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Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of May 10
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.
This sounds truly bananas. So basically anyone has standing to sue any abortion provider so long as that person suspects the abortion provider ran afoul of the heartbeat bill at some point? Abortion clinics (and their employees/volunteers) are going to be swamped with frivolous lawsuits.
Warren plans to run for third term in the senate in 2024
I find this a pretty important development, mainly because, other than AOC and Ilhan Omar, neither of which are really allowed to run for prez. under current legislation, there's basically no one with a meaningful amount of name recognition in progressive politics that can run for president. So who is going to represent us for president in '24? (Arguably it might not be so bad, because then we have to focus on non-federal races, which are smaller scale and arguably more important.)
Joel Greenberg, a former tax collector in Florida, admitted to sex trafficking a minor and agreed to help in prosecutions of others.
same story in NPR, if you want an unpaywalled source
Here's the actual plea agreement - 86 pages long. The juicy stuff starts on page 28, where the prosecutors lay out the factual basis of the charges - which in the context of the plea argument means facts that Greenberg is agreeing are true.
He also (page 39) used his work credit cards (from the Florida Tax Collector's office) to buy ~$7200 worth of cryptocurrency, presumably Bitcoin but they don't say explicitly.
...and then (page 42) embezzled around $100,000 from the tax collector's office to buy more cryptocurrency.
By page 52 he's up to $200,000 worth of state funds being used to buy Bitcoin.
Page 58, he set up a corporation with the not-scammy-at-all sounding name of "Government Blockchain Systems".
And that's my limit of how much legalese I can skim through...but muh gawd that's some brazenly stupid Florida Man level criming.
ProPublica: Trump spawned a new group of mega-donors who now hold sway over the GOP's future
NYTimes: Beneath Joe Biden’s Folksy Demeanor, a Short Fuse and an Obsession With Details
Which part of this is criticism? Maybe I'm stupid, but it just seems like a normal article describing what Biden is like? Not too different from the ones about Trump and Obama.
I don't think it's strictly positive or negative. Perfectionists have similar tradeoffs to the Biden being portrayed by the article.
Having high expectations for experts and paying attention to detail are good traits. If those expectations interfere with him delegating work or he gets stuck on minutiae, those become problematic traits.
Your rephrasing to "Biden doesn't have time for vagueness or policy minutiae..." is a bit counter to the description of Biden asking how half a dozen professions are impacted by a climate policy, what they make, how many there are, etc. Those are probably necessary questions to convey what he expects to get staff he trusts, but a few months down if he can't trust that an expert confirmed there was a geothermal resource needed for the proposal they made it might be an issue.
I read the article as a descriptive piece, not critical or puff. Some of it was a bit awkwardly written, but overall it seemed to match up decently with what I saw of Biden as a candidate. His temper when defending his son in a debate with Trump probably won him points. When it led to him challenging a guy in Iowa to a push-up contest or asking a reporter "Are you a junkie?", it was a gaff.
Honestly I had to do a double take that this article wasn't in the opinion section but an actual article, filed under politics, published by the times.
I suppose, in a way, if this kind of junk is what's necessary to fill out the paper's politics section, then that's a good sign for the nation after the last 4 years.
I would be glad to be proved wrong, but this seems like all smoke with no fire. Nobody with any real clout seems to be joining in on any of this, and the "american renewal" think seems pretty toothless. From my experience over the last few years, a few people will put up a mild fuss and then fall right back in line when it comes time for voting.