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RNZ News
12-07-2025
- Politics
- RNZ News
The House: The other MPs at Youth Parliament
Photo: VNP/Louis Collins Despite being a non-sitting week, last week Parliament was brimming with political intrigue and drama due to Youth Parliament, which occurs once each Parliamentary term, and involves each and every real MP selecting a young person from their electorate to represent them at the event in which participants recreate Parliament. Minister for Youth James Meager described the event as an opportunity for youth to "learn about effective advocacy and how they can play a role in the decision-making process in the country". Some may dismiss Youth Parliament as a tokenistic charade for swotty debating students. After being a fly-on-the-wall for the two days, it is clear that the event's impact runs far deeper. You can listen to The House's audio story from Youth Parliament at the link above. Youth MPs experience a number of Parliamentary procedures. Among them, the General Debate probably makes for the best watching. This isn't your typical secondary school speech competition about uniforms in schools or whether pineapple belongs on pizza. Instead, these speeches are often well-researched, compelling, and have a raw, unfiltered passion. Tanvi Upreti, Youth MP for National's Tom Rutherford, decried the lack of civics education in New Zealand schools, which she said led to young people making uninformed decisions at the polling booth. Photo: VNP/Louis Collins "Voting without understanding is not empowerment. It is a cause of silence. It is a manipulation. It is an illusion of our choice," Upreti said. Photo: VNP/Louis Collins Although strictly speaking, Youth MPs are non-partisan, representing their community rather than a party, it was clear some of them shared similar concerns as their older counterparts. One such example was Youth MP for Labour's Ginny Anderson, Tautalaleleia Sa'u. If you closed your eyes, you could have easily been listening in during a strong General Debate speech from any given sitting week. Photo: VNP/Louis Collins "Tax cuts for landlords, tax cuts for tobacco companies. But who's paying for it? People like my parents. People living in garages, cars, and overcrowded homes. We are paying for it with our dignity. Cost of living? No, it's the cost of breath, cost of seeing tomorrow, cost of the future, cost of who's going to eat and who isn't. Mr Speaker, at what cost will rangatahi have to pay to live a simple life?" Photo: VNP/Louis Collins At every Youth Parliament, there seems to be some sort of controversy. You may recall a hullabaloo about mask wearing during the 2022 event, and action for lowering the voting age. This time, the contention was over what some participants perceived to be censorship of speeches by the government (through the Ministry for Youth Development). Photo: VNP/Louis Collins A recent fixture of Youth Parliament is the Youth Press Gallery, a separate group of 16-24 year olds who get soundbites on the tiles and cover proceedings from the gallery. "I definitely have enjoyed just seeing the behind-the-scenes, it's kind of humanised a lot of the MPs," Youth Press Gallery member Jonathan McCabe said. Photo: VNP/Louis Collins It seemed it wasn't just the Youth MPs who had concerns around censorship. Youth journalists Reuben Smith and Aleksandra Bogdanova said, "[it's] felt like every story… that we have to publish, we have to send over to the ministry to have a look over. And though it's intended to help us, it does come with some consequences." Photo: VNP/Louis Collins Smith and Bogdanava are students of the NZ Broadcasting School at the Ara Institute of Canterbury. Both said their brief taste of press gallery life had reinforced their interest in being a part of the fourth estate. "It's a reminder of the democratic importance of free… journalism. Not something that is funded and sieved through the government." Photo: VNP/Louis Collins When asked about the accusations of censorship, Minister for Youth James Meager called it a bit of a misunderstanding, adding that "all of the Youth MPs and the Youth Press Gallery were entitled to say what they felt like they needed to say. Part of our role and part of the Ministry's role in running this programme is to make sure that all the participants are safe in what they do and say. And look, they don't have the protections in the same way that politicians do in terms of privilege and in terms of protection from legal action. So just trying to support them and guide them and provide recommendations about what they might want to do, to amend their speeches here and there, but ultimately it's up to them as to what they say." Photo: VNP/Louis Collins Youth MPs also had a go at scrutinising the government through a mock Question Time session, which Meager was involved in. Youth MPs weren't afraid to express dissatisfaction if they thought an answer wasn't up to scratch. Photo: VNP/Louis Collins While there was probably just as much back and forth shouting in the chamber as there is in Parliament proper, several of the MPs I talked to noted the collegiality of their colleagues, telling me that arguments were almost always made in good spirit. Youth MP for Catherine Wedd, Chris Proctor, said "the biggest thing I learnt is that politics isn't always like what you see in the media. I feel like sitting in the house. We felt a lot more unified than what it could look like from the outside. I think everyone's in there for the right reasons, representing their community." *RNZ's The House, with insights into Parliament, legislation and issues, is made with funding from Parliament's Office of the Clerk. 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Fox News
07-06-2025
- Health
- Fox News
Medical professionals say schools have gotten too political, citing ‘unscientific modes of thinking'
Two medical professionals argued in a new report that "medical school has gotten too political," citing "unscientific modes of thinking." "Medical students are now immersed in the notion that undertaking political advocacy is as important as learning gross anatomy, physiology, and pharmacology," the authors wrote in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Sally Satel, a lecturer in psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine, and Thomas S. Huddle, a professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham's Heersink School of Medicine, cited several instances of political sentiments affecting the medical school industry. They noted that researchers are "promoting unscientific modes of thinking about group-based disparities in health access and status." "The University of Minnesota's Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity decrees 'structural racism as a fundamental cause of health inequities,' despite the fact that this is at best an arguable thesis, not a fact. (The center was shut down last month.) The Kaiser Family Foundation states that health differentials 'stem from broader social and economic inequities,'" the authors write. Satel and Huddle pushed further by detailing an incident that occurred at the University of California, San Francisco, Medical Center. The institution not only called for a ceasefire in the Gaza war between Israel and Hamas, the authors wrote that staff chanted "intifada, intifada, long live intifada!" which "echoed into patients' rooms." The New York Times reported last summer that the protesters at the University of California, San Francisco, chanting "intifada" consisted of medical students and doctors. Such an incident lays out more deeply the consequences of medical schools prioritizing politics over instruction on professional imperatives, according to the authors. "These doctors were not putting patients first — if anything, they were offending and intimidating patients. They were putting their notion of social justice first," they wrote. The two medical professionals cite other instances where medical schools are steeped in politics, such as endorsing "racial reparations" and instituting "antiracism" training in order to qualify for a medical license in the wake of George Floyd's death. Satel and Huddle offer medical professionals "guidelines" for how to "responsibly" meet patients' needs while leveraging their "professional standing to effect change", including advocating for policies that "directly help patients and are rooted in professional expertise while ensuring that their advocacy does not interfere with their relationships with their colleagues, students, and patients." Satel, a practicing psychiatrist, told Fox News Digital that she is the medical director of a methadone clinic that represents a clinical setting. In response to Fox News Digital's request for comment, Huddle said that his "academic career has been as a clinician teaching how to care for patients while caring for them."
The Independent
27-05-2025
- Business
- The Independent
Trump pardoned a tax cheat. But only after his mom attended president's $1 million dinner
A former nursing home executive who had pleaded guilty to tax crimes has been pardoned by President Donald Trump based on an application apparently focused not just on his offenses, but on the political activity of his mother. Paul Walczak submitted his application for a pardon days after Trump's inauguration. It noted that his mother, Elizabeth Fago, had raised millions of dollars for the president's campaigns, as well as those of other Republicans, The New York Times reports, citing a person who received the application but was not authorized to share it. It also claimed that Fago had connections to an effort to damage President Joe Biden 's 2020 campaign by publicizing the diary of his daughter, Ashley Biden. The application reportedly argued that Walczak's criminal prosecution had resulted from his mother's political advocacy, rather than the crimes to which he pleaded guilty — specifically, using money for employee taxes to fund his lifestyle, including the purchase of a yacht. Weeks after the application for clemency was submitted, there was no news, while other Trump allies received pardons. It was then that Fago was invited to a $1 million-per-person fundraising dinner at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, which promised face-to-face time with the president. Less than three weeks later, the pardon came through. Walczak was facing 18 months in prison, two years of supervised release, and would have to pay $4.4 million in restitution, according to a sentence handed down 12 days earlier. The judge justified ordering the jail time by saying that there 'is not a get-out-of-jail-free card' for the rich. A White House official echoed the application's argument, telling the Times that Walczak was 'targeted by the Biden administration over his family's conservative politics.' Walczak withheld taxes from employee paychecks, totaling $7.4 million between 2016 and 2019. Over the same period, he also didn't pay $3.4 million of his business's portion of employee Social Security and Medicare taxes, according to the Justice Department. During this time, $1 million was spent on a yacht, hundreds of thousands of dollars was transferred to personal accounts, and business accounts were used for shopping at Bergdorf Goodman, Cartier, and Saks. Furthermore, in 2018, he ceased filing personal tax returns, despite continuing to receive a salary and transferring funds from the business accounts to his own personal use. Other transfers were made to a family member and his wife. In total, he owed the IRS $10.9 million. He was charged in February 2023 with 13 counts of tax crimes, pleading guilty to two counts and agreeing to pay restitution on November 15, 2024, just 10 days after Trump won the presidential election. According to the Times, Fago had held three fundraisers for Trump campaigns and attended VIP events at both the 2017 and 2025 inaugurations alongside her son, Walczak's half-brother, Joey Fago, and his wife, social media posts show. They also attended a 2020 election night watch party at the White House and that year's Christmas party. She also reportedly played a role in the saga of Ashley Biden's diary, found at a house in Delray Beach, Florida, that the former president's daughter had been renting in the run-up to the 2020 election. The diary was apparently shown to Trump campaign officials at Fago's home before being flagged to Project Veritas by Stephanie Walczak, her daughter. In a subsequent probe during the Biden administration, investigators obtained a search warrant related to a Project Veritas official who sought information about 'potential co-conspirators,' including communications with Fago and her daughter, among others. After Trump re-entered the White House earlier this year, the Justice Department announced it was closing the investigation into the diary. Fago, her daughter, nor anyone at Project Veritas were ever charged. In seeking clemency for Walczak, the application for a presidential pardon claimed his prosecution arose because he was the son of a prominent Trump supporter and cited the pardon issued to Hunter Biden by his father in the final days of his presidency. Biden said in a statement at the time that Hunter 'was singled out only because he is my son.' While waiting for word on the pardon of her own son by Trump, Fago attended the fundraiser dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Although it was billed as having a $1 million price tag, it is unclear whether she donated to MAGA Inc., the political action committee sponsoring the event. The amount was far larger than any of her previous donations to political causes of Trump's campaigns, and the group has until July to disclose any information on donors. After his pardon came through, a social media post shows the family celebrating with Walczak wearing a red, Trump-style hat with 'Make Paul Great Again' written across the front.
Washington Post
19-05-2025
- Business
- Washington Post
Pence speaks in North Carolina against broad Trump tariffs and praises House on tax bill
RALEIGH, N.C. — Former Vice President Mike Pence spoke Monday in North Carolina against the Trump administration's zealous efforts to impose tariffs on trading partners worldwide — another effort that shows his willingness to split at times with his former boss. The education arm of Pence's political advocacy group kicked off in Raleigh a series of events nationwide that was also billed as building support to extend tax reductions enacted by Trump and Republicans in 2017 but set to expire at year's end.
