Politics

Every republic has founding quarrels. India has Nehru, Gandhi, and Ambedkar arguing over whether the new state would be socialist, village-centered, or liberal-constitutional. Pakistan has Iqbal and Jinnah wrestling with what it means to build a Muslim homeland out of the wreckage of the Raj. South Africa has Mandela and the ANC leadership negotiating, under the gaze of the old security state and with the memory of Biko hovering over the room, what a post-apartheid constitution should guarantee and what it cannot yet touch. Across Latin America, the transitions out of military rule and the new constitutions of the 1980s and 1990s posed the same question in different accents: how far to curb markets, the generals, and the old oligarchies without igniting a counterrevolution.

A judge will have to sign off on the proposed settlement, which calls for the Education Department to not enroll any new borrowers in the plan, deny any pending applications and move all SAVE borrowers into other repayment plans.

Immigrants who have already been thoroughly vetted are being turned away from naturalization ceremonies because of where they were born.

At a moment when Texas Democrats have been in the wilderness, and on the heels of another lethargic showing from the party in the 2024 election, Talarico has generated excitement in his long shot bid for the U.S. Senate partly by offering something out of the ordinary. As his conservative opponents point to their Christian faith as the impetus for their pursuit of more religiosity in public life, he points to his own as the reason for his fervent rejection of the same. His campaign is heavy on religious rhetoric. Even his slogan—“It’s time to start flipping tables”—is a biblical reference. He is trying to claim a fertile turf dominated by Republicans, who have owned the Christian mantle in Texas for decades.

Yet again not even bothering to *try* to hide the narcissism & bigotry.

https://archive.is/HGO0P

https://archive.is/bGOcM

The alleged shooter of two National Guard members, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was struggling with mental illness, his ability to support his family, and, according to an Afghan veteran who fought with him, his pleas for help to the CIA went unanswered.

The abyss. The darkness. The meaningless void that life rebels against. It stares at us. Nietzsche warned about this moment—when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. When the frameworks that make meaning possible collapse, when the principles that make reasoning together conceivable dissolve, when words lose their moorings to reality and power becomes the only truth—that’s when the abyss stares back.

I guess the White House is all for extending the ACA subsidies, now?

Sometimes, judges have moved swiftly and even gotten concrete results. A Tufts University student arrested in the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts, after penning an op-ed on the war in Gaza was ordered released on bond pending appeal of a ruling that said her First Amendment rights had been violated. The Trump Administration complied. More than one federal judge has ruled that Trump has exceeded the terms of the Alien Enemies Act, the eighteenth-century wartime law that the Administration has used to justify many of its deportations to El Salvador. Others have found that many of Trump’s directives to fire government employees and efforts to hollow out administrative agencies have violated federal law and the principle of separation of powers.

[…]most voters that appear as “moderate” on the normal two-dimensional, economic-social ideological plane are actually non-ideologues — they are being forced onto the ideological spectrum because of biased analytical techniques, but do not actually belong there if the question being answered is “What political party would this person vote for?”.

New York Rep. Nydia Velázquez — a trailblazer known by the nickname “La Luchadora” or the fighter — announced Thursday that she will retire next year after more than three decades in Congress.

Federal judges on Thursday upheld several U.S. House districts that North Carolina Republicans drew in 2023 that helped the GOP gain additional seats the following year. They rejected accusations the lines unlawfully fractured and packed Black voters to weaken their voting power.

[alt text: a text-and-image tweet by @NotHoodlum on Twitter. The tweet shows a picture of U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. The text of the tweet says: “Marjorie Taylor Greene has been hated by the left for years and never feared for her life. She’s been hated by the right for two days and had to hire security."]

When news broke last September about Olivia Nuzzi’s alleged relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., my first instinct—within minutes, actually—was sympathy. I sent her a DM: “You’ll get through this.” She responded with a heart.

For much of the 2010s, U.B.I. received a lot of attention and energy as a heterodox, futuristic policy occupying a Venn-diagram overlap between wealthy tech-industry libertarians and wonky left-liberals. (Not coincidentally, groups that made up two pillars of the Obama-era Democratic Party.) In 2016, well before hyperscaling turned large language models into the “A.I.” of present-day hype, Sam Altman, then the president of Y Combinator, announced a long-range study of U.B.I. anticipating a “world where technology replaces existing jobs and basic income becomes necessary”; that same year, Elon Musk said he thought a U.B.I. was inevitable given automation to come: “I am not sure what else one would do.” In 2020, Andrew Yang made a U.B.I. proposal called “the Freedom Dividend” the focal point short-lived, tech-coded Democratic primary campaign–probably the high-water mark of the policy’s salience and buzziness.

Why does Larry Summers still have a job? Why does Larry Summers keep getting hired for jobs? What does Larry Summers have to say or do to prove to the world that he is unfit for having jobs?

Earlier this year, in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, a graveyard was spared by the fire that sent thousands of Los Angeles residents fleeing into the coal-black night. Here, in Mountain View Cemetery, lie the bones of Octavia Butler, the famed science-fiction writer who spent her life in Pasadena and Altadena, both of which had burned. Trinkets offered by fans often decorate Butler’s unassuming grave. A footstone is inscribed with a quotation from her Parable of the Sower : ALL THAT YOU TOUCH, YOU CHANGE. ALL THAT YOU CHANGE, CHANGES YOU.

Texas’s mid-decade redistricting effort was likely an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey V. Brown wrote Tuesday on behalf himself and U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama.

The prospect of chaos and war excited Jeffrey Epstein. The late New York financier and child abuser kept a keen eye on news about foreign conflicts that could be exploited for commercial gain. On February 21, 2014, Epstein sent an e-mail to Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister, with whom he would partner the following year as investors in a security tech firm Reporty Homeland Security (later renamed Carbyne). Epstein wrote, “with civil unrest exploding in ukraine syria, somolia [sic], libya, and the desperation of those in power, isn’t this perfect for you.” Barak tried to tamp down his friend’s enthusiasm, noting, “You’re right [in] a way. But not simple to transform it into a cash flow.”

archive.is link

They are terrified that Mamdani might have some successes in office.

Last week’s election results demonstrated the first concrete proof of the potency of an anti-AI message, as the effects of AI data centers on utility bills played a significant role in several major Democratic victories. In New Jersey, Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill’s closing argument was a pledge to freeze electricity rates, which have soared because of data center demand. In Virginia, Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger won after pledging to make data centers “pay their own way,” and many Democrats went even further. At least one candidate, John McAuliff, flipped a seat in the House of Delegates by focusing almost entirely on tying his Republican opponent to the “unchecked growth” of data centers, with an ad that asked, “Do you want more of these in your backyard?” And in Georgia, Democrats won their first non-federal statewide races in decades, earning 60 percent of the vote against two Republican members of the Public Service Commission by criticizing Big Tech “sweetheart deals” and campaigning for policies “to ensure that the communities that they’re extracting from” don’t end up with their “water supplies … tapped out or their energy … maxed out.”

Kim Davis is done. The former Rowan County clerk’s longshot attempt to get the justices to revisit 2015’s marriage equality ruling was rejected on Monday.

Authoritarians worldwide have discovered how to exploit a weakness in democratic opposition: they weaponize our compassion against our principles. It’s a nasty tactic but an effective one. Create unbearable suffering. Wait for your opponents’ empathy to overwhelm their resolve. Then offer relief in exchange for political surrender.

The capitulation of Senate Democrats in ending the government shutdown without healthcare concessions has sparked outrage. Calls for new leadership and primary challenges are growing. The fight for a Democratic Party that truly fights back continues.

Here is the list of spineless cowards who think capitulation is an effective strategy against fascism: - Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto - Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois - Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania (basically a moderate Republican at this point) - Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire - Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia - Sen. Angus King of Maine - Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire

The Trump administration told states on Saturday that they must “immediately undo” any actions to provide full food stamp benefits to low-income families, in a move that added to the uncertainty surrounding the nation’s largest anti-hunger program during the government shutdown. In late-night guidance seen by The New York Times, the Agriculture Department also threatened financial penalties against states.

Well, get ready for everything to get even more expensive! I’m sick of the winning at this point. But at least I won’t have to vote, right?

I’m not sure how I landed here, so apologies if this is a repost. It’s quite worth the read. If anyone still believes the NYT is worth the paper it’s printed on, this is a great example of why it isn’t.

He spent the twilight of his career denouncing Donald Trump as a threat to the republic he loved. But Dick Cheney arguably laid the foundations of Trump’s authoritarian takeover of the United States.

A year out from the 2026 midterms, with Republicans feeling the blows from a string of losses in this week’s elections, Donald Trump and his allies are mounting a multipronged attack on almost every aspect of voting in the United States and raising what experts say are troubling questions about the future of one of the world’s oldest democracies.

I am filled with disgust.

Israel’s merciless slaughter of Palestinian civilians, which dates back decades but intensified after the Hamas attack of October 7, is remaking American politics on both the left and the right. As Kamala Harris acknowledges in her recent memoir, 107 Days, Joe Biden’s lack of empathy for Palestinians helped shatter the Democratic Party and was a constant anchor dragging down her campaign against Donald Trump. Even now, although more Democratic politicians are catching up with public opinion by criticizing Israel and eschewing AIPAC funding, left-of-center political leaders remain polarized. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer reportedly sees support for Israel as so core to his personal and political mission that he pointedly refused to endorse—or, by all available evidence, even vote for—New York City’s Democratic Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani due to Mamdani’s criticism of Israel.