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Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of September 23
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.
AP: Missouri executes a man for the 1998 killing of a woman despite her family’s calls to spare his life
CNN: Missouri executes Marcellus Williams despite prosecutors and the victim’s family asking that he be spared
NBC News: Prosecutors say Marcellus Williams is innocent. He’s scheduled to be executed anyway.
The Guardian: Missouri executes Marcellus Williams despite prosecutors’ push to overturn conviction
Washington Post: Missouri executes Marcellus Williams despite prosecutors’ objections (archive link)
this case is particularly notable because there's often death-penalty cases where, despite evidence that points towards innocence, the prosecutors maintain their belief that the accused person actually committed the crime.
in this case even the prosecutors were like "yeah, we got this one totally wrong, this dude in innocent"
and it didn't matter.
they executed him anyway.
oh, also, you get 3 guesses about the skin color of the executed man. and 3 guesses about his religious beliefs. hint: you won't need all 3.
Days like this I wish for the Christian afterlife to exist so Parson and the judges and everyone else involved in denying this decision would have to stand before their Creator and be held accountable for what they've done. None of the rest of us can really make them see the blood on their hands, so maybe He could.
I don't really believe in that sort of afterlife but... Sometimes.
In the same week that convicted felon Trump promises mass deportations, a mayor of Muslim majority populated city endorses Trump and the Uncommitted Movement refuses to endorse Harris.
Mayor of the same city council that banned pride flags, and he has liked anti-black racist posts on Facebook...
Interesting. I haven't really been following Stein's campaign this time, since Kennedy took on the spoiler candidate role.
From what I understand, Muslims tend to be conservative, even more so than Christians. If Republican politicians could tone down their racisms a few notches, they may see Muslim voters flock to them. The same goes for conservative and "conservative" parties in other countries. But as long as the racist voter block outnumbers the Muslim voter block, that would probably be a bad move politically.
I remember there was a similar situation with Latino voters, who in the US tend to be more conservative, and started trending towards the Republican Party during the Bush and Obama years. Some assumed the Republicans would become the dominant political party for decades, by embracing the Latino voter base. Then came Trump with his "and some, I assume, are good people" speech.
I was surprised to read that Stein, personally, is not even a viable or a competent candidate, her party not having a congressional presence aside.
Stein isn't even on the ballot in all 50 states. When asked, Stein could not answer how many members of Congress there are.
https://www.salon.com/2024/09/12/jill-stein-schooled-on-in-brutal-breakfast-club-interview
That ship has sailed for Trump with his Muslim travel ban in his first term.
Evidently not, considering he still has higher support than Harris despite all that.
three former chairs of the Maine Republican party endorse Harris
Trump says he will not run again if he loses this November.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-says-he-will-not-run-again-if-he-loses-november-that-will-be-it-2024-09-22/
Trump Says 'You'll Never See Me Again' If He Loses to Biden - 2020
But he won't lose, because if he loses it's a lie. If he loses California it's because of fraud.
I wish I found this more reassuring.
Georgia Teamsters endorse Harris
Montana Voting System Shut down After Kamala Harris Left off Ballot
I've traveled across the country attending Trump rallies. Here's what you won't see on TV
It's about what I expected, but I appreciate the report from someone who actually went there and talked to people.
Yeah... That's.... That's what I thought I'd hear. It is almost surprising how unsurprising it is.
Gov. Newsom signs bill banning the use of cellphones during school hours (NBC Los Angeles)
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I think this is for the best but I am wondering how consistently it would be enforced. Or just how it would be enforced.
Realistically they also need to ban students from using personal computers in classrooms too. There is the same problem there with distraction. Maybe worse because it is easier to pretend to be doing classwork on a laptop than a phone. It really has a dire effect on their education and ability to focus on anything meaningful.
The article mentions that 4 states have cell phone bans in schools, apparently Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, and South Carolina, and some of those are already in place. I wonder how well they're working?
If internet access were restricted (potentially turned off depending on the class), I think that'd curtail the distraction potential of computers well enough. Of course the internet isn't required for computers to be distractions (as many who snuck Warcraft II and similar onto school computers in the 90s knows) but the barrier to entry is increased which helps a lot.
Maybe a big mirror on the wall at the back of the class would help the teacher see if anyone is playing games. Assuming the students are all facing the same way.
Or a live display of all of their screens. Even if each one is barely a thumbnail, it's pretty obvious when someone is playing a game rather than on a word document or wikipedia.
GoGuardian is pretty commonly used for that. It gives you live thumbnails of your class’s screens, along with some other features.
I'm really unsure how much this'll matter. It'll give us plenty of data and natural experiments, but I'm not sure it'll improve educational outcomes. Could just be my personal biases talking as a kid that was always bored and had plenty of free-time in classes.
As someone who had her phone confiscated when it wasn't even on her person, and someone else's went off in class, I don't think this will be the most positive outcome. There is no reason to ban phones, especially if kids need to be taught to use them responsibly.
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I sense a feeling of injustice from your personal experiences. While understandable, I don't think it outweighs the scientific research. Young people don't have a lot of impulse control and cell phones are designed to take advantage of that. It seems like there is a fairly broad scientific consensus that cell phone use in the classroom has a negative effect on students' ability to learn things.
Thornton et al, 2014:
Kaminske et al 2022:
Lee et al 2020:
There is a lot of other research about cyberbullying that I won't get into, but that is also a problem exacerbated by the amount of access to cell phones that children have.
Realistically, whether or not the "mere presence" of a phone causes distraction, the receipt of notifications and the use of the phone is absolutely a distraction. There is not a feasible way to disable notifications on every student's phone but allow them to keep the phones; they will just turn notifications back on. If they have possession of their phones, they will tend to use them. You either have to lock down the software (not feasible) or confiscate the phones (extremely feasible).
Personally I would argue that, even between classes, the distraction of being transported into the cyber world on a cell phone is a kind of context switching that lends itself to inattention during class. There is a lot of research about this in the workplace indicating that the time it takes to mentally "recover" from a distraction like reading Facebook posts can be quite significant and severely impact productivity.
The things that young people need to learn about technology are mostly related to data privacy, security, and internet hygiene. You don't need to use your personal cell phone to understand security concepts. If schools really need to teach something hands-on in a dedicated class, they can provide the phones or let the kids use their phones for that class, but there is no value in giving children access to cell phones in other classes, where they will inevitably distract themselves.
The actual skill of using a phone is extremely rudimentary and is self-taught by most young people. As far as mechanical skills go, young people might benefit from learning to touch-type on a computer, and they would benefit from hands-on experience using file systems and some other basic computing principles, but that also doesn't require the use of a personal cell phone.
One other thing that isn't strictly related to learning: I think that kids having constant access to their cell phones (and by extension their parents) in school has a negative impact on their independence. Parents will constantly text and call their children during school hours and expect a response. This is despite the children being in an extremely controlled and predictable environment with strict supervision. From a safety perspective, barring emergencies (which the law makes exceptions for), cell phone use in this context is not necessary. (When I was a child, if my parents truly needed to contact me or vice versa, it was done through a landline phone call, and that was fine.) What it ends up doing is entitling parents to every single second of every single day of their children's time, which is unfair to the kids and in my opinion places a pointless mental load on the parents that they don't even recognize - a compulsive urge to track their child's every breath.
If you look at the behaviors of Generation Z today, you already see a lot of signs of this. They are a very "afraid" generation. There's a lot going on there, but the lack of independence is certainly influenced by the overbearing parenting styles that have become popular among Generation X and Millenials.
Eric Adams pleads not guilty to five-count criminal indictment (Politico)
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And here is Matt Levine's commentary:
I think the fact that Turkey (Turkiye? Are we doing that? I don't know ) did all that and got...Eric Adams.
The Istanbul of New York.
Also Peter Shamshiri of the If Books Could Kill podcast did an episode on Eric Adams that they unlocked off their Patreon, mostly because it's just Peter hating Eric Adams and explaining why.
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2040953/episodes/15822103-unlocked-eric-adams
experts predict vote counting delays in important states on election night
Some positive election news from the Muslim American community:
https://apnews.com/article/kamala-harris-emgage-muslims-endorsement-gaza-israel-trump-campaign-biden-ad30de2fc83a7fd4f65190c0f3d1a6da
It turns out reddit has a subreddit dedicated to compiling articles about the consequences January 6th Capitol insurrectionists are facing.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CapitolConsequences/
Yup. They report on criminal cases related to January 6.
Son of suspect in Trump assassination attempt arrested on Child Sexual Abuse Material charges after his home was searched for unrelated reasons.
Wow. Out of the frying pan, into the fire, I suppose.
Post roe health care crisis is not the Mormon way says LDS for Harris spokesperson
‘Aware of our history’: Tiny Mississippi town faces its abusive police (Washington Post)
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