Latest news with #GluesenkampPerez
San Francisco Chronicle
6 days ago
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
GOP Washington state Sen. John Braun is running for Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez's seat
CHEHALIS, Wash. (AP) — Washington state Sen. John Braun announced Tuesday that he will run next year for the Republican nomination for the U.S. House seat held by Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. Braun, the Republican minority leader of the Democratic-controlled state Senate, will be vying for a competitive, conservative-leaning district in southwestern Washington that was carried by President Donald Trump last year. Braun said in a statement issued by his campaign that he would work to secure borders and maintain national defense. The statement said Braun is the president of a family-owned manufacturer of emergency vehicles who served in the Navy for 31 years. 'I know how to fight bad policy — and how to craft good policy that makes a difference for people here in Southwest Washington. I look forward to working with President Trump on a positive agenda that gets America back on the right track," he said. Gluesenkamp Perez, an auto repair shop owner, flipped Washington's largely rural 3rd Congressional District in 2022. The six-term Republican who previously held the seat, Jaime Herrera Beutler, did not make it out of the primary that year. Right-wing constituents angry about her vote to impeach Trump instead cast their lot with Joe Kent, a former Army special operations soldier who promoted Trump's lie that the 2020 election was stolen and touted conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol. Gluesenkamp Perez beat Kent by less than a percentage point in 2022. Heading into a rematch with Kent last fall, she was considered one of the most vulnerable members of Congress but won reelection by nearly 4 points. Gluesenkamp Perez has described political polarization as destructive to democracy and used a nuts-and-bolts approach to governing. Some progressives in her district have said she has not pushed back hard enough against Trump's second presidency. But some consultants say her approach could help boost her support among independents and moderate Republicans. Federal elections filings show that Democrat Brent Hennrich, a former movie theater operations manager who has dismissed Gluesenkamp Perez's moderation as the wrong approach, and Republican businessman Antony Barran are also running for the seat.
Winnipeg Free Press
6 days ago
- Politics
- Winnipeg Free Press
GOP Washington state Sen. John Braun is running for Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez's seat
CHEHALIS, Wash. (AP) — Washington state Sen. John Braun announced Tuesday that he will run next year for the Republican nomination for the U.S. House seat held by Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. Braun, the Republican minority leader of the Democratic-controlled state Senate, will be vying for a competitive, conservative-leaning district in southwestern Washington that was carried by President Donald Trump last year. Braun said in a statement issued by his campaign that he would work to secure borders and maintain national defense. The statement said Braun is the president of a family-owned manufacturer of emergency vehicles who served in the Navy for 31 years. 'I know how to fight bad policy — and how to craft good policy that makes a difference for people here in Southwest Washington. I look forward to working with President Trump on a positive agenda that gets America back on the right track,' he said. Gluesenkamp Perez, an auto repair shop owner, flipped Washington's largely rural 3rd Congressional District in 2022. The six-term Republican who previously held the seat, Jaime Herrera Beutler, did not make it out of the primary that year. Right-wing constituents angry about her vote to impeach Trump instead cast their lot with Joe Kent, a former Army special operations soldier who promoted Trump's lie that the 2020 election was stolen and touted conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol. Gluesenkamp Perez beat Kent by less than a percentage point in 2022. Heading into a rematch with Kent last fall, she was considered one of the most vulnerable members of Congress but won reelection by nearly 4 points. Gluesenkamp Perez has described political polarization as destructive to democracy and used a nuts-and-bolts approach to governing. Some progressives in her district have said she has not pushed back hard enough against Trump's second presidency. But some consultants say her approach could help boost her support among independents and moderate Republicans. Federal elections filings show that Democrat Brent Hennrich, a former movie theater operations manager who has dismissed Gluesenkamp Perez's moderation as the wrong approach, and Republican businessman Antony Barran are also running for the seat.
Time Magazine
04-08-2025
- Automotive
- Time Magazine
Lights Are Brighter Than Ever. Is That Bad for Your Eyes?
A few years back, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez started noticing the extreme brightness of car headlights in rural Washington, where she lives—and felt bombarded. 'You come around a curve and get these headlights smack in your face,' she says. 'They make you lose reaction time. It's a real safety risk.' As a U.S. Representative, she's working to change federal regulations to limit how bright headlights can be. Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez—who is also co-founder of an auto repair shop in addition to her political service—points out that even though vehicle safety has improved in the past decade, total road fatalities have gone up. Deadly accidents occur disproportionately at night, as headlight brightness has increased. It's not just headlights. Our eyes are increasingly assailed by ultra-bright billboard ads, dazzling street lights, and glowing personal screens. The resulting glare could affect long-term vision. 'High-intensity lights are potentially harmful because they concentrate so much brightness into a small area,' says Jacqueline Bowen, president of the American Optometric Association. Here's what experts think about the risks of bright artificial lights and how to protect your eyes. Bright new world LED lights have turned up the brightness on our environments. Compared to previous technologies, LEDs shine a more focused, directed beam and pack particularly intense blue light: the high-energy wavelength found in natural daylight. Invented in the 1960s, LEDs weren't embraced until the '90s, when engineers developed more efficient, longer-lasting versions. Since then, LEDs have been widely adopted, enhancing visibility and even productivity. But they're also blamed for global light pollution, visible even from the International Space Station. Here on Earth, the additional blue light is giving rise to complaints. LED headlights are especially bothersome. Gluesenkamp Perez recently conducted a poll in which nearly 70% of her constituents and followers said they're too bright. Among personal vehicles manufactured in 2023, about 3 in 4 have LED headlights, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) told TIME. Laptops, tablets, and other screens are a more insidious but constant source of LED light. Remember mom telling you not to stare at light bulbs? Well, 'a screen is just a flat, square light bulb,' Bowen explains, and about one-third of us stare at such screens for more than seven hours per day. Blinded by the light This intense light could be harming eye health. We just don't know the extent of the problem. People born after the early 2000s are unwitting participants in a natural experiment testing how their eyes will persevere over a lifetime of bright-light exposure, experts say. Even fireworks seem brighter lately. Watching the nighttime show at the famous Rocky Steps in Philadelphia this past July 4th, Dr. Joshua Dunaeif was one of few in the crowd wearing sunglasses. Although not LEDs, 'some fireworks are incredibly bright,' he says. An ophthalmology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Dunaief knows too much about the risks to leave his shades at home. 'Excessive light can damage the retina,' the light-sensing tissue at the back of the eye, Dunaief says. Read More: 10 Symptoms ER Doctors Say to Never Ignore An extreme example is glare from the sun. Looking at it too long can create a permanent blind spot. Modern technologies—like fireworks, headlights, and personal screens—are far less intense than sunlight, but cumulative exposures could be harmful over time, Dunaief says. Researchers, however, haven't been able to calculate these lifetime exposures. If constant bright lights are slowly damaging our eyes, they might fuel more cases of age-related macular degeneration, or AMD, which already affects 11 million Americans. They could also contribute to cataracts and eye sunburns called photokeratitis. Eye color plays a role in one's susceptibility. Because blue and green eyes have less pigment, they transmit more light to the retinas, meaning higher risk of damage, on average, than darker-colored eyes, Dunaief says. Driver safety People with certain eye conditions are more impacted by bright light. Especially in people with such disorders, bright LEDs can contribute to eye pain and traffic accidents when driving at night. LED headlights produce significant glare, which makes it tough to distinguish one object from another, called contrast sensitivity. 'You might miss objects you'd normally see if there were no headlights or dimmer headlights,' says Cynthia Owsley, who studies the impact of aging on vision at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Headlights may also cause bleaching, where the blast of light overwhelms the retina's neurons. They have to reset before sensing light again. 'It's very uncomfortable and makes it hard to see for several seconds,' Dunaief says. Bright light tends to affect older people more. Those with AMD, especially, might see okay during the day, but at night, they may take longer to recover from flashes of light, Owsley says. This interferes with pedestrians' vision, too. As Owsley has grown older and developed an eye condition, she avoids night driving due to such visibility problems. The risk and harms of AMD increase after age 65, but bright lights afflict younger people, too. One explanation is dry eye, where the eye's tear layer becomes uneven, scattering light for more glare. 'It's like having a dirty windshield,' which worsens glare similarly, Bowen says. Read More: Battling Dry Eyes? Here's What Actually Helps Middle-age is commonly when people get chronic dry eye, but some autoimmune diseases like Sjögren's syndrome cause it in younger people. Too much screen time is another culprit. When fixated on screens, our blink reflex is suppressed. 'It's shocking how much tear gland loss is evident in teenagers,' Bowen says. The condition may degrade long-term vision, she adds. One fix—in addition to reducing screen time—is simply reminding yourself to blink more. You can also use rewetting drops (as long as they're preservative-free), but such drops provide very temporary relief, Dunaief says. What's tricky is that people with dry eye often don't feel the dryness, Bowen adds. So if you notice bright lights hurting your eyes at night, this could be your sole wakeup call to schedule an appointment with an eye doctor to check if a condition like dry eye explains it. 'Much of this comes down to individual differences,' Owsley says. 'Some people are just very photosensitive. But if I were young and having trouble driving at night, I would definitely see an ophthalmologist.' Protect your eyes from bright light For eye health, 'the best strategy is prevention,' Owsley says. 'Even in your 40s, you should have routine comprehensive eye exams' with an ophthalmologist or optometrist. If an issue is identified, they can start treating it. Nutrition can also help. NIH researchers found that two antioxidants, lutein and zeaxanthin, lower the risk of AMD. They're abundant in green leafy vegetables like spinach and kale, as well as yellow and orange peppers. Limit sources of blue light at night (which can also disrupt sleep). If you're viewing screens, Dunaief recommends using software programs like to minimize blue light and brightness. When on the road, look at your own lane instead of oncoming traffic. Dunaief tries to look slightly to the right of his lane. Eye tracking research suggests the novelty of very bright headlights attracts people to gaze right at them. This increases glare exposure and recovery time, says Matthew Brumbelow, principal research engineer at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Read More: The Surprising Health Benefits of Spicy Food You might also aim for a preemptive strike: some evidence suggests that drivers of newer vehicles with bright headlights get into fewer crashes related to glare. 'Laboratory experiments suggest the more driver visibility, the less you're affected by glare from other sources,' Brumbelow says. In 2022, NHTSA finalized a rule to allow a new LED headlight, called adaptive driving beams, that block portions of the beam to 'ensure they do not glare other drivers' while maintaining visibility, according to NHTSA. Brumbelow says they're promising, yet few U.S. manufacturers have added these headlights because regulations make it difficult. Europe has permitted them for more than a decade. In the meantime, to help ensure your own bright headlights don't cause an accident, maintenance is key, says Gluesenkamp Perez. 'Older LEDs can start to flicker and strobe—another risk for more glare,' she says. More data on LED headlights and driver safety are needed. Brumbelow has found that cars with headlights rated highly by IIHS for visibility—which includes many but not all LED headlights—have 19% fewer nighttime crashes compared to cars with poor headlight visibility. It's harder to track glare-caused accidents, but the rates seem very low, according to Brumbelow. 'When glare is a factor, the drivers are more likely to be older,' he adds. Older people might benefit from eyelid surgery—drooping eyelids reflect bright light directly into the eyes. Dr. Charles Herman, a plastic surgeon in private practice near Philadelphia, says a major reason people visit him for eyelid surgery is complaints about glare from bright lights. (Ironically, he's also studied how bright lights in the operating room harm surgeons' eyes.) People of all ages could consider getting night driving glasses, which reduce blue light and glare—but protect the lenses. If scratched or smeared, they create more glare, as does your windshield, Bowen says. On July 17, Gluesenkamp Perez's legislation to further study the impact of headlight brightness advanced in the House. Until we learn more from such research, eat your dark leafy vegetables, see an eye doctor, and don't forget to blink.
Axios
14-07-2025
- Politics
- Axios
House Democrat floats radical solution to Congress' age problem
Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is proposing something unprecedented: Having Congress' ethics office effectively adjudicate whether lawmakers are too cognitively impaired to do their jobs. Why it matters: The 36-year-old Washington Democrat is publicly calling out a dynamic many of her colleagues refuse to even address — arguing Congress' aging membership is damaging the credibility of the whole institution. Gluesenkamp Perez, an auto shop owner who had never held public office before being elected to Congress in 2022, has built a brand calling out what she says is a disconnect between Washington, D.C., and everyday Americans. The age issue, she told Axios in an interview at her Capitol Hill office, is just another facet of that dissonance. "What I've heard from my neighbors, my community is this idea that this place is being run by a bunch of staffers," she said. "And we're seeing a very real decline in confidence in Congress." Driving the news: Gluesenkamp Perez tried last month to get her proposal attached as an amendment to the House Appropriations Committee's bill funding Congress for the next year. The amendment would require the Office of Congressional Conduct to create a standard to determine members' "ability to perform the duties of office unimpeded by significant irreversible cognitive impairment." That would open the door to ethics investigations into whether a member is mentally incapacitated to the point it is damaging to the House's credibility. Ethics investigations can result in a wide array of consequences, ranging from warnings and fines to — in the case of former Rep. George Santos — the House voting for expulsion. Zoom in: The amendment failed in an overwhelming voice vote, with few if any members of the Appropriations Committee voting for it — a show of just how taboo the topic is. Reps. David Valadao (R-Calif.) and Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), the chair and ranking member of the legislative branch subcommittee, both spoke in opposition to it. Valadao acknowledged "a lot of concern with some of our colleagues sometimes when we see some of their comments," but argued that the House's bi-annual elections are a sufficient referendum on lawmakers' fitness for office. What they're saying: "It's not a comfortable thing to think about time being irreversible and how our lives change, but ... real respect for our communities and the body here is [being] willing to have these honest, candid and difficult conversations," Gluesenkamp Perez told Axios. She said the disastrous debate performance that led former President Biden to withdraw from the 2024 election raised "serious concerns" in her district "that it was not their elected representatives calling the shots." Gluesenkamp Perez said that while she also supports term limits, her proposal would allow Congress to "impartially evaluate these questions" while maintaining a "representative body of all ages and experiences." Zoom out: There have been numerous examples in recent years of lawmakers in their 70s and 80s facing painfully public cognitive decline. Sen. Dianne Feinstein 's (D-Calif.) health and declining mental capabilities were a source of continued heartburn for Democrats in the years leading up to her death at 90 years old in 2023. Former Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), a former Appropriations Committee chair, was revealed last year to have been checked into an independent living facility with 6 months left in her term. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) is the latest lawmaker whose decline has been the subject of continued headlines, with the 88-year-old's office repeatedly walking back quotes she gives to reporters. The bottom line: Gluesenkamp Perez plans to continue her efforts and try to build support among her colleagues, telling Axios, "It's clear people want systemic reform. They want accountability."
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Blinded by the light: Should there be restrictions on headlights?
This story was originally published on A Washington Congresswoman is shining a light on what she says is a persistent problem for drivers—overly bright headlights. U.S. Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez told the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee that the blinding beams are a danger on the roadway. She acknowledged that the new Bipartisan Infrastructure Law tried to improve safety by allowing manufacturers to install adaptive beams, which are supposed to adjust headlights to oncoming traffic and other environmental factors. 'But let's be honest. It has not helped,' Gluesenkamp Perez said. She told the committee she'd like to work with it and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to set standards for headlights, 'that retain visibility for drivers, but also reduce glare and increase safety for other drivers on the road.' She said this is not just a concern in her southwest Washington, Third Congressional District. 'This is something that draws ire from rural Americans, from older Americans, from law enforcement,' she said, adding social media is full of complaints. KIRO Newsradio found no shortage of critics on Reddit. 'Why do you need to send 80,000 lumens into my brain just to see what's in front of you?' one user wrote. Another wrote, 'Used to love driving in the dark too, but it's miserable now, sick of…being flash banged by oncoming vehicles.' 'If you're so blind that you need an industrial laser frying everyone else's retinas to see ahead of you, maybe just don't (expletive) drive,' wrote another.
