Latest news with #NRA
Time Magazine
2 days ago
- Politics
- Time Magazine
Parkland Shooting Survivor Jaclyn Corin Calls Out AG Pam Bondi
On Valentine's Day 2018, Jaclyn Corin, now 24, sheltered in a classroom while a former student shot and killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School—including Corin's 14-year-old friend Jaime Guttenberg—and wounded 17 more. In the wake of what came to be known as the Parkland shooting, Corin, then a junior and her class president, helped organize a two-day trip for 100 students to Florida's capital city Tallahassee to press elected officials for gun-safety reform and co-founded the organization March For Our Lives. On March 24, 2018, an estimated 800,000 people joined the first march in Washington, D.C., while 800 other marches took place around the U.S. Since then, Corin has completed degrees at Harvard and Oxford, interned at the Biden White House, and had a brief stint as management consultant. Earlier this year she was appointed executive director of March For Our Lives. She talked to TIME from D.C. about the way the gun lobby and resistance movements have changed and why the group is organizing a social media, petition, and advertising campaign calling out 'Parkland Pam,' the U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. You've recently taken over the leadership of the organization you co-founded. What are you hoping to achieve? The gun-violence-prevention movement has evolved significantly since 2018. We have been able to accomplish a lot; over 300 gun-safety laws were passed on the state level, the NRA was effectively bankrupted, and young people really started to prioritize gun-violence prevention as a key political issue. But as urgency faded in the public eye, in some ways, the crisis deepened. In the time of all the federal progress, we saw the gun lobby adapting. It moved away from the NRA bluster and towards a quieter, more dangerous strategy, of dismantling enforcement and targeting vulnerable communities with militarized marketing. So we are focusing on accountability, going back to the real human impacts of this issue, so as to not let those we've lost or been damaged by this issue go forgotten. Do you see the NRA as defanged permanently or just dealing with a setback? March For Our Lives played a major role in taking down the NRA. We exposed their corruption. We filed a legal complaint that led to Wayne LaPierre's downfall, and since we marched in 2018 they've lost over a million members and nearly half of their revenue, but the larger infrastructure of the gun lobby has not weakened. It has diversified and become more difficult to track. The most alarming shift is the lobby's strategic focus on eroding enforcement. The absence of enforcement, especially under attorneys general like Pam Bondi, has created a de facto deregulation that makes it easier for illegal gun dealers, domestic abusers, and others to access deadly weapons when they shouldn't. U.S. Attorney General Bondi was the attorney general of Florida at the time of the Parkland shooting. Did you meet with her in the aftermath? Yes. One week after the shooting, I sat across from Pam Bondi with nine friends as a grieving 17-year-old, still processing the loss of my classmates, and she looked us in the eye and told us she was with us. I was disturbed that she kept moving the conversation from guns to a hollow school-safety message, and yet, because of the political conditions and conversation in Florida, she ended up publicly supporting measures like red-flag laws and raising the age to buy a firearm in Florida from 18 to 21. But once the cameras were gone and her political career advanced, she quietly reversed course. Have you asked her about the differences between the Florida legislation that she endorsed and the types of rules that she's endorsing now? I wrote her a letter, and we sent it to her team last week, but we have yet to receive a response. We are initiating a campaign to publicly showcase the hypocrisy she has demonstrated. It's not about vengeance, but rather accountability: if she's not willing to meet with us and reckon with the promises she made back in 2018, then we will continue to call out the discrepancies in what she has claimed she will deliver and what she is actually doing. What were the promises she made in 2018? She didn't make specific promises in our meeting, but publicly, she did advertise her fervent support of those red-flag laws and raising the age to buy a firearm, and more than that, she consistently reiterated her commitment to supporting victims and families. I couldn't think of a worse way to support victims and families than to destroy all of the progress the gun-violence-prevention movement has made over the last few years. [TIME's request for comment to the Attorney General's office went unanswered.] Is there a reason you call out Bondi over somebody like Senator Rick Scott, who was governor of Florida then, and passed some of those red-flag laws? Rick Scott is certainly on my sh-t list, but Pam Bondi represents a unique and deeply personal betrayal, both for me and the Parkland community at large. She was the first official I met with formally after the shooting. And her words carried weight for me because they were delivered directly to survivors in this moment of both national and personal crisis. She [publicly] made specific commitments, and then actively dismantled the very safeguards she once said she supported. Can you name two or three things that she has done since becoming U.S. Attorney General that you feel are a betrayal of the assurances she gave you? She has supported budget cuts to the ATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms]. She has destroyed funding for community-based violence-intervention programs that are proven to reduce gun violence in the communities most impacted by it, and she has gotten rid of the ATF zero-tolerance enforcement policy for rogue gun dealers who repeatedly break the law and supply weapons used in crimes. Back in 2018 she constantly reiterated that she wanted to make sure that rogue gun dealers didn't get away with literal murder, but now she is dismantling the policies that would make that possible. Governor Ron DeSantis said recently that he wants to repeal Florida's red-flag laws. Does that alarm you? It's true that Ron DeSantis has tried to push for the repeal of red-flag laws and reduce the age to buy a firearm back down from 21 to 18. So in response to that threat, which happened to occur around the time of the shooting at Florida State University, where a number of Parkland survivors then survived their second mass shooting, March For Our Lives convened a group of folks from both Parkland and the FSU community to sign a letter to DeSantis, demanding that he veto that legislation to roll back the progress we made if it were to ever reach his desk. How do you stay positive and hopeful when you see the kind of progress that you made being whittled away? It's devastating. I can't lie. There are days where I'm so exhausted and feel defeated. But for every elected official who breaks their promises, I've met dozens of young people who have proceeded to organize voter drives or start local coalitions or show up to town halls and begin conversations with their friends and community about what public safety should look like. Are you in touch with other survivors? Do you guys hang? I think surviving a mass shooting breeds closeness that can't be replicated. So I have stayed in close touch with many people, David Hogg included. Those friendships definitely make the aftereffects of experiencing a trauma like that a bit lighter. How many have moved on to other things? Most of the other co-founders of MFOL have moved on to other things. There are two co-founders, one of them being David, who are still heavily involved with the organization. Sometimes it's hard to be in a space like this for so long and stay personally committed to the mission to end gun violence. So they just exercise that commitment differently in their lives. Is there something that keeps you awake at night about the outlook for your generation or among your peers? I think there is a disillusionment among my generation with regard to American politics. By the time many of us hit 30, Donald Trump will have had influence over our politics for nearly half of our lives. We've grown up in a society where that is the case and where we feel like many of our efforts—whether voting or organizing or talking to family members—go nowhere. But that's part of why I wanted to come back to lead March For Our Lives, because I think we can reinvigorate our generation so long as we are calling out the people who are doing us wrong as much as we are lifting up one another and inspiring true hope. I think seeing one person step up and make a difference makes all the difference in inspiring others to do the same. With the benefit of seven years' hindsight, is there anything you would do differently now in the immediate aftermath of the shooting? That's a hard one to answer, because on the one hand, the raw authenticity and pure anger that was at the forefront of all of our communications back then made March For Our Lives so compelling. We were kids, 14, 15, 16, 17 years old, who were speaking from the heart and not delivering polished talking points. But I suppose in hindsight, I would tell both myself and all of us that progress is going to take a long time. We genuinely thought that we were going to end gun violence within a year or two. So I would tell us to slow down a little bit and celebrate even the slight progress we were able to make. That potentially would have helped me close my computer at a reasonable time of night. I know that David Hogg and X Gonzalez attracted a lot of criticism and even harassment. Has any of that come your way? X and David were the main two faces of the movement, but I personally experienced a number of death threats. I had the FBI on the speed dial. Getting involved in the gun-violence-prevention movement is scary, because I know what comes with putting your name out there. And I know so many women especially experience unique, horrific threats when they are to speak out for what they believe in. But there are thousands of innocent Americans, many of them children, who never got the chance to speak out about gun violence before their life was ended by it, so I am committing to continuing the fight. You went to Harvard for your undergraduate and Oxford for your master's. The world was your oyster. Was there a little bit of you that was like, do I go back to this gun-violence space? It's such a difficult issue and it attracts a lot of negative attention. At Harvard, there's a competitiveness that blooms in the air where, if you don't join McKinsey, Bain, or BCG or have an active plan to go to law school, then you are failing. Immediately after I graduated from Harvard, I was a White House intern for the Biden Administration, and I had secured a job in management consulting [after graduation] a month into my time at Oxford. I worked in management consulting, in a public-sector department. I hated it, because it felt like I was not contributing to something bigger than me. And I recognized about myself that I wanted to have my hands on the clay and play an active role in molding it. So when the opportunity arose to lead March For Our Lives into its next chapter, I quit my consulting job at the six-month mark, and I am not regretful. This is exactly where I'm supposed to be right now in my life.
Time Magazine
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
'The Hunting Wives' Is a Bonkers, Bisexual Culture-War Soap
If the word wife is in the title, expect suds. This is a cardinal rule of television, established by Desperate Housewives, cemented by the Real Housewives, and perpetuated by the many scripted and unscripted series those ravenously consumed foremothers begat: The Good Wife, Sister Wives, Basketball Wives, Mob Wives, The Ex-Wife, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. But really, wife titles have been shorthand for scandalous fun since the 14th century, when Chaucer made 'The Wife of Bath's Tale' the raunchiest of his Canterbury Tales. As the backstory of its eponymous five-time widow suggests, the ur-wife is a character with carnal experience, sexually empowered and financially secure but also subject to a man's rule. Hence the steam—and the scheming. You'd think 600-plus years and successive waves of feminism would have put paid to this archetype… and yet, though sexual candor predominates, the patriarchy persists. And so the diabolical minds behind summer TV have managed to dream up what might be the wildest, silliest, and soapiest wife show ever made—which, I know, is saying a lot. Adapted from May Cobb's novel, Netflix's The Hunting Wives has it all: kidnapped teens, age-gap affairs, buried secrets, crooked clergy, swinging politicians, shadowy stalkers, ravenous bisexuals, substances galore, a murder. And that's just in the three episodes provided for review. It's also about the Trump-era culture wars. Even if you cringe a bit at its crassness (as I did), you kind of have to admire it (as I also do) for always doing the most. Wife-show junkies, meet your new addiction. The Hunting Wives begins with a pretty basic soap opera premise: Sophie O'Neil (Brittany Snow) has just moved from Boston—sorry, Cambridge, where the show keeps reminding us Harvard is—to small-town Texas for her husband Graham's (Evan Jonigkeit) new job. A former political PR pro and generic East Coast Liberal, Sophie is now the full-time mom to a young son (Emmett Moss). So you can guess how she feels when she finds herself at a rollicking NRA fundraiser on the vast estate of Graham's new employer, the super-rich oilman and aspiring Republican governor Jed Banks (a smug Dermot Mulroney). There she encounters Jed's beguiling wife, Margo (Malin Akerman), who initiates Sophie into her circle of glamorous, snarky, hard-drinking, gun-toting, red-voting wives. Fish out of water, meet queen bee. But there's a twist to this upstart-vs.-diva plot. Sophie first lays eyes on Margo in one of the mansion's bathrooms, which Margo is scouring for a maxi pad. When her guest doesn't have one either, Margo strips down, shoves some paper towels in her lacy underwear, and asks Sophie (who's dressed in long-sleeved black number a dismayed Graham labeled 'Soviet') to zip up her slinky green gown. Then Sophie shares her Xanax stash with Margo; they clink pills, champagne-flute style, and exchange meaningful glances. Occurring less than five minutes into the premiere, this scene gives us our first inkling that these two women might be more likely to make out with each other than to feud for supremacy within their clique—which is also to say it's our first indication that The Hunting Wives is to soap operas what Secretary is to rom-coms. Margo is the horny, imperious sun that Maple Brook, TX revolves around, and Akerman both smolders in the role and seems to be having a ton of fun with it. We learn early on that Margo and Jed have extensive extramarital sex lives. But don't call it an open marriage! As Margo explains to Sophie: 'Open marriages are for liberals. We just keep it simple. I don't sleep with other men, and when Jed and I see a girl we like, we go for it.' (Not that she always adheres to those rules. Something else she tells Sophie: 'I believe in doing whatever the f-ck I want.') One girl Margo likes more than Jed might prefer is her skeet-shooting buddy Callie (Jaime Ray Newman), who immediately senses a rival in Sophie. For her part, Sophie is bored without her job and chafing within her marriage to a man who, despite his Harvard-polished manners, can be judgmental and controlling. Both women are running away from shameful pasts. The question of whether Margo and Jed's unconventional arrangement would hurt his campaign arises early, and the way the series handles it is emblematic of The Hunting Wives' perceptive take on the new right. This constituency, Jed points out, doesn't care about the (hetero)sexual transgressions of its macho leaders: 'They don't want a Boy Scout. They want a man.' If Donald Trump can get re-elected President after being held liable for sexual abuse, who in Texas is going to blink at the consensual nonmonogamy of a Republican gubernatorial candidate? Yet Margo rightly worries about double standards around gender and sexuality that guarantee she'll face scrutiny if it comes out that she, too, is sleeping with other women. From Graham's surveillance of Sophie to the do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do debauchery of Margo's friends, who regularly get wasted at honkytonk girls nights but wouldn't miss a Sunday at church, the show gets that hypocrisy is a bipartisan phenomenon. It's enough to make you forgive all the glib political references, from Marjorie Taylor Greene to 'deplorables.' Once in a while, there's even a painfully keen zinger. 'There are no clinics left to bomb—thanks to us,' one character brags. All of the above would've been more than enough to fuel a season of salacious froth, but the series' maximalism extends to more than just Margo's sex life. (Before we move off the latter topic, though, let me just say: There are two separate scenes within the first three episodes where someone stumbles upon a couple in flagrante and one of the lovers meets that person's gaze with a saucy smirk. Both involve Margo.) As is obligatory on TV these days, there is a murder mystery; early episodes are framed by flash-forwards to a blonde woman, her face obscured so it's impossible to tell which of multiple blonde characters she is, fighting for her life in the nighttime woods. The kidnapping of a teen girl months earlier lingers in the background. The local megachurch is its own whole thing, with Shondaland stalwart Katie Lowes giving a delightfully overbearing performance as Jill, a preacher's wife and Margo sidekick who's plotting to profit off of her husband's influence. Jill's teenage son Brad (George Ferrier) is just as calculating, if not nearly as savvy, pressuring his pious girlfriend Abby (Madison Wolfe) for a repeat of their prom-night hookup while pursuing other partners. The church's guitar-wielding youth minister, Pastor Pete (played by the late Paul Teal), senses friction within the relationship but has ulterior motives of his own. Abby's mother, Starr, a frumpy, low-income outcast in a sea of McMansion-dwelling trophy wives, is played by This Is Us alum Chrissy Metz, one of the show's top-billed actors. So it's curious to see her get so little screen time in the first few episodes. The Hunting Wives is too much, in ways both delectable and exhausting. Executive producer and showrunner Rebecca Cutter risks running out of steam in the back half of the season, let alone in a second. But for now, at least, its sheer exuberance keeps all the try-hard naughtiness from feeling excessively self-satisfied. (The gnawing guilt viewers of certain political persuasions might feel at reveling in lightly satirized MAGA nihilism as its real-life fallout reverberates around the globe is another story.) The Wife of Bath would surely recognize an heir in Margo—and, I think, approve.
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Business Standard
5 days ago
- Business
- Business Standard
CDSCO revises export NOC guidance document for new drug formulations
The Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) has revised its guidance document for issuing no-objection certificates (NOCs) for the manufacture of approved or unapproved new drugs intended exclusively for export. The updated framework, previously notified in May this year, introduces relaxations for fixed-dose combinations (FDCs) and research-oriented drug batches. As part of the revised document, manufacturers of unapproved FDCs will now be allowed to submit regulatory approvals from Stringent Regulatory Authorities (SRAs) such as the United States (US), European Union (EU), Canada, Australia and Japan as an alternative to approvals from the National Regulatory Authority (NRA) of the importing country. Earlier, an NRA approval was mandatory for unapproved FDCs, new drugs under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) category, and banned drugs. The updated guideline also permits the submission of SRA approvals in cases where NRA clearance of the importing country is not available, easing the regulatory burden on Indian pharmaceutical exporters catering to international markets with more advanced drug oversight systems. The revised guidance also entails discontinuation of quantity and purchase order (PO)-specific NOCs for all classes of drugs, except for NDPS and banned drugs. The apex regulatory body also clarified that exporters of New Chemical Entity (NCE) batches for research purposes can now submit International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) names, and standard temperature and pressure (STP) data, if NRA approval of the importing country is not available. The previous document provided this option to NCE batches for clinical trials and Abbreviated New Drug Applications (ANDAS), but did not elaborate on providing the same for other NCE research activities. In May this year, the CDSCO formalised a two-step process for securing export NOCs, with the first step involving a one-time registration at the CDSCO zonal office, submission of legal documents, manufacturing licenses, reconciliation data, and regulatory approvals. The second step entailed clearance of consignments at the port office through online submission of export documents. Each NOC will be valid for one year or until the approved export quantity is exhausted, whichever comes first. The CDSCO has also set a seven-day timeline for NOC issuance under the new system. The revised guidance document for issuance of NOC for manufacture of unapproved and new drugs comes after the CDSCO had centralised this process in July last year. These powers were earlier delegated to State and Union Territory (UT) Licensing Authorities, before the apex drug regulator had withdrawn them over complaints of non-compliance of rules in issuing export NOCs. The CDSCO had also asked states to hand over all NOCs issued from August 20, 2018 to May 14, 2024 to it.
Reuters
6 days ago
- Politics
- Reuters
Appeals court dismisses NRA free speech lawsuit against New York regulator
NEW YORK, July 17 (Reuters) - A federal appeals court on Thursday ordered the dismissal of the National Rifle Association's lawsuit accusing a New York state official of violating its free speech rights by coercing banks and insurers to avoid doing business with it. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said Maria Vullo, a former superintendent of New York's Department of Financial Services, was immune from the NRA's claims under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment because the law addressing her conduct was unclear at the time. In May 2024, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court had said the NRA could pursue its First Amendment case, reversing an earlier 2nd Circuit decision, but did not address whether Vullo was immune from being sued. Neither the NRA nor its lawyers had an immediate comment. Vullo, in a statement, said she was pleased the court "dismissed this baseless case, which was based on false allegations." The lawsuit stemmed from a probe into "Carry Guard," an NRA-branded program that according to Vullo violated New York law because it provided liability coverage to gun owners for intentional, wrongful use of firearms. After 17 people were killed in a 2018 mass shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, Vullo called on banks and insurers to consider the "reputational risks" of doing business with gun rights groups. She also fined three insurance businesses that worked on Carry Guard--Chubb , Lloyd's of London and Lockton Cos--and they agreed to curtail business with the NRA. The NRA said this "blacklisting" campaign amounted to unlawful retaliation for its gun rights advocacy. But a three-judge appeals court panel said Vullo deserved qualified immunity because there was no "clearly established" law at the time that she illegally pressured banks and insurers her office regulated into disassociating from the NRA. "Reasonable officials in Vullo's position would not have known for certain ... that her conduct crossed the line from forceful but permissible persuasion to impermissible coercion and retaliation," Circuit Judge Denny Chin wrote. Chin also found the relationship between Vullo's actions against NRA business partners and her treatment of the NRA itself "too attenuated" to support a retaliation claim. Andrew Cuomo, the former New York governor and current New York City mayoral candidate, had also been a defendant but was dismissed from the case in 2021. The appeals court returned the case to a federal district judge in Binghamton, New York, to formally dismiss all claims against Vullo. The case is National Rifle Association of America v Vullo, 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 21-0636.
Reuters
6 days ago
- Business
- Reuters
US appeals court orders dismissal of NRA lawsuit against New York official
NEW YORK, July 17 (Reuters) - A federal appeals court on Thursday ordered the dismissal of the National Rifle Association's lawsuit accusing a New York state official of violating its free speech rights by coercing banks and insurers to avoid doing business with the gun rights group. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said Maria Vullo, a former superintendent of New York's Department of Financial Services, had qualified immunity against the NRA's claims under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.
