The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, responding to Associated Press investigative stories on the Supreme Court, said Tuesday it was time for the justices to bring their conduct in line with the ethical standards of other branches of government.

“If they just establish the basic standards of every other branch of government, it would give us much more confidence in their integrity,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said. He commented in Vilnius, Lithuania, where he was attending the NATO summit as part of the U.S. delegation.

The AP published stories showing that Justice Sonia Sotomayor, aided by her staff, has advanced sales of her books through college visits over the past decade; that universities have used trips by justices as a lure for financial contributions by placing them in event rooms with wealthy donors, and that justices have taken expenses-paid teaching trips to attractive locations that are light on actual classroom instruction.

The series comes after stories over the past six months that have raised ethical concerns about the activities of the justices. Durbin and other lawmakers in Washington have announced a vote next week on legislation that would require the court to adopt an ethics code. While the measure is unlikely to pass, it sends a signal of discontent about the court.

The nation’s highest court operates without an ethics code, instead following what Chief Justice John Roberts has referred to as a set of foundational “ethics principles and practices.”

Asked Tuesday about the AP stories, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who also sits on the Judiciary Committee, called them “powerful reports” that amount to a “drip-by-drip-by-drip indictment of a Supreme Court that seems answerable to no one for ethical breaches.

“The chief justice really ought to be taking these into account for the sake the court and the country because the Supreme Court will no longer exist as a truly viable institution if it continues the failure to face the need for a code of ethics,” he said.

In contrast, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, another member of the Judiciary Committee, said he believes Congress should leave the ethics issue to the court and that the Democrats’ pursuit of ethics reform “is part of a long-standing assault against the court that the left feels is undermining a lot of things they’ve accomplished over the years by judicial action. To me, that’s the motivating factor.”

“I think it’s a co-equal branch of government we don’t have jurisdiction over. Secondly, I think this is part of a false narrative that the court is out of control and needs Congress to save it,” Cornyn said.

Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis and an expert in legal ethics, said the latest reporting reveals the extent to which “ethics problems at the Supreme Court is an equal opportunity scandal.

“It’s not just about Clarence Thomas and (Samuel) Alito,” Clark said, referring to earlier media reporting about the two conservative justices. “It’s an institutional rather than individual problem.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The head of a Senate panel examining social media’s negative effects on young people has dismissed as “a public relations tactic” some safety measures announced by Facebook’s popular Instagram platform.

Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, on Wednesday faced off with senators angry over revelations of how the photo-sharing platform can harm some young users and demanding that the company commit to making changes.

Under sharp questioning by senators of both parties, Mosseri defended the company’s conduct and the efficacy of its new safety measures. He challenged the assertion that Instagram has been shown by research to be addictive for young people. Instagram has an estimated 1 billion users of all ages.

On Tuesday, Instagram introduced a previously announced feature that urges teenagers to take breaks from the platform. The company also announced other tools, including parental controls due to come out early next year, that it says are aimed at protecting young users from harmful content.

The parental oversight tools “could have been announced years ago,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told Mosseri. The newly announced measures fall short and many of them are still being tested, he said.

A pause that Instagram imposed in September on its work on a kids’ version of the platform “looks more like a public relations tactic brought on by our hearings,” Blumenthal said.

“I believe that the time for self-policing and self-regulation is over,” said Blumenthal. “Self-policing depends on trust. Trust is over.”

Mosseri testified as Facebook, whose parent now is named Meta Platforms, has been roiled by public and political outrage over the disclosures by former Facebook employee Frances Haugen. She has made the case before lawmakers in the U.S., Britain and Europe that Facebook’s systems amplify online hate and extremism and that the company elevates profits over the safety of users.

Haugen, a data scientist who had worked in Facebook’s civic integrity unit, buttressed her assertions with a trove of internal company documents she secretly copied and provided to federal securities regulators and Congress.

The Senate panel has examined Facebook’s use of information from its own researchers that could indicate potential harm for some of its young users, especially girls, while it publicly downplayed the negative impacts. For some Instagram-devoted teens, peer pressure generated by the visually focused app led to mental-health and body-image problems, and in some cases, eating disorders and suicidal thoughts, the research detailed in the Facebook documents showed.

The revelations in a report by The Wall Street Journal, based on the documents leaked by Haugen, set off a wave of recriminations from lawmakers, critics of Big Tech, child-development experts and parents.

“As Head of Instagram, I am especially focused on the safety of the youngest people who use our services,” Mosseri testified. “This work includes keeping underage users off our platform, designing age-appropriate experiences for people ages 13 to 18, and building parental controls. Instagram is built for people 13 and older. If a child is under the age of 13, they are not permitted on Instagram.”

Mosseri outlined the suite of measures he said Instagram has taken to protect young people on the platform. They include keeping kids under 13 off it, restricting direct messaging between kids and adults, and prohibiting posts that encourage suicide and self-harm.

But, as researchers both internal and external to Meta have documented, the reality is different. Kids under 13 often sign up for Instagram with or without their parents’ knowledge by lying about their age. And posts about suicide and self-harm still reach children and teens, sometimes with disastrous effects.

Senators of both parties were united in condemnation of the social network giant and Instagram, the photo-sharing juggernaut valued at some $100 billion that Facebook acquired for $1 billion in 2012.

Already in July, Facebook said it was working with parents, experts and policymakers when it introduced safety measures for teens on Instagram. In fact, the company has been working with experts and other advisers for another product aimed at children — its Messenger Kids app that launched in late 2017.

Senators pressed Mosseri to support legislative remedies for social media.

Among the legislative proposals put forward by Blumenthal and others, one bill proposes an “eraser button” that would let parents instantly delete all personal information collected from their children or teens.

Another proposal bans specific features for kids under 16, such as video auto-play, push alerts, “like” buttons and follower counts. Also being floated is a prohibition against collecting personal data from anyone aged 13 to 15 without their consent. And a new digital “bill of rights” for minors that would similarly limit gathering of personal data from teens.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — When President Joe Biden first announced the framework he’d reached with a bipartisan group of senators for a big infrastructure bill, he said it meant more than building roads and bridges.

Agreement, he said two months ago, would send a signal “to ourselves and to the world that American democracy can deliver.”

The senators who led the legislation to passage Tuesday agreed.

“We all knew that, quite honestly, that the world was watching,” said Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont.

Approved on an overwhelming 69-30 vote, the nearly $1 trillion package would boost federal spending for major improvements of roads, bridges, internet access and other public works in communities from coast to coast. The bill goes next to the House.

What should have been a routine task — Biden recalled infrastructure as “probably the least difficult thing to do” when he was a senator — became an exercise in showing how damaged the legislative process has become in partisan Washington and how a president and core group of senators were determined to try to fix it.

Powering past skeptics, the five Democratic and five Republican senators who negotiated the deal were interested in Biden’s call to “build back better” after so many failed attempts at an infrastructure overhaul. But they also wanted to build back the confidence of Americans and the world that the U.S. government could tackle big problems.

“We really realized that this was going to be important for the country and I think it’s important for the institution,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said recently after a long day at the Capitol. “I’m really worried that everybody believes that we’re as dysfunctional as we appear to be, and so prove otherwise, it’s kind of important.”

Since Biden took office, small groups of senators had been talking and meeting quietly on their own and sometimes with the White House, searching for ways to reach across the aisle on a range of issue — among them the minimum wage, immigration and infrastructure.

Many were alumni of the bipartisan coalition that stitched together a year-end COVID-19 relief package and saw an opportunity for compromise in the evenly split 50-50 Senate, where typically 60 votes are needed to advance any legislation over an opposing filibuster.

Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Murkowski held private lunches with senators in a committee room. Others hosted dinners at their homes.

These were the early days of the Biden administration, not long after rioters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 in the deadly insurrection that shattered civic norms and left a deepening unease among lawmakers.

Biden had delivered an inaugural address with a call for unity after the turbulent 2020 election, and some of the Republican senators had joined in voting to convict Donald Trump of inciting the insurrection to upend Biden’s presidency. The former president was ultimately acquitted in his impeachment trial.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said those issues, along with the history of failed efforts to invest in infrastructure, were on her mind as she joined the effort.

“It was a major motivation for me,” Collins said, “to demonstrate to the American people that we could overcome the hyper-partisanship in Washington on a very important issue that administrations of both parties have been calling for, for the past 20 years.”

Biden had been in talks with another coalition led by West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican, but once that effort collapsed, he reached out to Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, the Democratic senator from Arizona.

A newer lawmaker, better known for her purple pandemic wig and chatting on the GOP side of the Senate aisle, Sinema made no secret of her reluctance to embrace Biden’s big infrastructure plan, which initially topped $4 trillion.

She had already been working behind the scenes with Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and others in what another member of the group, Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, described as a “backburner” coalition. They became the group of 10.

The White House sprang into action, eventually engaging in hundreds of meetings and phones calls with lawmakers of both parties in the House and Senate. The administration coordinated visits by members of the president’s “Jobs Cabinet,” and counselor Steve Ricchetti became a fixture on Capitol Hill.

“If there was a special sauce it was relationships,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in an interview.

The president was highly engaged, briefed multiple times a day about the talks and often directing the strategy. He worked the phones.

Biden “was able to establish a tone,“ Buttigieg said.

Trump, like previous presidents, had sought to assemble an infrastructure package during his time at the White House, but often sent mixed signals to negotiators and frustrated lawmakers by threatening to withdraw support from items to which he had previously committed. But senators said it was clear when Biden sent his top aides to talk with the senators, “they had the president’s proxy,” Collins said. “That made a difference.”

As final weeks of negotiations moved to Portman’s basement office at the Capitol, the group popped bottles of wine and ordered pizza for the difficult late-night sessions. Tempers flared, frustration mounted and exhaustion set in.

“We didn’t fully throw pizza,” said Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia. But there were “lots of time when people do get mad with each other.”

The whole deal almost collapsed the June day it was first announced when Biden suggested at a news conference he would not sign it into law without also having his broader $3.5 trillion package alongside it, infuriating the Republicans who staunchly oppose that bill.

Collins was waiting at the airport for a flight back home to Maine when she read the headline and immediately called Biden’s top staff for an explanation.

Tester, sitting on his tractor at home in Montana, was dumbfounded.

Biden sent a lengthy statement two days later assuring the group that he would fight for both bills and putting negotiations back on track.

After Tuesday’s overwhelming vote in the Senate, the president called Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and each of the 10 senators personally, reaching Sinema in the Senate cloakroom.

“They sent me a note. It said, ‘Biden on three for you.’ I literally said, ‘I don’t know what that means,’” Sinema told The Associated Press.

“He said congratulations and we spent some time talking about how important this victory is, not just for the work we’re doing on infrastructure but also to demonstrate that bipartisanship is still alive and our Congress can function,” she said.

“And then we talked about continuing to work together to get this bill across the finish line and onto his desk.”

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Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said Tuesday that the $65 billion for broadband means that some people in her state would get access to the internet for the first time. “The pandemic that we have endured for more than a year laid bare the disparities in access to high-speed internet,” Collins said.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, spoke of how the bill would lead to more rural and Native Alaskans having access to a sink to wash their hands in. The bill dedicates about $55 billion in new funding for water and wastewater systems. “We have to do right by our Native people,” she said.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., noted there is about $16 billion for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that would help fund projects designed to curb coastal erosion. “My state has lost as much land as is in the entire state of Delaware. But other states are losing land, too,” he said.

And Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., talked about how $110 billion in new funding for roads and bridges would mean access to markets for farms in Montana such as his own. “It is critically important we keep our aging bridges and roads and airports up to snuff,” Tester said.

The lawmakers, part of a group that they like to call the G-10, for gang of 10 — five Republican, five Democratic senators — are appealing to the wishes of many voters for not only better airports, roads and internet service, but also for some bipartisanship in Washington, without being directly asked to pay for those improvements through higher income taxes or user fees.

While it’s looking like the Senate will approve the bill during the coming week, supporters of the legislation will face an array of obstacles advancing the package, a major priority in President Joe Biden’s agenda. Interest groups on both sides of the political spectrum are taking aim at provisions they don’t like, potentially unraveling the agreement.

Some conservatives don’t like that the agreement moves the country further away from relying on user fees, such as the federal gas tax, to pay for highway and transit improvements. Others are wary that the bill sets a course for much more federal spending after the government already provided for nearly $5 trillion dedicated to COVID relief. This week, the Treasury Department warned Congress it was hitting the nation’s debt limit. “Every single time we add an enormous sum to our national debt, there is bipartisanship behind it,” Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said.

Environmental groups worry that the bill doesn’t do enough to address climate change. “It is clear that the deal does not meet the moment on climate or justice,″ said Tiernan Sittenfeld, a senior vice president of the League of Conservation Voters.

The pressure from the left underpins House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s statement that there won’t be a House vote on the bipartisan infrastructure plan until the Senate also passes the $3.5 trillion Democratic bill that boosts spending on health, environment and social programs.

The Senate is plowing through efforts to amend the narrower infrastructure bill, which will require 60 votes to advance for passage. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is intent on passing the legislation as soon as possible so that the Senate can turn its attention to a budget blueprint that will set the stage for crafting and passing the larger $3.5 trillion package in the fall.

Formally called the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the proposal has clocked in at some 2,700 pages. The Senate’s Republican leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has sided with those voting to allow debate to proceed, but he has not said how he will ultimately vote. He said Tuesday the bill has a chance to be a “bipartisan success story for the country,” but he is warning Democrats against trying to speed up the amendment process.

“Like a lot of us, I’m interested in what it looks like in the end,” McConnell said. He noted that “the past two administrations tried to do it, were unable to. The American people need it. I think it’s one of those areas where there seems to be broad, bipartisan agreement.”

By evening, the Senate had overwhelmingly approved three noncontroversial amendments, while rejecting three others. As the amendment process continued, senators were weighing how much to try to change the package and how hard to try, knowing it would be difficult to reach the 60-vote threshold to approve any substantial changes.

In addition to the $110 billion in new spending for roads and bridges and $55 billion for water and wastewater infrastructure, the bipartisan package is expected to provide, $39 billion for public transit and $66 billion for rail. There’s also to be billions for airports, ports, broadband internet and electric vehicle charging stations.

Paying for the package has been a challenge after senators rejected ideas to raise revenue from a new gas tax or other streams. Instead, it is being financed from funding sources that might not pass muster with deficit hawks, including repurposing some $205 billion in untapped COVID-19 relief aid, as well as unemployment assistance that was turned back by some states, and relying on projected future economic growth.

The bipartisan bill still faces a rough road in the House, where progressive lawmakers want a more robust package but may have to settle for this one to keep Biden’s infrastructure plans on track. The outcome with the bipartisan effort will set the stage for the next debate over Biden’s much more ambitious $3.5 trillion package, a strictly partisan pursuit of far-reaching programs and services including child care and health care that touch almost every corner of American life. Republicans strongly oppose that bill, which would require a simple majority for passage. Final votes on that measure are not expected until fall.

KEVIN FREKING and LISA MASCARO | AP NEWS

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The students in the roundtable ranged from ages 12-20 and represented seven different states. Event participants shared their personal experiences with the Secretary and the Senators, centering the conversation on lived experiences and how the critical funds in the American Rescue Plan will help other students in similar situations.

Secretary Cardona listened as students shared their stories:

“Among the issues that affect our students’ ability to learn is the instability in where they’re living, and homelessness is an issue that’s critically important. It’s hard to learn if you’re wondering where you’re going to be staying at night, or if there’s no stability there and you don’t have any support around that you. We need to make sure that our students can learn at high levels and addressing student homelessness is one of those issues that is critically important. All of you are stronger than most students in this country, and you’re resilient. You’re going to grow. It’s our job to make sure we support you because you have so much to offer.”

Sen. Joe Manchin discussed the importance of sharing these stories and providing relief for these students.

“It is vital to provide all of our young students with a platform to share their stories and experiences. I’m pleased the Department of Education is committed to helping our children and youth succeed in spite of the challenges they face. We all know, last year has added burdens for us all, especially our children currently experiencing homelessness, but we will get through this together, as we always do, by supporting our fellow Americans in need. Each and every one of you here today embody resilience, strength and determination.”

Sen. Patty Murray thanked the students for sharing their experiences and applauded the designated funds in the American Rescue Plan that goes towards helping students who are experiencing homelessness.

“This past year has been so difficult for every student and parent and educator across the country. But what students who are experiencing homelessness have gone through is really unthinkable…So as a mom and a grandmother, my heart truly goes out to each one of you because these are struggles that no kid should have to bear. Please know, I want you to know, we’re fighting for you. We hear you. You are not alone. We made sure that there is dedicated support in the American Rescue Plan.”

Press@ed.gov • Contributed

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Senators pushing to require background checks for private gun sales made a fresh pitch to President Donald Trump on Wednesday as part of an effort to break the gridlock over legislation to curb gun violence following a summer of more mass shootings.

GOP Sen. Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania and Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Chris Murphy of Connecticut cautioned that they did not win Trump’s endorsement of their background check bill during their 40-minute telephone conversation. But they nonetheless depicted the president as engaged and encouraging, with Toomey saying Trump has a strong “interest in doing something meaningful” to prevent gun violence, even though he has not endorsed any specific approach.

The outreach is the latest effort to try to traverse yet another impasse on gun control legislation. With Congress back in session this week, Republicans and Democrats have been pointing fingers, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell accused Democrats of engaging in “theatrics,” and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warning that “people are dying” while Senate Republicans refuse to act. Meanwhile, all sides are waiting on the White House and clear guidance from Trump on what he might support.

White House officials, lawmakers and Hill staff have held frequent meetings to discuss options aimed at curbing gun violence following a pair of shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas, that left more than 30 people dead over a single August weekend. The president is expected to be presented with a list of options of various initiatives as soon as Thursday, according to a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office shortly after the call, Trump said he and lawmakers were “working very, very hard together” and “seeing if we can come up with something that’s acceptable to everybody.”

But he offered few clues about what he is willing to put his weight behind, even as he insisted that “progress is being made.”

“We’re looking at background checks and we’re looking at putting everything together in a unified way so that we can have something that’s meaningful,” he said. “At the same time, all of us want to protect our great Second Amendment. It’s very important to all of us.”

Asked specifically about the bill in question, which would require background checks for firearm purchases at gun shows and over the internet, Trump said there are “a lot of things under discussion,” including some things that will never happen and other things that might.

“It’s really ‘Gun Sense,’ if you think about it,” Trump said, adding: “We’re having great dialogue. We’ll see what happens.”

The bipartisan Toomey-Manchin legislation failed to pass the Senate in 2013, and many Republicans continue to oppose the idea as an infringement on gun rights. McConnell, meanwhile, has refused to allow a vote on the bill because he says it’s not clear the Senate would be able to pass it or that Trump would sign it into law.

Trump said conversations would continue Wednesday night and into Thursday, and the senators said they hoped to hear back from the White House then.

The White House’s legislative director met privately with Republican senators Tuesday to discuss ideas the administration is considering, including so-called red flag legislation to allow officials to take away guns from people believed to be dangers to themselves or others and quicker imposition of the death penalty for the perpetrators of mass shootings.

Over in the House, No. 2 Democrat Steny Hoyer of Maryland said the chamber would vote in October on a red flag bill aimed at keeping guns out of the hands of mentally ill people or those convicted of hate crimes, along with legislation to ban high capacity gun magazines.

Hoyer, though, was noncommittal about action on an assault weapons ban that is backed by many liberals in his party.

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