Today, a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia returned an indictment* presented by the Special Counsel’s Office. The indictment charges twelve Russian military officers for conspiring to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.
Eleven of the defendants are charged with conspiring to hack into computers, steal documents, and release documents in an effort to interfere with the election.
One of those defendants, and a twelfth Russian officer are charged with conspiring to infiltrate computers of organizations responsible for administering elections, including state boards of election, secretaries of state, and companies that supply software and other technology used to administer elections.
According to the allegations in the indictment, the defendants worked for two units of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian General Staff, known as the GRU. The units engaged in active cyber operations to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. One GRU unit worked to steal information, while another unit worked to disseminate stolen information.
The defendants used two techniques to steal information. First, they used a scam known as “spearphishing,” which involves sending misleading email messages and tricking users into disclosing their passwords and security information. Second, the defendants hacked into computer networks and installed malicious software that allowed them to spy on users and capture keystrokes, take screenshots, and exfiltrate data.
The defendants accessed the email accounts of volunteers and employees of a U.S. presidential campaign, including the campaign chairman, starting in March 2016. They also hacked into the computer networks of a congressional campaign committee and a national political committee. The defendants covertly monitored the computers, implanted hundreds of files containing malicious computer code, and stole emails and other documents.
The conspirators created fictitious online personas, including “DCLeaks” and “Guccifer 2.0,” and used them to release thousands of stolen emails and other documents, beginning in June 2016. The defendants falsely claimed that DCLeaks was started by a group of American hackers and that Guccifer 2.0 was a lone Romanian hacker.
In addition to releasing documents directly to the public, the defendants transferred stolen documents to another organization, not named in the indictment, and discussed timing the release of the documents in an attempt to enhance the impact on the election.
In an effort to conceal their connections to Russia, the defendants used a network of computers located around the world, and paid for it using cryptocurrency.
The conspirators corresponded with several Americans through the internet. There is no allegation in the indictment that the Americans knew they were communicating with Russian intelligence officers.
In a second, related conspiracy, Russian GRU officers hacked the website of a state election board and stole information about 500,000 voters. They also hacked into computers of a company that supplied software used to verify voter registration information; targeted state and local offices responsible for administering the elections; and sent spearphishing emails to people involved in administering elections, with malware attached.
The indictment includes eleven criminal charges and a forfeiture allegation.
Count One charges eleven defendants for conspiring to access computers without authorization, and to cause damage to those computers, in connection with efforts to steal documents and release them in order to interfere with the election.
Counts Two through Nine charge eleven defendants with aggravated identity theft by employing the usernames and passwords of other persons to commit computer fraud.
“See It” project by Fiann Paul. The installation of the photographs of the Icelandic mothers breastfeeding, taken in the remote areas of Iceland, decorated the building at Tryggvagata in the heart of the capital city of Iceland from September 2011 to March 2012; Wikipedia
The Trump administration this spring tried to remove pro-breastfeeding language from a World Health Organization resolution. But here at home, breastfeeding has steadily become more accepted and accessible — culminating this year in the 49th and 50th states enacting laws to allow it in public.
The World Health Organization resolution stated that breast milk is the healthiest choice for babies and encouraged countries to crack down on misleading claims from purveyors of formula. Attempts by the United States to remove language that called on governments to “protect, promote and support breastfeeding” were unsuccessful, but the move shocked researchers and health advocates who have long contended “breast is best.”
The measure succeeded even after the United States reportedly threatened to withdraw military aid or introduce new trade measures against Ecuador, which had planned to introduce it. In the end, Russia introduced the measure. President Donald Trump criticized coverage of the controversy and said the United States wants to promote access to formula.
Meanwhile, this year in the United States, Idaho became the last to protect mothers who are nursing in public against fines for public indecency. Utah enacted a similar law a few days before, so all 50 states now allow public breastfeeding. New Jersey expanded its civil rights law to protect nursing mothers from discrimination at work, joining 28 states that offer workplace protections. New York will begin requiring breastfeeding rooms in all state buildings open to the public by next year.
The choices made by mothers in the United States and those abroad may seem unrelated, but in fact are closely intertwined. As cultural norms and laws in the United States shift, more women are breastfeeding, and a plateau in the market for substitutes has left manufacturers turning to developing nations, where formula is sometimes viewed as a healthier alternative and thus a status symbol by a growing middle class.
Eighty-one percent of newborn infants were breastfed in the United States in 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control, up from a low of 24 percent in 1971. While laws can often lag decades or more behind social norms, legislation related to breastfeeding has passed more swiftly by comparison. A number of states passed bills in the late 1990s and then again in the late 2000s, as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ramped up ads encouraging breastfeeding from 2004 to 2006. And nursing mothers have put serious pressure on state legislators after stories circulated of nursing women being asked to leave restaurants and other businesses.
“I was a new mom asked to leave an establishment or go into the bathroom within two weeks of giving birth, and that fundamentally changed me,” said Adrean Cavener, the mother of a two-year-old son and the owner of a lobbying firm that helped push for the law in Idaho. “ ‘Cause I was looking into the face of the most miraculous thing that ever happened, and I’m feeding him in a place that someone just defecated. I was sitting in this bathroom stall with tears streaming down my face.”
In Idaho, the holdout state, the bill passed without a single “no” vote and was received very differently than a similar bill considered in 2003 that never made it out of committee. One legislator made headlines for saying he feared women would “whip it out and do it anywhere.”
Linda J. Smith, a lactation consultant and board member at La Leche League, a breastfeeding advocacy group, said that when she was working on a bill to allow public breastfeeding in Ohio, she and other mothers used a stunt to help legislators understand why women preferred to nurse wherever they may be with their child.
“We brought them individually wrapped cookies, but we said, ‘You can’t eat it now. You have to wait ‘til you’re in the bathroom and eat it there.’ ”
States that initially passed breastfeeding protection laws more than a decade ago have had to make updates as more women enter the workforce. Laws requiring workplaces to accommodate nursing mothers were in part spurred by Affordable Care Act regulations, stating that businesses with at least 50 employees must provide time for women to express breastmilk for at least a year after they have given birth. But many states have added specific requirements to their own statutes.
First, it was just a hitch in my step, then my legs began to feel sore and weirdly hollow during my daily walk with my dog, especially if I lollygagged along the way and spent time standing and chatting with friends we met. By the time I’d get home, down a steep hill, my right hip outright throbbed with the aching.
Right, an orthopedic apparatus; Wellcome Library Rare Books
It didn’t take long before I developed a limp on that side. A couple I know saw me favoring that leg and the wife said, “You’re going to need a hip replacement. Better sooner than later.”
My reaction was what were they talking about? Hip replacement. For one thing, I hadn’t heard about this revolution in new body parts the boomers have helped fuel. Besides, I was young, my early 70s, and had had only one operation in my whole life. Some 30 years before. I had miles to go, no room for such a procedure.
Turns out my neighbor who told me I’d need the operation knew what she was talking about. She had undergone a hip replacement herself a few years before. And she was at least ten years my junior. But still, I thought, not me. Slowly, I recovered. My hip got much better, despite the steep hillsides in my neighborhood. Harumph, I thought, so much for what they knew. Hah.
Roll a few months forward. A clumsy fall in the grocery store and I landed hard on that right hip, on the bony protrusion on the side that I learned only later is called the trochanter. This wasn’t the first time I’d fallen and I expected just like before, it would hurt like heck but get better. Six months of therapy and an x-ray later I learned the bitter truth, my neighbor was right. My right hip needed replacement.
Arthritis, likely heightened by the trauma of the fall, had eaten away the entire cartilage between the ball and socket of that hip, now down to bone on painful bone. The doctor showed me on the x-ray. No space between those bones. They were surrounded by a halo of white on the film. Sclerosis, the doctor called it. He explained that is how the bones react to the constant rubbing together. They change, growing lumpy and sclerotic.
The timing of the surgery was up to me. The pain would dictate. It became so intense it caused a permanent hitch to my walk, so bad that sometimes I felt like I had a peg leg and would hobble along trying not to put weight on it. I had to postpone a planned European trip. The only real solution, aside from a steroid shot that likely wouldn’t last for long, was that surgery to replace my hip. The only way to regain my mobility.
I opted for a well-known surgical team of orthopedists in my town and the latest surgery, known as the anterior frontal approach. I rescheduled my trip for several months away.
It seemed like people came out of the woodwork to tell me they too had undergone the procedure. How amazing it could be, how quickly they recovered. A walk in the park.
Pre-operation, I made the mistake of asking the physician’s assistant for a graphic description of the procedure. You lie on an x-shaped table, the subject leg mobile, the foot wearing a special boot. The surgeon cuts on the top of the thigh, only far enough to reach the muscles that he parts rather than cuts, helping speed post-surgery recovery. Then the leg is maneuvered for doctors to pull apart the joint and reach the arthritic femur where the sclerotic top is sawed off. A metal piece is inserted into the remaining femur bone. A ceramic ball which acts as the new ball is screwed on the top of the metal piece.
Editor’s Note: For those interested in the welfare of animals, Peaceable Primate Sanctuary was created to fill an unmet need and to provide a sanctuary for baboons retired from use in biomedical research, as pets or entertainers (see page below*)
Right, a fourth-year Harvard Medical Student examining a baby goat at Franklin Park Zoo; photograph by Meredith Nierman for WGBH
The patient was rushed into the room, listless, intermittently trying to lift his head only to fall back down. Soon, he became unresponsive and cold. I placed the ultrasound probe on his chest and saw a barely contracting heart — heart failure. A massive clot filled the left atrium. The team became silent, then quickly regained its composure, and the supervising doctor began disbursing orders in rapid fire. We stabilized the patient, though he remained in serious condition, and then we shifted to research mode. We emailed doctors across the country: “Have you seen acute dilated cardiomyopathy before in similar patients? He is a 3-year-old meerkat.”
I would never have predicted that I would spend my final month of medical school performing fetal ultra-sounds on a pregnant gorilla, phlebotomizing a 500-pound tapir with hemochromatosis, caring for a meerkat in heart failure, and investigating medical mysteries across the animal kingdom. Yet spending the final month of my MD-PhD program working at the veterinary hospital of a zoo was one of the more remarkable and humbling experiences I had during medical school — a unique capstone to my education as a physician-scientist.
Early during medical school, I became fascinated by the diversity of anatomy and physiology across the animal kingdom. After lectures on cardiology, I read the scant literature on whale heart physiology, in near disbelief that the aorta of a sperm whale has a 2-foot circumference and a staggering cardiac output of 450 liters per minute.1 It was breathtaking trying to imagine the dynamics of blood flow in such a massive cardiovascular system. During neurology courses, I was amazed to learn that marsupials do not have a corpus callosum connecting the hemispheres of their brain (they are connected via a different tract). The differences between “us” and “them” across the myriad dimensions of function seemed to probe basic assumptions about human pathophysiology. What mechanisms protect giraffes from hypertensive organ damage when their systolic blood pressures are twice that of humans?2 How do hibernating bears avoid uremia despite months of minimal urine output?3 The human animal, I came to appreciate, is but a single point among a cloud of points revealing otherwise invisible physiologic trends and questioning principles often taken for granted. This perspective also seemed an inexhaustible source of research ideas with potential to affect both human and animal health.
Later in medical school, I read about the remarkable ways in which diseases can be prevalent in specific species but not others. I helped diagnose my family’s cocker spaniel with Evans syndrome — the co-occurrence of autoimmune hemolytic anemia and thrombocytopenia — and was intrigued to learn that Evans syndrome and immune thrombocytopenia more commonly afflict cocker spaniels, suggesting a genetic susceptibility for this breed and an opportunity to reveal some of the mystery of its cause. One of the first patients I saw on the wards in medical school had Evans syndrome. The look on the clinical team’s faces when I blurted out, “My dog has that!” was priceless. Yet it spurred me to share with my colleagues the bridges I was finding between human and animal medicine.
These experiences led me to reach out to the Franklin Park Zoo’s veterinary hospital in Boston, whose veterinarians bravely agreed to host a medical student for an admittedly unorthodox, perhaps unprecedented rotation. And for both the gorillas and myself, this experiment changed how we view and understand medicine.
For nearly every disease I saw at the zoo, the simple question of why certain species, human or nonhuman, are susceptible to it, while others are not, raised immediate possibilities for research into their etiology. Chimpanzees have an ostensibly more atherogenic lipid profile than humans, yet they do not appear to get atherosclerosis; instead, they and other great apes (gorillas, orangutans, and bonobos) are susceptible to a different disease —fibrosing cardiomyopathy — that is uncommon in humans.4
At the zoo, I helped perform cardiac ultrasounds of the gorillas as part of the Great Ape Heart Project to understand how heart disease manifests in our closest cousins. When I cared for a cotton-top tamarin with colitis and a bowel obstruction secondary to colon cancer, I learned that tamarins (a small New World monkey) have high rates of chronic colitis and subsequent colon cancer. Remarkably, this appears to preferentially occur to tamarins in captivity,5 suggesting an environmental etiology and an opportunity to study the underlying causes of inflammatory bowel disease.
At the zoo, I realized that natural veterinary disease models present unique opportunities for elucidating disease etiology beyond induced disease models often used in research since they manifest spontaneously and in more natural contexts. They may also provide an animal model where one does not otherwise exist. For example, hepatitis B virus research was greatly advanced when a related virus was discovered in woodchucks at the Philadelphia Zoo,6 and in 1909, a tumor in a chicken from a Long Island farm led to the seminal discovery of the Rous sarcoma virus, which was later pivotal to revealing the first oncogene and the genetic origins of cancer.7
*Editor’s Note: Our daughter recently visited the Peaceable Primate Sanctuary; A Home for Retired and Rescued Baboons in Winamac, Indiana (a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit organization). The sanctuary was designed with experts in baboon housing, management and care, and upholds all local, state and federal regulations. They accepted their first baboons in May 2016 and their goal is to care for 60 baboons by 2020. There’s a newsletter signup as well as ways to donate to the Peaceable Primate Sanctuary, such as Amazon.
On June 21, 2018, the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) introduced Open Bookshelf, a one-stop shop for hundreds of e-books that are freely available online. This collection, which currently features over 1,000 books, includes titles that are in the public domain along with titles that are Creative Commons licensed. These titles are selected by the Curation Corps, a team of librarians from across the country that includes public, school, and academic librarians. The books available on Open Bookshelf reflect the diversity of the Curation Corps: the collection features classical literature (including Pride and Prejudice and Little Women), textbooks, academic titles, and children’s books. Visitors may browse this collection by language or genre (e.g. science fiction, education & study aids, and computers). Individual users can access Open Bookshelf through SimplyE, a free mobile application. Open Bookshelf is also available to participating libraries through the DPLA Exchange. [MMB]
From Columbia University’s Center for Iranian Studies comes Encyclopaedia Iranica, a peer-reviewed encyclopedia dedicated to Iranian history and culture. The encyclopedia, which was launched in print in 1982 and has been online since 1996, is currently edited by Professor Elton Daniel and an international team of 38 scholars, including scholars of linguistics, central Asian art & archeology, and modern Central Asia. Meanwhile, the encyclopedia’s entries are penned by over 1,000 scholars, providing readers with access to a breadth of expertise. Visitors can perhaps best explore the encyclopedia through the advanced search option, which includes an option to browse by topic (including biographies, flora and fauna, music, and material culture). As of this write-up, Encyclopaedia Iranica is in the process of developing subject tags to facilitate easier browsing – readers are invited to submit appropriate subject tags. Finally, visitors may want to check out the resources section, which features links to other digital projects that may be of interest, including the Afghanistan Encyclopedia, the Digital Persian Archive, and Women’s Worlds in Qajar Iran, to name just a few. [MMB]
For instructors of chemistry and biology, the Howard Hughes Medical Insitute’s BioInteractive collection offers this compilation of resources “related to chemistry, biochemistry, and biological macromolecules such as DNA, RNA, proteins, carbohydrates, and lipids.” In total, Chemistry of Life includes 78 resources, including animated videos, hands-on classroom activities, interactive videos, three-dimensional models, and more. Visitors can best browse these items by selecting the View All Chemistry of Life Resources link at the bottom of this page. From here, visitors can filter resources by topic (e.g., biochemistry; nutrition, mechanism), by resource type (e.g., animation, 3D model, instructor resource), or by curriculum (including AP Biology, Common Core, Next Generation Science Standards-Life Science). Each resource is accompanied by a short description. Many of the more extensive educational resources in this collection also are also accompanied by a list of relevant NGSS, AP Biology, and IB Biology standards. [MMB]
Launched in February 2018, Crash Course Media Literacy is one of the newest additions to the popular YouTube series launched by vlogging brothers John and Hank Green. This recent series is hosted by veteran vlogger and radio host Jay Smooth and addresses a range of topics that touch on a number of academic disciplines. As Jay Smooth notes in the first episode of this series, “[a]s a field of study, media literacy comprises and overlaps many different theories and subjects from critical thinking and psychology to linguistics and ethics in technology.” Individual episodes in this series address issues including the history of print journalism, the work of Marshall McLuhan, confirmation bias, advertising, and disinformation. This series may be of interest to social studies, journalism, and psychology instructors, as well as librarians. [MMB]
For scholars of fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth-century English literature, the Database of Early English Playbooks (DEEP) is “[a]n easy-to-use and highly customizable search engine of every playbook produced in England, Scotland, and Ireland from the beginning of printing through 1660.” This database was created by Alan B. Farmer, an English professor at The Ohio State University and Zachary Lesser, an English professor at the University of Pennsylvania. The pair created the very first version of this database in 1999 when they were graduate students at Columbia University interested in “the marketing of authorship and theatricality on the title pages of early modern English playbooks.” Since then, the pair has collaborated with a number of programmers and designers to create the current version of DEEP. Today, the database includes single-play playbooks as well as collections (books that contain plays). Researchers may want to start by perusing the How to Use DEEP page, which provides a helpful tutorial of the specific search fields that can be used to explore this database. In addition, scholars can download all data contained in DEEP in HTML, XML, or CSV format. [MMB]
Founded in January 2014, NOTCHES is a self-described “peer-reviewed, collaborative and international history of sexuality blog that aims to get people inside and outside the academy thinking about sexuality in the past and in the present.” The blog is edited by an international team of scholars and publishes a variety of blog posts. Most blog posts illuminate a specific aspect of the history of sexuality, often accompanied by related images or video clips. For instance, in one recent post, historian Rebecca Jennings writes about the experiences of lesbian women in Australia during the post-World War II era. NOTCHES also publishes a number of interviews with scholars who have recently published books related to the history of sexuality. In one recent interview, historian Jerry T. Watkins III discusses his recent book Queering the Redneck Riviera: Sexuality and the Rise of Florida Tourism. Visitors can browse previous blog posts by subject tags such as historiography, masculinity, and cultural history. [MMB]
From the Minnesota Literacy Council (check out the 07-29-2016 Scout Report) comes this complete curriculum to help students prepare for the science portion of the General Equivalency Diploma (GED). Although these printable resources are designed specifically for GED teachers, they may also be of interest to K-12 science instructors. This curriculum is organized into a series of units including earth and space science, physical science, and life science. Within each of these units, instructors can download a sequence of complete lesson plans, accompanied with ready-to-go student handouts. Many of these individual lessons include links to additional resources that may be of interest to instructors. In addition, this collections features a number of short instructional videos. [MMB]
For mathematics instructors and students, the mathematics publishing company Worldwide Center for Math offers a number of instructional videos related to upper-level mathematics, including algebra, trigonometry, and precalculus. These videos are perhaps best browsed by playlist. One playlist, Think Thursday, features a series of short videos that present logic problems and brain teasers accompanied by a demonstration of how one might approach these problems. These short videos may especially appeal to mathematics instructors looking for warm-up activities. Other playlists include Musimathics: Music & Math; Basics: Proof; and the History of Greek Mathematics. [MMB]
In February 2005, Baylor University English professor Robert Darden penned an essay for The New York Times op-ed section entitled “Gospel’s Got the Blues.” In this essay, Darden noted that although gospel music has enduring popularity, a number of early gospel recordings are at risk of disappearing. This editorial inspired philanthropist Charles M. Royce to donate funds to the university to launch the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project. Over the past several years, the project has digitized thousands of early gospel recordings. In 2016, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African-American History and Culture featured a number of items from the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project in their Musical Crossroads exhibit. Gospel music fans can also listen to these recordings on the project’s homepage. The collection includes a number of recordings dating back to the 1950s and 1960s, including songs by C.L. Franklin, Mahalia Jackson, and the Staple Singers. In the Publicly Accessible Audio section, visitors can browse these recordings by artist, date, publisher/record label, or original format (e.g., 33 �x2153 rpm, 45 rpm, etc.). [MMB]
In 2016, the Global Volcanism Program at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History released “Eruptions, Earthquakes, and Emissions.” The project presents “a time-lapse animation of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes since 1960.” In addition, this animation also incorporates data about sulfur dioxide emissions from volcanic eruptions for every year since 1978, which is when such data first became available thanks to the introduction of satellites to monitor sulfur dioxide emissions. As viewers watch this animation, they may click on icons to view more information about specific earthquakes or volcanic explosions. Visitors interested in further exploring this data about volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and sulfuric emissions may download these respective datasets in a CSV or GeoJSON file. [MMB]
Founded in 1985, the MIT Media Lab is dedicated to supporting interdisciplinary (or “antidisciplinary”) research and to “the study, invention, and creative use of digital technologies to enhance the ways that people think, express, and communicate ideas, and explore new scientific frontiers.” As part of this mission, the organization hosts a number of MLTalks, which are public interviews with a range of experts that include scholars, writers, doctors, artists, and others. On MIT Media Lab’s website, interested visitors can listen to and view recordings of previous MLTalks. In one recent talk, MIT Media Lab Associate Director Andrew Lippman talks to historian and New Yorker contributor Jill Lepore about the history of evidence. In another recent talk, Joe Paradiso of the Media Lab interviews science fiction writer Neal Stephenson. Each MLTalk is approximately ninety minutes in length and features a short lecture by the featured guest, followed by a robust interview and question and answer period. [MMB]
Editor’s Note: C-Span video of Senator Wyden’s question and Secy. Azar response seems to be removed from easy accessibility. We have now copied what we could find on C-Span
On June 26th, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar still cannot answer Senator Ron Wyden’s (a senator for Oregon since 1996) question about parents knowing the whereabouts of their migrant children.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar pushes back against questioning from Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden over his agency’s handling of over 2,000 migrant children placed in its custody as a result of the Trump administration’s family-separation policy. Secretary Azar declines to provide specific numbers on how many parents know the whereabouts of theirchildren,but says they can find the information at agency portals and with the help ofcase workers.
Editor’s Note: Below is information for one of the agency’s portals … If you have any questions or need help filing a civil rights, conscience or religious freedom, or health information privacy complaint, you may email OCR at OCRMail@hhs.gov or call the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights toll-free at: 1-800-368-1019, TDD: 1-800-537-7697.
Please Note: The Portal will be offline for maintenance from Sat Jul 07 05:00 AM EDT to Sat Jul 07 04:00 PM EDT. Any information being entered when the Portal is taken off-line will be lost.
“We provide alternative formats (such as Braille and large print), auxiliary aids and services (such as a relay service), and language assistance.
GOVERNMENT POLICY
6. Azar Blames ‘Broken Immigration System’ As HHS Struggles To Meet Court-Ordered Deadline For Reuniting Families
HHS Secretary Alex Azar says there have been obstacles to meeting the deadline on returning young children to their parents, but the agency is using DNA to help match the families.
The Wall Street Journal: Trump Administration Says It Is Working To Reunite Families By Court Deadline The Trump administration, in a race to comply with a court order to reunite up to 3,000 children with adult family members who crossed the border illegally, said Thursday it is encountering significant logistical hurdles. The federal government has until Tuesday to reunite children younger than 5 years old with their parents, under a court order issued last week by U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego. Older minors must be reconnected with their parents by July 26, the federal judge ruled. (Radnofsky and Campo-Flores, 7/5)
Modern Healthcare: HHS Faces Tight Deadline To Reunite Migrant Kids With Parents The complications could mount once HHS transfers the kids to their parents’ detention centers and as the furor and litigation rage in the fallout of the Trump administration policy. In addition to the lawsuit that led to the recent court order—originally filed in February by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of a Congolese immigrant family—17 Democratic attorneys general have lodged a separate lawsuit that names Azar, HHS, ORR and other departments and administration officials as defendants. (Luthi, 7/5)
The Hill: HHS Working To Identify Children Separated From Families At Border The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) says it is reviewing the cases of “under 3,000” children who may have been separated from their parents or families at the U.S. border. HHS officials are trying to whittle that number down further to identify the children who were actually separated from their parents by the U.S. government — as opposed to other circumstances before they came to the U.S. — ahead of a court-imposed deadline to reunite children with their families. (Hellmann, 7/5)
The Hill: HHS: About 100 Children Under 5 To Be Reunited With Parents Next Week About 100 children under the age of 5 will be reunited with their families next week after getting separated by authorities at the U.S. border, officials said Thursday. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) must reunite the children under 5 by Tuesday to comply with a court order handed down last month. (Hellmann, 7/5)
The Hill: HHS Using DNA Testing In Order To Reunite Migrant Families ‘Faster’ The Trump administration is conducting DNA tests to reunite children separated from their parents at the border. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said Thursday that the agency is using the “faster” and more accurate method in order to comply with a court order to reunite children aged 4 and under with families by July 10, and children aged 5 to 17 by July 26. (Hellmann, 7/5)
Hundreds of thousands of people marched throughout the country on Saturday, June 30 to protest family separation at the US-Mexican border. At least 700 marches and rallies were reported from big cities and small towns though the total number of participants was not available. In Washington, DC about two thousand people gathered in Lafayette Square in 95-degree heat to hear speakers before strolling to the Capitol.
Two days earlier Washington saw a much better organized and more colorful march by and for women. Gathering at Freedom Plaza for instructions, chanting and a few speakers, the women stopped for a rally at the Justice Department before proceeding to the Hart Senate Office Building. Once inside women occupied a central atrium and intentionally disturbed the peace. The US Capitol Police said that they arrested 575, though some reports said there were over 600.
Melania Trump wrote the script for both days when she was photographed on June 21 wearing a trench coat that said on the back “I really don’t care. Do U?” At Thursday’s march women wrote “We” “Care” on each palm in large black letters and walked with their hands up so the words would be visible. By Saturday, t-shirts were available that said “I really do care.” “We care” about the fate of immigrants and asylum seekers became the theme for all of those protesting Trump’s detention and separation of families escaping violence in Mexico and Central America.
The June 28 march was organized on very short notice by Women’s March and Popular Democracy. The former had brought millions of women to Washington on January 21, 2017. The few men who came to Freedom Plaza were asked to provide support services but not be arrested at the Hart Building. The march had a permit. Several of DC’s multiple police forces escorted the marchers down Pennsylvania Ave. and guarded the various buildings on the way.
On Thursday, the main event was civil disobedience (CD) at the Hart SOB. On Saturday the main event was the rally at Lafayette Square. It was much hotter on Saturday, so those listening to the speeches clustered under the many trees in Lafayette Square. Freedom Plaza had a tent where women who signed up to be arrested could leave their stuff. March organizers provided bagels and bottles of water. On Saturday large tubs of water stretched down the sidewalk on 16th St. across from Lafayette Square. St. John’s Episcopal Church opened its doors to anyone who needed to sit down out of the heat and also passed out water, sunscreen and granola bars.
Banners and signs proliferated at the women’s protest. There were fewer at the bigger rally on Saturday. Most signs were homemade. On Saturday, the AFL-CIO held a union rally at its building before joining the main rally one block away. On Thursday, there were no union signs, though there were probably some union members among the marchers.
Summer has many wonderful things to recommend it: long hours of daylight; fruits and vegetables fresh from the garden or a Farmers’ Market; swimming outdoors in ocean, lake or pool; the distinct lack of formality in dress; outdoor sports like tennis and golf; comfort in one’s loose-fitting clothes; and a chance, perhaps, to enjoy a bit of vacation at home or away.
For children, of course, there is that delicious anticipation of the last day of school, and the thrilling first moments after the final bell when the whole beautiful summer spreads itself before you in your imagination, not one minute of the precious time yet squandered. For teachers, too, it’s a buoyant moment, followed shortly by the exquisite treat of going to bed and NOT setting the alarm clock.
Growing up in northern California, I loved to spend idle summer hours sitting up in the top of my special live oak tree, or playing wild games of Monopoly or Canasta with my best friend from next door. Once a week my mother would take us to the library and we’d stock up on books, three or four at a time. I can still recall the scent of that library, and see in my mind’s eye the wooden card catalogue and metal shelving in the children’s section. The name and face of the librarian are long gone from memory, but she was a beloved resource who kept tabs on everyone’s special interests and level of proficiency, and could suggest books that were an appropriate next step.
On hot days, my brother and I could bike down one hill and up another to a little green puddle partly ringed with a stone wall and a gate with a curved sign above it that said: “Emerald Lake Country Club.” There was no clubhouse; no tennis court; no amenity beyond a couple of outdoor restrooms and a trucked-in sandy beach. The lake had a raft in the middle, and a tall swing next to the high diving platform on the edge. On the Fourth of July, there were swimming races for children. I won mine a couple of times when Kay Belden moved up to the older age group, but in the years that we were in the same group, there was no touching her. I learned to dive by watching Kay, and every now and again she’d deign to notice my efforts, and offer advice, which thrilled me.
My brother used to drive the lifeguard (and my mother) mad by slipping beneath the surface and disappearing for a long time. He was a natural sinker, and could hold his breath for what seemed like forever. The water was so green that you couldn’t see three feet beneath the surface, so you never knew where he’d come up next. Often he shot out of the water beneath the inner tube on which I was floating, turning me over. Sometimes he grabbed me by the feet and yanked me down. Try as I might to swim underwater, I always bobbed back up, so he could easily escape my outraged efforts for revenge. I suppose that there’s an advantage to being naturally buoyant (it’d be hard to drown me), but at the time it seemed like the bane of my life.
In California, the grass-covered hills turn golden in the summer. It doesn’t rain from May to September, so the tall grass cures in the sun. That was when we got out the cardboard cartons we’d saved all winter, flattened them, and rode them down the hill in the same way that children in the East use sleds in the snow. It could be a hard and bumpy ride, but the dry grass was slick and the slopes were steep, and we could gather enough speed to shoot the small, dry creek at the bottom of the hill. (Well, at least my brother and the other big boys did).
Once or perhaps twice a summer, we’d have a really hot spell, as high as 90°. There would be headlines in the newspaper about little old ladies collapsing from the heat. But usually the “marine layer,” as the weathermen now refer to fog, would roll in over the coastal mountains that were known simply as Skyline, pouring over the slopes like a great ocean comber, making our nights chilly enough to sit by the fire, even in summer. It was nature’s own air conditioner, at least for those of us who lived near enough to the ocean.
On rare nights when the fog didn’t come in, my brother and I would sometimes lie on our backs in the tall grass and swat mosquitoes (and get bitten by them) as we watched the brilliant stars wheel overhead. Smog hadn’t yet come to the Bay Area, and the dry air was very clear. The first poem I ever wrote, when I was about 8, ended with: “…and stars at night, a million stars, hung low.”
The first time I ventured east of the Mississippi, I was five years old. The War had begun, and my parents knew that soon travel would be impossible. As soon as school let out for the summer, my mother, brother and I boarded the train at the Oakland Moll and headed back to New York State to visit Great Aunt Julia. She was then 88 years old, and my mother, who was her closest relative, was anxious to see her one last time.
Aunt Julia lived with a companion in a small town in upstate New York. She had a big old house with nooks and crannies to delight children, including a dark back stairway just made for haunting. There was a stuffed loon on the dresser in my brother’s bedroom, and in mine, a small white china cat holding a purple and gold velvet ball that was a pincushion. Best of all there was a barn out back (empty, alas), and a lawn and big trees where we could play tag. I remember the first evening at dusk when we sat out on the porch, still a bit in awe of our aunt, and on our best behavior. Suddenly there was a small gleam of light in the air right by my foot. I wasn’t sure I had really seen it, but shortly there was another, a little farther away.
“What is it?” I breathed, not the least afraid because it seemed somehow friendly, a bit like the stars I loved.
“Ginger Blue!” said Aunt Julia. “Has the child never seen a firefly?” (I think I was almost as entranced by that “Ginger Blue!” — which turned out to be Aunt Julia’s favorite exclamation — as I was by the fireflies).
Bottles were quickly provided so that my brother and I could catch fireflies to our hearts’ content, a task I adored because the fool things were so easy to capture, and didn’t sting or bite like our California bugs.
The next leg of our trip took us to New York City, where it was hot and humid, and then to New Jersey to stay with cousins who had children about our ages. The afternoon we arrived, there was a good rain, and because the grownups hadn’t heard any thunder, we were allowed to put on our bathing suits and go out to play in it. I can still remember the wonder of that: it was lots better than playing in our sprinkler on a hot day at home. In California, the rains didn’t come until the weather had turned cold, and you’d no more go out in your bathing suit in rain than you would in snow.
The rest of the trip took us to our Mother’s old college, where we saw snapping turtles in the lake, and then on to Chicago, and to Pentwater, Michigan, where we visited Mother’s former roommate in her wonderful house by the lake. It seemed strange to be playing in the sand dunes and then swimming in fresh, not salty water, but the winds off the lake were cool and welcome.
That trip also provided me with my first glimpse of lightning, as we came across the Great Plains. From my upper berth, I could look out the little window and see huge bolts of lightning on the horizon, although because of the distance, or possibly the noise of the train, I never heard the thunder. I was quite afraid of the lightning. It seemed unpredictable, and looked violent even though it was beautiful.
Now that I have lived more than half my life in the East, I’ve gotten over being afraid when I hear the first rumbles of thunder, although I still don’t enjoy it when there are strikes so near that you can hear the fizz-snap simultaneously with the bang. I have never stopped loving fireflies. On evenings after a rain, or when the grass has been freshly cut, we can count on a large number of winking lights, and the woods in the hollow behind our house are often like a fairyland of tiny stars moving lazily about among the trees.
One of the things I most appreciate about the East in summer is that despite horrible daytime heat, and humidity so thick you’d swear you could squeeze a handful of air and watch it drip, the evenings can be pure magic. With no coastal fog to chill us, we can sit out on the deck at night without even a sweater and enjoy watching those fireflies, or perhaps the flying squirrels that come to our bird feeder.
And, if we’re lucky, it will rain often enough so that we’re not eternally tied to the garden hose, although during a dark and rainy spell like the one we’ve had this past week, we find ourselves grumbling that it’s good weather to grow mushrooms and not much else.
But after all, summer is summer, no matter where you live, and it needs nothing else to recommend it. In any guise, it’s a time for living lightly and slowing down to enjoy whatever nature brings you. If you do it right, when Labor Day rolls around you’ll have begun to be bored with summer, and you’ll be ready for Fall’s up-gearing once again.
When Thalia Zepatos joined the Freedom to Marry campaign in 2010, she had a big job ahead of her: she had to craft a totally new message about same-sex marriage that would convince Americans that supporting the issue was the right thing to do.
“It was looking for that statement that a lot of people could nod their heads to,” said Zepatos. “It wasn’t about who was participating in the marriage, it was about what it really stands for. And we were trying to elevate that conversation.”
Five years later on June 26, 2015, same-sex marriage was made legal in the U.S.
Martin Meeker, the director of the Oral History Center at UC Berkeley, interviewed Zepatos and nearly a dozen others about the Freedom to Marry campaign for the center’s Freedom to Marry Oral History Project. Listen to Meeker talk about how a single message can help change a nation’s opinion.
Same-sex marriage became legal in the U.S. three years ago. (Photo by Ted Eytan via Flickr)
Following is a written version of the podcast episode:
Three years ago [yesterday] — on June 26, 2015 — same-sex couples were given the legal right to marry in the United States.
It was a really big deal. The issue of same-sex marriage had been long-contested and highly controversial. But after the Supreme Court struck down all remaining state bans on same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges, marriage equality was the law of the land.
But it didn’t happen overnight.
Martin Meeker is the director of the Oral History Center at UC Berkeley. He says Americans’ shift toward accepting same-sex marriage was a result, in large part, of a decade-long campaign called Freedom to Marry. He spent more than 100 hours interviewing nearly two dozen people about the campaign for the center’s Freedom to Marry Oral History Project.
Martin Meeker is the director of the Oral History Center at UC Berkeley.
He says few people know that Freedom to Marry was a big reason that same-sex marriage became legal.
“People tend to experience social change as this irresistible tide of public opinion,” he said. “But there are always many people who worked countless hours to create the context for change actually happening. It’s the same with Freedom to Marry. There were hundreds of deeply engaged people, many of whom we interviewed for this project, who worked to change the discourse so that people would feel that changing their opinion on same-sex marriage was actually the right thing to do.”
One of the interviews that Meeker did was with Thalia Zepatos, the director of research and messaging for Freedom to Marry. She was widely known as the “message guru” of the organization.
“Yeah, Thalia’s interview is super interesting,” he said. “She played an essential part, I think, in changing the way same-sex marriage was being talked about nationwide. It had a lot to do with switching the discourse from talking about rights and benefits to talking about marriage in terms of love and commitment, universal values.”
In one of the interviews with Zepatos, she talks about crafting the message of the campaign. “I mean, there’s kind of a campaign truism, which is whoever defines the campaign will win it,” she says. “If you get people to say, this is what this is really about. Yes, you’re setting the terms of the debate.”
At 78 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), federal debt held by the public is now at its highest level since shortly after World War II. If current laws generally remained unchanged, CBO projects, growing budget deficits would boost that debt sharply over the next 30 years; it would approach 100 percent of GDP by the end of the next decade and 152 percent by 2048. That amount would be the highest in the nation’s history by far. Moreover, if lawmakers changed current law to maintain certain policies now in place—preventing a significant increase in individual income taxes in 2026, for example—the result would be even larger increases in debt. The prospect of large and growing debt poses substantial risks for the nation and presents policymakers with significant challenges.
In this report, CBO presents its projections of federal spending, revenues, deficits, and debt for the next three decades and describes some possible consequences of those budgetary outcomes. This report’s projections are consistent with the 10-year baseline budget and economic projections that CBO published in the spring of 2018. They extend most of the concepts underlying those projections for an additional 20 years, and they reflect the macroeconomic effects of projected fiscal policy over that 30-year period. All together, they constitute the agency’s extended baseline projections.
CBO’s 10-year and extended baseline projections are not predictions of budgetary outcomes. Rather, they represent the agency’s best assessment of future spending, revenues, deficits, and debt under the assumption that current laws generally remain unchanged. They also give lawmakers a point of comparison from which to measure the effects of proposed legislation.
Why Are Projected Deficits Rising?
In CBO’s projections, the federal budget deficit, relative to the size of the economy, would grow substantially over the next several years, stabilize for a few years, and then grow again over the rest of the 30-year period. In total, deficits would rise from 3.9 percent of GDP in 2018 to 9.5 percent in 2048. (Adjusted to exclude the effects of timing shifts that occur because fiscal year 2018 began on a weekend, the budget deficit in 2018 would be higher, at 4.2 percent of GDP). Those large budget deficits would arise because spending would grow steadily under current law, and revenues would not keep pace with that spending growth.
In particular, over the next 30 years, spending as a share of GDP would increase for Social Security, the major health care programs (primarily Medicare), and interest on the government’s debt. In CBO’s projections, most of the spending growth for Social Security and Medicare results from the aging of the population: As members of the baby-boom generation (people born between 1946 and 1964) age and as life expectancy continues to rise, the percentage of the population age 65 or older will grow sharply, boosting the number of beneficiaries of those programs. Growth in spending on Medicare and the other major health care programs is also driven by rising health care costs per person. In addition, the federal government’s net interest costs are projected to climb sharply as a percentage of GDP as interest rates rise from their currently low levels and as debt accumulates.
That spending growth would be only partially offset by declining spending for other programs. Mandatory spending other than that for Social Security and the major health care programs — such as spending for federal employees’ pensions and for various income security programs — is projected to decrease as a percentage of GDP. Discretionary spending is projected to decline in most years over the next decade and then roughly stabilize as a percentage of GDP. (Mandatory spending is generally governed by provisions of permanent law, whereas discretionary spending is controlled by annual appropriation acts.)
Revenues, in contrast, would take a different path. They are projected to be roughly flat over the next few years relative to GDP, rise slowly, and then jump in 2026. Revenues would sharply increase that year because most of the provisions of Public Law 115-97 (originally called the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and called the 2017 tax act in this report) that directly affect the individual income tax rate are set to expire at the end of calendar year 2025. (The 2017 tax act lowered individual income taxes beginning in 2018.) Thereafter, revenues would continue to rise relative to the size of the economy—although they would not keep pace with spending growth.
The projected growth in revenues beyond 2028 is largely attributable to increases in individual income tax receipts. Those receipts are projected to grow mainly because income would rise more quickly than the price index that is used to adjust tax brackets and other parameters of the tax system. As a result, more income would be pushed into higher tax brackets over time. (Because of provisions of the 2017 tax act, the effect of real bracket creep in this year’s projections is slightly greater than the effect that CBO projected in prior years.) Combined receipts from all other sources are projected to increase slightly as a percentage of GDP.
What Might Happen If Current Laws Remained Unchanged?
Large and growing federal debt over the coming decades would hurt the economy and constrain future budget policy. The amount of debt that is projected under the extended baseline would reduce national saving and income in the long term; increase the government’s interest costs, putting more pressure on the rest of the budget; limit lawmakers’ ability to respond to unforeseen events; and increase the likelihood of a fiscal crisis. (In that event, investors would become unwilling to finance the government’s borrowing unless they were compensated with very high interest rates.)
How Does CBO Make Its Long-Term Budget Projections?
CBO’s extended baseline, produced once a year, shows the budget’s long-term path under most of the same assumptions that the agency uses in constructing its 10-year baseline. Both baselines incorporate these assumptions: current laws will generally remain unchanged, mandatory programs will be extended after their authorizations lapse, and spending for Medicare and Social Security will continue as scheduled even if their trust funds are exhausted. CBO makes those assumptions to conform to statutory requirements.
Some projections, such as those for Social Security spending and collections of individual income taxes, incorporate detailed estimates of how people would be affected by particular elements of programs or by the tax code. Other projections reflect past trends and CBO’s assessments of how those trends would evolve if current laws generally remained unchanged.
CBO’s budget projections are built on its demographic and economic projections. CBO estimates that the population will grow more slowly than it has in the past and will be older, on average. CBO also anticipates that if current laws generally did not change, real GDP — that is, GDP with the effects of inflation removed—would increase by 1.9 percent per year, on average, over the next 30 years. That rate is nearly 1 percentage point lower than the annual average growth rate of real GDP over the past 50 years. That expectation of slower economic growth in the future is attributable to several factors — most notably, slower growth of the labor force. Projected growth in output is also held down by the effects of changes in fiscal policy under current law — above all, by the reduction in private investment that is projected to result from rising federal deficits.
How Uncertain Are Those Projections?
If current laws governing taxes and spending remained generally the same, debt would rise as a percentage of GDP over the next 30 years, according to CBO’s central estimate (the middle of the distribution of potential outcomes). That projection is very uncertain, however, so the agency examined in detail how debt would change if four key factors were higher or lower than their levels in the extended baseline. Those four factors are labor force participation, productivity in the economy, interest rates on federal debt, and health care costs per person. Other factors — such as an economic depression, a major war, or unexpected changes in rates of fertility, immigration, or mortality — also could affect the trajectory of debt. Taking into account a range of uncertainty around CBO’s central projections of those four key inputs, CBO concludes that despite the considerable uncertainty of long-term projections, debt as a percentage of GDP would probably be greater — in all likelihood, much greater — than it is today if current laws remained generally unchanged.
How Large Would Changes in Spending or Revenues Need to Be to Reach Certain Goals for Federal Debt?
CBO estimated the size of changes that would be needed to achieve a chosen goal for federal debt. For example, if lawmakers wanted to reduce the amount of debt in 2048 to 41 percent of GDP (its average over the past 50 years), they might cut noninterest spending, increase revenues, or take a combination of both approaches to make changes that equaled 3.0 percent of GDP each year starting in 2019. (In dollar terms, that amount would total about $630 billion in 2019.) If, instead, policymakers wanted debt in 2048 to equal its current share of GDP (78 percent), the necessary changes would be smaller (although still substantial), totaling 1.9 percent of GDP per year (or about $400 billion in 2019). The longer lawmakers waited to act, the larger the policy changes would need to be to reach any particular goal for federal debt.
How Have CBO’s Projections Changed Over the Past Year?
Compared with last year’s projections, CBO’s current projections of debt as a share of GDP are higher through 2041 and lower thereafter. CBO now projects that debt measured as a share of GDP would be 3 percentage points lower in 2047 than it projected last year. (The previous edition of this volume showed projections through 2047.) The increase in debt through 2041 stems primarily from tax and spending legislation enacted since then that boosted projected deficits through 2025 — especially the 2017 tax act, the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 (P.L. 115-123), and the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018 (P.L. 115-141). In particular, the budgetary effects of the tax act are expected to peak during the middle of the next decade. In later years, the effects are expected to be modest, although their precise magnitudes are uncertain.
Deficits are smaller after 2025 than CBO projected last year because of lower projections as a share of GDP of noninterest spending and because of projections of revenues that are the same or higher than CBO estimated last year. The smaller deficits result in lower debt as a share of GDP after 2041 than CBO projected last year.
