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Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of November 10
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The Democrats who backed Republican shutdown deal - and why
At this point I've come to expect dysfunction and incompetence from Republicans and cowardliness and fecklessness from the Democrats. So it was a real 'stoppable force vs movable object' situation. Deep down, I like to think that most people - myself included - expected this to end in some unfathomably stupid way. Yet, this was one of the more bewildering outcomes.
Now I'm just a simple man, but I imagine that if you're going to shut down the government for 40 days, the only way you agree to opening it back up is if you extract some concessions from the party in power. Otherwise what was the point of everything? Their big concession was a promise to have a vote on extending ACA subsidies. A vote that they will undoubtedly lose, if it even happens at all. Frankly, I don't know what would be more humiliating: losing the vote as expected or not getting it at all.
This is like if the movie John Q ended with Denzel Washington turning himself in and saying "I'm sure we'll find a heart somewhere. Now can we let bygones be bygones?"
Ladies, gentlemen, and everyone outside and in between, your 2025 opposition party!
Republicans: You will suffer, and we will not reign in Trump illegally withholding SNAP benefits no matter what! Because a check on the Executive is unfathomable.
Democrats: Everything we fought for was actually just made up, and we have capitulated. We could have capitulated earlier, like we were going to anyway, but we wanted to add confusion by feigning a resistance when there was no intent to stick it through anyway. Thus somehow making the entire situation worse than if we had just done nothing.
Because the Republican party is so trustworthy and we can totally believe they will do it.
The point of getting the vote is that it forces Republicans to explicitly vote it down. That then becomes ammunition for the next campaign. I don’t think anyone expects the vote to pass, it’s just that when a party owns the chamber, they normally can just table bills they don’t want to vote on.
So anything that is awkward for republican senators would just never even get a vote to protect them.
Is there any guarantee that this promised vote will happen?
Nope, but the CR is only to January, so if they don’t hold the vote it’ll just be government shutdown 2 electric boogaloo.
The Democrats just demonstrated they'll cave in exchange for nothing. If they shut down the government again, the Republicans will just wait them out again, because it's proven to be an effective strategy.
Ugh. This whole situation was just a real kick in the teeth for me, so apologies if this post is too aggressive or something; I have difficulty gauging tone right now. I was feeling some hope for the first time in a while after the elections, and then almost immediately the Democrats gave up.
They got what they were initially bargaining for. I think people mistake what people actually want vs what you initially propose. There’s no way a year of ACA funding would ever actually be the agreed bargain. The house and president would never agree to it.
It takes two to tango. If democrats drive too hard public opinion will change.
The seemingly legitimate fury at the defectors from the rest of the party seems to suggest that as a bloc they were trying to hold out for outright renewal of the ACA subsidies and that it wasn’t just an initial bargaining position. I don’t think it’s accurate to suggest that this was an intentional play by the Democrats.
Good point
You don't trust? They're TOTALLY going to have a vote with a useful outcome, and it's TOTALLY going to help people about to pay $3,000/month (not hyperbole) on their insurance that used to cost them ~$400/month.
True, but those elections aren't going to happen for another year and they kind of already had that ammunition by way of the cr votes since the shutdown was explicitly over the ACA subsidies.
The question is what did they have to lose by continuing to hold out? They're already opening the door to millions of people getting fucked by voting for this continuing resolution, so why not hold out longer while all of the pressure is on the Republicans? I think it's telling that none the Democrats who voted for this are up for reelection.
Well, no, the shutdown was because Democrats don't want people to get paid, dontcha know? It's all over the airwaves.
Trump issues pardons for Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and others involved in 2020 fake elector scheme
Trump administration will require all SNAP participants to reapply for benefits - POLITICO
Fuck. All of this. There is a glee in their desire to fuck with food stamps that is stomach roiling
ETA
Food stamps are back, but millions will soon lose benefits permanently - POLITICO
The new bill will kick off refugees and people they think should be working. Sigh
Isn't there something like 40 million people receiving SNAP benefits? They say 186,000 like it's a big number, but it's basically a rounding error.
And yes, it also pisses me off that they talk about blue states like they're the places you'll find the big numbers of fraud. Such assholes.
Confirmed: 41.7 million in 2024, or 12.3% of Americans. With some rather large swings between individual states.
https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/chart-detail?chartId=55416
So 186,000 is a 0.44% error rate. Which seems like a very reasonable for a system as huge as SNAP.
Yeah, also "a check" doesn't make sense with food stamps. If they're talking about disability/social security that gets clawed back (literally if someone dies mid month they want their money back) and it even actively looks like a "dead person" got money.
Food stamps go onto a card which would also get deactivated and the money returned to the states after death. Sure, mistakes happen and people can literally hide a death from the government, but it's so minor.
US justice department investigates Epstein's alleged ties to Clinton and banks after Trump request
What is Trumps weird obsession with the Clintons and pedophilia?
Every accusation is a confession.
Hilary Clinton was his opponent in the 2016 election. I think that's seriously all there is to it. He holds grudges forever unless people bow down to him, so he'll never stop slinging mud at her and anyone associated with her.
I saw some comments online that by opening an active investigation, this will prevent congress from releasing more info. I don’t think it works that way, and the more he tries to bury Epstein info, the more guilty he looks.
It didn't used to work that way.
With this chaos monkey in charge, I am no longer sure how anything works anymore.
US announces ‘Southern Spear’ mission as forces deploy to South America (Al Jazeera)