Jon Stewart and advocates who pushed to aid veterans should get Presidential Medal of Freedom, Sen. Gillibrand tells Biden

WASHINGTON — Jon Stewart and fellow advocates who cajoled Congress into passing legislation to help veterans sickened by massive burn pits overseas deserve the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said in a letter to President Joe Biden on Thursday. For years, Congress had failed to address the impacts of burn pits — the massive, open-air trash fires that the military used to incinerate everything from medical waste to plastic and ammunition during the global war on terror. Some of the pits were the size of football fields, and federal officials believe at least 3.5 million m...