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Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of July 3
This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.
This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.
https://www.axios.com/2023/07/02/supreme-court-rulings-justices
The opinion of SCOTUS is poor to put it lightly
It's odd that the author says that broad bipartisan support of SCOTUS nominees was ended "by the Democrats under Trump, and it's not coming back." I seem to remember a certain Senate Majority Leader stonewalling nominations under Obama and declaring that Democrats will never seat a justice while Republicans control the Senate ever again. Doesn't sound like the Democrats did this thing to me.
GOP Playbook 101. Do something unpopular. Blame the democrats for doing it. Profit.
In all seriousness, how do we stop politicians lying to us? I think until that problem is solved, there's not much to be done. How many people have the time to work all their jobs, run their lives, and fact check politicians, in the midst of all the sobbing at the hopeless future?
Repealing citizens united would be a good start.
Regulating media would help too. You've got a handful of old rich white assholes that own all the media companies
I'm not sure how those address politicians' lies to the public, though. Don't get me wrong, I agree that these are good things that should be done, but they don't address the lies in any substantive way I can see.
Hmmm... well, okay, I guess regulating the media could help, in terms of regulation around fact checking and possibly making media liable for disseminating known falsehoods. But I'm not sure how that really works with a free press.
That quote is referring to the Kavanaugh hearing, which is still a sore-spot for conservatives. Of course the truth is that both sides have very dirty hands for quite a few years now (see the table at the bottom of for/against votes) and it's going to keep getting worse for as long as our country keeps getting stretched out to both extremes.
You say that "both sides" have dirty hands, but I'm looking at the party of the justice as compared to the primary party in the senate, and while there have been plenty of Republican justices nominated by Democratic senates, the opposite was last true in 1895.
I'm not sure what you're driving at with the table. There's no table of for/against votes that I can see, just nominations and their outcomes, and that doesn't tell you much about partisanship [Edit: I see what you're talking about now]. There are numerous relatively recent examples of nominations by presidents of one party being confirmed by Senates controlled by the other–all breaking one way, if you can believe it.
There's plenty to fault the Democratic Party for, but treating SCOTUS nominations as partisan battlegrounds is not really one of them. They had good reason to suspect that nominations from the GOP over the past 20 years or so would lead to the revocation of hard-won individual liberties–correctly, as it turns out. You can see partisanship there if all you look at is the bare numbers of votes, but you have to kind of squint a bit.
I routinely hear conservative commentators reference the Bork nomination from the 80s. Anger from the contentious hearings seem to run deep and have long legs -- on both sides. The point I'm (badly) driving at is that keeping score isn't doing the country any favors. We need SCOTUS to be a respected institution and circus confirmation hearings make that soo much worse -- as does partisan media misrepresentation of SCOTUS rulings.
SCOTUS rulings are a tough thing for lay-people to unpack -- myself included. The law is complicated and nuanced and has many, many tradeoffs. It's important to remember that GOP nominations are not mustache-twirling villains, but rather people with different values or different approaches to solving a problem.
I saw an amazing pair of dueling headlines after the Counterman v Colorado ruling last week (paraphrased slightly): "SCOTUS Guts Cyberstalking Laws Allowing Online Abusers" vs "SCOTUS Upholds First Amendment Protections and Burden of Proof Laws". Turns out both headlines are technically correct, and both headlines are deeply partisan and help to drive our country farther apart.
At what point does a difference of values pass the point of vive la difference and tread into irreconcilable territory though?
For myself, this insistence that society be structured along a very narrow and yet somehow also ill-defined interpretation of "traditional" Christianity lies on the wrong side of that border. I am not Christian, have never been Christian, will never be Christian. I have less than no interest in having my personal freedoms limited by someone else's beliefs in Deity.
Yet every year I see people with money and influence manipulating the weaknesses of our system of governance to do precisely that, and it's been going on for as long as I've been alive. These people who will lie in nomination hearings that personal freedoms are "settled law" just to get to a position where they can undermine said freedoms, you claim they aren't moustache-twirling villains; I can only agree that none of them have moustaches.
It is tragic imho and if the group you call out succeed, there will be many leopards eating many faces. The reason for religious tolerance in the constitution in the first place was to avoid the wars of religion that had been seen in Europe. If these neo-puritans succeed, they will start with gay and trans people, but Jehovahs Witnesses and Mormons for example will be somewhere on the priority list to be rejected and persecuted.
The Religious Right will shrink and eat it's own, just like the French Revolution did, Just like the successful Russian Communists did. Absolutist ideologies are incredibly dangerous on so many levels.
I feel I should also address this point.
There is no reason whatsoever that the most fundamental law of the land should be unintelligible to the average citizen. It's not far from "oh, well the law is complicated, you see," to an anointed priesthood with some sort of divine power to interpret the basic tenets of society. This SCOTUS is not only treading that line, they're walking it like a drunk does the line of a sobriety test.
If we cannot agree on the fundamental rights of every citizen in a way that is comprehensible to the overwhelming majority of those citizens, then perhaps we should not be trying to maintain a Union, because it's already lost.
Ah, I totally agree! An anointed priesthood is no way to run a modern society. I'll try to clarify my position:
The reason SCOTUS rulings are tough to unpack is they often involve tradeoffs. People with different values will swing one direction or another on those values -- freedom vs safety is a classic one. Should we let the government spy on us to keep us safer, or should we constrain the government even though that will cost lives? It's tough because there's no right answer, only tradeoffs and people with different viewpoints and values. But that nuance isn't how the media covers SCOTUS rulings, and that's a big part of the problem.
I find Supreme Court rulings to be pretty readable when I bother to read them, and they do include useful background information. The problem is that there is always more context that you might not get without more background knowledge.
Based on this comment, I wonder whether you might enjoy this book. it is built from very readable short essays by excellent writers. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50092714-fight-of-the-century?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=LFrrp3Vz8O&rank=2
Between this and Roe, it's weird to wake up and go "well, that's it, we have fewer rights and protections than we did yesterday"
What baffles me is the sheer apathy. My co-workers don't care, they "don't care about politics". Shining examples of the progress of American society, pillars of how we live in the year 2023, were removed and may not come back in our lifetimes. People's lives will be ruined and that's that. Their fates were sealed by a politically biased, corrupt, and unelected council that can reject or deny any facet of our government operation if anyone anywhere makes a court case of it.
I see no reason to recognize a branch of government that shapes its interpretations to fit the convenience of its donors and rejects any notion of improving American lives, harm mitigation, or even judicial precedent. They're a rogue branch with no oversight and power that supersedes the other two branches.
I feel this is by design. It's simply outrage fatigue.
Remember when we as a society declared someone unfit for office because they misspelt "potato"? The last administration had some new scandal on the weekly that would have sunk anyone else. It was political gish gallop that simply overwhelmed people and their ability to react or care. Honestly? It worked. People STILL aren't being punished for their roles in the insurrection on Jan 6th or any of the other crimes that happened.
A certain party wants disenfranchised voters. They're already talking about raising the voting age because they see people as voting "wrong". They're already declaring the 2024 election fraudulant 1 full 18 months ahead of time. They are motivated, organized and have money while being armed with undefinable and scary buzzwords like "woke" as their boogeymen. They have the power of "news" channels behind them that claim they are an entertainment network in court.
I fully predict they'll also claim the mass turnout of GenZ to further claim fraud since more people are willing to put effort into voting than in the past due to things like Roe, Pudding Fingers here in Florida and the general hate laws being passed.
It absolutely is. This is how the Russian political system is by design. The vast majority of the population is deliberately depoliticized, and actively avoids politics.
There's a real danger for allowing the apathy to fester and deepen. It's a mechanism to allow the political system and the powerful to target the weakest and poorest members of our society.
There’s another tildes post today that links to https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
Huge productivity gains and stagnant wages since the 70s. Where is the wealth from the productivity going?
The constant flood of nonsense is designed to mask the destruction of the middle class so the rich can have a little more. Citizens United, the consolidation of news under a few rich people, it’s all related.
I wasn't happy about voting for Hillary, but I did so and gladly because SCOTUS was on the line thanks to Moscow Mitch' obstructionism... people voted for an orange fascist and here we are.
FWIW, the view from the other side is very much the opposite. They feel this court is "calling balls and strikes" and following law and precedent (except where precedent broke from the law), and improving American lives and protecting them from harm. I suspect the truth is somewhere in the middle and our perceptions are being pushed to the extremes to suit someone's agenda (or agendas). The best solution, IMO, is all Americans need to broaden our media diet. It's our best chance to know when we're being lied to or manipulated-by-omission.
If you're into podcasts, a great low-effort way to sample narratives from both "sides" of the aisle is to listen to NPR's Up First and the Daily Wire's Morning Wire back-to-back. They're 10 minute news summary shows, and how each show covers a given topic (or doesn't cover a given topic!) is very illuminating.
The quick answer is the media by giving us exactly what we want to hear rather than nuanced, thoughtful discussion. The "if it bleeds, it leads" problem. A longer answer, with a more conspiratorial bent, is for as long as we're fighting each other over culture war issues, the people at the top are a lot more free to engage in corruption and war-mongering. Jon Stewart had an incredible rant years back when he exited the Daily Show where he talked about being blown away by how pervasive corruption is at every level of society. That should be a bipartisan issue, and we need dedicated journalists to investigate and expose that.
You're making a very important point here. Listen to conservative media (not the partisan Republican-party shill media, but media from principled conservatives) and you'll hear the "veneer" that you describe as exactly that, a veneer, a facade of respectability. NPR has been my primary news source for probably around 16 years -- I've been a sustainer for years and I still drink my morning coffee out of NPR "thank you" mugs. But NPR coverage is indeed selective, and a lot more biased than people on the left know. I learned that the hard way after I improved my media diet. (Also, as a side note: the Morning Wire is less ideologically pulled than the main Daily Wire content.) The reason I like contrasting the two shows is the format is so similar that it is very obvious when one of them omits coverage of an important topic.
I appreciate the suggestions! I am on the left and have been my whole life so those programs look like they're speaking to my baseline. I've been seeking out sources on the other side to tell me what I don't already know. I love podcasts and any long-form discussion format. I hope the trend toward those sources and away from the old-guard media continues.
Conservatives very much feel the opposite. That division is well-worth diving into and understanding as deeply as possible.
A liberal is unlikely to find a conservative news source they completely agree with. Not listening to each other will continue to deepen divisions. The goal of listening to news from the "other" side is to aid in understanding and not to agree. If we all did that for a couple years then we'd be a lot better able to find common ground. Right now both sides are entirely talking past each other and that will continue to make things worse. (Also, I mentioned in another thread the Morning Wire is more news-centric and while biased, doesn't step into the opinion-centric stuff to the degree the rest of the Daily Wire does.)
Thanks. Added to my queue.
That is a common view on the left, and I would have agreed with you 6-7 years ago, but that is no longer true. NPR, NYT, WaPo, CNN have all taken a hard turn left. I'm on the left and I didn't notice it until I knew what to look for. I'm glad you mentioned this because this is one of the hardest things for me to convince people of -- there's no good shortcut, you really just have to listen to right-wing media for an extended period to get a feel for it.
This is a great follow-up to my previous point because the exact same argument can be levied against the left. There's no good shortcut, we all just have to do the work of listening to stuff we disagree with. :-P
Sure! I'm no scholar, I'm just an idiot with a day-job who listens to podcasts while I commute so this is just off the top of my head: Up First had a complete blackout on the Twitter Files -- I don't skip episodes and I heard precisely zero mentions. Similar for the Hunter Biden scandals and IRS whistleblowers, which IIRC was only briefly mentioned and heavily downplayed. In contrast the Morning Wire covered the recent SCOTUS decision about the web designer but didn't mention the investigation into the incorrect/falsified customer list.
The Twitter Files weren't one story, they were several stories spanning several weeks of releases. Up First is a daily show so they more than had the time to cover that news. I use the term "blackout" very specifically here because right in the middle of those releases Elon Musk did something stupid and Up First did cover that. Up First was willfully choosing not to cover the Twitter Files.
I've enjoyed our conversation so far and I appreciate that you're willing to challenge my ideas, however this reply feels disingenuous to me. You asked for examples, I replied with an anecdote that I clearly said was from memory, then you replied with a Google site search. I never made claims on what the whole of the NPR news organization did or did not cover. Perhaps you read my use of the word "similar" to mean there was a blackout on Hunter Biden stories -- sorry if my statement was ambiguous -- Up First has indeed covered Hunter Biden but they consistently downplay those stories.
I could reply that you've fallen into left-wing misinformation that pushes a consistent narrative that right-wing media is entirely bigotry and misinformation/disinformation but that doesn't push our conversation any farther downfield.
What I can say is: being from the left I've always been able to notice when a right-leaning news source is showing bias or leaving out relevant information, however I wasn't able to do that for left-leaning news sources until I started listening to both sources, in earnest. Listening to thoughtful, long-form left-leaning sources is good(!) and we should all do more of that, but it also isn't going to show us our blind spots. We need to actively listen to things we disagree with before that can happen.
What do you think LGBT people should do when the right fearmonger and make stuff up? Surely we can recognise that there's a culture war while also recognising that it isn't a 'both sides' issue?
It's a great question. I'm just an idiot on the internet but I strongly believe the answer is: we fight like hell to secure (and maintain!) the civil rights of our fellow citizens because that is a core principle of our society, and after that we do our best to ignore each other and go about our lives. In a pluralistic society we'll never agree on everything and the solution to the right making stuff up cannot be the left making stuff up.
I agree! But are the left really lying as often or about as major things? Especially in regards to the realities of LGBT people?
Another great question. The short answer is that the right (definitively) thinks that they are. As I see it, the only way out of this mess is for each side to do the (hard and in good-faith) work of figuring out why the other side thinks that. Not to agree or sympathize, but to understand and empathize.
The right wing thinks that because they're in a media ecosystem that regularly lies to them and tells them that the left is dangerous and corrupt. The left wing thinks that because they see the right-wing media lie to its consumers and tell them that the left is dangerous and corrupt.
I have a lot of compassion for the people who are stuck in a media ecosystem that keeps them feeling oppressed and afraid, but this isn't a "both sides" sort of issue.
Daily Wire is pretty well known for being unreliable, is there a more truthful/less manipulative conservative outlet to compare with?
I'd suggest giving their Morning Wire offering a chance anyway and listing to it for a week and form your own opinion. Their coverage will obviously skew right, and any listeners from the left will notice (and be annoyed with) that perspective, but the goal of the exercise is to expose left-leaning listeners to right-leaning concerns, ideas, and coverage.
I'd recommend the exact same for any right-leaning people and NPR's Up First. And it's noteworthy that right-leaning people will have the same opinion of NPR that you expressed about the Daily Wire. :-)
I'm trans. Daily Wire constantly lies and fearmongers about people like me. Listening to them is not good for my mental health, and from what I've seen them say it probably won't improve the quality my media intake.
Is there not something better? A conservative news source that at a bare minimum won't lie and fearmonger about LGBT people?
I get that NPR is biased, but can't you see that the extent/impact isn't comparable? What does NPR miss out that Daily Wire of all places has a better and more nuanced take?
Here's what they seem to generally be put by fact/bias checkers:
Daily Wire: biased right, mixed factual reporting
NPR: biased left-center, high factual reporting
And the two I'm most exposed to (I'm not American):
Stuff: biased left-center, high factual reporting
RNZ: least biased, high factual reporting
Feel free to suggest a different fact/bias checker if you disagree with Media Bias / Fact Check's methodology.
The Morning Wire is more news-centered than the main opinion-centered content of the Daily Wire. Biased, obviously, but the news/opinion distinction matters here.
(I'm not sure if it would help your mental health when consuming difficult media, but I'll type this up just in case.) I think I've identified three-ish levels in mainstream conservative viewpoints on LGBT issues, and I find that when listing to conservative media it's helpful to try and identify where a given speaker falls on that spectrum: On one side, they feel it's wrong, usually on religious grounds, but respect the dignity of the person as a human; the "Jesus loves everyone" people. Next to that is people that don't approve of the lifestyle but support civil rights for LGBT people; the libertarian-esque ,"I don't care what consenting adults do with each other" people. Next to that is the people that opposite it on culture-war grounds, such as the Drag Queen Story Hour and We're Coming For Your Children topics; people that would be more likely to ignore it if they didn't (also) feel under attack or that it was targeting children. (Anyone outside of that spectrum has very extreme views and represents a tiny fraction of the population.) Most conservative talking-heads that I follow fall squarely in the middle, sort of a "Yes, it's wrong but that's between them and God, and everyone should probably have civil rights I guess, but propagandizing to children is where I draw the line." The reason I think watching for that spectrum is helpful is because there's a good bit of overlap in the "Eh, we disagree but let's just ignore each other," middle. :-P
I'm not aware of any fact checkers that aren't also ideologically biased, unfortunately. :-( I think the sad truth is we all have to do the (hard) work of trying to find news sources that help us understand the positions and values of the "other" side.
Which is an inherently disingenuous take, and all the talking heads espousing it know that. Nobody calls it propaganda when a straight couple kiss in a movie, or if a teacher mentions their heterosexual spouse to their classroom. As soon as a queer person does it though, it's suddenly propaganda and indoctrination. It's completely obvious and unequal treatment. This isn't done by people honestly engaging with the subject, it's mostly done by right wing hacks looking to prevent queer people by being accepted by society. They're still insinuating or outright stating it's wrong, they're just not currently calling for any direct action.
If that were actually true, I doubt huge swathes of conservatives would have so readily accepted the "grooming" and trans panic bullshit being peddled. Frankly, I think the truth is that they just don't like queer people, but were afraid of being called out as bigots, so they jumped on a surface-level excuse as soon as they could. "Oh, I'm fine with gay people, it's just the grooming thing I dislike, because of the children. Though, if they're doing such awful things, maybe we shouldn't be fine with them?" When the current wave of all this got started a few years back, lots of people called out the seemingly innocent concerns actually being a way to push into more serious bigotry, which is exactly what happened.
And on the ignore each other note, do you have any idea how much many queer people would love to just live their lives as people instead of being a constant political issue? It is exhausting beyond words to have to constantly fight for the right to exist, and it's the conservatives who are almost entirely responsible for driving that struggle. If your ideal is we all ignore each other and just live our lives, focus on fighting the people actively working to prevent it.
For some conservatives I'm sure that's true. I'm also sure that's not true for others that I've met IRL. I can't speak for all conservatives (mostly because I'm not one), but I can say the only way we're going to deescalate the culture war is by talking to each other (ideally in person), empathizing with each other, and finding common ground. There is common ground. <3
What exactly is the common ground between "equal rights for all" and the refusal to allow certain sections of the population to make personal medical decisions, or express themselves without discrimination? This is a legitimate question. You've been all over the place "both sides"-ing pretty much every political thread, but you don't seem to want to posit specific positions you want to defend, just keeping the idea of compromise and good will in the center without talking about what that means in any practical sense. I agree that it's all well and good to be kind, but I'd prefer that you either defend the right or stop talking like their ideas are equally defensible.
LGBT people aren't "propagandizing children" though, and the listeners on the right only think they are because the very programs you're suggesting tell them it's happening. They're not responding to a problem, they're creating one.
Slate article: The Supreme Court Just Legalized Stalking.
Supreme Court ruled that stalking is protected by 1st amendment. Looks like it overturned a Colorado court's decision; stalking is (was, now?) criminal in CO under state law.
I made a post about this in the previous weekly US politics thread and it isn't that cut and dry.
Fellow user @purpleyuan wrote up a great deep dive on the topic on how the ruling is aimed to address "True Threat" Doctrine abuse and that the stalker in the case isn't off the hook yet.
Thanks for linking those! The Slate article didn't go into the way the recklessness standard would be applied.
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/07/03/houston-texas-lawsuit-local-control/
Houston sues state in attempt to block new law that erodes Texas cities’ power to regulate within their borders