US Congress Research Articles

The New Pirate TV: Examining the Remediation and Online Narrowcasting of Justin.tv in a New Media Environment

This article examines the rise of online narrowcasting and the battle over the right to remediate ephemeral televisual content through the case study of Justin.tv. The platform became wildly popular, garnering forty-five million monthly users at its height, because it allowed anyone with a stable Internet connection to become a distributor of content. The platform quickly transitioned from a place for “life-casting” to one where users were narrowcasting a wide array of content, including original media, copyrighted live television and sports programs, and taped archives of television shows. This platform-shifted retransmission of televisual content caught the attention of traditional broadcasters and the US Congress. Justin.tv’s narrowcasts followed the traditional linear model of broadcasting but also included the interactivity and open-source usage rules of Web 2.0. This led to a conflict in which the copyright holders attempted to redefine the retransmission of the content—which had originally been intended to be temporary—as stealing. Considering the explosive growth of live-streaming platforms such as Twitch (Justin.tv’s successor) during the COVID-19 pandemic, reexamining the antecedents of narrowcasting and contested sites of remediation through Justin.tv provides important context for understanding the current media ecosystem.

Congress Takes a Positive Swing at an Unsung Public Health Crisis: Preventing Pressure Injuries in Veterans Affairs Facilities.

Congress Takes a Positive Swing at an Unsung Public Health Crisis: Preventing Pressure Injuries in Veterans Affairs Facilities.

Athlete Perceptions of Governance-Related Issues to Sexual Abuse in Sport

Cases of abuse in sport have emerged with frightening regularity over the past two decades. Scholarship has identified risk factors that can help facilitate abuse in sport and has explored athletes’ experiences with sexual abuse. However, less is known about athletes’ perceptions of the systematic organizational-level problems that fail to curtail sexual abuse. This article, therefore, explores what athletes believe to be the key issues in governance that facilitate sexual abuse in sport. An analysis of the lawsuits that athletes filed against US sport organizations and the testimonies they provided to the US Congress from 2017 to 2022 show four primary ways in which organizational culture, decisions and policies helped permit misconduct in sport. Athlete perspectives suggest governance issues related to monopolistic power structures, a lack of athlete representation, conflicts of interest, and commercialization facilitated an abuse-prone culture within Olympic and Paralympic sport in the United States. These findings show that athletes feel that the adjudication mechanisms that remain connected to sport bodies do not always curtail abuse.

Attitudes and Experiences of Clinicians After Mandated Implementation of Open Notes by the 21st Century Cures Act: Survey Study

On December 13, 2016, the US Congress enacted the 21st Century Cures Act (hereafter the Cures Act), which contained the Final Rule mandate that took effect on April 5, 2021. Since then, health systems have been required to provide patients digital access to their eHealth information "without delay" and without charge. This study aimed to assess clinicians' initial experiences with, and attitudes toward, sharing visit notes with patients after being mandated to do so by the Cures Act and to determine clinician preferences regarding instant record release. This cross-sectional survey study was conducted between June 10, 2021, and August 15, 2021, at the University of Kansas Health System, a large academic medical center in Kansas City, Kansas, United States. Participants included clinicians currently employed by the health system, including resident and attending physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, and critical care and emergency medicine registered nurses. A total of 1574 attending physicians, physician assistants, and nurse practitioners, as well as 506 critical care and emergency medicine nurses, were sent invitations; 538 (34.18%) and 72 (14.2%), respectively, responded. Of 609 resident physicians, 4 (response rate not applicable because it was unknown how many residents viewed the website while the link was available) responded. The majority of respondents were attending physicians (402/614, 65.5%) and within the department of internal medicine (160/614, 26.1%). Most agreed that sharing visit notes was a good idea (355/613, 57.9%) and that it is important to speak with the patients before they accessed their records (431/613, 70.3%). Those who agreed that sharing visit notes is a good idea tended to view the practice as a useful tool for engaging patients ("Agree": 139/355, 39.2%; "Somewhat agree": 161/355, 45.4%; P<.001) and experience no change in the clinical value of their notes for other clinicians (326/355, 91.8%; P<.001). Those who disagreed (or were neutral) tended not to encourage patients to read their notes (235/258, 91.1%; P<.001) and were more likely to experience a change in their charting practice (168/257, 65.4%; P<.001) and increased time charting (99/258, 38.4%; P<.001). The findings of this study may be generalizable to institutions similar to the University of Kansas Health System, and the clinician testimonies gathered in this study may provide valuable insight into the initial opinions and experiences of clinicians at these institutions. In addition, these clinician experiences collected early in the transition period may be used to guide future health policy implementation and to understand how best to prepare clinicians for these changes in practice.

Type 2 Diabetes Prevention Programs-From Proof-of-Concept Trials to National Intervention and Beyond.

The prevention of type 2 diabetes (T2D) in high-risk people with lifestyle interventions has been demonstrated by several randomized controlled trials. The intervention effect has sustained up to 20 years in post-trial monitoring of T2D incidence. In 2000, Finland launched the national T2D prevention plan. For screening for high T2D risk, the non-laboratory Finnish Diabetes Risk Score was developed and widely used, also in other countries. The incidence of drug-treated T2D has decreased steadily since 2010. The US congress authorized public funding for a national diabetes prevention program (NDPP) in 2010. It was built around a 16-visit program that relies on referral from primary care and self-referral of persons with either prediabetes or by a diabetes risk test. The program uses a train-the-trainer program. In 2015 the program started the inclusion of online programs. There has been limited implementation of nationwide T2D prevention programs in other countries. Despite the convincing results from RCTs in China and India, no translation to the national level was introduced there. T2D prevention efforts in low-and middle-income countries are still limited, but results have been promising. Barriers to efficient interventions are greater in these countries than in high-income countries, where many barriers also exist. Health disparities by socioeconomic status exist for T2D and its risk factors and form a challenge for preventive interventions. It seems that a stronger commitment to T2D prevention is needed, such as the successful WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which legally binds the countries to act.

A new US Congress brings new challenges

A new year is a time of new beginnings in our lives. At the American Chemical Society, it is a time to refresh goals and welcome changes in our governance committees, local sections, and technical divisions, as well as in many of the organizations ACS works with for the common good. For the ACS Committee on Public Affairs and Public Relations (PA&PR), odd-numbered years bring a large flurry of changes as a result of a new Congress in Washington, DC, particularly related to the contacts used by ACS government affairs staff. This is especially true when the balance of power in Congress changes. As a very complex organization, ACS serves its members and chemistry in many ways. Our strategic goals keep us focused. Strategic goal 4 , for example, states that ACS will communicate to the public and to policy makers the importance of chemical professionals and chemistry in addressing

Comment: A new US Congress brings new challenges

Comment: A new US Congress brings new challenges

Connecting the dots in ‘Rarest of rare’: Is judicial discretion the perfection of reason? Tracking judicial discretion in death penalty cases in India

In order to restrict the imposition of the death penalty to an extremely narrow band of cases, the Supreme Court of India laid down the principle of ‘rarest of rare’ guiding but not fettering the sentencing discretion of judges. Despite the guidelines, the decision remains purely discretionary with its accompanying arbitrariness leading to unpredictability, and disparity in sentencing, which places a tremendous burden of responsibility on the sentencing judge. It is necessary to think of an alternative to the judge-centric discretionary death penalty, such as Sentencing Commission recommended the death penalty, that will help bring transparency and predictability to the entire process of decision making. Discretion delivers discrimination. Therefore, the discretionary death penalty is discriminatory. Whether by a judge or a jury, the exercise of sentencing discretion is arbitrary and capricious, particularly if the discretion is untrammeled and unchannelized. The ‘rarest of rare’ principle does not differentiate between murder simpliciter and murder contemporaneous such as rape-murder. Each judge interprets the meaning of ‘rarest of rare’ in his way. The current system is not working. A guideline-driven sentence is far better than a judge-centric one. The US Congress has constituted the US Sentencing Commission, a statutory judicial body entrusted with formulating a mechanism for sentencing to remove disparity and element of surprise in the sentencing outcome. It lays down structured guidelines with narrow judicial discretion in the matter of sentencing a convict. Sentencing Commission, though not a perfect mechanism- no mechanism can be perfect given the very nature of capital punishment- seems to overcome many of the drawbacks and shortcomings of the existing judge-centric system raising questions on perfect reasoning.

Rice in the Time of Sugar: The Political Economy of Food in Cuba

Louis Pérez, author of more than a dozen books on modern Cuba and Cuban-American relations, here turns his hand to the history of Cuban rice. Historians interested in Cuban agriculture have written abundantly and wonderfully on sugar and tobacco. They have shown much less interest in Cuban food and food production. Pérez emphasizes early on the importance of rice to Cuban meals and diets, and its centrality to Cuban food culture. He stresses the irony that while Cubans for two centuries have been great rice eaters, trailing only some Asian populations in per capita rice consumption, they have never been great rice producers. Although Cuban landscapes, especially in the westernmost third of the island, are suited to rice growing, at many points in their history Cubans have imported 90 percent or more of their rice. This mismatch between production and consumption is what Pérez wishes to explain, especially for the years between 1840 and 1960. His stated aim is “to lift rice out of historiographical obscurity, to situate rice at the center of the very way to think about the Cuban past” (p. 23).Pérez burrows inside the politics of rice in both Cuba and the United States. At the heart of the book lies the fact that both Cuba and Louisiana could grow both sugar and rice. As a result of the growing involvement of the United States in Cuban affairs, the fate of Cuban rice farmers and rice production hinged on tariff deals between the two countries. If the US Congress and Commerce Department were to give Cuban sugar a warm welcome in US markets, then, in exchange, Cuba would have to allow US rice favorable terms. Given that economies of scale were more easily achieved by US rice farmers than their Cuban counterparts, trade deals that suited Cuban sugar producers always handicapped (uncompetitive) Cuban rice farmers. As Pérez puts it, “US rice producers had no better allies than Cuban sugar producers” (p. 25). Many Cubans lamented the lack of homegrown rice, and several governments sought to bolster rice farming, to little effect. Even Fidel Castro, who changed so much, could not change Cuba's dependence on foreign rice.Chapter 1 revisits the rise of sugar and decline of subsistence food production in nineteenth-century Cuba. Rice from South Carolina and Georgia helped make Cuban specialization in sugar feasible. By midcentury, sugar producers dominated Cuban agriculture and those aspects of policy that Spain (Cuba's colonial master before 1898) left to Cubans. Chapter 2 charts the course of rice imports from the 1890s to about 1920, an era when Cubans produced almost no rice of their own. They imported rice from several Asian countries, but the interruptions to maritime shipping brought on by World War I obliged Cubans to rely heavily on US rice for the first time. Chapter 3 explains that Asian rice reclaimed its place in Cuban markets in the 1920s, that Cuban efforts to boost rice production in the late 1920s brought meager results, and that in 1937–38 the US government negotiated new tariffs giving American rice farmers an edge over Asian ones in the Cuban market. The disruptions of World War II encouraged Cubans to try to grow more of their own rice, which they did, tripling output—but still accounting for only 3 percent of Cuban farm acreage. Chapters 4 and 5 detail the politics of rice and sugar in the 1950s. In the early 1950s, against the backdrop of a struggling economy, the Fulgencio Batista government made efforts once again to expand rice production, which had the potential to resolve the summer underemployment that came with the seasonality of sugar growing. But in 1956 Batista reversed course under pressure from sugar interests. An epilogue takes the story through the last 60 years, ending much where matters began, with Cuba importing the bulk of its rice.Pérez did research in at least eight cities. He used official documents, the press, trade publications, travel literature, and much else. The underlying research effort is one of the book's strengths. The audience that Pérez had in mind seems to be fellow scholars. The sources sometimes dominate the story, with long quotations from one or another official. A few quotations appear only in Spanish.The weakest feature in a strong book, in my judgment, is contextualization. Pérez focuses so intently on trade negotiations that he mentions only in passing important constraints and conditions that shape his larger story, such as the idea of comparative advantage and the ideology of free trade or the anxieties of Cold War Washington.

Alvin William Trivelpiece

An outstanding leader, physicist, and administrator, Alvin William Trivelpiece died on 7 August 2022 in Rancho Santa Margarita, California.Alvin William TrivelpieceAIP ESVA/PHYSICS TODAY COLLECTIONPPT|High resolutionBorn on 15 March 1931 in Stockton, California, Al put himself through California Polytechnic State College and graduated in 1953 with a degree in electrical engineering. He earned a PhD in electrical engineering in 1958 from Caltech under the guidance of Roy Gould. His dissertation was titled “Space charge waves in cylindrical plasma columns.”After spending a year in the Netherlands as a Fulbright scholar, Al became a professor of electrical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1966 he became a professor of physics at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he supervised 19 doctoral candidates and published more than 40 papers on plasma physics. Al also wrote, with Nicholas Krall, Principles of Plasma Physics, which remains a classic textbook 50 years after publication.Taking a leave of absence from the University of Maryland in 1973, Al served for two years with the Atomic Energy Commission as an assistant director for research in the division of controlled thermonuclear research. Among his achievements was the establishment of the national Controlled Thermonuclear Research Computer Center (CTRCC), which provided fusion researchers across the country with remote access to leading-edge computing resources. The idea was met with considerable skepticism, but it became a model used by other science agencies.In 1976 Al became vice president for engineering and research at Maxwell Laboratories, and in 1978 he was appointed corporate vice president of Science Applications Inc. Three years later Al was nominated by President Ronald Reagan and confirmed by the Senate as director of the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Research (now the Office of Science), where he had responsibility for 5 research programs and 10 of DOE’s laboratories. He also served as the energy secretary’s science adviser.As director, Al developed a plan for construction of five major scientific research facilities: the Advanced Light Source, the Advanced Photon Source, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility, and the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS). Those facilities continue to sustain US leadership in many fields of science today. Al’s planning was informed by federal advisory committees that he established and the National Academy of Sciences, an approach that continues to serve DOE’s Office of Science well.Al and Charles DeLisi in 1986 initiated the Human Genome Project, which has had an enormous impact on the life sciences and medical research. Al was masterful in obtaining support for the project from DOE management, the Office of Management and Budget, and the US Congress. The National Institutes of Health joined the project two years later.Al expanded the scope of the CTRCC to form the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, which continues to serve the research programs in the Office of Science as well as other DOE programs.In 1987 Al became the executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and publisher of Science. Then in January 1989, he became director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where he was responsible for several initiatives. He created the Office of Laboratory Computing to enhance Oak Ridge’s ability to meet complex scientific challenges. Al led the development of a successful proposal for the Center for Computational Sciences, which brought together computational-science teams, computer scientists, and the hardware vendor Intel. It was designated as one of two DOE high-performance computing research centers in 1993.A second major achievement was the SNS. The lab had been designing a reactor-based neutron source. When the cost became unacceptable, Al took the lead in shifting to the accelerator-based SNS and gathered a multilab consortium to execute design and construction and broaden the project’s base of support. The SNS returned the US to a world-leading position in neutron-scattering research.Al was an advocate for international cooperation in science. His work behind the scenes with Evgeny Velikhov led to an agreement between the US and the Soviet Union on developing a magnetic-fusion demonstration model, which laid the groundwork for the ITER project.Al’s outstanding achievements extend across research, education, science administration, and national security. He was an innovator in the positions he held. Many of his accomplishments resulted from his understanding of science and politics and his ability to guide projects through government processes.Those of us who worked closely with Al have been fortunate to have had the opportunity. Al was a continuous source of ideas and wisdom. He had a great sense of humor and was quick to generate puns. He enjoyed playing poker, chess, and golf and was an avid runner. He piloted his own airplane to the age of 85. His wisdom, leadership, and friendship will be missed.© 2023 American Institute of Physics.

Reagan, Congress, and Human Rights: Contesting Morality in US Foreign Policy by Rasmus Sinding Søndergaard

Reviewed by: Reagan, Congress, and Human Rights: Contesting Morality in US Foreign Policy by Rasmus Sinding Søndergaard Aryeh Neier (bio) Rasmus Sinding Søndergaard, Reagan, Congress, and Human Rights: Contesting Morality in US Foreign Policy (Cambridge University Press, 2022), ISBN 9781108495639 (hard-back), 324 pages. Rasmus Sinding Søndergaard, a Danish historian teaching at a Swedish university, has written an excellent account of the way that the United States Congress, through its struggles in the 1980s with the Reagan Administration, helped to make the promotion of international human rights an important ongoing component of American foreign policy. His book, Reagan, Congress, and Human Rights: Contesting Morality in US Foreign Policy, is deeply researched. To one who was a close observer and participant in those struggles as they were taking place, Søndergaard’s highly detailed reporting seems flawless. Most of his judgments seem well-considered and fair. And yet, despite his book’s many virtues, it appears to me that Søndergaard has told only part of the story. It was not only struggles with Congress during the Reagan years that led to an ongoing American commitment to promote human rights. It was also the focus on human rights reporting in the mainstream American press during that period and the emergence of an array of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) dedicated to the human rights cause. The press coverage and the lobbying by NGOs complemented and contributed to the efforts of those members of Congress who were at the forefront of disputes with the Reagan administration. In turn, of course, the battles waged by members of Congress provided material for press attention to human rights, and NGOs built their constituencies by mobilizing their supporters around struggles in Congress. Before the 1970s, the international human rights cause did not attract much attention. It was rarely an issue in the US Congress. Press coverage was scarce. And a civil society movement to promote human rights barely existed. Amnesty International had been founded in 1961, but while it caught on in a few European countries, it had only a small following in the United States. Also, in those days, it restricted its activities to very few issues. Its main activity was to identify “prisoners of conscience” in a number of countries and to organize letter-writing campaigns for them. All of this changed in the 1970s because human rights became a focal point in the Cold War struggle. The most important developments were the emergence of a small dissident movement, quickly subjected to harsh repression in Moscow, at the heart of the Soviet empire; a military coup that was accompanied by extensive torture and killings that overthrew a democratically elected leftist government in Chile; and large scale protests against the Apartheid government in South Africa that were violently suppressed. The geopolitical alignments of the governments engaged in repression became a central part of the story. Some reacted to abuses because of their political sympathies for certain victims of repression. Others were insistent that all such abuses should be condemned and that human rights should be upheld regardless of Cold War alignments. [End Page 157] A member of Congress who responded to the human rights developments in different parts of the world was Representative Donald Fraser of Minnesota. He conducted hearings on those developments and was the principal author of legislation that would change the way the United States Department of State would deal with human rights. Fraser’s legislation mandated the creation of the post of Assistant Secretary for Human Rights, provided that the Department would issue annual “country reports” on the human rights practices of governments worldwide, and prohibited security aid to governments that had practiced gross abuses of rights. The latter provision was seen as a repudiation of the role of Henry Kissinger in facilitating the military coup in 1973 that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power in Chile. The legislation was vetoed by President Gerald Ford, for whom Kissinger served as Secretary of State. It was adopted by Congress over Ford’s veto. An essential part of the process that secured the votes needed to override Ford’s veto is that the legislation won the support of right-wing members of...

Harnessing Backlash: How Leaders Can Benefit from Antagonizing Foreign Actors

AbstractLeaders nearly always claim that their diplomatic campaigns are intended to attract foreign support. However, many diplomatic campaigns fail spectacularly in this regard. While these events have largely been explained as diplomatic failures, I argue that alienating the apparent target of an international diplomatic campaign can be a deliberate strategy leaders use to win domestic support. Under certain conditions, a costly backlash from a foreign actor can be a credible signal that the leader shares the domestic audience's preferences. Therefore, by intentionally provoking a backlash from a valuable foreign actor, leaders can exchange foreign condemnation for an increase in domestic support. I support this argument with evidence from Netanyahu's 2015 speech to the US Congress. I show that, as expected by this theoretical framework, Netanyahu's efforts resulted in a significant backlash among US Democrats and a corresponding increase of support among right-wing Israelis, a crucial constituency for his upcoming election.

The power of coalitions: lobbying success in US sanctions policy toward Iran from 2007 to 2016

This paper focuses on the role of interest groups in US sanctions policy toward Iran from 2007 to 2016. The aim of this work is to explain what changed in regard to the role of interest groups in the most significant shift in US-Iranian relations under President Barack Obama before and after the vote on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which was intended to halt Iran’s non-peaceful nuclear program in return for an easing of sanctions by the US Congress. This study contributes to our knowledge about how structural variables, issue salience, and actor strategies work together to produce outcomes. In addition, it provides a better understanding of interest group influence by identifying conditions under which interest groups can be successful in changing the policy status quo. This research proposes that the once firm stands of the Democrat legislators on supporting Iran sanctions changed due to support of President Obama’s strategy of engagement by Pro-Diplomacy groups and the international community, which he used as legislative subsidy. In addition, favorable policy windows opened up opportunities that pushed for diplomacy instead of confrontation.

Why a Divided New US Congress Will Not Stall Action on Social Determinants of Health

This JAMA Forum discusses industry progress, state initiatives, congressional action, and administrative actions to address social determinants of health, which are nonmedical factors that influence health such as housing and nutrition.

The US Congress 118th: a Gender Portrait

Senator Patty Murray of Washington was solemnly sworn in by Vice President Kamala Harris in the Old Senate Hall on Capitol Hill in Washington on January 3, 2023, in front of Murray&amp;apos;s husband, Rob Murray. She became the first woman to temporarily become President of the Senate. The episode is like a historical symbol of the conquest of heights of power by American women in the first quarter of the 21st century: a duet of American women perform a &amp;quot;routine&amp;quot; action in the procedure for transferring power. The American press, not without reason, interprets the results of the election of women to various levels during the 2022 midterm elections as “new records”. The 118th US Congress (2022-2024) has a record number of women. The point of view that it was the issue of abortion that helped &amp;quot;limit the losses of the Democrats&amp;quot; in the last election cycle was widely accepted among specialists. The Supreme Court&amp;apos;s dismissal of Roe v. Wade has placed abortion at the center of the election debate, along with the economy, inflation and immigration. The election took place amid a global financial downturn and a notable rise in the cost of living in the United States. In addition, they are the first since the June 2022 Supreme Court ruling overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. The Democrats retained control of the Senate. The Republican Party won a majority in the House of Representatives. In thinking about expanding the political power and representation of American women, it is necessary to consider the barriers to women&amp;apos;s retention in office and how to remove those barriers, recognizing the full range of diversity among them—and, in particular, the diversity of their political experiences and opportunities—in political institutions. The gubernatorial level of power demonstrates the same trend. Nearly a quarter of all US governors are women. Moreover, there are twice as many women democrats among them. In total, 12 American women occupy this level of office: 8 of them are Democrats, 4 - Republicans.

ОСНОВНІ ДЕТЕРМІНАНТИ ВИБОРІВ В КОНГРЕС США 2022 РОКУ

Relations with the USA since Ukraine gained independence have been one of the priorities of the state's foreign policy due to a number of geopolitical, economic, security and other factors. Since the beginning of Russian aggression in 2014, the United States has turned into one of the main strategic partners of Ukraine, and with the beginning of a large-scale war in 2022, the United States plays a key role in its foreign policy strategy, given the unprecedented economic and military aid. The war issue in Ukraine, given the significant US support.is the center of political discussions in this state, especially during election campaigns, since no political force can ignore it and not include in the election platform. Therefore, it is vital for Ukraine to cooperate with both leading parties of the USA, to ensure constant support and allocation of aid regardless of the configuration of political forces in the Congress. These circumstances determine the relevance of the study of the main factors affecting the elections to the Congress and the role of the Russia-Ukraine war in the pre-election processes. Thus, the purpose of this article is to establish the main determinants of the US Congress elections in 2022. It is determined that the US electoral system has unique features and institutions such as the Electoral College, the primaries, caucuses, etc. The course of elections is significantly determined by the specifics of the electoral system and electoral culture. It is pointed out that Republican identity and more traditional moral views are most common among older, white, religious, affluent, and married respondents, mostly men. On the other hand, Democratic and progressive political views are more common among minorities, younger respondents who are not married, secular or less religious, low-income people, and women. Among the trends in the development of US electoral processes, such phenomena as "negative commitment" and "expansion of the conflict" stand out. The first one forces people to refuse to communicate with each other due to different political views, and the second is characterized by party absorption of issues and strong party identification. And at the same time, in the last three elections held in the USA, a record voter turnout was observed. In addition to these traditional determinants of the American electoral process, the following factors determining the course of the midterm elections to the US Congress in 2022 can also be identified: the pool of the most discussed topics (the right to abortion, high taxes, inflation, social security, the war in Ukraine), big interest in the elections, stratification of society according to party identifications, preservation of an ideological view of politics, trust in electoral institutes. Although the US foreign policy on Ukraine was not a central topic, it was constantly discussed by the parties and attracted the attention of citizens due to its relevance. In the course of the election campaign, the war issue in Ukraine became relevant, discussions about the strategy of waging the war, additional methods of support, the new world order and the role of the United States in it, etc. intensified. Both parties generally promoted mostly positive messages for Ukraine and contributed to strengthening the country's image in the eyes of the American public. Key words: elections, electoral culture, electoral system, Congress, war in Ukraine, electoral institutions.

Getting the Lead Out: A Career-Long Perspective on Leaded Gasoline, Dust, Soil, and Proactive Pediatric Exposure Prevention

This commentary considers the long arc of lead (Pb) poisoning from antiquity to the 21st century. While Pb exposure is commonly attributed to paint or water, this article aims to discuss the underrecognized impacts of air Pb and soil Pb and to address controversial misconceptions related to these exposure sources. The Roman Aristocracy experienced lead poisoning mainly from the ingestion of foods, lead cookware, and lead-contaminated water and wine, but by the 20th century, lead exposure occurred by ingestion and inhalation. The introduction of tetraethyl lead (TEL) additives in gasoline was approved in 1925 in the US and produced an exponential increase in inhalable air lead exhaust particles through the 1970s. These five decades of widespread lead aerosol exposure were enabled by the Lead Industries Association (LIA), which confounded pediatricians, healthcare providers, and government agencies by promoting lead-based paint as the primary agent of childhood lead exposure. Empirical evidence of lead poisoning, environmental exposures, and proactive lead prevention in the general population was impossible until analytical instruments became commonly available for clinical studies and environmental measurements in the 1960s and 1970s. Soil studies in Baltimore, Maryland, beginning in the mid-1970s, indicated that lead particles exhausted from vehicles fueled by leaded gasoline excessively contaminated urban soils compared with non-urban soils. The invisible lead-contaminated air fouled multiple exposure routes via inhalation and ingestion. In addition to misunderstandings about sources of lead exposure, misinformation currently abounds regarding the timeline of banning lead in gasoline. The US Center for Disease Control (CDC) lists the ban as beginning in 1996. The banning of leaded gasoline first occurred in Japan starting in 1972, and after a 1984 Senate Hearing, the US Congress agreed on a rapid phasedown. A US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) timeline confirmed that most leaded gasoline was banned by the end of 1986. Banning leaded gasoline was associated with sharp declines in the US population’s blood lead, which prompted global efforts to ban leaded gasoline. The eventual result was a complete global ban on highway use of leaded gasoline achieved in August 2021. Leaded gasoline is still used in piston-engine aircraft and the US EPA is proceeding to complete the ban on lead additives in fuel. Using precautionary principles to recover lead-contaminated urban environments and prevent new toxicant exposures are essential challenges and opportunities for present and future generations.

Dyskurs racji versus dyskurs emocji, czyli o szturmie na Kapitol w mediach publicznych Polski, Rosji i Niemiec

The article presents the results of the analysis of media coverage in European countries on the events of January 2021 in the United States. The US Congress was deliberating to approve the presidential election results when a crowd of Donald Trump supporters burst into the building. The authors compared television news services of public stations in three countries: Poland, Russia, and Germany. The content analysis in its quantitative and qualitative dimensions, qualitative methods (Critical Discourse Analysis) as well as comparative analysis were used. The research results allowed the authors to indicate the dominant types of discourse in the public media in January 2021. The authors have shown the varied nature of the narratives used (discourse instrumentalization versus the chronicle style of narration), language (emotional versus informational), and the contextualization of media reports (embedding in historical, social, or cultural contexts).

A Model of Foreign Policy Decision-Making Factors in the U.S. Congress

The paper is devoted to modeling the factors of foreign policy decision-making process in the US Congress. It is based on the analysis of data on Russia-related bills proposed in the period from 2010 to 2022. The factors influencing the likelihood of a bill&amp;apos;s adoption were identified and organized into three large groups: institutional, procedural, and substantive. These factors were systematized and arranged into a conceptual model in the form of decision tree, structuring the process of foreign policy decision-making with respect to Russia. Using examples of sanctions bills from the 2010s, the discussion of sanctions bills demonstrates that the immediate topic of containing Russia is not sufficient for Congress; the passage of sanctions bills is only possible when there are conjunctive public, partisan, and private interests. The paper demonstrates how much Congress&amp;apos; foreign policy decisions are influenced by domestic political factors. It is assumed that this model will allow researchers to assess and predict the outcome of the discussion of the foreign policy agenda in Congress not only in relation to Russia, but also in relation to other countries.

Article: Uncertainties Hold Back Achievement of OECD Pillar II Goals

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Pillar 2 that was designed to levy a minimum tax on multinationals in all of the countries in which they operate still has many areas of uncertainty. These include issues from the more general uncertainties concerning the politics, including the apparent desire not to adopt a multilateral convention for its implementation to the technical ones that revolve around the complexity of the rules for calculating the effective tax rate (ETR) (which also increases compliance costs), with the risk of jeopardizing the Pillar 2 project’s objectives of simplicity and uniformity. Moreover, the Biden Administration’s unequivocal support for Pillar 2 has not translated into action in the US Congress, and any administrative steps the United States intending to undertake the implementation of Pillar 2 (in lieu of action in Congress) are also not evidenced. Pillar, Base erosion, Treaty, Multilateral convention, Effective tax Rate, Covered taxes, CFC, GILTI, BEAT, Minimum tax, anti-avoidance, Inclusive Framework, aggressive tax planning, GloBE, Substance carve-out, Incentives, Top-Up-Tax, UTPR, STTR