Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of March 17

I had read it yesterday and it's so horrible... She only got out due to the media attention and nothing else. There is no rule of law present anymore in that system. None.

We sat in freezing-cold jail cells for hours, waiting for everyone to be processed. Across the room, one of the women suddenly spotted her husband. They had both been detained and were now seeing each other for the first time in weeks.

The look on her face – pure love, relief and longing – was something I’ll never forget.

This just reminds me so much of the material I read about concentration camps during history class and I'm just so horrified.

Far out that was a harrowing read

Which brings us back to the core question: how could these Democratic Senators support a plan that would simultaneously give Donald Trump unprecedented censorship powers while also consolidating Meta’s control over online speech?

The evidence suggests they simply don’t understand what they’re doing. Each of these Senators has a documented history of fundamental confusion about Section 230 and how the internet works:

*Richard Blumenthal has been getting Section 230 wrong since his days as Connecticut’s AG in the early 2000s.

*Sheldon Whitehouse’s chapter on free speech revealed such profound confusion about Section 230 that it’s hard to believe he’s actually read the law.

*We’ve already covered Durbin and Klobuchar’s dangerous misunderstandings.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/03/16/trump-has-pummelled-the-us-to-the-edge-of-recession-destroy/

There is an interesting graph that shows the tariffs promised on the campaign trail versus the announced tariffs, the big thing missing from the chart is reciprocal tariffs.

If it was really about increasing government revenue, why would he also be gutting the IRS, which brings in "about 96 percent of the funding that supports the federal government’s operations" and "for every dollar spent by the IRS, the agency returns between $5 and $12"?

The other side: The Democratic Party reached an all-time low in popularity in NBC polling dating back to 1990.

• A net 27% of those polled said they have positive views of the party (20% positive and 7% very positive).

• CNN's latest polling also found that the Democratic party's favorability rating among Americans is now at just 29%, a new low in in the outlet's polling dating back to 1992.

So yeah, Republicans love Republicans and Democrats hate Democrats. Nothing too unexpected given the past year or so.

This is spin.

Put another way

54% see the country as on the wrong track.

(51%) disapproves of his [Trumps] performance.

Just 27% of registered voters view the [Democratic] party positively. That includes just 59% of self-identified Democrats.

NBC poll says while 44% of Americans say America is on the right track which is the most since 2004.... 47% Approve of trump which is the second worst poll for a "New to office" poll at this point in time. The worst poll was... also Trump at 40% in his first term.

What surprises me is usually more Americans think America is on the wrong track. I guess Democrats are as skeptical as ever, and Republicans are really drinking the cool aid.

And then announced it on social media as well as where Hunter Biden was and retaliated against the country hosting him.

He's hoping they get injured or killed.

Adam Serwer, writing in The Atlantic, puts this in perspective: The Great Resegregation -
The Trump administration’s attacks on DEI are aimed at reversing the civil-rights movement.

nonwhite voters who identify as “conservative” or “moderate” have been voting more and more like their white ideological counterparts over the past few elections. So, the electorate is polarizing less on race and more on ideology.

Republicans have figured out how to break Democrats' pluralistic coalition. It was always a tenuous and awkward alliance between liberals and minority moderates and conservatives. But Republicans have been using immigration and social issues to wedge minority moderates and conservatives away from Democrats.

Gen alpha can’t even vote though, no?