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Midterm Disinformation Has Taken Over Pennsylvania

WEST CHESTER, Pa. — Disinformation has long been a feature of American politics. Mudslinging, smear campaigns, dirty tricks. Yet wading through the muck ahead of this year’s midterm elections in one fiercely contested state, Pennsylvania, shows just how thoroughly it now warps the American democratic process.

In July, a tweet made the rounds spreading a falsehood about voting. “BREAKING: Pennsylvania will not be accepting mail-in ballots,” declared someone using an account called the Donald J. Trump Tracker.

In September, mysterious letters began arriving in mailboxes in Chester County, on the old Main Line west of Philadelphia, falsely telling people that their votes might not have been counted in the last election.

No, the Democratic candidate for United States Senate, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, does not have tattoos of the Crips, the notorious street gang from Los Angeles, as Newt Gingrich said on Fox.

contentious primaries, Pennsylvanians have experienced a deluge of false or misleading posts, photographs and videos on social media, as well as increasingly partisan, bitter and at times unhinged claims on television, radio and live streams to a degree that no one recalled seeing before.

“I’m not saying the politics was ever, you know, perfect,” Michael Nutter, the mayor of Philadelphia from 2008 to 2016, said in an interview, lamenting the seemingly bottomless depth of the problem.

“I think what’s changed is you go back 100 years and you’d have had to put a whole lot more effort into spreading lies,” he said. “Now, you can just push a button.”

FactCheck.org.

A lot of attention has focused on a stroke that Mr. Fetterman suffered in May, just as he clinched the Democratic nomination. The stroke left him with an auditory processing disorder, a condition that affects the brain’s ability to filter and interpret sounds, which Republicans have said makes him unfit for office. His speech has also become more halting, and he stumbles over his words, as he did multiple times in the debate last week against his Republican opponent, Mehmet Oz, the television personality known as Dr. Oz.

Opponents used his verbal gaffes in misleading ways. A video montage by a Republican campaign operative, Greg Price, exaggerated the effects of the stroke, while a Twitter account impersonating BuzzFeed falsely claimed that Mr. Fetterman had apologized for urinating on a campaign staffer. Mr. Price did not respond to requests for comment.

Other false claims have, again, questioned the machines that count votes, while a recent flurry of posts on Telegram, the app created in Russia, have incorrectly accused the state’s top election official of not complying with legal rulings about mail-in ballots. ActiveFence, a cybersecurity company, said that these claims have spread across platforms, garnering tens of thousands of impressions.

Jill Greene, the state representative for Common Cause, the national good-government organization, said that the many unfounded and untruthful claims posed a challenge for voters.

pledged to remove or marginalize false posts ahead of the midterms.

A doctored post on Facebook, to cite one of scores of examples, showed Mr. Oz kneeling to kiss the star of Donald J. Trump along the Hollywood Walk of Fame. (In the original, he was kissing his own star.)

being repeatedly told that the American election process is deeply corrupted.

In fact, Mr. Mastriano’s candidacy has from its inception been propelled by his role in disputing the 2020 presidential election lost by Mr. Trump.

county by county, but election experts say they do not reflect factors as benign as changes in addresses.

“They’re in search of solutions to a problem that doesn’t exist,” Kyle Miller, a Navy veteran and state representative for Protect Democracy, a national advocacy organization, said in an interview in Harrisburg. “They are basing this on faulty data and internet rumors.”

Some Republican lawmakers have leaned on false claims to call for changes to rules about mail-in ballots and other measures intended to make it easier for people to vote. Several counties have already reversed some of the decisions, including the number and location of drop boxes for ballots.

Mr. Miller, among others, warned that the flurry of false claims about balloting could be a trial run for challenging the results of the presidential election in 2024, in which Pennsylvania could again be a crucial swing state.

In Chester County, a largely white region that borders Delaware and Maryland that is roughly split between Republicans and Democrats, the effort to sow confusion came the old-fashioned way: in the mail.

Letters dated Sept. 12 began arriving in mailboxes across the county, warning people that their votes in the 2020 presidential election might not have counted. “Because you have a track record of consistently voting, we find it unusual that your record indicates that you did not vote,” the letter, which was unsigned, said.

The sender called itself “Data Insights,” based in the county seat of West Chester, though no known record of such a company exists, according to county officials. The letters did include copies of the recipients’ voting records. The letters urged recipients to write to the county commissioners or attend the commission’s meetings in the county seat of West Chester, in September and October. Dozens of recipients did.

The county administrator, Robert J. Kagel, tried to assure them that their votes were actually counted. He urged anyone concerned to contact the county’s voter services department.

Even so, at county meetings in September and October, speaker after speaker lined up to question the letter and the ballot process generally — and to air an array of grievances and conspiracy theories.

They included the discredited claims of the film “2000 Mules” that operatives have been stuffing boxes for mail-in ballots. One attendee warned that votes were being tabulated by the Communist Party of China or the World Economic Forum.

“I don’t know where my vote is,” another resident, Barbara Ellis of Berwyn, told the commissioners in October. “I don’t know if it was manipulated in the machines, in another country.”

As of Oct. 20, 59 people in Chester County had contacted officials with concerns raised in the letter, but in each case, it was determined that the voters’ ballots had been cast and counted, said Rebecca Brain, a county spokesman.

Who exactly sent the letters remains a mystery, which only fuels more conspiracy theories.

“It seems very official,” Charlotte Valyo, the chairwoman of the Democratic Party in the county, said of the letter. She described it as part of “an ongoing, constant campaign to undermine the confidence in our voting system.” The county’s Republican Party did not respond to a request for comment.

Disinformation may not be the only cause of the deepening partisan chasm in the state — or the nation — but it has undoubtedly worsened it. The danger, Ms. Valyo warned, was discouraging voting by sowing distrust in the ability of election officials to tally the votes.

“People might think, ‘Why bother, if they’re that messed up?’”

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McCarthy Unveils House GOP’s Midterm Agenda In Pennsylvania

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy on Friday directly confronted President Joe Biden and the party in power, choosing battleground Pennsylvania to unveil a midterm election agenda with sweeping Trump-like promises despite the House GOP’s sometimes spotty record of delivering and governing in Congress.

McCarthy, who is poised to seize the speaker’s gavel if Republicans win control of the House in the fall, hopes to replicate the strategy former Speaker Newt Gingrich used to spark voter enthusiasm and sweep House control in a 1994 landslide.

The House GOP’s “Commitment to America” gives a nod to that earlier era but updates it for Trump, with economic, border security and social policies to rouse the former president’s deep well of supporters in often-forgotten regions like this rusty landscape outside Pittsburgh.

“What we’re going to roll out today is a ‘Commitment to America’ in Washington — not Washington, D.C., but Washington County, Pennsylvania,” McCarthy said at a manufacturing facility. “Because it’s about you, it’s not about us.”

On Friday, the House Republican leader stood with a cross-section of other lawmakers to roll out the GOP agenda, offering a portrait of party unity despite the uneasy coalition that makes up the House minority — and the Republican Party itself.

The GOP has shifted from its focus on small government, low taxes and individual freedoms to a more populist, nationalist and, at times, far-right party, essentially still led by Trump, who remains popular despite the deepening state and federal investigations against him.

Propelled by Trump’s “Make America Great Again” voters, the Republicans need to pick up just a few seats to win back control of the narrowly-split House, and replace Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But even so, McCarthy’s ability to lead the House is far from guaranteed.

While Republicans and Trump did pass tax cuts into law, the GOP’s last big campaign promise, repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, collapsed in failure. A long line of Republican speakers, including Gingrich, John Boehner and Paul Ryan, have been forced from office or chose early retirement, often ground down by party infighting.

“House Republicans are really good at running people out of town,” said Matt Schlapp, chairman of the Conservative Political Action Coalition, or CPAC.

McCarthy, first elected to office in 2006, is among the remaining political survivors of those House Republican battles, and he’s a new style of leader who has shown more ability to communicate than to legislate.

A key architect of the Republican “tea party” takeover in 2010, the California Republican personally recruited the newcomers to Congress — many who had never served in public office and are long gone. McCarthy was an early Trump endorser, and has remained close to the former president, relying on his high-profile endorsements to propel GOP candidates for Congress. He abandoned an earlier bid to become speaker when support from his colleagues drifted.

The “Commitment to America” reflects the strength of McCarthy’s abilities, but also his weaknesses. He spent more than a year pulling together the House GOP’s often warring factions — from the far-right MAGA to what’s left of the more centrist ranks — to produce a mostly agreed upon agenda.

But the one-page “commitment” preamble is succinct, essentially a pocket card, though it is expected to be filled in with the kind of detail that is needed to make laws.

“They talk about a lot of problems,” said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. “They don’t have a lot of solutions.”

In traveling to battleground Pennsylvania, a state where President Biden holds emotional ties from his early childhood, McCarthy intends to counter the president’s fiery Labor Day weekend speech, in which he warned of rising GOP extremism after the Jan 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, with a more upbeat message.

The event is billed as more of a conversation with the GOP leader and lawmakers rather than a stirring address in a uniquely contested state.

Along with as many as five House seats Republicans believe they can pick up in Pennsylvania in November, the state has one of the most watched Senate races, between Democrat John Fetterman and Trump-backed Mehmet Oz, that will help determine control of Congress. Top of the ticket is the seismic governor’s matchup between the GOP’s Doug Mastriano, who was seen outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, and Democrat Josh Shapiro.

“If you are a hardline, populist, and you really want anger, Kevin’s a little frustrating because he’s not going to be angry enough for you,” Gingrich said. “On the other hand, if what you want is to have your values implemented and passed in the legislation, he is a really good leader and organizer.”

Gingrich has been working with McCarthy and his team to craft the style and substance of the proposal. The former speaker, who has been asked by the Jan. 6 committee investigating the Capitol attack for an interview, was on hand Thursday in Washington, joining McCarthy as he unveiled the plans privately to House Republicans, who have been mixed on the approach.

Mostly, the GOP pocket card hits broad strokes — energy independence, security and an end to liberal social policies, particularly in schooling.

Conservative Republicans complain privately that McCarthy isn’t leaning hard enough into their priorities, as he tries to appeal to a broader swath of voters and hold the party together.

Many are eager to launch investigations into the Biden administration and the president’s family, with some calling for impeachment. Legislatively, some House Republicans want to fulfill the party’s commitment to banning abortion, supporting Sen. Lindsey Graham’s bill prohibiting the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

In a sign of the pressures ahead for McCarthy, dozens of House GOP lawmakers signed on to plans from Trump-aligned Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to prevent many gender reassignment procedures for minors, celebrating the Georgian as courageous for taking such a hardline approach.

She and others were invited to join Friday’s event, as McCarthy seeks their backing.

Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, a member of the conservative Freedom Caucus, has advocated for withholding federal funds as leverage for policy priorities, the tactic that engineered past government shutdowns.

“Putting out like, you know, principles about, ‘Well, we’ll secure the border.’ I mean, okay, but what are we gonna do about it?” Roy said. “The end of the day, I want specific actionable items that’s going to show that we’re going to fight for the American people.”

It’s notable that McCarthy alone has proposed a plan if Republicans win control of the House chamber. In the Senate, Republican leader Mitch McConnell has declined to put forward an agenda, preferring to simply run against President Biden and Democrats in the midterm election.

“Kevin’s done a very good job of being in position to become the speaker. And then the question is, what do you do with that? Schlapp said. “This helps as a road map.”

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

: newsy.com

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Pop Quiz: Can You Fall In Love With A Fictional Character?

In this segment of “Pop Quiz,” Newsy’s “In The Loop” dives into whether or not you can fall in love with a fictional character.

In 1955, a woman by the pseudonym of “Miss A” wrote in asking for advice about a crush.

The response was: “I don’t know what you learned in college, but you are flunking the course of common sense. You have fallen for a piece of celluloid as unreal as a picture on the wall.”

One year later, that advice column was published again in an academic paper that coined the phrase “parasocial relationship,” which was defined as a “seeming face-to-face relationship between spectator and performer.”

Parasocial relationships have also been characterized as one-sided and basically imaginary, but they feel real, because as an audience member or a reader, we’re spending a lot of time with them.

They have since been the focus of around 250 empirical studies over the past seven decades, and most of them analyze audience relationships with real life media figures: like TV personalities, actors, musicians, or, in more recent years, social media influencers. And some studies have looked specifically at fans of celebrities like Justin Bieber or Elvis Presley. Fun fact: there are still more than 600 active fan clubs dedicated to Elvis Presley.

On a neurological level, we do know that the human brain is pretty good at experiencing imagined stimuli as if they were real. One study found that the auditory cortex in the brain can light up both when hearing a sound and when imagining that sound.

So, it’s not a huge leap to suggest these fictional or “imagined” parasocial crushes might feel like the real thing.

Fewer studies have been conducted on parasocial relationships with fictional characters; but the ones that exist have looked at anime characters, sitcoms like “Modern Family,” readers of the “Twilight” series and, specifically, everyone who had a crush on the fictional vampire Edward Cullen.

In a survey of around 240 women, 44% said the series had no real influence on them, and that it was all just fantasy. But 31% said the series showed them “the type of true love and strong commitment they would like to have in their own romantic relationship.”

Researchers have described parasocial relationships as identity-forming, allowing “adolescents to crystallize their beliefs, preferences and expectations.”

Many researchers do note that parasocial relationships can lead to unrealistic expectations for real-life relationships, but others also saw them as “placeholders” for actual relationships that allowed people to romantically experiment.

Another real-world example of a parasocial relationship is when a man named Akihiko Kondo held an unofficial wedding ceremony to marry the holographic pop star Hatsune Miku. The marriage is not actually legally recognized, but it’s one of many around the world.

Skeptics can look at this as an example of something keeping him from making real-life relationships. In an interview with the New York Times, Kondo says he’s aware of how strange people think his attraction is. And while he knows that Hatsune Miku isn’t real, his feelings are — and he says he was able to pull himself out of depression and find a sense of love and solace because of it.

All of that goes to show that parasocial relationships with fictional characters can, and do have real-world impacts.

Companies have long capitalized on the appeal of parasocial relationships. And video games take this one step further, especially when you look at the entire genre of dating Sims, where players can virtually date fictional characters.

Dating Sims have made an estimated $570 million across several platforms. “Stardew Valley” is one of the most popular ones, letting players date and marry from a pool of 12 fictional characters. And as of this spring, the game has sold over 20 million copies.

The fandoms surrounding these games really confirm a lot of the past studies done on parasocial relationships. Players have described them as venues for escapism that provide a sense of autonomy and emotional safety, and that is especially true for queer gamers.

One person told Huffpost: “I get to live through the experience of not being seen as weird or an outcast for being ‘different’ in my gender identity and sexuality.”

It seems that our emotional attachments to fiction and pop culture are very real and can even have a purpose from giving us ways to form our emotional identities, providing venues for emotional escapism, as well as a way to explore and feel a real sense of love.

: newsy.com

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TV Shows And Movies Are Contributing To Youth Sex Education

Sex has always been portrayed in TV, movies and shows, but it’s changed over time to educate people about sex.

In a time when sex education varies between different states and local school districts, TV shows and films are filling in the gaps for some teens and young adults.

In 2018, a Healthline survey of more than 1,000 Americans found that only 33% of people between the ages of 18 and 29 reported having some form of sex education in school.

And a 2020 study from the Journal of LGBT Youth found that a majority of gay and lesbian college students “expressed that their formal sex education was lacking and that they sought out or received information from other informal sources to supplement their learning.”

Those informal resources included internet forums, popular films, music and TV shows.

When it comes to television, teen dramas like the long-running series “Degrassi” has been paving the way.

Since 1987, when “Degrassi Junior High” first debuted, the franchise about students at a Canadian junior high and high school has highlighted the issues of teen pregnancy, abortion, STDs and sexual assault. In 1992, the U.S. Department of Education even developed a sex education curriculum that used episodes of “Degrassi” as starting points for classroom discussion.

“Degrassi” now spans five different series across three generations of viewers and represents teens and families of various cultures, as well as varying sexual and gender identities. Its newest iteration is slated to debut on HBO Max in 2023.

As “Degrassi” served almost like the blueprint for sex education in teen dramas, a series for older viewers, ABC’s “How To Get Away With Murder,” made history with its own advocacy for safe sexual health within the LGBTQ community.

The series centers on a group of law school students and their professor. And in 2018, it became the first network primetime series to highlight pre-exposure prophylaxis, more commonly known as “PrEP,” a medication that reduces the risk of spreading HIV.

The series’ discussion of PrEP, as well as the representation of a character living with HIV, was praised by organizations like GLAAD and Greater Than AIDS for the way it educated audiences without stigmatizing the issue.

“How To Get Away With Murder” ended in 2020, but sex education in TV has continued.

Today’s teen dramas like Netflix’s new “Heartbreak High” or the critically acclaimed and aptly named “Sex Education” are poking fun at the limitations of real-life sex education in schools, while advocating for honest and informative conversations about sex, consent, body positivity and healthy relationships.

“Sex Education” tells the story of the son of a sex therapist who gives relationship advice to his peers. Both critics and health experts have praised the show for its informative humor and nuance about the realities of sex. The fourth and final season of the series is expected to be released next year.

: newsy.com

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LGBTQ+ Individuals Face Heightened Safety Risks In Prison

LGBTQ+ inmates often face bias, discrimination and unsafe circumstances in prison.

Dee Farmer served time at a federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, for credit card fraud. She was housed in a male facility even though she identified as a trans woman. Based on prison policy, she was placed with her gender assigned at birth. Within two weeks of her arrival, she says she was beaten and raped by her cellmate.

“I stayed in prison for 17 years. And while there, you know, I suffered all the types of abuses,” she said. “When I was raped, the guard was sitting down in his office and there were maybe 200 inmates in the unit I was in, in Terre Haute. There’s only one guard, generally, to every housing unit. So, to believe that the officers can protect you is just a myth.”

A lawsuit by Farmer against the prison system reached the Supreme Court.

The justices ruled in her favor, saying that prison officials may be liable for harm if they know of safety risks and disregard them. That case was in 1994.

Today, LGBTQ+ inmates still face bias, discrimination and unsafe circumstances in prison.

Jane Hereth is an assistant professor of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee whose recent report documented the overrepresentation of LGBTQ+ people in the criminal justice system and the pipeline that funnels many of them there.

“Bias and discrimination across the board by police, by judges, by attorneys,” she said. “Things like family rejection, poverty, homelessness, bullying in schools — were all part of their story leading to the criminal legal system.”

According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, LGBTQ+ individuals were twice as likely to be arrested compared to their straight counterparts.

“When we talk about incarceration, probation, the justice system in general, there’s a high representation of LGBTQ Black and brown folks,” Black and Pink Social Worker and Deputy Director Andrew Aleman said.

Once behind bars, trans individuals are at a heightened risk, especially trans women of color.

“We know that most trans women who are who are taken into custody are housed in a men’s facility, despite knowing the risk and the high rates of sexual assault and violence that happen to trans women in men facilities,” Lambda Legal Senior Attorney Richard Saenz said.

Shows like “Orange Is the New Black” introduced many in the public to life in prison for LGBTQ+ people.

“‘Orange Is the New Black’ and some other shows that have come out since then have really humanized people who are in custody,” Saenz continued. “One of the things that I remember seeing is that a trans woman was approached, you know, maybe by four or five inmates at once, sort of like jokingly harassing her sexually. And so that is something that you generally see within the prison system on a daily basis.”

Farmer says harassment takes a mental toll.

“They suffer a number of times, many of them, even if they’re not raped, they are constantly sexually harassed and pressured into sexual relationships,” Farmer said. “And many of them have to do it for their safety.”

Farmer says there’s still a revolving door of LGBTQ+ people who go through solitary confinement for protection but then return to the general prison population because confinement was depressing.

“I was placed in the segregation unit and I was there for over a year. And while I was there, there were maybe eight or nine, not necessarily transgender, but gay and transgender — I would just say gender-nonconforming inmates — that were just back and forth into the segregation unit,” Farmer said.

Organizations like Black and Pink are advocates for LGBTQ+ in the criminal justice systems. Their programs connect gay inmates to support networks outside prison.

“My ask would be that we don’t forget our roots, and we don’t forget that there are thousands of LGBTQ people in prisons and jails right now. And these are our loved ones,” Saenz said.

: newsy.com

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Abortion Driving More Women To Vote In Midterm Elections

Without any federal protection for reproductive rights, it’s votes for state and local officials that can have the biggest impact.

The topic of reproductive rights will be a defining issue in the 2022 midterms.

A recent analysis from the Democratic-leaning TargetSmart found women have been registering to vote at a higher rate than men since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

“I’ve never seen anything quite as dramatic as the gender gaps we’re seeing in this voter registration,” said Tom Bonier, the CEO of TargetSmart.

The increase was first noticed after the Kansas primary. Bonier said the difference is easiest to spot in states where abortion access is most at risk.

“You’ve got these competitive states, like Wisconsin, like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, that have a lot of very important statewide and down-ballot elections this year. And where choice is very much either literally on the ballot or potentially on the ballot,” Bonier said.

It’s not unusual for women to vote at higher numbers than men. But this surge is happening at a time when experts wouldn’t usually expect it.

“If those voters, those women voters get energized, get highly motivated, see that they really have a stake in the outcome of an election, their potential to be a force in elections goes up exponentially,” said Debbie Walsh, the director for the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

In recent polls, more Americans have said abortion is an issue that will impact their vote.

An August Wall Street Journal poll found registered voters said abortion was the second-most important issue, ranking only behind the economy.

“It’s one thing when a right is denied. It’s another thing when a right is taken away. And I think you can’t overstate the impact of losing something that you thought you had, and the implications of that for the future,” said Walsh.

This year’s primaries have shown that reproductive rights can bring voters to the polls.

In the Kansas primary, where a state constitutional amendment on abortion was on the ballot, voter turnout was 48% — about double the typical primary turnout in Kansas.

“Particularly after the Kansas vote, Democratic and pro-choice candidates are seeing that this can be a motivator. This can increase turnout. This can energize voters to show up,” said Walsh.

And without any current federal protection for reproductive rights, it’s votes for state and local officials that can have the biggest impact on a woman’s access to abortion.

: newsy.com

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How Different Sex Education Methods Affect Students Around The World

Gaps in sex ed in the U.S. can leave students in the dark, while other countries have programs that positively affect student health and knowledge.

Across the nation, students have vastly different experiences learning about a somewhat taboo but super important health topic: sexual health education, or sex ed.

According to Sex Ed for Social Change, or SIECUS, 29 states and D.C. mandate sex ed as of July 2022. But 17 of those states require that abstinence be stressed, and only 11 of them require the curriculum to be medically accurate. Some states choose to leave discussions around healthy relationships, contraception and sexual orientation out of the conversation entirely.

“Due to the lack of guidance and policy implementation at the federal level, the United States has a patchwork of laws that vary, which determine what and if sex education is being taught,” said Michelle Slaybaugh, director of social impact and strategic communications at SIECUS. “When it comes to education, policy, decisions have largely been left to local control, So we’re talking very local at the school board level, not even the city or state level. It’s very, very local.”

Currently at the federal level, SIECUS is one group working to get the Real Education and Access for Healthy Youth Act passed. This legislation promotes comprehensive sex ed, which means giving young people the knowledge and skills they need to make healthy choices about their sexual lives, and the act makes sure access to this education is protected.

In March, Congress passed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2022, but funding for comprehensive sex ed programs is not included.

On the state level, according to the SIECUS mid-year report, the number of bills introduced this year aimed at restricting sex ed was almost equal to the number of bills introduced advancing sex ed. But more regressive bills were passed in states this legislative session than progressive ones.

“I think there is this big myth that if we teach young people about sex, that they’re going to go and have it,” Slaybaugh said. “The evidence does not show that. Additionally, I think it is very important for us to understand that age appropriate or developmentally appropriate sex education is key.”

A Georgetown University study shows that sex ed helps with a lot of things, like preventing unplanned pregnancy, maternal death, unsafe abortions and sexually transmitted diseases. But a survey from the Public Religion Institute found that nearly a quarter of millennials were not taught sex ed in middle or high school.

There is also a big gap in sex ed that’s inclusive and talks about LGBTQ+ identities. Less than 10% of LGBTQ+ students say their school’s sex ed is inclusive. When talking about gender identity and orientation, this is sometimes where curriculum can become “medically inaccurate.”

“Medically accurate sex education is vital to promoting long term health outcomes, and a part of that, which I think is really where we’re seeing the rub, is this idea of gender norms, gender stereotypes and orientation,” Slaybaugh said.

Florida in particular has become a bit of a hotspot when it comes to sex ed and what can or should be taught. New laws there, like what critics dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, limits discussion of sexuality and gender identity for some elementary students.

Katie Lagrone, a correspondent at Newsy’s sister station in Tampa, Florida explains a confusing mix of standards on whether the new laws are altering old policies on sex ed.

“In Florida, while laws mandate health education include teen dating and disease control, we discovered there’s actually no statewide curriculum for sex education,” Lagrone said. “What and how students are taught about sexual and reproductive health is left to individual school boards who approve policies, principals who interpret them and instructors who ultimately drill it down for students. What’s more… we found about a one-third of Florida’s 67 school districts are teaching students, even high schoolers, abstinence only.”

Studies show abstinence-only instruction doesn’t prevent teens from having sex. In fact, a 2019 study by the CDC found by the 12th grade, more than half of Florida teens surveyed have already engaged in sexual intercourse, with some STD rates among teens in Florida being four times higher than the national average.

In some counties that have adopted this abstinence-only teaching method in Florida, teen birth rates are actually higher. One district spokesperson told Newsy these limits are because they “are respectful of parents rights.”

Elsewhere in the world, some countries have been recognized for comprehensive sex ed programs that help combat these issues, especially in Europe.

In the Netherlands, it’s required by law that all primary school students are taught sex ed. It starts as early as 4-years-old, but they’re not talking about the full birds and the bees at that age. They are simply covering the basics of healthy relationships.

In the U.S., some people argue that that is too young to be teaching sex ed, but three decades of research shows that sex ed can help prevent child abuse.

On average, teens in the Netherlands are also waiting longer to have sex when compared to Europe or the U.S. Researchers found that most young people in the Netherlands had “wanted and fun” first sexual experiences, while many American teens said they wished they waited longer to have sex for the first time.

The Netherlands has one of the lowest teen pregnancy rates in the world. Dutch teens are some of the most likely to use birth control pills, though part of that could be because contraception is easily accessible.

The Netherlands also works to educate parents on how to talk to their kids about sex to help get everyone on the same page.

In Denmark, for a long time, their sex ed program emphasized preventing unplanned pregnancy and promoting safe sex. In 2015, the country’s birth rate fell below the rate necessary to maintain population, and Danish officials went as far as actually encouraging people to have babies at a younger age. At the time, only point 5% of teen girls in Denmark had a baby. That rate was six times higher in the United States.

In recent years, the birth rate has started to rise again. While neither Denmark nor any country has a perfect system, they experienced some outcomes that other places could learn from.

This highlights good models for comprehensive sex ed, but there are also other countries, like the U.S., where it isn’t widely taught, there are inconsistencies or it’s not available at all. Experts stress the importance of making sure students have the information necessary to live healthy lives.

“We really need to push for something that is rooted in age-appropriate, medically-accurate and affirming content that is taught by trained educators to be able to deliver the most comprehensive and age-appropriate education around sexuality as possible,” Slaybaugh said.

: newsy.com

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Sheriff: 2 Dead In Northern California Wildfire

The blaze hadn’t expanded since Saturday morning, covering about 6.6 square miles with a 25% containment. But it grew in size on Sunday.

Two people have died in a blaze that ripped through a Northern California town, said Siskiyou County Sheriff Jeremiah LaRue.

LaRue shared the news of the fatalities Sunday afternoon during a community meeting held at an elementary school north of Weed, the rural Northern California community charred by one of California’s latest wildfires. He did not immediately provide names or other details including age or gender of the two people who died.

“There’s no easy way of putting it,” he said before calling for a moment of silence.

Both LaRue and other officials acknowledged uncertainties facing the community, such as when people would be allowed back into their homes and power would be restored. About 1,000 people were still under evacuation orders Sunday as firefighters worked to contain the blaze that had sparked out of control Friday at the start of the holiday weekend.

The blaze, known as the Mill Fire, hadn’t expanded since Saturday morning, covering about 6.6 square miles with 25% containment, according to Cal Fire. But the nearby Mountain Fire grew in size on Sunday, officials said. It also started Friday, though in a less populated area. More than 300 people were under evacuation orders.

Power outages, smoky skies and uncertainty about what the day would bring left a feeling of emptiness around the town of Weed the morning after evacuation orders were lifted for thousands of other residents.

“It’s eerily quiet,” said Susan Tavalero, a city councilor who was driving to a meeting with fire officials.

She was joined by Mayor Kim Greene, and the two hoped to get more details on how many homes had been lost. A total of 132 structures were destroyed or damaged, fire officials said Sunday, though it wasn’t clear whether they were homes, businesses, or other buildings.

Three people were injured, according to Cal Fire, but no other details were available. Two people were brought to Mercy Medical Center Mount Shasta, Cal Fire Siskiyou Unit Chief Phil Anzo said Saturday. One was in stable condition and the other was transferred to UC Davis Medical Center, which has a burn unit. It’s unclear if these injuries were related to the deaths reported Sunday.

Weed, home to fewer than 3,000 people about 280 miles northeast of San Francisco, has long been seen by passersby as a whimsical spot to stop along Interstate 5. But the town, nestled in the shadow of Mt. Shasta, is no stranger to wildfires.

Phil Anzo, Cal Fire’s Siskiyou Unit Chief, acknowledged the toll fires have taken on the rural region in recent years.

“Unfortunately, we’ve seen lots of fires in this community, we’ve seen lots of fires in this county, and we’ve suffered lots of devastation,” Anzo said.

Dominique Mathes, 37, said he’s had some close calls with wildfires since he has lived in Weed. Though fire dangers are becoming more frequent, he’s not interested in leaving.

“It’s a beautiful place,” he said. “Everybody has risks everywhere, like Florida’s got hurricanes and floods, Louisiana has got tornadoes and all that stuff. So, it happens everywhere. Unfortunately here, it’s fires.”

The winds make Weed and the surrounding area a perilous place for wildfires, whipping small flames into a frenzy. Weed has seen three major fires since 2014, a period of extreme drought that has prompted the largest and most destructive fires in California history.

That drought persists as California heads into what traditionally is the worst of the fire season. Scientists say climate change has made the West warmer and drier over the last three decades and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.

Crews battled flames while much of the state baked in a Labor Day weekend heat wave, with temperatures expected to top 100 degrees Fahrenheit in Los Angeles, exceptionally warm weather for Southern California. Temperatures were expected to be even hotter through the Central Valley up to the capital of Sacramento.

The California Independent System Operator issued its fifth “flex alert,” a plea for people to use their air conditioners and other appliances sparingly from 4 to 9 p.m. to protect the power grid.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

: newsy.com

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Prenups Aren’t All Bad. Here’s Why They’re Becoming More Common

Prenups can be a touchy subject, but the stigma is fading, with some experts saying it could be a smart move for anyone getting married.

Prenups, or pre-nuptial agreements, don’t always have the most positive connotation.

While they are legal agreements entered into by couples before marriage — often to keep finances separate despite being otherwise legally joined — they can be a touchy subject for couples starting to build a life together.

But that stigma seems to be fading away. A new report from The Harris Poll said that this year, 15% of U.S. adults surveyed signed a prenup, which is up from just 3% in 2010. It also found that 35% of unmarried people say they’re likely to sign a prenup in the future.

In the Americas, prenups go back to 17th century Canada, when French colonist men married women who came to the country with financial assistance from King Louis XIV. These women were so highly sought after that they were able to convince their husbands to sign prenups. This came at a time when men outnumbered women, so women had a leg up. Eventually that gender ratio evened out, and prenups went away.

They got popular again in the U.S. much later. A 1970 Florida case Posner v Posner ruled that prenups should be a standard practice.

One big possible factor in their usage today is the fact that millennials now have more debt than previous generations. One survey found that nearly three quarters of millennials have over $100,000 in debt on average, not including mortgages.

The most common debt is credit card debt followed by student loans. There’s also medical debt and personal loans.

Prenups can protect your partner from taking on your debt in the case of death of divorce. In some states, your spouse can be held accountable for all of your debt acquired during the marriage.

Kelly Chang Rickert is a family law attorney in California who specializes in prenups, and she sees debt come up in divorce cases all the time.

“It’s not unusual for me to have a divorce where one side has a Neiman Marcus card and charged up $70,000, and the other side… they are responsible for half the debt because it was acquired during the marriage,” Chang Rickert said.

But the breakdown of who’s responsible for what differs from state to state. For instance, some states are community property states, meaning unless you sign a prenup, everything acquired during the marriage must be split 50/50. That’s how things work in Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin.

In other states, laws differ. There can be different rules around what makes prenups enforceable. For example, in Connecticut there’s a specific window of time between when the prenup is presented and when the marriage happens for it to hold up. So, it’s important to see what a state requires beforehand.

Another reason more people could be getting prenups is because they’re getting married later in life and have more assets to protect coming into the marriage. According to Pew, in 2019 the average age a man first got married was 30, and for women it was 28. That’s three years later for both men and women compared to 2003 and four years later than 1987.

“These days, a lot of people work for themselves,” Chang Rickert said. “If you’re a social media influencer or you’re an artist or you’re a writer, a lot of people make money off their creative efforts. So if they have a business coming into the marriage, a lot of them don’t want to share that in case it doesn’t work out.”

This leads to the question of how finances are split. This determines what a prenup could look like. In the 70s and 80s, it was common practice to put all your money into shared accounts with your spouse. But over the past several years, the number of married couples who keep some of their finances separate has risen.

Experts say if couples have a joint account for things they share, they can opt to keep everything else separate, and in the case of divorce, they’ll only have to worry about dividing the joint account. But it’s important to note that separate accounts won’t stay separate unless a prenup is signed stating that.

“Even if you don’t have a prenup, you kind of do: It’s called the law,” Chang Rickert said. “So if you don’t have a prenup, you’re just going by what your state law says. California says community property, so your debt is my debt. That’s what the state law says. So if you don’t like that, then you should craft your own.”

Rickert Chang recommends getting a prenup ideally a year before your wedding. She also points out a few pros of prenups. For one, the stereotypical scenario we see in movies where a rich guy asks his fiancé to sign a prenup — it could actually be a good thing.

“If you were smart about it, and the guy’s like, ‘I want you to sign a prenup saying I don’t want community,’ then what you could do is you can negotiate it,” Chang Rickert said. “You could be like, ‘Fine, I won’t touch your stuff, but in lieu of that, I would like 50,000 a year or 1,000, 100,000 a year,’ and that way you can negotiate, and you can actually get money by agreeing to sign a prenup.”

There’s also certain professions where it’s strongly encouraged to protect the other person.

“Definitely lawyers or doctors, I think you should always get prenup,” Chang Rickert said. “Not just only because it’s my business — I don’t want you taking half of it, but also it’s a business that I can get sued on. So, I would like to protect you from any lawsuits that I might get.”

As prenups have become more common, more people have dug into this topic on social media platforms like TikTok. Chang Rickert has an account of her own where she educates people on prenups to help break down myths and stigmas, including that they aren’t just for rich people and not just in case of divorce.

Now, there aren’t necessarily more divorces now. CDC data shows that divorces declined between 2000 and 2020.

However in the case of a divorce, not signing a prenup could really pile on to the cost of divorce, which can already be pretty high, costing between $15,000 to $20,000 on average.

: newsy.com

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Curriculum Wars Are Intensifying Amid Rising Teacher Burnout

More schools are policing what can be taught, from discussions of gender identity to race.

Across the country, what’s being taught in the classroom is becoming increasingly political.

In school districts nationwide, the debate over what public school children can read and learn is intensifying.

According to Education Week magazine, 17 mostly conservative states have recently imposed bans on what teachers can say about race, gender and sexuality.

Four more states have similar proposals moving through legislatures.

Scott Galvin is the director of Safe Schools South Florida, an organization opposed to the sunshine state’s new ban on discussing gender identity and sexual orientation in the classroom.

“Am I allowed to ask kids about pronouns when they’re introducing themselves?” Galvin asked. “Can I put rambling rainbow flags up in my school?”

Critics have dubbed the ban “Don’t Say Gay.” For now, it applies to grades kindergarten through third.

“Our school system is for educating kids, not indoctrinating kids,” Florida Gov. Ron Desantis said.

Gov. Desantis says the ban is needed to stop what he calls “woke indoctrination” that marginalizes the role of parents and pits people of different races against each other.

“No taxpayer dollars should be used to teach our kids to hate our country or to hate each other,” he said.

Another new Florida law limits what teachers can say on racial issues and allows parents to sue teachers and school districts for perceived violations.

Some teachers fear these new laws will create a chilling effect.

“My concern all along has been the vagueness of it and the lack of just guidance and how it’s going to be interpreted,” said teacher Michael Woods.

But there are parents who say that making teachers think twice is a good thing.

“If you’re not sure, then you’re going to ultimately put your belief or your persuasion on that topic, so that’s better left unsaid,” parent Sean Sykes said. “There are things in here that that 100% should be taught at home.”

The curriculum wars also extend to books.

According to the free speech organization Pen America, over 1,100 book titles have been banned across 26 states over the last school year.

In suburban Muskego, Wisconsin, near Milwaukee, English teacher Kabby Hong put Julie Otsuka’s “When The Emperor Was Divine” on the list for AP reading, but the school board committee rejected the book.

“When I read the board members’ rejection of the Julie Otsuka book and their rationale as to why they rejected it, I was offended on so many levels,” Hong said.

One board member argued it had been selected only because the author was not white.

“What I heard is somebody from the administration told the committee to pick a book from a nonwhite author,” said Kevin Zimmerman, Muskego-Norway School Board member. “You can’t have that. That’s a protected class. You can’t discriminate against a race.”

The book tells the stories of Japanese Americans interned in U.S. camps during World War II.

“They said that the American perspective was missing in her novel, and it’s written by a Japanese American novel about Japanese American characters,” Hong said. “So how could the American perspective be missing from this novel?”

The school wars are not helping, at a time when teachers report record-low job satisfaction as a result of pandemic burnout and low pay.

: newsy.com

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