Senator Kirsten Gillibrand wants you to call your senator about the American Health Care Act (AHCA, aka Trumpcare).
"Because, to be honest, the only way anything ever works here in Washington is when regular people stand up and demand something change," Sen. Gillibrand tells me on Wednesday in a phone interview for Elite Daily about the ongoing health care debate.
You might not have heard that some Republicans in the Senate are working on their version of the AHCA, which would repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA, aka Obamacare).
That's because the 13 Republican senators working on the bill have not actually shown it to anyone — but they want a vote on it as early as next week. They say they plan to release the text on Thursday.
This has led to quite a bit of protesting from regular citizens, concerned organizations, and senators — both Democratic and Republican.
But protests are not happening just because the bill is being kept secret. They're happening because the bill could hurt a lot of people.
The AHCA passed in a narrow vote in the House in early May. But in late May, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) determined that this particular law would leave 23 million people without insurance by 2026.
Senator Bernie Sanders called it the "worst piece of legislation, by far, that I have seen in my lifetime."
Even Donald Trump called the plan "mean." I mean, the AHCA is the most unpopular piece of legislation considered by Congress in decades, and every single state disapproves of it according to research by The New York Times.
They should certainly call their representatives and call their senators. They should go to town halls. They should write letters to the editors. They should tweet about it, they should post on Facebook, post on Instagram. All of that matters. It's really about projecting your voice as far and wide as you possibly can.
Gillibrand adds that "at least three or four senators that are having real debates about whether they should vote for the bill," and calling could help sway their opinion. Those few votes could change the direction of the bill.
This is a sentiment shared by Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. During a press call last week, Richards said that senators "are all tracking phone calls that are coming in on this matter," so your call really can do something.
"There are several Republican senators who know this bill will be devastating for women in the state," Richards said. "They have to hear from [women]."
Although we don't know exactly what's included in the current version of the bill, the previous version is a frightening clue — especially for young women.
If the bill looks anything like the House bill, Planned Parenthood may well be defunded. The Trumpcare version we've seen defunded Planned Parenthood for a year, which would likely force many clinics to shut down.
In Gillibrand's state of New York, there are 58 Planned Parenthood centers caring for more than 186,000 patients, so she's quite concerned.
There's also the question of what it would do for contraceptive coverage. Under Obamacare, contraceptives were fully covered by insurance plans. This was followed by a decrease in unintended pregnancies and abortions.
So there would be clear repercussions if that contraceptive coverage were lost with Trumpcare. Gillibrand says,
It just means there will be more unintended pregnancies and more abortions that could be avoided if they had access to contraception. That, I think, will harm young women.
Meanwhile, the House AHCA bill would roll back protections for people with pre-existing conditions. Gillibrand says,
To the extent young women have any issues in their backgrounds, they might not get access to insurance.
Gillibrand participated in the Congressional Women's Softball game on Wednesday night, which benefits young women diagnosed with breast cancer. She says,
I'd be very worried about any of our young survivors not being able to get any health care coverage for the rest of their lives.
As with a lot of what's been going on this year, it's important to note that this secretive bill process is not normal.
It's very unusual to have a piece of legislation this size that doesn't go through regular order ... Normally, we'd have hearings, an ability to mark up the bill and offer amendments before it's actually on the Senate floor, and that process was nonexistent. So the first time we see the bill will be the first time that it'll be voted on, without any chance for hearing or revision or consensus.
Even if there was space for amendments and revisions, however, Gillibrand thinks this bill, if it's like the House one, is "unfixable." She says,
It basically gives enormous tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans, it doesn't guarantee affordable care for people with pre-existing conditions, and it's going to raise the rates on people from 50 to 64, pretty much automatically. A lot of constituents are going to be harmed by this bill.
There have been plenty of diets and nutritional guidelines out there over the years, some much more bizarre (and potentially dangerous) than others.
Apparently, at one point, there was even a diet suggesting you eat a cotton ball every so often to stave off hunger (super healthy, and delicious, amirite??!?).
As strange as some of those diets may be, breatharianism might be the strangest, most like-a-damn-science-fiction-novel of all.
Although not the originators of this strange and difficult-to-spell diet, breatharian lovers Akahi Ricardo and Camila Castello have been grabbing attention with their claims that all they need to survive are air and the good vibes of the universe.
The two of them slowly weaned off of food together, starting with a vegetarian diet, and slowly working their way to, like, nothing.
The plans for weaning yourself off sustenance of any kind have guidelines that begin with eight- to 21-day plans, in an attempt to rid people of the dependency on food.
Castello even says she went through an entire pregnancy without consuming virtually anything, except the universal vibes.
If she eats nowadays, it's with her children to "experience the joy" of taste (jeez, at least the kids get to eat).
Practitioners of breatharianism say you can train yourself to subsist off of prana (which is what they call all the cosmic energy in the world, or the vital life force in Hinduism).
The main source of prana is the sun, so that's where they claim you can get everything you need to lead a balanced lifestyle -- just deep breaths and a little natural vitamin D.
There have been practices based on the same eat-only-air claims dating back to Hindu religious texts and the Renaissance.
While some people work periodic fasting into their lives, it's definitely not something to do without professional guidelines.
And, let me be clear, breatharianism is not a nutrition plan. In fact, some people have actually died from trying it.
Doctors are pretty unanimous in calling the idea a "lethal pseudoscience" and not a good idea at all. They say it's still a pretty universal truth that humans need food and water to survive and thrive.
And while I may be a bit of a hippie myself at the end of the day, I'm not convinced on this one by a long shot.
I say, if you're interested in trying new dietary or nutritional guidelines, do lots of research and ask for help.
Multihyphenate may be an overused term, but ELLE regular Robin Black defines it. The sought-after L.A. makeup artist, known for her distinctly cool take on pretty (picture Poppy Delevingne, all freckles and smudged eyeliner), also photographs her own work, which has graced gallery walls, as well as magazine spreads. Black grew up sailing the South Pacific with her Japanese mother and Irish-German father, attended a Maori preschool (the teachers' black-tattooed lips fascinated her), and later studied biochemistry and painting at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Now she puts her excess creative energy to work at her backyard studio, where shoots for her blog, Beauty Is Boring, have a Warholesque air. "Sometimes my subject and I both feel like clean and natural, but sometimes I ask, 'Do you mind if I pour this bucket of paint and water over your head?' "
I'm not generally an artist who tends toward glamour. I like the idea of Brigitte Bardot if she lived right now, with our generation's influences. She should have that touch of grunge, a little hardness.
I saw the extremes—no mascara or tons of fake lashes—on the spring runways. I have a love affair with both, but there's something laissez-faire about not wearing mascara that appeals to me.
You definitely need lipstick and groomed eyebrows, which draw attention to your eyes the way mascara would. Fill in brows with a pencil or a gel, then run a disposable mascara wand through to remove some of the product.
Skip eye shadow, because your lashes are going to do all the talking. And you don't want a dark brow, because you don't want to close down that part of your face. Do a clear brow gel or wax, brush your brows up, and leave the entire area clear so that your lashes really stand out.
I love a dark lip, especially really dark color on the corners of the mouth. It changes the lips' shape: The edges recede, and the center looks quite full. Line the corners with a black or dark liner, bring it part of the way across, and blend it. Then put a red lipstick over the entire thing.
You don't want to use shimmer, because shimmer turns white on camera. Another problem is under-eye concealer that's too light. One of the most useful things about growing up painting is that I'm really familiar with the color wheel. I often see people with very pale or yellow-based concealer under their eyes, but what they're covering up underneath is blue, and blue and yellow together make green. If you have a little blue under your eyes, for example, you want a concealer that matches your skin but has an orange undertone.
I've had women tell me, "I can wear only pink blush." And I think, well, you really ought to wear something with a warmer tone, maybe a coral or even a tangerine. Then we try it, and they say, "I look 10 years younger! Why have I never tried this?"
The reasons for our mirth are the ultracool Karen Elson and Raquel Zimmermann, dancing like no ones watching in Lanvins A/W11 campaign video.
The models and some male friends get down at their gawkiest to Pitbulls I Know You Want Me featuring Calle Ocho, a tune youll recognise it from your trial Zumba class. Trust designer Alber Elbaz to break in at the end. Cant you tell hes like, Wait, wait, lemme show you this move?
Elson and Zimmermann cant help but smirk as they shake it, but we think the awkwardness is part of this spot's winning appeal. Take a look... and why not send us your own version, if you dare?
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The generals had encountered an opponent far superior in talent, a tough and protracted resistance, a warfare of very serious perils and of successes difficult to be attained and far from brilliant; it was asserted that Pompeius was scheming to get himself recalled from Spain and entrusted with a more desirable command somewhere else. The soldiers, too, found little satisfaction in a campaign in which not only was there nothing to be got save hard blows and worthless booty, but their very pay was doled out to them with extreme irregularity. Pompeius reported to the senate, at the end of 679, that the pay was two years in arrear, and that the army was threatening to break up.
The Roman government might certainly have obviated a considerable portion of these evils, if they could have prevailed on themselves to carry on the Spanish war with less remissness, to say nothing of better will. In the main, however, it was neither their fault nor the fault of their generals that a genius so superior as that of Sertorius was able to carry on this petty warfare year after year, despite of all numerical and military superiority, on ground so thoroughly favourable to insurrectionary and piratical warfare. So little could its end be foreseen, that the Sertorian insurrection seemed rather as if it would become intermingled with other contemporary revolts and thereby add to its dangerous character.
They were a crowd of the most miscellaneous sort, wearing one face today and another tomorrow; but they clearly felt themselves, and it was fully recognized by their time that they formed, a wholly new element in society. The 'clerici vagantes' of the twelfth century may perhaps be taken as their forerunners - the same unstable existence, the same free and more than free views of life, and the germs at all events of the same pagan tendencies in their poetry. But now, as competitor with the whole culture of the Middle Ages, which was essentially clerical and was fostered by the Church, there appeared a new civilization, founding itself on that which lay on the other side of the Middle Ages. Its active representatives became influential because they knew what the ancients knew, because they tried to write as the ancients wrote, because they began to think, and soon to feel, as the ancients thought and felt. The tradition to which they devoted themselves passed at a thousand points into genuine reproduction.