#politics

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Representatives Jason Crow (D-CO-06), Chris Deluzio (D-PA-17), Maggie Goodlander (D-NH-02), and Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA-06) released the following joint statement:  “We are veterans and national security professionals who love this country and swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. That oath lasts a lifetime, and we intend to keep it. No threat, intimidation, or call for violence will deter us from that sacred obligation.  “What’s most telling is that the President considers it punishable by death for us to restate the law. Our servicemembers should know that we have their backs as they fulfill their oath to the Constitution and obligation to follow only lawful orders. It is not only the right thing to do, but also our duty.  “But this isn’t about any one of us. This isn’t about politics. This is about who we are as Americans. Every American must unite and condemn the President’s calls for our murder and political violence. This is a time for moral clarity.  “In these moments, fear is contagious, but so is courage. We will continue to lead and will not be intimidated.   “Don’t Give Up the Ship!” 

"The public perception of this case is that it's about politics," US Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee, wrote in the decision. "To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map. But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map."

Privacy in general matters because you never know how your data might be used even if you’re a good guy.

On Thursday, a Skagit County Superior Court judge ruled that pictures taken by Flock cameras in the cities of Sedro-Woolley and Stanwood qualify as public records, and therefore must be released as required by the state's Public Records Act, court records show.

Flock's cameras, also called automated license plate readers, continuously and indiscriminately capture time- and location-stamped photos of any passing vehicles. Those images are then stored, and information about the vehicles, including their condition, make, model and license plate number, is added to a searchable database controlled by the customer.

Last week's Skagit County ruling could oblige the dozens of Washington police agencies which use Flock cameras, ostensibly to help them find stolen vehicles, crime suspects and missing people, to release the photos and data they collect — an outcome privacy advocates warned was possible.

The ruling also exacerbated concerns about potential misuse of Flock data, which swelled after University of Washington researchers released a report Oct. 21 showing federal immigration agencies like ICE and Border Patrol had accessed the data of at least 18 Washington cities, often without their police departments' knowing. The report raised concerns that the agencies might be using the data to target and arrest immigrants as part of Trump's immigration crackdown.

Amid a lobbying blitz and a flood of campaign cash, senators inserted language into this week’s emergency spending bill that eliminates rules designed to prevent food contamination and foodborne illnesses at farms and restaurants, according to legislative text reviewed by The Lever. The bill would also limit the development of rules to regulate ultra-processed foods, despite such foods being derided by the “Make America Healthy Again Movement,” championed by President Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Last year saw a doubling of Americans who were hospitalized or killed by contaminated food outbreaks, according to data compiled by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. In all, there are now “10 million cases of foodborne illnesses annually in the United States (and) these illnesses result in about 53,300 hospitalizations and over 900 deaths,” according to a recent report by the Government Accountability Office. Despite that, the new funding bill blocks federal rules designed to trace sources of outbreaks, and to prevent contamination of produce. One provision in the legislation states that no funds “may be used to administer or enforce the ‘Requirements for Additional Traceability Records for Certain Foods,’ published on Nov. 21, 2022.” Originally proposed by the first Trump administration during the pandemic when COVID-19 posed severe risks of contaminating food systems, the Food and Drug Administration’s traceability rule aimed to establish new record-keeping standards for companies to track their food products across the supply chain. Those records could help regulators identify the point of origin in the event of a major disease outbreak or food contamination event. The rule applied to produce, seafood, and certain dairy products, such as cheese, and exempted small businesses from the rule.

The record showed that during Smith's investigation, his office sought limited phone toll data from eight senators and a member of the House in the days surrounding the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.

While such records would not involve the content of any phone calls or messages, multiple Republicans on the committee incorrectly claimed at the hearing the next day that Smith had "tapped" their phones or "spied" on them.

"The subpoena's limited temporal range is consistent with a focused effort to confirm or refute reports by multiple news outlets that during and after the January 6 riots at the Capitol, President Trump and his surrogates attempted to call Senators to urge them to delay certification of the 2020 election results," Breuer and Koski wrote. "In fact, by the time Mr. Smith's team conducted the toll records analysis, it had been reported that President Trump and Rudy Giuliani tried calling Senators for such a purpose, with one Senator releasing a voicemail from Mr. Giuliani."

A theme throughout the argument was a concern shared among several justices and the plaintiffs, summed up neatly by Gorsuch: “Congress, as a practical matter, can’t get this power back once it’s handed it over to the president,” the Trump appointed justice said. “It’s a one-way ratchet toward the gradual but continual accretion of power in the executive branch and away from the people’s elected representatives.”

“We will never get this power back if the government wins this case,” said Neal Katyal, who represented the small businesses challenging Trump’s initiative. “What president wouldn’t veto legislation to rein this power in and pull out the tariff power?”

Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House and a representative from Louisiana, has offered several explanations for the delay in swearing in Grijalva—ranging from waiting until all votes were certified in the special election (despite not requiring Republicans who also won special elections to wait) to claiming the House needed to return from recess (despite precedent showing new members are typically sworn in the day after their election, regardless of whether the House is in session). Most recently, Johnson has said Grijalva will not be sworn in until the government reopens.

At the time, Johnson said he could not swear in Grijalva during a pro forma session: "The House is not on the floor doing business this week, but we will do it immediately early next week as soon as everyone returns to town. We have to have everybody here and we'll swear her in."

Not including the special election in Arizona's 7th Congressional District, there have been three other special elections this year to fill vacancies in the 119th Congress (2025-2027). Johnson swore in the three winners—Randy Fine (R-Fla.), Jimmy Patronis (R-Fla.), and James Walkinshaw (D-Va.)—of those special elections the day after their respective elections. Both Fine and Patronis were sworn in during a pro forma session.

During the 113th through the 118th Congresses, three other special election winners—Reps. Tom Tiffany (R-Wisc.), Mike Garcia (R-Calif.), and Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.)—were sworn in during pro forma sessions. All three of those special elections were to fill vacancies in the 116th Congress (2019-2021).

HOPE. TURN THE VOLUME UP.

New York will remain a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants. And as of tonight, led by an immigrant.

Haha. I can’t wait for “Trump says Earth is flat. Wikipedia updates Earth article to agree.”

“The question is, why should the opinions of the largely impartial UN and human rights scholars be weighed equally to the obviously partisan opinions of commentators and governments?

“Wikipedia has never, ever treated all voices as equal, nor does policy demand we do. If we did, the Earth article would state that Earth’s shape is under debate. But we don’t do that because scholarly consensus is that Earth is roughly spherical. Instead, flat eartherism is presented as what it is: a fringe movement without scientific backing,” the editor wrote.

Experts including the International Association of Genocide Scholars, Amnesty International, B’Tselem, and a UN Human Rights Council commission led by former president of the Rwanda genocide international tribunal Navi Pillay, have all concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Healthcare spending is driven by utilization (the number of services used) and price (the amount charged per service). An increase in either of those factors can result in higher healthcare costs. Despite spending nearly twice as much on healthcare per capita, utilization rates for many services in the United States is lower than other wealthy OECD countries. Prices, therefore, appear to be the main driver of the cost difference between the United States and other wealthy countries.

The U.S. spends twice as much as comparable countries do on health, driven mostly by higher payments to hospitals and physicians.

"Private insurance companies in this country spend between 12 and 18 percent on administration costs," Sanders said on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sept. 17. "The cost of administering the Medicare program, a very popular program that works well for our seniors, is 2 percent. We can save approximately $500 billion a year just in administration costs."

Is the gap between private and public health insurance providers’ administrative costs really that high? Most experts agreed the numbers looked about right. But because of key differences between Medicare and private insurance, the trade-off isn’t as simple as Sanders suggests.

If "the numbers looked about right", then why is it "half truth"?

Experts told us we could safely assume private insurance costs, on the other hand, are much higher, though actual spending estimates vary.

Aah... So it's a "half truth" because Bernie understated how much cheaper medicare is than private insurance companies.

Historically, administrative expenses were much higher in the commercial market because insurers did a lot of underwriting, or using the health status of individuals or groups to determine their premiums. The Affordable Care Act was designed to curb that spending.

On top of that, experts explained that unlike Medicare, private insurers take on more responsibility than simply paying claims or occasionally going after fraud. Before a claim is even filed, they check its appropriateness, assess whether it is medically necessary, and whether it can be done in a cheaper way (outpatient versus inpatient care, for example).

"Medicare has been trying in fits and starts to look a little more closely at how it pays claims but generally speaking, it is passive in processing claims," Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University.

And private companies, deny more claims, which makes it more expensive.

Health expenditures per person in the U.S. were $13,432 in 2023, which was over $3,700 more than any other high-income nation.

But there's something else that we've got to do, Jon. We have to have a vision for the future of this country. And-- and I think that many of my colleagues in the Democratic Party have not had that vision.

SPEAK!

The conversations pulsing across these platforms are shaped not by civic values but by whatever proves to keep people scrolling: Nuanced opinions are compressed into viral slogans; attention collects around the loudest and most controversial voices; algorithms love conflict, inspiration, outrage and anger. Everything is always turned up to 11.

One worry I have about Democrats right now is that they do not want to confront how much of the country disagrees with them. Polls show that the percentage of voters saying the Democratic Party is too liberal increased sharply between 2012 and 2024. The percentage of voters saying the Republican Party is too conservative fell during that same period. Even the violence and corruption of Trump’s second administration have not fully closed the gap: A September poll from The Washington Post and Ipsos found that 54 percent of voters thought the Democratic Party was too liberal and 49 percent thought the Republican Party was too conservative.

But what happened over the past 15 years is that the Democratic Party has made room on its left and closed down on its right. For all the talk of what the Democratic Party should learn from Sanders and Mamdani, there should be at least as much talk of what they should learn from Manchin or Golden or Marie Gluesenkamp Perez or Sarah McBride. The party should be seeking more, not less, internal disagreement.

His primary win was a spectacular repudiation of the pollsters, who with glossy charts and graphs try to induce the public to consent to middle-of-the-road, incrementalist politicians who give up before the negotiations have even started. Meanwhile? The median age of first-time homebuyers has soared from 33 years old during the pandemic to 38 in 2024. If that’s pragmatism, is it any surprise that no one’s interested? “It’s not about money, it’s about will,” Mamdani told Stewart.