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ATLANTA — Even when grappling with a four-game losing streak and the uncertainty generated by quarterback Kirk Cousins' eight interceptions and no touchdown passes in that span, there is some solace for the Atlanta Falcons. Atlanta Falcons quarterback Kirk Cousins walks off the field after throwing an interception during the second half of an NFL football game against the Minnesota Vikings, Sunday, Dec. 8, 2024, in Minneapolis. They play in the NFC South. There is more good news: The Falcons' next two opponents, the Las Vegas Raiders and New York Giants, are tied for the NFL's worst record at 2-11. Coach Raheem Morris says he is sticking with Cousins for next Monday night's game at Las Vegas. Sunday's 42-21 loss at Minnesota dropped Atlanta to 6-7, one game behind Tampa Bay in the NFC South. The Falcons hold the tiebreaker advantage over the Buccaneers, so if they can take advantage of their cushy closing stretch of games that also includes Washington and Carolina, they could salvage their season. "We're right in this thing," right guard Chris Lindstrom said Monday before acknowledging he is "obviously not happy or satisfied with where we're at." Lindstrom said he maintains "the ultimate belief in what we're doing and everything that we have going on and everything is still in front of us." Cousins and the Falcons must solve their red-zone woes to maintain hopes of the team's first playoff appearance since 2017. The Falcons rank eighth in the NFL with 371 yards per game but only 19th with their average of 21.4 points thanks to their persistent problems inside the 20. Even the forgiving NFC South can't make up for the scoring problems caused by penalties, turnovers and other persistent breakdowns. "You can't live with it at all," Morris said Monday when asked about Cousins' recent streak of interceptions. Even so, Cousins remains the starter as first-round draft pick Michael Penix Jr. awaits his opportunity. "It's for sure Kirk is our quarterback but I have no hesitations about what our young man has been doing and how he has been preparing and the things he is ready to do," Morris said. "So if that time ever came I would have a lot of confidence in what Mike is able to do, but Kirk is our quarterback. Kirk is the guy who is going to lead us." With four sacks against the Vikings, the Falcons may have finally solved their longtime pass-rush woes. Atlanta had five sacks in a 17-13 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers on Dec. 1, giving the team back-to-back games with at least four sacks for the first time since 2019. Outside linebacker Arnold Ebiketie had one of Sunday's sacks, giving him four for the season. With nine sacks in the last two games, the Falcons have almost doubled their NFL-low total of 10 through their first 11 games. Even as the pass rush was productive, the Falcons' defense showed a sudden inability to prevent big plays through the air. Atlanta allowed four completions of more than 40 yards as Vikings receivers Jordan Addison and Justin Jefferson combined to catch five scoring passes from Sam Darnold, who did not throw an interception. Morris said the Vikings' strategy was to avoid cornerback A.J. Terrell, "making other people make plays, and we didn't go out there and make them." Running back Tyler Allgeier had nine carries for 63 yards and a touchdown. Even while Bijan Robinson continued to produce with 22 carries for 92 yards and a score, Allgeier re-emerged as a strong complement with his second-highest rushing total of the season. Cousins has an unhealthy ratio of 17 touchdown passes to 15 interceptions. "Kirk was the guy who led us to the 6-3 record," Morris said. "We've got to find a way to get out of the funk. ... For us, it's going to be his opportunity to go out and right the ship and he has earned it." Former Atlanta quarterback Desmond Ridder is expected to start for the Raiders on Monday night after Aidan O'Connell's knee injury in Sunday's 28-13 loss at Tampa Bay. Sent weekly directly to your inbox!
As school districts struggle to control the spread of cyberbullying, pornographic images and online exploitation among their students, Texas lawmakers could consider banning social media from minors, among other sweeping measures, in the upcoming legislative session. Over the last decade, Texas lawmakers have attempted to slow the spread of social media's harmful effects by criminalizing cyberbullying and preventing online platforms from collecting data on minors, the latter of which has faced court challenges by social media companies. While law enforcement and prosecutors have traditionally been responsible for cracking down on these online dangers, lack of resources in those agencies has meant enforcement has fallen onto educators, who already struggle to meet the demands of instruction, let alone stay knowledgeable on all the ways children use the internet. “Almost every kid comes to school these days, regardless of background, regardless of socioeconomic status, they have some type of smartphone device in their hand. So they will have access to unfettered content most of the time, no matter what we try to do,” said Zeph Capo, president of the Texas American Federation of Teachers. Lawmakers have suggested several initiatives next session to address the online dangers affecting Texas children, including a bill filed by Rep. Jared Patterson, R-Frisco, that would prohibit minors from creating accounts on social media sites and require age verification for new users. Other options include adding funds to internet crimes units in law enforcement agencies, banning the use of people’s likeness in artificially created pornographic images, and making people aware of the dangers of the internet. "Social media is the most dangerous thing our kids have legal access to in Texas," Patterson said in a news release. While they welcome any efforts to reduce harm to children, school officials and cybercrime investigators say more needs to be done to hold social media companies accountable for enforcement. “We need these businesses to be responsible business people and throttle some of this tremendously negative content, particularly when it comes to kids,” Capo said. “But, you know, they don’t want to do anything like that.” During a Senate Committee on State Affairs hearing in October, lawmakers listened to a litany of stories about how social media has affected young people in Texas: a middle school girl who developed an eating disorder after watching a TikTok video, a middle school boy addicted to cartoon pornography after his YouTube algorithm took him to a porn site, and a woman who testified to being groomed for sex work in high school as her images were posted on social media applications. Most of these incidents had a starting point at school where children have frequent access to technology and teachers and administrators are too busy to provide oversight. Add in the fact that they know ways to circumvent campus firewalls, students are being groomed via social media on school grounds, said Jacquelyn Alutto, president of Houston-based No Trafficking Zone, during the hearing. “Right now, schools are a hunting ground,” she said. The Texas Tribune requested interviews with several school districts about online dangers in schools, including the Austin, Round Rock, Katy and Eanes school districts, but they did not respond. The Plano school district declined to be interviewed. Last year, the American Federation of Teachers and the American Psychological Association, among other national organizations, called out social media platforms for undermining classroom learning, increasing costs for school systems, and being a “root cause” of the nationwide youth mental health crisis. The admonishment came after a report detailed how school districts across the country are experiencing significant burdens as they respond to tech’s predatory and prevalent influence in the classroom. The same year, in an attempt to hold social media companies more accountable, Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law House Bill 18, known as the Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment Act. The SCOPE Act requires covered digital service providers to provide minors with certain data protections, prevent minors from accessing harmful content, and give parents tools to manage their child’s use of the service. It also required school districts to obtain parental consent for most software and social media applications used in the classroom and to look for alternatives to the internet for instruction. However, many of the family-friendly websites and games that children might use for entertainment are also rife with potential sexual predators who pretend to be children. “A little boy can be playing Robloxs in the cafeteria, and during that lunch break, a trafficker can target him, and he can be sexually groomed or exploited within a few weeks or months,” Alutto said. And even harder to control is when students share pornographic images of themselves online, a reason why some child welfare groups want social media platforms restricted or outright banned for minors. “This has also helped human traffickers groom and recruit children,” Alutto said. Studies show 95% of people aged 13 to 17 report using social media, with more than a third saying they use social media “almost constantly.” Nearly 40% of children ages 8 to 12 use social media, even though most platforms require a minimum age of 13 to sign up, according to a study by the U.S. Surgeon General. This has created a generation of chronically online children, and the medical community is still unsure of their longterm effects. Although the SCOPE Act was passed to restrict kids from seeing harmful online content and give parents more control over what their children do online, social media companies have watered it down. A federal district court judge earlier this year temporarily blocked part of the law that required them to filter out harmful content, saying it was unconstitutional under the First Amendment free speech right. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced in October that he was suing TikTok for allowing its algorithm to affect minors. TikTok denied the state's allegations, pointing to online information about how parents in certain states, including Texas, can contact TikTok to request that their teen's account be deleted. This lawsuit, like dozens of others across the country, is playing out in court, forcing Texas lawmakers to wait and see what more they can do in the upcoming session to hold social media companies accountable. Australia recently banned social media for children under the age of 16. “The state needs to ensure that if technology providers want to do business, they must protect our children, stop the flow of (child pornography and child sexual assault) and report it,” Brent Dupre, director of law enforcement at the Office of the Attorney General of Texas, told The Texas Tribune. Dupre’s department is one of three Internet Crimes Against Children Task Forces in the state, and his agency alone covers 134 counties. His office receives 2,500 cyber tips per month for investigation from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, an overwhelming number of cases for an agency with only 11 officers. The problem is so persistent that Dupre said his office was conducting a live training session with law enforcement officers a few months ago on how to pose in chat rooms as a minor when the trainer noticed a real adult was already trying to solicit their fake minor for sex. “These proactive investigations aren’t done as frequently as we like because of the sheer caseload that we got,” Dupre said, noting how they work with other law enforcement agencies who are suffering with staff shortages. Christina Green, chief advancement and external relations officer for Children’s Advocacy Centers of Texas, said her agency serves more than 60,000 child victims yearly, with a majority of these connected to online incidents that happened in school while using social media applications. She said law enforcement agencies as well as hers need more resources to protect children. “This field is rapidly developing, and the tools needed to continue must also develop,” she said. Echoing school officials, Dupre said social media companies should enforce more restrictions on what minors can do on their platforms. He said companies should be required to track attempts to upload child pornography and other internet harm and be held accountable for allowing sexually explicit content to stay on their websites. Dupre suggested lawmakers require chat and social media companies to use artificial intelligence to scan for child pornography and child sexual assault material and block users from sending this kind of material on their platforms. “To me, children who try to upload self-produced material should automatically have their accounts disabled,” he said. “Many technology providers scan for these photos and videos, which are then quarantined and reported, but not all providers lockout or cancel that user end-to-end encryption.” However, the most essential place to stop cyberbullying, sexual exploitation and other internet-based crimes on minors is at home, Green said. She suggested teaching children in schools as early as the third grade about online risks and repeating training yearly. She also wants the same education extended to parents.“We have been talking to parents about when you drop your kid off at someone’s house, do you know if devices will be used there? It’s like asking if there is a pool in the backyard. These types of questions need to become commonplace,” Green said. Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Error! There was an error processing your request.
President-elect Donald Trump’s recent dinner with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral were not just exercises in policy and diplomacy. They were also prime trolling opportunities for Trump. Throughout his first term in the White House and during his campaign to return, Trump has spun out countless provocative, antagonizing and mocking statements. There were his belittling nicknames for political opponents, his impressions of other political figures and the plentiful memes he shared on social media. Now that's to the Oval Office, Trump is back at it, and his trolling is attracting more attention — and eyerolls. On Sunday, Trump turned a photo of himself seated near a smiling first lady Jill Biden at the Notre Dame ceremony for his new perfume and cologne line, with the tag line, “A fragrance your enemies can’t resist!” The first lady’s office declined to comment. When Trudeau hastily flew to Florida to meet with Trump last month over the president-elect's on all Canadian products entering the U.S., that Canada become the 51st U.S. state. The Canadians passed off the comment as a joke, but Trump has continued to play up the dig, including in on his social media network referring to the prime minister as “Governor Justin Trudeau of the Great State of Canada.” After decades as an entertainer and tabloid fixture, Trump has a flair for the provocative that is aimed at attracting attention and, in his most recent incarnation as a politician, mobilizing fans. He has long relished poking at his opponents, both to demean and minimize them and to delight supporters who share his irreverent comments and posts widely online and cheer for them in person. Trump, to the joy of his fans, first publicly needled Canada on his social media network a week ago when he with a Canadian flag next to him and the caption “Oh Canada!” After his latest post, Canadian Immigration Minister Marc Miller said Tuesday: “It sounds like we’re living in a episode of South Park." “his approach will often be to challenge people, to destabilize a negotiating partner, to offer uncertainty and even sometimes a bit of chaos into the well established hallways of democracies and institutions and one of the most important things for us to do is not to freak out, not to panic.” Even Thanksgiving dinner isn't a trolling-free zone for Trump's adversaries. On Thanksgiving Day, from “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” with President Joe Biden and other Democrats’ faces superimposed on the characters in a spoof of the turkey-carving scene. The video shows Trump appearing to explode out of the turkey in a swirl of purple sparks, with the former president stiffly dancing to one of his favorite songs, Village People’s “Y.M.C.A." In his most recent presidential campaign, Trump mocked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, refusing to call his GOP primary opponent by his real name and instead dubbing him “Ron DeSanctimonious.” He added, for good measure, in a post on his Truth Social network: “I will never call Ron DeSanctimonious ‘Meatball’ Ron, as the Fake News is insisting I will.” As he campaigned against Biden, Trump taunted him in online posts and with comments and impressions at his rallies, deriding the president over his intellect, his walk, his golf game and even his beach body. After Vice President Kamala Harris took over Biden's spot as the Democratic nominee, Trump repeatedly suggested she never worked at McDonalds while in college. by appearing at a Pennsylvania McDonalds in October, when he manned the fries station and held an impromptu news conference from the restaurant drive-thru. Trump’s team thinks people should get a sense of humor. “President Trump is a master at messaging and he’s always relatable to the average person, whereas many media members take themselves too seriously and have no concept of anything else other than suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome,” said Steven Cheung, Trump’s communications director. “President Trump will Make America Great Again and we are getting back to a sense of optimism after a tumultuous four years.” Though both the Biden and Harris campaigns and launched other stunts to respond to Trump's taunts, so far America’s neighbors to the north are not taking the bait. “I don’t think we should necessarily look on Truth Social for public policy,” Miller said. Gerald Butts, a former top adviser to Trudeau and a close friend, said Trump brought up the 51st state line to Trudeau repeatedly during Trump’s first term in office. “Oh God,” Butts said Tuesday, “At least a half dozen times.” “This is who he is and what he does. He’s trying to destabilize everybody and make people anxious,” Butts said. “He’s trying to get people on the defensive and anxious and therefore willing to do things they wouldn’t otherwise entertain if they had their wits about them. I don’t know why anybody is surprised by it.”
Livestock Farm UV Disinfection Lamp Market Outlook and Future Projections for 2030With Donald Trump’s return to the White House and Republicans taking full control of Congress in 2025, the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion is back on the chopping block. More than 3 million adults in nine states would be at immediate risk of losing their health coverage should the GOP reduce the extra federal Medicaid funding that’s enabled states to widen eligibility, according to KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News, and the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families. That’s because the states have trigger laws that would swiftly end their Medicaid expansions if federal funding falls. The states are Arizona, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Utah, and Virginia. The 2010 Affordable Care Act encouraged states to expand Medicaid programs to cover more low-income Americans who didn’t get health insurance through their jobs. Forty states and the District of Columbia agreed, extending health insurance since 2014 to an estimated 21 million people and helping drive the U.S. uninsured rate to record lows. In exchange, the federal government pays 90 percent of the cost to cover the expanded population. That’s far higher than the federal match for other Medicaid beneficiaries, which averages about 57 percent nationwide. Conservative policy groups, which generally have opposed the ACA, say the program costs too much and covers too many people. Democrats say the Medicaid expansion has saved lives and helped communities by widening coverage to people who could not afford private insurance. If Congress cuts federal funding, Medicaid expansion would be at risk in all states that have opted into it — even those without trigger laws — because state legislatures would be forced to make up the difference, said Renuka Tipirneni, an associate professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health. Decisions to keep or roll back the expansion “would depend on the politics at the state level,” Tipirneni said. For instance, Michigan approved a trigger as part of its Medicaid expansion in 2013, when it was controlled by a Republican governor and legislature. Last year, with the government controlled by Democrats, the state eliminated its funding trigger. Six of the nine states with trigger laws — Arizona, Arkansas, Indiana, Montana, North Carolina, and Utah — went for Trump in the 2024 election. Most of the nine states’ triggers kick in if federal funding falls below the 90-percent threshold. Arizona’s trigger would eliminate its expansion if funding falls below 80 percent. Montana’s law rolls back expansion below 90-percent funding but allows it to continue if lawmakers identify additional funding. Under state law, Montana lawmakers must reauthorize its Medicaid expansion in 2025 or the expansion will end. Across the states with triggers, between 3.1 million and 3.7 million people would swiftly lose their coverage, researchers at KFF and the Georgetown center estimate. The difference depends on how states treat people who were added to Medicaid before the ACA expansion; they may continue to qualify even if the expansion ends. Three other states — Iowa, Idaho, and New Mexico— have laws that require their governments to mitigate the financial impact of losing federal Medicaid expansion funding but would not automatically end expansions. With those three states included, about 4.3 million Medicaid expansion enrollees would be at risk of losing coverage, according to KFF. The ACA allowed Medicaid expansions to adults with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $20,783 for an individual in 2024. Nearly a quarter of the 81 million people enrolled in Medicaid nationally are in the program due to expansions. “With a reduction in the expansion match rate, it is likely that all states would need to evaluate whether to continue expansion coverage because it would require a significant increase in state spending,” said Robin Rudowitz, vice president and director of the Program on Medicaid and the Uninsured at KFF. “If states drop coverage, it is likely that there would be an increase in the number of uninsured, and that would limit access to care across red and blue states that have adopted expansion.” States rarely cut eligibility for social programs such as Medicaid once it’s been granted. The triggers make it politically easier for state lawmakers to end Medicaid expansion because they would not have to take any new action to cut coverage, said Edwin Park, a research professor at the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families. To see the impact of trigger laws, consider what happened after the Supreme Court in 2022 struck down Roe v. Wade and, with it, the constitutional right to an abortion. Conservative lawmakers in 13 states had crafted trigger laws that would automatically implement bans in the event a national right to abortion were struck down. Those state laws resulted in restrictions taking effect immediately after the court ruling, or shortly thereafter. States adopted triggers as part of Medicaid expansion to win over lawmakers skeptical of putting state dollars on the hook for a federal program unpopular with most Republicans. It’s unclear what Trump and congressional Republicans will do with Medicaid after he takes office in January, but one indicator could be a recent recommendation from the Paragon Health Institute, a leading conservative policy organization led by former Trump health adviser Brian Blase. Paragon has proposed that starting in 2026 the federal government would phase down the 90 percent federal match for expansion until 2034, when it would reach parity with each state’s federal match for its traditional enrollees. Under that plan, states could still get ACA Medicaid expansion funding but restrict coverage to enrollees with incomes up to the federal poverty level. Currently, to receive expansion funding, states must offer coverage to everyone up to 138 percent of the poverty level. Daniel Derksen, director of the Center for Rural Health at the University of Arizona, said it’s unlikely Arizona would move to eliminate its trigger and make up for lost federal funds. “It would be a tough sell right now as it would put a big strain on the budget,” he said. Medicaid has been in the crosshairs of Republicans in Washington before. Republican congressional leaders in 2017 proposed legislation to cut federal expansion funding, a move that would have shifted billions in costs to states. That plan, part of a strategy to repeal Obamacare, ultimately failed.
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