Politics

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Washington — The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a new law that would lead to a ban of the social media platform TikTok, clearing the way for the widely popular app to shutter in the U.S. as soon as Sunday.

"We conclude that the challenged provisions do not violate the petitioners' First Amendment rights," the court said in a unanimous unsigned opinion, which upholds the lower court decision against TikTok. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch wrote separately, with Gorsuch agreeing with the outcome of the case but splitting with the court's reasoning.

Not a great first look for Ferguson at all. Cutting social programs would be such a terrible move rn

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A woman in her seventies served two months hard time after being found guilty for rioting on Jan. 6, but she is promising to refuse any pardon from "felon" Donald Trump.

Pam Hemphill, from Boise, Idaho, was once all in on Trump, but she condemned the former and incoming President in an appearance on CNN earlier this year, going as far as to say he is "totally responsible" for what happened that day.

She ultimately admitted she was in a "cult," and backed Vice President Kamala Harris

On Sunday, Hemphill claimed that members of the MAGA movement had called her probation officer to try to get her in trouble. That attempt, she said, "backfired."

"I’m not going to be bullied by MAGA anymore, as those who went as far as calling my Probation Officer trying to get me in trouble backfired on them, thinking I would stop speaking out, just give me more confidence to continue!" she said. "I will refuse a pardon from felon Trump!"

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Dutch actor and climate activist Sieger Sloot took to social media, as he typically does, to encourage people to join a protest planned in The Hague in January.

But what Sloot thought was an innocent attempt to organise a non-violent demonstration to demand action to tackle the burgeoning climate emergency led to an eight-month ordeal resulting in a sedition conviction.

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In June, a panel of Wikipedia editors declared the Anti-Defamation League a “generally unreliable” source of information about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, limiting when the organization can be cited in Wikipedia articles. And there was an outcry this fall among some Jewish scholars and pro-Israel activists over edits to Wikipedia’s entry for Zionism to add references to “colonization.”

Wikipedia has also recently drawn ire from right-wing figures including Elon Musk, the billionaire who has been by President-elect Trump’s side during much of the transition. Musk posted on X (formerly Twitter) in December: “Stop donating to Wokepedia.”

A Heritage Foundation spokesperson said she was not able to answer questions about the organization’s work related to Wikipedia, which editors it was seeking to identify or how it sought to “target” them. The Wikimedia Foundation, which provides the infrastructure for Wikipedia, declined to comment.

The Heritage Foundation sent the pitch deck outlining the Wikipedia initiative to Jewish foundations and other prospective supporters of Project Esther, its roadmap for fighting antisemitism and anti-Zionism. The slideshow says the group’s “targeting methodologies” would include creating fake Wikipedia user accounts to try to trick editors into identifying themselves by sharing personal information or clicking on malicious tracking links that can identify people who click on them. It is unclear whether this has begun.

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cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/17930532

This one is very shocking, there's lots of things it covers: Abuse in general, religious abuse, psychological abuse, self harm, fat{phobia/misia}, misogyny, power dynamics etc. We still recommend watching it if you can deal with those things and the content warnings in the video because it shows the truth of the companies behind your favourite games and the systems which demand inexpense which leads to abuse and other awful things.

The rule will affect more than 15 million Americans, raising their credit scores by an estimated average of 20 points. No Americans will have medical debt listed on their credit report — down from approximately 46 million Americans who had this kind of debt on their credit report in 2020.

The vice president also announced that states and localities have already utilized American Rescue Plan (ARP) funds to support the elimination of over $1 billion in medical debt for more than 700,000 Americans and that jurisdictions are on track to eliminate approximately $15 billion in medical debt for up to almost 6 million Americans.

“No one should be denied economic opportunity because they got sick or experienced a medical emergency,” Harris said in a statement Tuesday. “This will be lifechanging for millions of families, making it easier for them to be approved for a car loan, a home loan, or a small-business loan. As someone who has spent my entire career fighting to protect consumers and lower medical bills, I know that our historic rule will help more Americans save money, build wealth, and thrive.”

Not many political analysts give attention to Rhode Island every four years. I on the other hand am known for my deep love of the state and talk about it frequently. The state swung seven points to the right from 2020-2024, a point more than the nation. Though often thought of as a state full of blue collar white Catholic the state is home to a substantial Hispanic population, who skew decidedly working class. Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Harris’ biggest losses vs Biden came in the state’s urban areas like Cranston, Central Falls, and Providence etc. No city or town saw a larger swing towards Trump than working class Central Falls where some 65% of the population is Hispanic. Harris’ 63% of the vote in Central Falls was way down from Biden’s 72% there in 2020.

Personally, I spent the Biden years unsuccessfully trying to switch careers and immigrate away from the USA/ Rust Belt. I have had little success in either, but now I understand why it was so hard for "good people" in "Germany" to get out of dodge. Did a lot of food access mutual aid when I had the time and resources, felt pretty impotent though. Having mostly recovered from the two failed attempts to improve my situation, I am trying to figure out what to do next in the New New Neo Shin Age of Monsters we find ourselves in. While the Democrats smized and handed us over "peacefully" for pogroms, territorial grabs, limitless pollution, genocides and domestic terror in the name of their sacred oligarchic democracy, I wondered if there was some other decent way forward for the sane that I was missing.

For those who do not understand the analogy, I am comparing our situation to these:

Beer Hall Putsch

Appeasement

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President-elect Donald Trump is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 10 in New York, 10 days before he is sworn in to be president of the United States.

In a decision Friday, New York Judge Juan Merchan noted that his inclination was to not impose a sentence of incarceration. In the filing, Merchan noted that if a sentence was unable to be given before Trump took the oath of office, the only other viable option may be to postpone proceedings until after Trump's presidential term is over.

In May, Trump was found guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, officially labeling him a convicted felon. The decision also comes after Merchan ruled last month that Trump is not immune from a conviction in the case.

Proceedings had been indefinitely stayed in order for Trump's legal team to argue that the case be dismissed.

In a statement, the Trump-Vance transition team called the order a "witch hunt."

"There should be no sentencing, and President Trump will continue fighting against these hoaxes until they are all dead," Steven Cheung, Trump's spokesman, said. Trump's New York criminal charges were the only to go to trial

After about a day and a half of deliberations, 12 New York jurors said last May that they unanimously agreed that Trump falsified business records to conceal a $130,000 hush money payment to adult-film star Stormy Daniels to influence the 2016 election.

Following the verdict, Trump virtually completed a routine pre-sentencing interview with the New York City Department of Probation. The prosecutors for the Manhattan District Attorney's office, who prosecuted Trump, and Trump's legal teams each submitted sentencing recommendations last month. Those documents have not been released to the public.

Trump also turned his attention to mobilizing donations for his campaign and mounting legal fees by using the conviction as a fundraising tool. Within 24 hours of the guilty verdict, Trump's campaign boasted raising millions of dollars. Trump and his legal team have also vowed to appeal the conviction, a process that could take years.

The jury heard from 22 witnesses during about four weeks of testimony in Manhattan's criminal court. Jurors also weighed other evidence — mostly documents like phone records, invoices and checks to Michael Cohen, Trump's once loyal "fixer," who paid Daniels to keep her story of an alleged affair with the former president quiet.

The facts of the payments and invoices labeled as legal services were not in dispute. What prosecutors needed to prove was that Trump falsified the records in order to further another crime — in this case, violating the New York election law that makes it a crime for "any two or more persons [to] conspire to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means." The jurors were able to choose whether those unlawful means were violating the Federal Election Campaign Act, falsifying tax returns or falsifying other business records.

The verdict came more than a year after a grand jury indicted Trump on March 30, 2023, marking the first time a former or sitting president faced criminal charges.

The 119th Congress starts today, Jan 3. One of the first orders of business is electing a Speaker of the House.

Mike Johnson can likely only afford to lose a single GOP vote if he wants to remain speaker. He’s already got one Republican promising to oppose him, and about a dozen more who won’t commit to backing him.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/12/astonishing-level-dehumanization/681189/

The pearl clutching is strong with this one. As usual, they gloss over the fact that health insurance profits are determined by the denial rate. The author conflates necessary rationing of care in any system with the clear incentive of for-profit insurance to deny care. Such cupidity.

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This is an opinionated article by legal experts: Evan Davis was editor-in-chief of the Columbia Law Review and David Schulte was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal. Both clerked for Justice Potter Stewart. Davis is a New York lawyer who served as president of the New York City Bar and Schulte is a Chicago investment banker.--

The Constitution provides that an oath-breaking insurrectionist is ineligible to be president. This is the plain wording of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. “No person shall … hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath … to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” This disability can be removed by a two-thirds vote in each House.

Disqualification is based on insurrection against the Constitution and not the government. The evidence of Donald Trump’s engaging in such insurrection is overwhelming. The matter has been decided in three separate forums, two of which were fully contested with the active participation of Trump’s counsel.

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The unlikelihood of congressional Republicans doing anything that might elect Harris as president is obvious. But Democrats need to take a stand against Electoral College votes for a person disqualified by the Constitution from holding office unless and until this disability is removed. No less is required by their oath to support and defend the Constitution.

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[Edit typo.]

First, the data: Criminalizing homelessness is bad financially and bad for public safety. Homelessness and incarceration have long been linked, as many people shuttle between jails, prisons, emergency rooms and the streets. This cycle occurs at the front end and the back end. Homeless individuals are more likely to contact the criminal/legal system — especially as police enforce low-level “survival” crimes such as trespassing, sleeping in public or loitering — and formerly incarcerated people are nearly 10 times more likely to experience homelessness.

This cycle undercuts safety in multiple ways. The collateral consequences of even short-term jailing — such as loss of employment, separation from families, and fines and fees — increase the likelihood of future arrest while exposing arrested individuals to health risks and unsanitary conditions associated with jails. And policies that divert police to enforce low-level infractions, such as collections of fines and fees, lead tolower clearance rates for violent crime.

Criminalization policies also bear a significant financial cost. The cyclical churn between homelessness, shelter and incarceration is estimated to cost taxpayers $83,000 per individual annually — far more than providing treatment and housing. A study of Seminole County, Fla., found that the annual cost of repeatedly arresting 33 frequently homeless people is roughly $171,225 per person. In New York City, the daily cost for supportive housing is $48 per person, compared to $1,414 for incarceration and $3,609 for hospitalization.