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Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of September 9
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.
The mainstream press is failing America – and people are understandably upset
'The ramblings of an absolute lunatic': Trump's incoherent behavior on display for the world to see
TIL the term "sane-washing."
Comes from a Reddit effortpost describing how and why political parties sane-wash extreme rhetoric from their flanks.
Taylor Swift endorses Kamala Harris for president after debate ends
Not a huge surprise.
Did anyone here watch the debate? Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten says Harris seemed nervous at first, but easily came out on top.
I watched it as background noise while doing other things. Didn't give it my full attention (because honestly, at this point Trump's voice alone can get my blood pressure rising) but Harris was doing far better than him. At some points she was just smirking and looked like she wasn't trying to laugh because some of the stuff he was saying. I myself honestly facepalmed at some of it.
Highlights that stood out to me include:
As you can tell, those things stuck out because they're mildly insane. Kamala reacted pretty civilly, and called him out on a few things like his reaction to January 6. I think there was only really one time that the moderators had to shut her down to keep things moving because she wanted to respond to one of Trump's responses. I think she was honestly kind of bemused by some of the things he was saying, her strategy seemed to be to let him say whatever and work himself up while showing off his... Less than stellar cognitive state.
Kamala very successfully baited him into his rants, she would give a more substantive answer and then mention his crowd size, and he'd spend his answer ranting and getting fact checked by the moderators.
I think she dodged some questions but he answered nothing. And the strategy tonight was absolutely to look and sound presidential while reminding the people that tuned Trump out how unhinged the things he says are. And it worked, so, brava.
Don't downplay the "concepts of a plan" comment.
The moderator asked "Yes or no question - so you don't have a plan?" and that's the best he could come up with.
"I have the concept of a plan" sounds like something one of my friends would say in D&D right before they charge into a room full of enemies Leeroy Jenkins style...
Trump should have cast fireball
It's very Binders Full Of Women which is not nearly crazy enough to be a repeated line of mockery given the near blood libel accusations he spewed, but Concepts of a Plan would echo in any other election
Binders Full Of Women was actually Romney saying something good in a cringy way, though. He was saying he wanted to get more women involved in his administration and had taken steps to do so. I'm glad it hurt him, I opposed him, but his meaning was actually good. Concepts Of A Plan is a cringey way to admit a bad thing - that he doesn't have a plan.
I mean yes, it was well intentioned if a bit dehumanizing. But in a saner world it'd be picked up on so much more heavily as being unprepared or incompetent than in this current world where you can make things up and not be called a liar.
I also watched the debate, and I think @CannibalisticApple hit all the important things that happened. Trump was easy to manipulate and Harris looked and sounded presidential. She dodged a few questions, and misspoke a couple of times - CNN listed her as having one mistruth in her debate, when she said that Trump left them with the worst unemployment since the Great Depression, but it was since the great recession of 2008 - but overall she did a great job.
One thing that gets to me is that Trump obviously doesn't understand political asylum. It is very clear that he thinks "asylum seekers" are people who have been removed from asylums for the criminally insane and are going to the US.
Another thing that I noted is that he doesn't really understand the concept of scale. At one point he made outlandish claims about how many immigrants are entering the US, and he claimed up to 20 million people per month are entering the states. That's just... not possible. I don't even understand the utility of making such a stupid claim. I realize that it is part of his debate methodology - he Gish Gallops every time he gets to speak, where he makes so many untruthful claims that it is impossible to address them all - but I don't actually see the utility of sneaking this lie into the minds of his constituency.
Harris outright manipulated Trump into melting down on live TV. She knew exactly what jabs to get in (crowd sizes, losing in 2020, etc) to make him go off script and start ranting about Haitians eating peoples cats. It was wild.
I wonder why she waited until almost exactly after debate. Would she not have endorsed her if she did poorly? Her endorsement of Harris was much strong than of Biden, which just seemed like a statement in a casual conversation to me. I'm guessing many of Swift's fans are very young, so I hope they show up to vote.
She won an award for best new artist in 2007 and toured for the first time in 2009. There are swift fans who bring their daughters to concerts
I think it was deliberately coordinated with the campaign. If somehow Harris had done poorly, it would be a media bump, but I don't think they counted on her doing poorly, just on how successful she was at getting him to do poorly.
I'm not saying that the campaign isn't capable of lying but the article linked above does deliberately call out that it was not coordinated:
Ah that was supposition on my part.
Whether it was or wasn't (and I want to watch that video either way) I suspect that the timing was at least deliberate on her part.
Yeah I feel like Taylor is too calculated (not necessarily in a bad way) to not have a very deliberate post like that ready to go. As my friend says, celebrity endorsements shouldn't be necessary but it's a good thing this one happened anyways
Oh 100%. And with the great cat photo to play into the childless cat ladies meme? I bet her and the PR team had the photoshoot with the cat the next day and then just debated exactly when to drop it.
This article repudiates nearly every claim Trump made in the debate. It's especially harsh, going so far as to call some claims "absurd" ("everyone" wanted Roe overturned) and "poppycock" (millions of people are coming from prisons and asylums into the US).
One particular piece of misinformation stuck out:
So no, Trump never offered extra soldiers to protect the capital, only to protect him.
As Haitians in Alabama face ‘baseless attacks,’ JD Vance parrots debunked claims about Springfield, Ohio
Two things in particular strike me about this,
This comes on the heels of a Republican governor and RFK Jr addressing stories of animal murder and RFK Jr specifically allegedly eating a dog. Its being pushed by the House Judiciary GOP Twitter account and Elon Musk along side the VP candidate. Add in that I personally don't think that Vance has a relationship with the dog he brought on one campaign stop and it's one of those "flip the accusations on someone else" sorts of things.
This pattern is familiar and falls right alongside anti-Asian xenophobia, allegations of schools doing operations on students and outright blood libel. It is not far from "precious pets" to "Christian babies". Combined with the statements Trump has made about how bloody deportation would be, and it is sickening.
This came back up at the debate. Honestly this is some really awful racism and xenophobia.
Donald Trump had a really, really bad debate in the New Yorker
Michigan had a contest to design an "I Voted" sticker
The werewolf makes me tempted to vote in person this year as opposed to using my absentee.
As a Michigander and registered voter, I feel compelled to collect all of these some how.
Those are amazing and I am so jealous. I love all of them, from the "I voted yay" to the fish.
They're Eating The Dogs - Trump vs. Harris ft. Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Trump's authoritarian promise/threat is distilled into one paragraph and broadcast on social media
His response wasn't reasonable. He was anti-mask for a long time, despite all the historical evidence of their effectiveness, encouraged people to take chloroquine and follow random disproven advice instead of actual tested medical advice, and as @PelagiusSeptim said, repeatedly claimed that it wasn't that much of a threat despite both evidence that that wasn't true and that he knew otherwise. There were some side effects to the vaccine, that's true, but there were exceeding rare, no different than any other vaccine.
As far as Jan 6, he actively did nothing during the attack is pushing the whole "Ashli Babbitt shouldn't have been shot" narrative despite her being a former MP who should've known better than to keep trying to climb through that window (Wikipedia link, I know, but it's got a lot of sources). The "evidence" behind any manipulation against Trump is also so flimsy that literally every case about it was thrown out, several of the lawyers who submitted cases were disbarred for it, and every single third-party audit determined that there was no fraud (I couldn't find a good single source here, but if you look up the results there's quite a few). The biggest evidence of any sort of election fraud is the numerous emails from Trump's team about the plan to claim there was fraud as well as the emails about planning and then executing the fake elector plan.
Edit: since I already posted one Wikipedia link, screw it, just read through the article on the attempts to overturn the election. It covers pretty much everything.
I'm sorry, what? His entire presidency was marred by controversy! You could pick any random day from his time in office and find a different scandal. I mean, your list of "great controversies" doesn't even include one of his impeachments -- for any other administration that would be the greatest political scandal in a generation.
It's not "tricky". It was absolutely despicable and likely the greatest betrayal of the Office in American history. Trump had a duty to act and chose not to, putting himself above his country. Even now he considers himself the victim of January 6.
Trump's skepticism regarding covid was not justified. He admitted in the Woodward tapes that he knew how deadly covid could be, and intentionally downplayed it.
Large numbers of people voting is not surprising in an incredibly polarizing election.
He absolutely tried to do so, it's just that the investigations he ordered failed to produce any evidence suggesting criminality because they were wholly based on lies.
His rally speeches since Biden won are full of content focused on revenge and retribution. I don't want this guy in charge of the irs or the FBI.
I also don't think he's joking about internment camps full of immigrants.
Even if he was joking.... how could anyone find the joke actually funny?
Edit: To further elaborate on this, I don't really know why if a literal president elect "promises sentences during a campaign" we should respond with a "meh". The very fact that Trump says stuff like that, even if he can't go through with it, should be a very alarming red flag as it is.
Relying on "he says stuff but he doesn't mean it" is honestly such a stupid idea. We the people should have to play a game of "is he serious this time or is it bullshit" every time he opens his mouth. Let's just take him seriously.
Because personally a man who idolizes Putin and Orban, who has tried to overthrow the government, who refuses to acknowledge he lost 4 years later, who has said that if he loses it'd be fraud again, who has said that when he takes power he'll prosecute his enemies.
The odds of the DoJ having sane people in it who refuse to follow his orders this time are not better than before. They're much much worse.
The Atlantic put this sentiment nicely (although in the context of Vance peddling the alt-right's migrants-eating-pets conspiracy):
North Dakota’s Abortion Ban Is Overturned
I believe the same judge has overturned a previous ban as well and the North Dakota Supreme Court upheld that decision, so they passed a new one.
Credit to a judge that can acknowledge that bodily autonomy is required for pursuit of happiness.
Creative!
Getting prison time for saving a patient's life is pretty fucked up. As is waiting for a patient to get worse before being able to legally help them.
The fear of prison and waiting until patients are septic or worse has been happening across the country as these laws pop up. It's absolutely disgusting. The laws, not the doctors. The doctors are stuck.
Haitian immigrants helped revive a struggling Ohio town. Then neo-Nazis turned up (The Guardian)
…
…
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The initial Facebook post which was several levels of "a friend of an acquaintances's neighbor saw" was tracked down.
It's horrible and the author is like "what? Leopards will burn down my town? I never imagined that when I posted unsubstantiated rumors about Haitian people, they might blame Haitian people" (paraphrase).
But no, she is the one in the minority...
You missed the craziest part:
Median voter moment. I struggle to imagine being that uninformed about politics...
Dick and Liz Cheney endorse Kamala Harris
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/dick-cheney-kamala-harris-liz-cheney-rcna169979
What a time to be alive. I'm not a fan of Dick Cheney, but they're both actual Republicans who stayed with their principles while the rest of their party got suckered by a populist RINO. Let's hope they still hold some sway over actual Republican voters.
Trump’s campaign says candidate is safe after gunshots were reported in his vicinity in Florida
Here's a Twitter post by Tracing Woodgrains arguing that conservatives benefit from a kind of "affirmative action" in law:
Trump promises no taxes on overtime wages
Yes, encouraging more hours for fewer people (and so less job positions) is clearly going to be beneficial for the working class...
Project 2025 proposes doing away with overtime pay. Nothing taxed is no tax paid.
Lower the FLSA (or abolish it) and anyone can be salaried
Trump often picks up and promotes other people’s terrible ideas. (Most recently, about Haitian immigrants.) But not that one, apparently?
More like "yet".
Trump implemented or tried to implement 60% of the Heritage Foundation's proposals the first year he was in office.
As you know, anything Trump may have said more than 4 minutes ago is worth anything. :-)
In this case, though, eliminating overtime pay is an unpopular idea, even with his base, so I’m doubtful that a populist would pick up on that one. How could that be made popular? So, I think it would be in the 40%.
Overturning the ACA is unpopular, he tried to do that too.
Unpopular in general, but popular enough with some Republicans that they could win primaries.
I think getting rid of overtime pay would be much less popular than that: bad politics anywhere. It would be hard to find anyone other than a few weird intellectuals in favor.
There are genuinely working class people who are opposed to the minimum wage because they don't think abolishing it would lower their own wages, just the "unskilled" wages
So ultimately, I'm going to believe the guys that say they're going to do the thing. If Trump was unaligned with P2025, I might not ascribe it to him. However despite his claims, he's actively working with and supported by many people actively involved in making it.
It is reasonable to infer he'd sign a bill removing overtime pay if it were passed.
Minimum wages and overtime pay aren't the same thing, so that's a rough analogy at best.
I'm aware they're not the same thing and never said they were. I'm not making an analogy. I'm acknowledging that there are people who will support things outside of their best interest because they don't think it will hurt them, just other people who don't deserve it. Labor laws were hard fought for and they can be lost if we don't continue to fight for them.
I'm also saying that pretending that deeply unpopular things won't pass because it's some sort of rationally bad idea is naive at best and ignorant at worst. Vance and Trump have surrounded themselves with people involved in Project 2025. Whether that's the party placing their preferred people or Trump choosing them doesn't matter to the ultimate outcome. He wants to deport anyone he thinks shouldn't be here, from legal immigrants to anti-war protestors. Hell, he's asked why he can't just have the protestors shot before. If someone hadn't said no, do you think he wouldn't have because it might possibly unpopular? Do you think the racist hatred he's fomenting about legal Haitian immigrants is polling as popular?
It seems there were a few people already upset about Haitian immigrants before the Trump campaign latched onto a preexisting controversy and made it national news. Though, going back further, Trump is certainly responsible for fanning fears that were, in turn, already there in the US and go way back.
Here's another story about Haitian immigrants in a different community. They're getting published now in reaction to Trump making it national news, but apparently a local controversy started last month:
Haitian immigrants fleeing unrest and facing exploitation find ‘Alabama is the best place to live’
I wouldn't be particularly surprised if literal Nazis were behind that controversy too, somehow. But that's speculative, and there are a lots of other sources of nonsense online. Memes aren't hard to make. They would have no power if there weren't people who were already susceptible.
Despite getting a controversy in the national news again, I don't think Trump has the power to take any bad idea and make it popular. He's an accelerant.
I'm aware that Trump didn't invent the idea. He doesn't typically invent things. Fomenting means to stir or instigate, not invent. He absolutely instigating xenophobic and racism hatred of immigrants today.
I didn't say he could take "any bad idea", I said the architects of these specific bad ideas work for/with him. And thus while I may hope if he's elected that none of them come to pass, I will not assume that he cannot, particularly given his explicit desire to terminate the constitution and upend the rule of law itself.
I'll agree that it'll be great if none of this happens. But let's not deflect away again and again. Unpopularity does not stop him from trying to do what he wants.
So in short, I don't think minimum wage and overtime are the same. I don't think that Trump came up with the idea of hating immigrants and I don't think that Trump can take absolutely any bad idea and make it happen. I think he will try to accomplish whatever he wants to do and that his advisors support Project 2025 so he'll probably try to do a lot of those things in that document.
I am trying very hard to engage fully in good faith with you and I feel like that is not being reciprocated as we keep hopping to a new subject that's just barely related but no longer part of the actual topic. If you don't want to, that's fine, but I'm happy to talk about this topic, Haitian immigrants doing well in Alabama is definitely a different topic.
Maybe it’s a little indirect, but I was attempting to explain why I don’t agree with your arguments and sharing information you might not be aware of. I don’t suppose it matters though. We should probably just stop talking about Trump.
Two Springfield public schools evacuated, one closed due to bomb threats
Springfield, OH
Two days in a row now I believe.
This is why I can't get behind the jokes on this one. These accusations, including alleging the Haitians in Springfield are "illegal" aka undocumented, or that immigrant gangs are taking over apartment buildings in Aurora*, are likely to lead to very direct harm to those people.
*I can't keep up on my racist signal whistles I think that's the claim for Aurora. It's the claim somewhere.
They're also distractions from Trump's policy failures. He will make things worse for the Everyman™. The Democrats make the rich richer but the Republicans make things worse for everyone else. Since WWII, Democrats have added 50 million jobs, I believe it is, whereas Republican presidents have added 1 million. I normally don't believe that we can attribute as much of the economy to the president as most people do, but I mean, come on. The difference is huge.
Yes, ha ha, the bad man said that "they're eating the dogs; they're eating the cats," and that's a big part of why he's dangerous, but most people don't care about that danger; they only care about the impact on their own finances.
And yes, the Venezuelan gangs supposedly took over an apartment complex in Aurora, CO. Which, like, would suck if it were true, but I mean Fair Housing laws make it so you can't discriminate in housing based on race or ethnicity (no matter how much Trump would like to not have to house Black people), so I don't really see how that would be preventable.
That statistic refers to the end of the Cold war and not World War Two. With Both Bush and Trump ending their terms on a major recession they caused or worsened while Clinton, Obama and Biden have more or less gotten employment back on track. An MSNBC writer said they checked the Bureau of Labor Statistics to make the claim and it checks out.
So it's basically that
jobs on 1/20/93-jobs on 1/20/89+jobs on 1/20/09-jobs on 1/20/01+jobs on 1/20/21-jobs on 1/20/17~= 1,000,000And by coincidence (whether due to policy or pandemic (and policy)), there has been a recession at the end of each Republican presidency, meaning that Democrats have had the opportunity to exit recessions every time. Basically a perfect storm.
From what I can tell there were some gang members arrested, but there's a particularly MAGA supporting official there that has been claiming nationwide gangs are taking over blah blah blah. There was some backtracking after the debate but then some backtracking about the backtracking. Crime happens, they seem to have handled a big chunk of it. And no matter what Trump says all Venezuelans aren't violent criminals and mental patients. Ugh it's disgusting.
I think the distraction machine is working against him more than for him this time. He seems to be getting further and further "off message". Coming up with "no tax on overtime" which is a decent marketable campaign promise, and pivoting immediately to immigrants. He can't be kept on topic at all anymore, and whether that is him not wanting to, age, cognitive decline, or idek what, it seems like that is less popular than it used to be. And if you can't convince all those people that you actually would be better for them...
Having more of the voting public have to listen to his unhinged ranting during the debate was effective I think. He's exhausting and nonsensical. And if you (general) aren't so far in the tank for him that you think he was great that night, you may be thinking about 4 years of that bullshit vs that calm professional woman who wouldn't say insane things. Maybe I'm just being optimistic though.
50 million and 1 million aren't right, but there is a sizable difference in the Democrats' favor. At least 1:2 ratio, it seems.
Thanks, that felt insanely high, but I couldn't remember any other number.
Lindsey Graham gets dragged into Marjorie Taylor Greene's fight with Laura Loomer... because it is in fact possible to be too racist for MTG?
Look this is stupid posturing other than the disrespect of Trump bringing Loomer to 9/11 event, and of the absolutely racist garbage she said about Harris. I won't repeat it. Laura Loomer needs less oxygen, not more.
But it was so over the top ✨Drama✨ I wanted to share it.
I don't like to make fun of people for things they can't change but like woof, Laura Loomer is 31 but looks like she's in her 50s. Is that due to plastic surgery? I know I've seen other people discussing that they had the same initial reaction to learning her age, so I'm genuinely curious if that's the explanation.
I guess plastic surgery would be something that she changed, not that it makes it okay to make fun of for the various mental and physical explanations that could have led to the surgeries.
Also, my initial thoughts learning about her "meteoric" rise and sudden appearance in the national scene was that maybe she's sleeping with Trump? But like I don't know if he would just fuck anything that moves or if he legitimately would not be interested in someone who looks like her because he's so vain? Again, not a criticism of her appearance but a criticism of Trump and something that I only even thought about because of how sleezy he is, not because of anything about her.
Either way, hearing about her being with the Trump team behind the scenes during the debate makes me wonder what it's like to be someone who knowingly lies to the world just to make themselves more...famous? Richer? Powerful? I'm not sure what they get. Just feeding their egos, I guess? Like surely all these smart people on Trump's team know he's bad for everybody. And there are many intelligent people who will vote for Trump. What do they think about his lies? Do they have cognitive dissonance? Do they just not care? I try not to care sometimes but I always just fall back into my pattern of being a "good" person lol so I can't comprehend it.
Iirc she was on team "they're doing abortions onstage at the DNC"
I mostly try not to pay any attention to her, but I think having her as part of the team is strategic. In theory she says the more extreme things (which Trump always admires), and he only has to say "some very fine people are saying..." And so on.
I think the intelligent people are aware of the bullshit, and are listening to the Project 2025 policy guys - I don't even know who he still has on his team that's a functional person but I assume many - the people that will put the bill in front of him and tell him what to sign. The ones frustrated he can't stay on target but know if they give him a list of judges to pick from he'll pick one of theirs and ask no questions, etc. They think it'll benefit them for him to be in office for whatever variety of reasons. Some of which, intelligent as the person may be, are still biased BS.
Not exactly news, but...Trump referred to 7-11 instead of 9/11 without realizing it and it just needs to be shared. With his team containing "truthers," we need to discuss the fact that 7-11 was a part-time job.
https://youtu.be/GgUf1mJPqcY
AI generated video making fun of him:
https://youtu.be/Q-mV96SHIZU
But more importantly, let's discuss the facts that Donald Trump's economic policies are predicted to raise the national debt by $5T (as opposed to $1T with Harris's), that Republicans increase the national debt way more than Democrats, and that "Since 1933, the economy has grown at an annual average rate of 4.6 percent under Democratic presidents and 2.4 percent under Republicans...The average income of Americans would be more than double its current level if the economy had somehow grown at the Democratic rate for all of the past nine decades." Most importantly, animals have never had a war; who's the real animals???
Video: Biden, Harris, Trump and Vance attend 9/11 ceremony in New York
Not really that notable, but... interesting...to see them all just standing there right next to each other.
Harris shaking Trump's hand and being prepped for the arm yank, Biden not acknowledging him. I was amused
Also Vance is deliberately mimicking Trump's fashion choices. They're bad fashion choices and the tie is glaring, but it feels both very intentional and very dumb.
Vance's mimicry is even more...well, I was going to say "absurd," but I guess weirder would fit better with him...because Trump has a compulsion to be the best-dressed man around with perfectly fitting suits, etc., and Vance looks terrible in his suit. Not to start a whole "Obama in a tan suit" thing, but it just kind of demonstrates how he can't help but badly imitate Trump.
I mean I would agree that Trump wants to be the best dressed man around but also that he's very much not. The whole suit is too big, Sleeves are too long etc
But yeah, Vance looks like a parody of a parody