15 votes

Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of September 23

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Tags: politics, recurring.weekly, usa

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.

35 comments

  1. [2]
    Comment deleted by author
    Link
    1. DefinitelyNotAFae
      Link Parent
      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...

      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.

      6 votes
  2. [6]
    BeanBurrito
    Link
    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.

    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.

    10 votes
    1. Minori
      Link Parent
      Mayor of the same city council that banned pride flags, and he has liked anti-black racist posts on Facebook...

      Mayor of the same city council that banned pride flags, and he has liked anti-black racist posts on Facebook...

      8 votes
    2. [4]
      KapteinB
      Link Parent
      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...

      A recent poll conducted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations found Muslim voters in Michigan to be split in their support of the major party candidates, with 18 percent favoring Trump and 12 percent favoring Harris. The same poll, however, found that Jill Stein, the candidate of the Green Party, earning the support of 40 percent of Muslim voters, a significant plurality.

      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.

      4 votes
      1. BeanBurrito
        Link Parent
        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....

        Interesting. I haven't really been following Stein's campaign this time, since Kennedy took on the spoiler candidate role.

        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

        8 votes
      2. [2]
        BeanBurrito
        Link Parent
        That ship has sailed for Trump with his Muslim travel ban in his first term.

        . If Republican politicians could tone down their racisms a few notches, they may see Muslim voters flock to them.

        That ship has sailed for Trump with his Muslim travel ban in his first term.

        2 votes
        1. stu2b50
          Link Parent
          Evidently not, considering he still has higher support than Harris despite all that.

          Evidently not, considering he still has higher support than Harris despite all that.

          4 votes
  4. [3]
    Oslypsis
    Link
    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 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/

    7 votes
    2. DefinitelyNotAFae
      Link Parent
      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.

      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.

      13 votes
  7. [3]
    boxer_dogs_dance
    Link
    I've traveled across the country attending Trump rallies. Here's what you won't see on TV

    I've traveled across the country attending Trump rallies. Here's what you won't see on TV

    6 votes
    1. skybrian
      Link Parent
      It's about what I expected, but I appreciate the report from someone who actually went there and talked to people.

      It's about what I expected, but I appreciate the report from someone who actually went there and talked to people.

      5 votes
    2. DefinitelyNotAFae
      Link Parent
      Yeah... That's.... That's what I thought I'd hear. It is almost surprising how unsurprising it is.

      Trump validates and stokes that anger using textbook fascist tactics — the glorification of a mythic past, the marginalization of women, the division of society into “us” and “them,” the creation of a shared sense of victimhood, scapegoating, and an idealized white nationalist social hierarchy — and they eat it up.

      Yeah... That's.... That's what I thought I'd hear. It is almost surprising how unsurprising it is.

      3 votes
  8. [9]
    skybrian
    Link
    Gov. Newsom signs bill banning the use of cellphones during school hours (NBC Los Angeles) …

    Gov. Newsom signs bill banning the use of cellphones during school hours (NBC Los Angeles)

    Assembly Bill 3216, known as the Phone-Free School Act, would require every school district, charter school, and county office of education to adopt a policy limiting or prohibiting the use of phones by July 1, 2026.

    …

    According to the bill, students will be allowed to use their phones in case of an emergency, or a “perceived threat of danger." Newsom had also signed a law in 2019 granting districts the authority to regulate student smartphone access during school hours.

    5 votes
    1. [5]
      scroll_lock
      Link Parent
      Comment box Scope: comment response, question, opinions Tone: neutral Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none I think this is for the best but I am wondering how consistently it would be enforced. Or...
      Comment box
      • Scope: comment response, question, opinions
      • Tone: neutral
      • Opinion: yes
      • Sarcasm/humor: none

      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?

      6 votes
      1. [4]
        ButteredToast
        Link Parent
        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...

        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.

        4 votes
        1. [3]
          Oslypsis
          Link Parent
          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.

          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.

          2 votes
          1. [2]
            MimicSquid
            Link Parent
            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.

            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.

            1 vote
            1. kfwyre
              Link Parent
              GoGuardian is pretty commonly used for that. It gives you live thumbnails of your class’s screens, along with some other features.

              GoGuardian is pretty commonly used for that. It gives you live thumbnails of your class’s screens, along with some other features.

              2 votes
    2. [3]
      Minori
      Link Parent
      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...

      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.

      6 votes
      1. [2]
        Habituallytired
        Link Parent
        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...

        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.

        6 votes
        1. scroll_lock
          Link Parent
          Comment box Scope: comment response, scientific information, reflections/analysis Tone: neutral Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none I sense a feeling of injustice from your personal experiences....
          Comment box
          • Scope: comment response, scientific information, reflections/analysis
          • Tone: neutral
          • Opinion: yes
          • Sarcasm/humor: none

          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:

          Research consistently demonstrates the active use of cell phones, whether talking or texting, to be distracting and contributes to diminished performance when multitasking (e.g., distracted driving or walking). Recent research also has indicated that simply the presence of a cell phone and what it might represent (i.e., social connections, broader social network, etc.) can be similarly distracting and have negative consequences in a social interaction. Results of two studies reported here provide further evidence that the “mere presence” of a cell phone may be sufficiently distracting to produce diminished attention and deficits in task-performance, especially for tasks with greater attentional and cognitive demands. The implications for such an unintended negative consequence may be quite wide-ranging (e.g., productivity in school and the work place).

          Kaminske et al 2022:

          Recent research has found that the presence of cell phones impairs attention during learning. The present experiment sought to better understand this phenomenon by measuring the effects of cell phone presence, cell phone notifications, and cell phone ownership (participant's or others) on attention. Attention was measured using a Stroop task in a within-subjects design, wherein participants (n = 105) were exposed to five experimental conditions. Cell phone notifications caused distractions, regardless of phone ownership and task difficulty, increasing the amount of time required to complete the task.

          Lee et al 2020:

          Students' cellphone use has been related to poorer learning, possibly due to greater distraction. This study investigated whether cellphone-related anxiety, addiction, and disconnection were related to distraction and learning as well as how practical educational policies could minimize negative effects. .... Our findings showed that participants in the Use-Cellphone Group experienced a greater degree of distraction and worse test performance than those in the No-Instruction Group. Only cellphone addiction and distractedness played key roles in impacting the effects of condition on test performance. Thus, allowing cellphones in class may exacerbate existing cellphone addiction behaviors and impair learning.

          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.

          There is no reason to ban phones, especially if kids need to be taught to use them responsibly.

          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.

          9 votes
  9. [2]
    skybrian
    Link
    Eric Adams pleads not guilty to five-count criminal indictment (Politico) ... And here is Matt Levine's commentary:

    Eric Adams pleads not guilty to five-count criminal indictment (Politico)

    Mayor Eric Adams pleaded not guilty in Manhattan federal court Friday to charges that he engaged in a yearslong conspiracy to receive illegal foreign campaign contributions, wire fraud and bribery.

    ...

    Federal prosecutors have accused Adams, a Democrat, of having accepted free travel on Turkish Airlines and luxury hotel rooms worth more than $100,000, illegal contributions to his 2021 mayoral campaign and other perks from a number of people connected to the Turkish government. They allege that in exchange for those bribes, Adams used his position as Democratic nominee for mayor to fast-track the opening of the Turkish consulate in Manhattan.

    And here is Matt Levine's commentary:

    I’m sure the seats are nice, but bribery in the form of “free flights to Turkey” is somewhat inconvenient for the mayor of New York. From the indictment:

    Because the Turkish Airline provided free travel benefits worth tens of thousands of dollars to ERIC ADAMS, the defendant, he flew the Turkish Airline even when doing so was otherwise inconvenient. For example, during the July and August 2017 trip, Adams’s Partner was surprised to learn that ADAMS was in Turkey when she had understood him to be flying from New York to France. ADAMS responded, in a text message, “Transferring here. You know first stop is always instanbul [sic].” When Adams’s Partner later inquired about planning a trip to Easter Island, Chile, ADAMS repeatedly asked her whether the Turkish Airline could be used for their flights, requiring her to call the Turkish Airline to confirm that they did not have routes between New York and Chile.

    We have talked a lot recently about the scalability of various dodgy arbitrages: You can make a profit from your Spotify or Citi Bike account, but can you turn that profit into real money? I feel like this case raises a related intellectual puzzle, something like “how much of your lifestyle could you fund using unlimited free business-class travel on Turkish Airlines?” I am sure some of my pointsmaxxing readers will reply “oh man I could retire early and buy a mansion with unlimited free Turkish Airlines flights,” but for normal people like me and Eric Adams, unlimited free Turkish Airlines flights wouldn’t even cover all of our air travel needs. “Call the Turkish Airline to confirm that they did not have routes between New York and Chile,” come on man.

    Well, he also allegedly got a lot of campaign contributions from Turkish officials, which were allegedly funneled through US straw donors, which is probably more of the point. But in US law there is a polite fiction that “campaign finance violations” and “bribery” are different things: People are allowed to give elected officials money to pay for their campaigns (though not foreigners, and not through straw donors), but they are not allowed to give them money or another “thing of value” to pay for their personal lives in exchange for favors. Adams is charged with both campaign finance violations and bribery, and the free flights (and hotel stays) are the alleged bribes.

    And in exchange he allegedly did favors for the people bribing him. What favors? I mean?

    In September 2021, the Turkish Official told ERIC ADAMS, the defendant, that it was his turn to repay the Turkish Official, by pressuring the New York City Fire Department (“FDNY”) to facilitate the opening of a new Turkish consular building — a 36-story skyscraper — without a fire inspection, in time for a high-profile visit by Turkey’s president. At the time, the building would have failed an FDNY inspection. In exchange for free travel and other travel-related bribes in 2021 and 2022 arranged by the Turkish Official, ADAMS did as instructed. Because of ADAMS's pressure on the FDNY, the FDNY official responsible for the FDNY’s assessment of the skyscraper’s fire safety was told that he would lose his job if he failed to acquiesce, and, after ADAMS intervened, the skyscraper opened as requested by the Turkish Official.

    4 votes
    1. DefinitelyNotAFae
      Link Parent
      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...

      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

      2 votes
  12. [2]
    BeanBurrito
    Link
    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/

    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/

    2 votes
    1. boxer_dogs_dance
      Link Parent
      Yup. They report on criminal cases related to January 6.

      Yup. They report on criminal cases related to January 6.

      2 votes
  15. skybrian
    Link
    ‘Aware of our history’: Tiny Mississippi town faces its abusive police (Washington Post) ...

    ‘Aware of our history’: Tiny Mississippi town faces its abusive police (Washington Post)

    In the same church banquet hall where Justice officials met with residents last year to announce an investigation into [Lexington, Mississippi's] police department, they passed out the fruits of more than 10 months of their labor: copies of a 45-page document that spelled out, in chilling detail, the civil rights abuses allegedly committed by the people who had been sworn to protect the town.

    On another sheet of paper, the Justice Department boiled down its findings.

    The police department, the document read, “arrests, jails, and detains people who cannot pay fines or fees, without assessing their ability to pay,” uses excessive force, subjects residents to “stops, searches, and arrests without probable cause,” fails to provide arrestees with “prompt access to court,” retaliates against free speech, sexually harasses women and discriminates against Black people, among other accusations.

    ...

    Investigators, speaking more candidly after the release of the findings report, shared with residents their incredulity at the behavior of the Lexington department during the investigation. They said they witnessed civil rights abuses firsthand, and concluded that Lexington’s officers either didn’t know the law, or didn’t mind federal investigators seeing them break it.

    2 votes