Monday, June 17, 2024

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1/ The U.S. surgeon general called for social media companies to include a surgeon general’s warning label stating that the platforms can harm people’s mental health. Dr. Vivek Murthy, who cannot unilaterally add warning labels, urged Congress to enact legislation requiring the label to “regularly remind parents and adolescents that social media has not been proved safe” and that “social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents.” Murthy cited a 2019 American Medical Association study that showed teens who spend three hours a day on social media double their risk of depression. On average, teens spend nearly five hours a day on social media apps. “The mental health crisis among young people is an emergency,” Murthy added, “and social media has emerged as an important contributor.” (New York Times / Washington Post / Associated Press / ABC News / CNN / Axios)

2/ A federal judge blocked the Biden administration from enforcing new protections for LGBTQ+ students in six states. The new rule expands Title IX civil rights protections to LGBTQ+ students, as well as the definition of sexual harassment at schools and colleges, and adds safeguards for victims. Compliance with the rules is required to receive federal education aid. However, U.S. District Judge Danny Reeves called the regulation as “arbitrary in the truest sense of the word” in blocking it in Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. The ruling comes days after a different federal judge temporarily blocked the new rule from taking effect in Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Montana. More than 20 Republican states are attempting to block the rules from taking effect as scheduled on Aug. 1. (CNN / Associated Press / New York Times)

3/ The Supreme Court overturned a federal ban on bump stocks, which allow semi-automatic rifles to be fired like fully automatic machine guns. The court split 6-3 along ideological lines in deciding that the federal government was wrong to classify a bump stock as a machine gun because “with or without a bump stock, a shooter must release and reset the trigger between every shot.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the majority opinion an “artificially narrow definition” to reach a conclusion that will have “deadly consequences.” The Trump administration imposed the prohibition after the Las Vegas mass shooting in 2017, where a man using bump stocks killed 60 people and injured hundreds more. It was the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history. (NBC News / New York Times /

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