SEATTLE – Congress's defense spending package could provide military service members and their families more legal protections.

The House-passed version of the National Defense Authorization Act includes provisions that ban forced arbitration clauses so service members can take consumer and employment fraud to court.

It also would overturn the Feres Doctrine – a 1950 Supreme Court decision designed to protect the Defense Department from lawsuits in medical cases, such as split-second decisions by medics on the battlefield.

But Larry Shannon, government affairs director for the Washington State Association for Justice, says that decision has extended to any service member injury, illness or wrongful death.

"If this Feres Doctrine has become an exception that has swallowed the rule of accountability, there is no accountability for these health care providers both in the military and providing services to the military,” he states. “They get, basically, an immunity card from this Feres Doctrine."

Shannon credits U.S. Rep. Adam Smith of Washington state, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, for ensuring these measures were part of the final House bill.

However, the provisions weren't included in the Senate version so it's not yet clear if they will be part of the final package.

Critics of these measures say the Defense department will be subject to unending lawsuits.

Shannon also praises the forced arbitration prohibition provisions, which give service members the ability to sue in cases involving fraudulent debt collection or home loans, and against employers, such as military contractors. He notes that it's hard enough for the public to enforce their rights under forced arbitration agreements. It's nearly impossible for service members.

"The net effect is just stripping your rights away from you,” he maintains. “You have no redress. It means that they have a license to steal from the members of the military with virtually no accountability and no redress on these consumer transactions and from some of these contractors in the area of employment."

The House and Senate are expected to begin negotiations on the 2020 spending package in August. The current spending bill expires at the end of September.

Several Connecticut groups are partnering to help people claim COVID relief money.

The Get Your Refund Campaign aims to help more than 45,000 families statewide get the enhanced tax benefits they were entitled to in 2021. Internal Revenue Service data show $120 million in unclaimed federal Earned Income Tax Credits for 2019.

Juan Berrios, executive director of the tax assistance nonprofit SimplifyCT, said there are a few key reasons for people failing to collect what's owed them.

"I think it's really just about the level of information and misinformation that was out there during that timeframe," Berrios recounted. "If you recall, our government moved very swiftly, right, so the very first stimulus package was passed and then within a couple of weeks, people were actually getting their checks."

Some people could receive up to $6,700 from the federal Earned Income Tax credit alone, available to anyone who earned $64,000 or less in 2021. The expanded child tax credit is available for any family with children who have a valid social security number. The last day to claim or file for these 2021 missed credits is April 15, 2025.

Campaign feedback has been positive with many families grateful to claim the benefits. Berrios noted some have been leery of claiming the refunds since the credits typically apply to people who do not file their taxes but he added collecting refunds will not affect their benefits.

"Filing taxes does not affect government-provided benefits," Berrios emphasized. "The Child Tax Credit, the Earned Income Tax Credit and the third stimulus payment, they're not counted as income. They do not affect your other benefits that an individual or a family receives. And, also, it's very important to note that immigrants can also file taxes."

Berrios added given the chaotic state of the world in 2021 due to the pandemic, local tax preparers might not have been open or returns were done virtually. He acknowledged some might fear filing because they owe the IRS money or fear being penalized for not filing but if you're due a refund, you will not be penalized.


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An analysis of court documents by Kentucky Public Radio revealed the social media company TikTok knew users can become addicted to the platform in under 35 minutes.

Kentucky is one of more than a dozen states suing TikTok, arguing the company knowingly harmed children and violated consumer protection laws.

According to a 2022 Pew survey, children spend on average more than 91 minutes a day on TikTok.

Christia Spears Brown, professor of developmental psychology at the University of Kentucky, said rates of depression have spiked among teens.

"We see it in affluent kids, we see it in low-income kids. We see it in rural communities. We see it in urban communities," Spears Brown outlined. "We really see this as a ubiquitous, universal kind of space."

The lawsuit seeks a stop to TikTok's practices and monetary compensation to states. According to the latest CDC data, 40% of the nation's youth say they feel persistent sadness and hopelessness, and the percentage rises to 53% among girls. The nation's suicide rate among youth people jumped 62% between 2007 through 2021. TikTok argued it has implemented policies to protect children and said the lawsuits are misleading.

The American Psychological Association maintains using social media is "not inherently beneficial or harmful to young people." But Spears Brown advised parents to proactively monitor and control their child's social media use.

"One of the biggest pieces of advice for parents is to really limit the amount of time that kids are on social media," Spears Brown emphasized.

TikTok has also come under scrutiny for allowing its livestreaming feature to facilitate child sexual abuse and exploitation. Lawsuit documents say thousands of minors have livestreamed videos of themselves where users can pay to send the live-streamer money in the form of a digital currency the company calls TikTok "gifts."


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By Audrey Henderson for Energy News Network.
Broadcast version by Terri Dee for Illinois News Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

As low-income households face the dual burden of weather extremes and high energy costs, energy efficiency is an increasingly important strategy for both climate mitigation and lower utility bills.

Passive House standards - which create a building envelope so tight that central heating and cooling systems may not be needed at all - promise to dramatically slash energy costs, and are starting to appear in "stretch codes" for buildings, including in Massachusetts, Illinois, Washington and New York.

And while some builders are balking at the initial up-front cost, other developers are embracing passive house metrics as a solution for affordable multifamily housing.

"We're trying to make zero energy, high performing buildings that are healthy and low energy mainstream everywhere," said Katrin Klingenberg, co-founder and executive director of Passive House Institute-U.S., or Phius.

Klingenberg says the additional work needed to meet an aggressive efficiency standard, is, in the long run, not that expensive. Constructing a building to passive standards is initially only about 3%-5% more expensive than building a conventional single family home, or 0%-3% more for multifamily construction, according to Phius.

"This is not rocket science... We're just beefing up the envelope. We're doing all the good building science, we're doing all the healthy stuff. We're downsizing the [heating and cooling] system, and now we need someone to optimize that process," Klingenberg said.

Phius in practice and action

A Phius-certified building does not employ a conventional central heating and cooling system. Instead, it depends on an air-tight building envelope, highly efficient ventilation and strategically positioned, high-performance windows to exploit solar gain during both winter and summer and maximize indoor comfort.

The tight envelope for Phius buildings regulates indoor air temperature, which can be a literal lifesaver when power outages occur during extreme heat waves or cold snaps, said Doug Farr, founder and principal of architecture firm Farr Associates.

Farr pointed to the example of the Academy for Global Citizenship in Chicago, which was built to Phius standards.

"There was a really cold snap in January. Somehow the power went out [and the building] was without electricity for two or three days. And the internal temperature in the building dropped two degrees over three days."

Farr said that example shows a clear benefit to high efficiency that justifies the cost.

"You talk about the ultimate resilience where you're not going to die in a power outage either in the summer or the winter. You know, that's pretty valuable."

There is also a business case to be made for implementing Phius and other sustainability metrics into residential construction, such as lowered bills that can appeal to market-rate buyers and renters, and reduced long-term maintenance costs for building owners.

AJ Patton, founder and CEO of 548 Enterprise in Chicago, says in response to questions about how to convince developers to consider factors beyond the bottom line, simply, "they shouldn't."

Instead, he touts lower operating costs for energy-efficiency metrics rather than climate mitigation when he pitches his projects to his colleagues.

"I can't sell people on climate change anymore," he said. "If you don't believe by now, the good Lord will catch you when He catch you.

"But if I can sell you on lowering your operating expenses, if I can sell you on the marketability, on the fact that your tenants will have 30%, 40% lower individual expenses, that's a marketing angle from a developer owner, that's what I push on my contemporaries," Patton said. "And then that's when they say, 'if you're telling the truth, and if your construction costs are not more significant than mine, then I'm sold.'"

Phius principles can require specialized materials and building practices, Klingenberg said. But practitioners are working toward finding ways to manage costs by sourcing domestically available materials rather than relying on imports.

"The more experienced an architect [or developer] gets, they understand that they can replace these specialized components with more generic materials and you can get the same effect," Klingenberg said.

Patton is presently incorporating Phius principles as the lead developer for 3831 W Chicago Avenue, a mixed use development located on Chicago's West Side. The project, billed as the largest passive house design project in the city to date, will cover an entire city block, incorporating approximately 60 mixed-income residential units and 9,000 sq ft of commercial and community space.

Another project, Sendero Verde, located in the East Harlem neighborhood of New York City, is the largest certified passive-house building in the United States with 709 units. Completed in April, Sendero Verde is designed to provide cool conditions in the summer and warmth during the winter - a vast improvement for the low-income and formerly unhoused individuals and families who live there.

Barriers and potential solutions

Even without large upfront building cost premiums and with the increased impact of economies of scale, improved technology and materials, many developers still feel constrained to cut costs, Farr said.

"There's entire segments of the development spectrum in housing, even in multifamily housing in Chicago, where if you're a developer of rental housing time and again ... they feel like they have no choice but to keep things as the construction as cheap as possible because their competitors all do. And then, some architecture firms only work with those 'powerless' developers and they get code-compliant buildings."

But subsidies, such as federal low income housing credits, IRS tax breaks and resources from the Department of Energy also provide a means for developers to square the circle, especially for projects aimed toward very low-income residents.

Nonetheless, making the numbers work often requires taking a long-term view of development, according to Brian Nowak, principal at Sweetgrass Design Studio in Minnesota. Nowak was the designer for Hillcrest Village, an affordable housing development in Northfield that does not utilize Phius building metrics, but does incorporate net-zero energy usage standards.

"It's an investment over time, to build resilient, energy-efficient housing," he told the Energy News Network in June 2023.

"That should be everyone's goal. And if we don't, for example, it affects our school system. It affects the employers at Northfield having people that are readily available to come in and fill the jobs that are needed.

"That's a significant long-term benefit of a project like this. And that is not just your monthly rents on the building; it's the cost of the utilities as well. When those utilities include your electricity and your heating and cooling that's a really big deal."

Developers like Patton are determined to incorporate sustainability metrics into affordable housing and commercial developments both because it's good business and because it's the right thing to do.

"I'm not going to solve every issue. I'm going to focus on clean air, clean water, and lowering people's utility bills. That's my focus. I'm not going to design the greatest architectural building. I'm not even interested in hiring those type of architects.

"I had a lived experience of having my heat cut off in the middle of winter. I don't want that to ever happen to anybody I know ever again," Patton said. "So if I can lower somebody's cost of living, that's my sole focus. And there's been a boatload of buy-in from that, because those are historically [not] things [present] in the communities I invest in."


Audrey Henderson wrote this article for Energy News Network.


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