Metro Observer Daily

  Depression, self-harm and suicide are rising among American adolescents. For M, a 13-year-old in Minnesota, the despair was almost too much to take. One evening last April, an anxious and free-spirited 13-year-old girl in suburban Minneapolis sprang furious from a chair in the living room and ran from the house — out a sliding door, across the patio, through the backyard and into the woods. Moments earlier, the girl’s mother, Linda, had stolen a look at her daughter’s smartphone. The teenager, incensed by the intrusion, had grabbed the phone and fled. (The adolescent is being identified by an initial, M, and the parents by first name only, to protect the family’s privacy.) Linda was alarmed by photos she had seen on the phone. Some showed blood on M’s ankles from intentional self-harm. Others were close-ups of M’s romantic obsession, the anime character Genocide Jack — a brunette girl with a long red tongue who, in a video series, kills high school classmates with scissors. In th...

 Schrader owns a farm in his home district, but there’s little indication that he spends much time there. WHEN REP. KURT SCHRADER voted against the initial passage of the American Rescue Plan last year, he faced intense backlash from fellow Democrats in his Central Oregon district. The vote was Schrader’s third controversial action in as many months, following his opposition to the overwhelmingly popular $2,000 stimulus checks and a statement that compared the second impeachment of former President Donald Trump to a “lynching” earlier that year. For local Democrats, it was the last straw. Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Ore., arrives at the Rayburn Building in Washington, D.C In a blistering letter signed by the party chairs from the five counties that make up Schrader’s current district, local leaders lambasted their representative for not “consulting with communities in this district” before his vote. They labeled Schrader’s actions a “betrayal of [his] duty to best serve [his] constituen...

DEMOCRATS IN THE House of Representatives  are planning to expedite a massive bill that would dramatically increase U.S. security assistance to Ukraine and lay the groundwork for substantial new sanctions on Russia — hastening a war-friendly posture without opportunity for dissent as concerns over a military invasion abound. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., speaks during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told members on a caucus call Tuesday that she’s looking to skip marking up the bill and move it straight to the House floor, setting up the possibility of a vote as soon as early next week, two congressional sources told The Intercept. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because they’re not authorized to talk to the press. Pelosi’s office did not immediately reply to a request for comment. “This is how the space for nonmilitary options gets slowly closed off in Washington, without any real debate,” one of the sour...