpected: when I paint; when I scale a mountain on a bike; when I lose track of time in the woods; when I notice the leaves of the trees applauding me like they would in sign language, when I nuzzle into the people I love; Change is the peace I feel within, knowing what I want and where I need to be.

 The world is shaped, etched, and molded every day by people like me. People who are my neighbors, my peers, my elders. But true change starts with the world that exists inside of ourselves, first. On the surface, you may not notice the way things begin to shift. In the morning, for instance, when the light streams through my bedroom window, I used to slap on my cochlear implant immediately. Now, the silence allows me to tune into my inner voice. There is peace in welcoming transformation through stillness, knowing that change is inevitable–our lives are the proof.

In the reverberations of our chaotic political climate, it’s worth asking: What is your inner voice telling you? How are you thinking for yourself? What do you choose to believe? How can you show up for yourself and build toward a culture in which we all meet our needs and therefore our communities?

For me, it means recommitting to myself: My joy for being alive is not born out of resistance to any system, no matter who is in office. My joy does not need any reason to exist. It just is. And that has to be more than enough.

source https://time.com/7273059/chella-man-choosing-trans-joy-essay/

How to Prepare For the New Social Security ID Policy Ahead of Its Initiation in April

Since President Donald Trump has returned to the Oval Office, Social Security—a program which sends retirement and disability benefits to over 70 million people—has been the subject of many conversations. Although Trump initially assured voters that Social Security wouldn’t be touched, there have since been reports of potential staff and office cuts spearheaded by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

A new policy by the Social Security Administration (SSA) was announced on March 18, with a plan to enforce online and in-person identity proofing as opposed to that which can be done over the phone. This was an attempt to “implement stronger identity verification procedures,” the press release said. The changes were initially scheduled to go into effect on March 31.

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However, after much confusion and backlash, the SSA backtracked on some of the new measures and also extended the timeline, allowing more time for the system—and Social Security recipients—to prepare for the new identity proofing requirements.

Here’s what you need to know ahead of the new Social Security identification policy.

What are the new Social Security ID policies? 

The new SSA ID policy includes a transition to requiring “stronger” identity proofing procedures for both benefit claims and direct deposit changes—identity proofing that can no longer happen over the phone for most beneficiaries of Social Security.

Recipients will instead have to verify their identity via an online account, but those who do not have an account will need to prove their identity “in-person” at an SSA field office. People can call 1-800-772-1213 to schedule an in-person appointment.

Per the SSA, “the updated measures will further safeguard Social Security records and benefits for millions of Americans against fraudulent activity.”

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who is leading the charge with DOGE, previously characterized Social Security as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time,” claiming that the program is riddled with fraud and waste. Some experts have stated that the levels of fraud within the Social Security system are not as prominent as the Trump Administration says.

During a March 29 interview on MSNBC, Sen. Tina Smith, a Democrat from Minnesota who serves on the Senate Finance Committee, voiced concerns about the Trump Administration and DOGE’s intentions regarding Social Security. 

“They’re creating so much chaos and havoc in this system, it’s causing so much anxiety for my constituents and people all over the country,” she said. “I will tell you, I could see my Republican colleagues on the Finance Committee this week, as we were clearing the nominee [Frank Bisignano] for Social Security Administration, reflecting back the anxiety they’re getting from their constituents. But at the same time, are they willing to do anything to stop this? Apparently not.”

During Bisignano’s hearing on March 25, Smith declined to ask a question and instead made a statement. “This is a travesty. We can see what’s going on here… this is a wholesale effort to dismantle Social Security from the inside-out. This is not about rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse,” she said. Speaking on MSNBC, Smith said Bisignano was “deflecting” during his hearing, and cast doubt on his assurances that he would protect Social Security.

Read More: What Is Happening to Social Security Under the Trump Administration and Should You Be Concerned About Yours?

Who will be affected by these new policies and who is exempt?

The new policy initially drew criticism from lawmakers and advocates who stated that it alienated those for whom it would be incredibly difficult to make in-person visits to SSA field offices—including those in rural communities far away from offices, those with disabilities, and seniors.

AARP, formerly the American Association for Retired Persons, posted a statement, requesting the SSA “rethink” these requirements, pointing out that “requiring rural Americans to go into an office can mean having to take a day off of work and drive for hours merely to fill out paperwork.”

During Bisignano’s hearing, he answered questions about these changes from lawmakers worried about the alienation of citizens. Sen. Elizabeth Warren posed a hypothetical scenario to Bisignano in which a senior with a disability has trouble with traveling to a field office and is eventually turned away. She asked him: “Is that a benefit cut?” To which he replied: “I have no intent to have anything like that happen under my watch.”

On March 26, the SSA posted an update to these new changes, stating that some people will be exempt from these new rules, allowing people applying for Social Security Disability Insurance, Medicare, or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) to complete their claim by other means.

“We have listened to our customers, Congress, advocates, and others, and we are updating our policy to provide better customer service to the country’s most vulnerable populations,” Lee Dudek, Acting Commissioner of Social Security, said in the update. “Medicare, Disability, and SSI applications will be exempt from in-person identity proofing because multiple opportunities exist during the decision process to verify a person’s identity.”

All other beneficiaries who are unable to use the online portal must still visit an in-person SSA office, that includes “people applying for Retirement, Survivors, or Auxiliary (Spouse or Child) benefits.” However, the agency states that this will not be enforced in “extreme dire-need situations.” These extreme scenarios include terminal cases or prisoner pre-release scenarios—though the agency says it is still working on a process that will allow for these cases to bypass the new policy.

When will the new Social Security ID policy go into effect?

With the new shift in policy, the update from the SSA announced a delay in the timeline of the new identity proofing requirements, stating the changes will apply to all beneficiaries beginning April 14. This was in part due to an attempt to have more time to train employees.

The changes come amid the SSA denying reports that they are closing multiple field offices.

“Since Jan. 1, 2025, the agency has not permanently closed or announced the permanent closure of any local field office,” the SSA statement read. “From time to time, SSA must temporarily close a local field office for reasons such as weather, damage, or facilities issues, and it reopens when the issues are resolved.”

Still, experts worry that with planned staff cuts, it may be harder for beneficiaries to receive benefits. Pamela Herd, professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, told TIME on March 26 that the effects are already being felt.

“People are waiting for hours to get through on the phone and then getting cut off before they can actually talk to a representative. The field offices, that honestly were already a bit overwhelmed [already], are now completely overwhelmed,” she said. “So there’s a real disconnect between the statement, ‘I’m not going to cut benefits,’ and in practice, what is going on in the agency.”

How to prepare for the new ID policy

Those who are not applying for Medicare, Disability and SSI should prepare for the new ID policy by creating a “my Social Security” account on the SSA website, if they do not already have one. That way, they will not have to provide identification in-person. This option is the “easiest and most secure” way to verify one’s identity, according to the SSA.

People can create their account through either one of two credential service providers: Login.gov or ID.me, and they must have a valid email address. For those who are unable to utilize the “my Social Security” account and therefore must go to a field office in-person, the SSA allows for several different kinds of primary and secondary proofs of identity, including a driver’s license, passport, alien or voter registration card, or union card to verify your identity.

Social security has their own priority list of identification documents on their website.

source https://time.com/7272921/social-security-new-identity-proofing-policy-how-to-prepare/