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Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of October 27
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.
In a world where the Washington Post and New York Times don't have the guts to call a duck a duck, there's still People magazine out here stating the obvious for the oblivious: Donald Trump Confuses Dementia Screening for 'Very Hard' IQ Test as He Brags About Results
Texas attorney general sues Tylenol makers over autism claims
I wonder what this next level of stupidity is supposed to distract us from...
And in completely unrelated news...
Half of US states sue Trump administration over halting food stamps
Mamdani Forced to Explain to MAGA How Brown People Use the Word “Aunt”
Apparently NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has committed the cardinal sin of calling his father's cousin his "Aunt" making his story about her fear around taking the subway in a hijab after 9/11 somehow a horrid lie according to Newsmax and similar sources. He then also had to explain that the name he was saying wasn't "Zehra Fuhi" but (paternal) aunt Zehra. Because you know, that's what he called her.
Given that this is also fairly common in the South, along with the idea of "play cousins," I don't understand why they're even trying to make this a big deal. And yeah I grabbed the snarkiest headline on this one because it's genuinely that silly.
I highly encourage everyone to listen to the full remarks, which were linked to in the article. It hit home for me, personally.
My grandfather was a Muslim immigrant from Iran, and most people only knew him by the western name he adopted when he left his home country. Some of his friends and acquaintances only learned of his real name at his funeral. When my parents told him that they were naming me after his real name, he was furious. "What are you doing? He'll never get a job!"
Throughout my childhood, I was proud of my heritage. In elementary school, I did my little world projects about Iran, I told people about where my grandpa grew up and where my cousins live, and I told people about my middle name and what my last name meant in Farsi. Then on September 11, I got a phone call from my dad, who repeatedly said, "If anyone asks, tell them you're Italian." I thought he was being overly cautious, as was often the case, but that's what he did in 1980 when people were vandalizing his family's home and calling in death threats. Thankfully, none of that ever happened to us in the wake of 9/11, but I can't fault him for being afraid.
Like Mamdani, my last name is spelled phonetically. Anyone with a third grade reading level should be able to pronounce it. However, like Mamdani, people somehow find a way to panic or butcher it. "Oh, I'm not even gonna try to pronounce this one. Is 'Anthony' here?" That's why my nickname in middle school was 'Beans' - not because I was flatulent, or obsessed with legumes, or, as many often thought in my racist ass town, of Mexican descent. No, people called me Beans because my friend's dad couldn't pronounce my last name and would play with it when he would greet me. To be clear, I didn't mind that at all, and honestly it was kind of endearing. What bothered me were the nicknames I got after 9/11 - towel head, camel jockey, sand n-word.
I should make it clear that I am white. The only people who ever clock my background as anything other than your run-of-the-mill Europea melange are either the most experienced racists or, for some reason, Turks and Armenians. Culturally, I am white. Aside from a few terms of endearment and some comfort foods, my grandfather went full-blown assimilation. For those reasons, I have never experienced the hatred, the harassment, or the fear that so many American Muslims experience to this day.
It has, however, made people feel quite comfortable expressing their thoughts about Muslims, Arabs, and Middle Eastern people to me. And in this country, those three are practically the same thing. My friends who jokingly called me racial epithets also said things like, "We should turn that whole place [the Middle East] into a parking lot." My teachers who couldn't pronounce my last name said things like, "They need to deport all the Muslims before we have another 9/11." I even heard one of my own family members (from the other side) say, "Every problem on Earth can be traced back to a Muslim."
Islamophobia is still a permissable bigotry in the United States, and the NY mayoral race is chock full of examples. Andrew Cuomo has repeatedly attempted to tie Mamdani to 9/11, yet Mamdani has to do most of the answering for it. Curtis Sliwa accuses Mamdani of supporting global jihad and no one bats an eye. Imagine the reaction if Kirsten Gillibrand spoke of a Jewish or Black candidate the way she spoke about Mamdani. Was she censured like Ilhan Omar? Not even close. Even here on Tildes people feel comfortable writing things about Muslim and Middle Eastern nations as though the people there are somehow inherently violent or inferior. Though maybe that was a misread on my part. They might've been speaking about the culture. Gee, where have I heard that before?
Yeah when I saw this come up on Bluesky I was surprised it was being framed as a racial thing, because I grew up calling all my older cousins aunt/uncle, and my kids do the same. And I was a very white southern kid. I know there's a lot of cultural and linguistic cross-pollination between black and white southerners, but until recently I thought this was just an everybody thing.
As a Midwesterner, I rarely saw my white friends use familial titles for their older family's friends. I even knew several people, again, typically white, who, once they were older teens/adults, just called their actual blood-related aunts and uncles by their first name. As a brown person, I thought that was bizarre. I would never think to call my "titos" and "titas" (Filipino/Tagalog) only by their first names. Same with my parents' friends. I'm almost 40yo and I still call them auntie/uncle in whichever language. It's just a sign of respect.
I'm in my early 40s, white, Midwestern and I always said Uncle/Aunt Name but never just Name or Title (except for grandparents who were just Title)
But I do think that formality has eased over time with the youth.l and maybe more so on the coasts? My niblings are being taught Aunt DefinitelyNotAFae (I haven't decided that I want a more non-binary title) and such. (Chicago and Madison ) But I also didn't grow up on Ma'am and Sir, just please and thank you. I had classmates that did though. Bit of a mixed bag.
Wasn't as common in the north (Midwest) growing up as I see it in the South. Whereas my Black, Latino and SEA friends and colleagues have definitely been using it. This does appear to be the worst thing they can manage to dig up on the guy. Meanwhile, Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed like 13 women that we know of and Sliwa was on camera laughing while his Red berets committed a hate crime So I guess all sides are equally bad
Personally I think it's mostly an attempt to get "hijab" and 9/11 next to Mamdani's name
I've been increasingly suspicious of and disappointed with the NYT for a while now, but their reaction to Mamdani has seemed like a mask-off moment to me. They've been running increasingly unhinged hit-pieces, with increasingly right-wing framing. I don't have any real investment in who is the mayor of New York City - it's deeply irrelevant to my life - but it has certainly finished dismantling any good will I had toward the Times. This article in particular is incredibly right-wing in framing and viewpoint, and seems bizarrely anti-intellectual to me.
Been burnt on the NYT since it became clear they would run any article skeptical about trans health care and never* mention the actual stats, professionals providing the care as a specialty, or interview trans adults who were happy in those same articles. I've not followed their coverage of the mayoral race but yeah I'm not surprised. That writer focuses on "free speech in higher ed" which makes me feel like he's really just "concerned" in a Bari Weiss sort of way. (Highly recommend the If Books Could Kill podcast for their occasional takes on the NYT and such reporters/columnists.)
*I'm sure they did occasionally but it was always with a "but is that enough to take the risk" sort of angle.
It’s pretty in line with their reporting on Gaza so no real surprise there. I canceled the last of my NYT subscriptions last fall and still miss their recipes a bit, but I couldn’t stand supporting them financially anymore.
Jacobin magazine reviews and assesses Maine politician Plattner's reddit history
Damn, Jacobin coming through again.
I had seen some coverage of him regarding the tattoo before and thought to myself "yeah right, coincidence", but that's certainly a deeper background than has mostly been done of him.
He's (obviously, indeed humanly,) not perfect, but if I were of Maine, yeah I'd likely vote for him given this.
Lowkey might be the best dollar I ever spent. Hopefully they do it again next year.
Damn, I'll try and keep that in mind next year in case they do.
I'm not in Maine, or a Republican, but based on that Reddit history I'd vote for him.
I do live in Maine and have been keeping an eye on Platner's campaign because he's saying the right kinds of things today and has a background a lot closer to a normal person than many politicians.
But I should mention that he is running in the Democratic primary to eventually run against Susan Collins (along with our current governor Janet Mills and some other candidates).
DOJ Caught Deleting Court Record for Pardoned Jan. 6 Rioter Who Targeted Obama’s Home with a Gun
Seriously.
WTF?
As if the court didn't see the first one and no one remembers it.
Which as I was typing was.... Concerning actually. It's more 1984 than I would like.
NBC News: DOJ indicts Democratic congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh over ICE protests
Disclaimer I did do a bit of volunteer work for the Abughazaleh campaign over the summer, which is where I heard about this
The charges. Alas that the federal grand juries in Chicago are more willing to lay charges. But I've been seeing her pop up and wish her the best of luck with running for the seat. I've liked her
Food banks in the central U.S. say they can’t fill the gap left by frozen SNAP benefits
BBC: Trump directs nuclear weapons testing to resume for first time in over 30 years
Well fuck. Somehow, I'm still able to be shocked/horrified by what this deranged madman does. Time to go call some congressional offices and scream in terror.
It doesn't much change anything for what it's worth. It's about equivalent to "military parade" in that it's mostly just more dick waving from trump.
The US nuclear arsenal works and has always worked. It's tested in more ways than most people could imagine and is the single most valuable thing to this country (which is why I also firmly believe that as corrupt as russia is, more than enough nukes still work).
Them resuming testing is functionally pointless. The US has never dipped below the "kill every living thing" arsenal because it would be dangerous to do so from a MAD perspective. Just decided that you only needed enough nukes to turn the earth to dust 10x instead of 100x.
I've little doubt trump is going to try and greenlight some tsarbomb bullshit, but as the article makes clear no one even knows if he means testing ballistics or actual detonations, and given his key jangling attention span, i doubt much of note will happen.
Even if we did actually blow something up, it's a pretty solid process at this point. If you're worried about trump fucking with that, well he could also launch one from the football at any moment so it's not like worst case scenarios just got worse.
The question is where would we blow something up? More people live in the desert southwest than did in the 40s and 50s. Downwinders will get cancer.
Underground like we did for the last 2 decades of nuclear testing.
Edit- at least last 2 decades. Above ground testing is well known to not really be safe, and not done except in rare circumstances. In the off chance he wants another fusion test it'll be another bikini atoll situation, which while obviously not a good thing, is very very very unlikely to increase cancer risks for anyone.
Edit 2- 1962 was the last atmospheric test done by the US. China was the most recent atmospheric test in 1980. The US was still doing tests until 92. So 30 years.
Good to know. Thanks.
Top Trump Officials Are Moving Onto Military Bases
Stephen Miller, Marco Rubio, Kristi Noem, and others have taken over homes that until recently housed senior officers.
You're not tricking me into searching that. Not with these eyeballs. But I did check AO3 and there is only one fic with Bill (Schoolhouse Rock) and it's G rated.
Guess that "junior staffer" got rehired after the last one.
I suited up in a private browser window and went trudging through a swamp of several Rule34 sites as well as DeviantArt and some image searches that would have absolutely ruined my search history had I not been in private mode, and I came up completely empty. There is Schoolhouse Rock Rule34, because of course there is, although Paheal (which at least used to be the biggest R34 repository) only turned up 9 images, of which maybe 2 or 3 were Bill related. None of those were MPREG, though, and I couldn't find any images of a pregnant Bill through any of my searches, via DDG or on R34 sites or DeviantArt. That's not to say it's not out there, somewhere, though. I'm not an expert on fetish fandom porn by any means so there may be search terms or sites that I missed. Still seems very strange that this is how the video presented the bill.
I appreciate your sacrifice comrade.
Ai videos are weird and they clearly did so much editing. Honestly, it's such a piece of trash that it's very fitting for Cuomo's campaign
This one is so ridiculous it actually got a laugh.
The article at least. The video... I had to skip through it because it pissed me off. But even the few seconds I did watch had me question how this got through the quality control stage just for the bill's design alone.
Trump's Plan is now out in the open
It’s getting ever harder to avoid connecting the authoritarian dots.
Christ, what an asshole.
Trump held a Great Gatsby/Roaring 20s-themed party at Mar-A-Lago as his cutoff of SNAP funding begins.
Christ, what an asshole.
That's a Goatse-sized sphincter, comrade.
US Senate votes to reject Trump’s global tariffs on more than 100 countries
This seems symbolic since it would also need to pass the House and then would almost certainly be vetoed. Still, it’s nice to see the Senate rehearsing standing up to Trump.
JPMorgan Chase alerted Trump admin to over $1B in ‘suspicious’ transactions involving Epstein and prominent Wall Street figures: report
Over 4,700 transactions, including wire transfers to Russian banks raised red flags in 2019, new documents reveal
ICE’s real plans for America (Johnny Harris)
Nebula link
Youtube link