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Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of March 2
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.
Father who gave gun to Georgia school shooting suspect for Christmas is guilty of 2nd-degree murder
I do assume, or at least hope, that his mom didn't only urge the father to lock the guns up because of the parents in MI being charged but due to not wanting people to be killed.
I still have some conflicting feelings about this type of use of the law but it seems very justified to me in this case. (I probably need to read more on it to be certain)
I have similarly mixed feelings. The case in Michigan was, in my opinion, 100% justified because those parents just ignored every warning sign and showed little to no care, thinking of themselves first and foremost. The kid in that case literally asked them for help and got dismissed. Previous discussion on Tildes here, with comments (top one's even mine) and quotes from various articles summing up just how little those parents (especially the mother) cared. I mean, I genuinely don't think that woman cared about her kid at all, her kid was just an accessory.
With this case, from reading into the linked articles there were some big red flags going on too, as mentioned in this linked article about the shooter's mother. Kid had a shrine to the Parkland shooter and she somehow wrote off his obsession with school shooters as similar to her true crime interest, and "joked" about his dad buying him a tactical shooter vest to complete his "school shooter outfit". (Actually, I am curious why his mother wasn't charged since she was equally aware of red flags, though apparently estranged at the time.)
But... It sounds like the parents also did acknowledge the kid had problems to some extent. I found this article going more into detail on the dad discussing his son's mental health issues. He absolutely should have taken the gun away and probably shouldn't have given him one in the first place, but this article honestly makes me a lot more sympathetic. The gun was a gift after they bonded while deer hunting. And he was exploring mental health care options in the weeks leading up to the shooting, and I don't think I need to reiterate how long and difficult it can be to access mental health services.
Basically, he deserves some consequences for not at least securely storing the gun when he knew his son had issues, and then also trying to get his daughter to lie about his issues... but he doesn't come across nearly as awful and negligent as the Crumbleys. He feels a lot more like a dad who genuinely cared but didn't know what to do to help him, and also didn't expect his son to go this far. A lot of parents will genuinely not want to even consider the possibility that their child could commit such an act, leading to a lot of willful blindness.
So, yeah, I'm conflicted. I don't want there to be a new standard for every parent of a school shooter to be tried on these charges because each case is so very, very different. At bare minimum, I want any such cases to be tried on an individual basis examining the facts as much as possible. Because sometimes, parents WILL try to do anything they can but it still won't be enough. And many of these parents will live with unimaginable guilt for the rest of their lives even without being tried. Mass shootings are tragic enough, and I don't want to increase the number of victims more than necessary.
Oddly I found him to be more negligent and awful for his son having a literal shrine and he still doesn't act. Plus I don't think 14 year olds
I think the mom did what she could eventually - maybe it was just the threat of her own prosecution that hit her after all - and I suspect the prosecutors were less willing to risk losing a test case on a much more sympathetic accused. But I need to finish reading more.
It wasn't that thread but I know I have talked about the concerns this would be used against, say, minority single parents of teens that end up in a gang and kill someone. If it sticks with situations where parents provide access to the guns that may be somewhat of a way to avoid this just being another systemic racism issue.
They're very different the individual circumstances of it is how I feel about prosecuting parents for those accidental infant deaths where the sleep deprived parent forgets their baby is in the car in unsafe weather. Or a toddler escapes the house and is killed. They all feel like situations where many people are doing the best they can and sometimes tragedy will still happen. And others are callous assholes who don't care about the outcome at all.
I'm not generally a fan of prison so yeah, conflicted.
Conflicted here too.
I think what we're seeing is a result of the fact there's been abstention/negligence at all the other levels that we could be addressing the issue of school shootings, which has thus forced its "solution" down to the level of individual parent responsibility.
That isn't a solution, and the broader systemic factors causing the shootings will continue unchecked as they have for decades now.
Right. I think there's a sense that well... At least we're trying something. That feeling is coming from decades of zero expectations of any action being taken. When the bar is so low that it is a pub in hell then even stumbling over it feels like some sort of twisted victory.
To get to this point the system has failed so many people that just don't expect it to actually succeed in doing anything. So you take anything as a sign of progress or something even when it isn't.
And at the same time, if no one else will keep guns out of the hands of kids who want to kill other kids, maybe the parents will do it... Probably not but maybe.
https://www.npr.org/2026/02/28/nx-s1-5728969/kansas-revokes-drivers-licenses-of-hundreds-of-trans-people-prompted-by-new-law
Apparently they are invalidating drivers licenses for trans people in Kansas.
Yeah, invalidated past tense. There was no grace period, it was instant. It was discussed in ~lgbt but got deleted, idk why.
Do you have a link to that post?
Nope, I'm wondering if I'm mixing up which conversations I had where as I don't have any comments showing in a deleted post. So I suspect I may have been a shitshow.
But if not I really hate losing good discussions to deleted posts. (I hate losing bad ones too frankly.)
It does come up if you Google for it on Tildes though
MadTV - iRack
Texas Republicans head to runoff in Senate race as James Talarico wins Democratic nomination
Probably for the best.
Yeah, If he'd just pout and hold his breath and sit in the corner until an adult can start to fix the results of his tantrums I wouldn't be sad.
On the one hand, he can only stall 10 days before bills automatically become law if he does not either veto or sign it.
On the other hand, if his Republican allies in Congress play timing shenannigans they can help him pocket veto things.
On the gripping hand, he has the attention span of an adderall-fueled goldfish, so he'll likely move onto something else tomorrow.
If his republican allies in congress are playing ball they can just not pass the bill to begin with.
Axios: DHS Secretary Kristi Noem out, Trump says
This was just an odd one:
I'm done': MAGA actor James Woods says he's no longer a Republican
This "theory" btw is that her husband is actually her brother and the marriage was citizenship fraud. (Weird they don't seem to care about the incest...)
Also calling him an actor, as in current, suggests he's done more than voice Hades in the past decade or so. They had to downplay that he was an executive producer of Oppenheimer and tell him not to do promos because no one likes him but he owned the rights so they couldn't yeet him completely.
But ah, well, celebrity news inspires the pettiness.
What to know about the deadly shooting at a Texas bar and the gunman
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From The Atlantic (mild paywall1)
I find this article interesting, or maybe encouraging, because like many people I have been concerned that Vance would be even worse than Trump and there is a high chance that Trump won't finish his term. But this shows that at least on the topic of war, Vance is more reasonable than Trump, but also very weakened by his association with Trump.
The Humiliation of J. D. Vance
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1by mild paywall, I mean it can be defeated by using noscript or similar javascript blocker
May or may not be worthy of its own topic, but Nintendo of America is suing the US Government over tariffs, as reported by Aftermath.
https://aftermath.site/nintendo-tariffs-sue/
@Deimos by the way, this weekly thread is linked in the ~news sidebar, but not the ~society sidebar where the thread currently lives. Maybe it could be linked in both?