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Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of October 19
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.
An Idaho ICE Raid Rounded Up Hundreds. The Fallout Could Change How ICE Operates
Summary below
I'd hope this would be eye-opening for anyone who doubts where we're going as a country.
Vivek Ramaswamy put out an ad so disgusting that the National Review did journalism to debunk it.
Amy Acton was the documented victim of child sexual abuse by her step father. Her mother lost custody of her and her brother and stayed married to the abuser. Ramaswamy created (or indirectly supported) an ad with Acton's mom telling people not to vote for Acton because "she's a liar".
It's deeply disgusting and the campaign isn't backing off but it seems a lot of Republicans have deleted their posts after the fact from the apology posts I'm seeing.
ETA: he confirmed it was his ad, the question existed because it lacked the mandatory "created by/approve this message" language .
Oof, that's vile!
I've long been astounded by the American style of campaigning where some candidates focus on trashing their opponent rather than explaining what they themselves bring to the table. I guess it must actually work or people wouldn't be doing it? I tend to instinctively dismiss people who try this because I've been taught that bashing others indicates incompetence, and I believe most people in my country share this belief, so something like this ad would be a career ending move here.
Even if opponent-bashing is a useful tactic in America/Ohio, I find it very hard to believe stooping this low could get him any other result than a clear cut loss.
(Wasn't he a presidential candidate too?)
A lot of places have stricter campaign laws, but part of what is so awful about this is that they tested it by polling people before it got released publicly and it works on a certain subset of voters he wanted. But there has been pretty widespread backlash, it's just a matter of whether his gains outweigh his losses.
Because her being a past victim will probably hurt her by some amount regardless of everything else. How much they can make the lies stick - Trump also was pushing the lies - vs the "so you support pedophiles" counterbalance... Idk.
He did run in 2024 yes but is starting to fall afoul of the white supremacy in the right even as very rich awful human.
Ugh, gross. It just makes him seem so desperate that it serves to paint him as a likely loser. Some people will probably vote for that because they're desperate/insecure themselves but hopefully not too many. Remains to be seen!
The current president of Ireland was a dark horse candidate who only* won because her opponent's negative campaign strategy was incredibly unpopular with everyone.
It’s a good strategy for the current Republican position. The reality is that the president is unpopular and so is the party, so trying to attack the other candidate is way to garner support without having to remind the voter that you’re with the guy raising gas prices.
A funny thing to observe in political ads in general is that neither the democratic candidate nor the Republican candidate in battleground states mentions their political affiliation in their ads. They both want to distance themselves from their respective parties.
For that ad in particular, if you know the background, it’s pretty despicable, but if you don’t, it’s convincing. It’s one thing for a political opponent to call you a liar - of course they would - but your own mother? That’s shocking.
Fingers crossed the backlash is loud enough to reach enough of those unaware voters to make a difference. It's been on the national news we watch every night, and even the current governor has called for the ad to be withdrawn.
It reminds me of the mailer saying a rival "didn't have the HEART for office" because he had a heart transplant. It was back in 2006 before attack ads got to the current level and I only learned about it from a trivia book years later, so I don't know what level of backlash it got... But Berryhill won the primary by 40 percentage points, and even 14 years later it was memorable enough that the article about his death referenced it in the headline. (And now I'm sad he died, he seems like a good man.)
Jared Kushner’s Hacked Phone Revealed His Secret Negotiations—Including More Than $700 Million in Transfers
(Reader mode got me through the paywall)
A long read. TLDR: Russians hacked Kushner's phone, later one of their agents got caught in Europe and decided to share info in exchange for avoiding a prison sentence. Monitoring the phone revealed negotiations and millions transferred between UAE / Saudi Arabia / Israel and Kushner.
Do you think this revelation is going to actually change anything?
Hopefully this is where the Dems are going to start attacking once they get power
I regularly listen to Heather Cox Richardson's explainer videos on YouTube. For those who don't know: she's a political historian, familiar with how dictatorships tend to rise and fall. She would likely say that there's never one single thing that causes things to change. It's many small things, often grassroot level, that accumulate and eventually create a mass that starts an avalanche. This kind of thing coming to light will probably fuel a bunch of such small things.
Of course, almost everyone already suspected this type of thing was happening, myself included, but it's something else to get confirmation and a detailed description.
Edit: typo
Thank you for the rec Lia, my political history is pretty weak for the 20th century.
But I've just checked out her wiki and she's written books about subjects I'm very interested to learn about, like what led to Wounded Knee, reconstruction, and the roots of how America became what it is now.
Thank you very much for highlighting her work!
It was a relief to discover her so I like to recommend the channel to others.
I wasn't aware that Republicans used to be the ones with a backbone who stood for democracy, but the information gives me hope that things can certainly change when enough ordinary people want them to.
This is thousands of times worse than whatever was supposedly found on Hunter Biden’s laptop so I expect 24x7 coverage of it on Fox News until next spring at least.
The Secret Terms of Trump’s Venezuelan Oil Deal (Pro Publica)
I don't get how they don't think this will turn in to Hugo Chavez 2.0, or another revolution. Also, drones are a thing now.
If it happens after Trump is gone (or even just lost the midterms) then obviously it's another weakness one can throw at the evil commie anti-american Dems and only Trump/Current-Republican will save the American taxpayer?
That, they genuinely don't expect anything they do to fail like they seem to have with Iran, or they just don't care.
Trump and Vance announce $25M whistleblower program to encourage public to report alleged fraud
And it will be totally unbiased:
NWLC: White House Establishes Women’s Health Division Amid Major Attacks on Women’s Health
Sure she did...