HandsHurtLoL

In 2016, when it became clear that Donald Trump would become president, media outlets across the U.S. were blindsided by the results. They pledged to do better representing the larger communities that make up America. That included conservatives, those in rural areas (a complex group on its own) and, yes, Latinos.

Four years later, though Trump did not win reelection, former Vice President Joe Biden’s narrower margin of victory in spite of polls predicting a landslide have media outlets asking similar questions all over again. The increased percentage of Latino voters for Trump in particular caught many off guard. How could pollsters get it wrong again? And is the media, and a lack of diversity in newsrooms, part of the problem?

Last time around, a national publication made a show of announcing it was expanding its coverage teams and hiring people that brought those unique perspectives. I applied for a spot to cover immigration even though I knew that coming from a smaller newspaper, it would be a long shot. Still, if it was serious about diversifying the newsroom, I thought, I had a chance.

I’m a first-generation immigrant, born in Ciudad Juárez and raised across the border in El Paso, in a middle-class family. While my dad had been an engineer in Mexico, he became a life insurance salesman when we emigrated, then a truck driver, something he is still doing in his mid-60s. There’s no 401(k) for him, there’s no deep savings account or a fully paid mortgage.

When I applied for the position, I had been an immigration reporter for about a decade; I had experience writing about immigrants and refugees from a dozen countries. Spoiler alert, I didn’t get the job, neither did another person of color.

[Article continues]

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) has handed over power of attorney to her daughter, even as she remains in the U.S. Senate.

Feinstein has prompted concern if not outright alarm in recent years amid numerous mental lapses in the public eye. Earlier this year, she missed more than two months due to shingles. When she returned, a reporter asked Feinstein about her absence, but the senator’s response suggested she was unaware she had been away from Washington, D.C.

On Thursday, the New York Times reported that Feinstein, 90, gave power of attorney to her daughter Katherine Feinstein, 66. The Times said Katherine is currently engaged in a nasty legal dispute with the three daughters of her mother’s late husband Richard Blum, who died in 2022:

In one legal dispute, the family is fighting over what’s described as Senator Feinstein’s desire to sell a beach house in an exclusive neighborhood in Stinson Beach, north of San Francisco. In another disagreement, the two factions are at odds over access to the proceeds of Mr. Blum’s life insurance, which Senator Feinstein says she needs to pay for her growing medical expenses.

[…]
Katherine Feinstein, 66, Senator Feinstein’s only child, who has power of attorney over her mother’s legal affairs, filed two lawsuits against Senator Feinstein’s co-trustees. The first lawsuit, over the beach house, says the property is in disrepair, that Senator Feinstein no longer wishes to use it, and that she wants to sell it this summer or fall.

Feinstein is not running for reelection in 2024, but she has rebuffed calls to resign from the Senate, which Democrats control 51 to 49. During her absence earlier this year, several of President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees stalled in the Judiciary Committee, as Feinstein was not present to cast tie-breaking votes.

In an Appropriations Committee hearing last week, Feinstein began speaking about a defense spending bill at a time when she was simply supposed to cast a vote for or against the legislation. “Just say aye,” a fellow senator instructed her.

In May, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) said Feinstein’s struggles are “painful to watch” and called on her to resign.

A federal appeals court has ruled that Kentucky can continue to enforce a gender-affirming care ban that also requires trans youth already receiving this care to detransition.

Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton wrote in the decision that “The people of Kentucky enacted the ban through their legislature” and “that body–not the officials who disagree with the ban–set the Commonwealth’s policies.”

The lawsuit, Doe v. Thornbury, challenged S.B. 150, a sweeping anti-trans bill that passed into law over the veto of Gov. Andy Beshear (D) in March. It is one of the most extreme among several laws enacted recently in Republican-dominated legislatures.

In addition to banning gender-affirming care for trans youth, the bill denies use of bathrooms aligning with gender identity in schools, conflates and excludes LGBTQ+-related topics and information on sexually transmitted diseases from sex education, and prohibits school staff and students from properly addressing trans minors. The lawsuit, however, focused solely on the provision banning gender-affirming care.

In a statement earlier this summer, the ACLU called the new law an egregious government overreach into families’ personal decision-making.

“These are merely political attacks from groups with a fundamental opposition to transgender people being able to live openly, freely, and affirmed as who they really are,” Shapiro said. “Banning medically necessary care for trans youth is not supported by science or reputable major medical organizations.”

But Judge Sutton disagreed. In a similar decision allowing a gender-affirming care ban in Tennessee to take effect, Sutton reportedly wrote that the support for gender-affirming care by major medical organizations was “surely relevant” but “not dispositive.”

In Gov. Beshear’s veto statement of the bill, he said it “strips freedom from parents to make personal family decisions” and that it would “cause an increase in suicide among Kentucky’s youth.” He also said that the bill would turn teachers into “investigators” who would pry into students’ lives.

After the legislature overrode the veto, ACLU-KY’s executive director Amber Duke blasted the body for rushing the law through “in a deliberately secretive process at the 11th hour.”

“Trans Kentuckians, medical and mental health professionals, and accredited professional associations pleaded with lawmakers to listen to the experts, not harmful rhetoric based in fear and hate. Their pleas fell on deaf ears as the general assembly passed the bill in a matter of hours.”

Former President Donald Trump was indicted Tuesday on charges he participated in a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results — an effort that reached a bloody crescendo as his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Following an investigation by special counsel Jack Smith, a grand jury voted to charge Trump with conspiracy to defraud the United States, witness tampering and conspiracy against the rights of citizens, and obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding.

Trump, who has been summoned to appear in court on Thursday, is still the leading candidate in the Republican primary race. If he pleads not guilty (as he has with the other indictments), we could be hearing about his trial as he makes his case for the White House.

Here are five key points to help get you up to speed.

[Article continues]

WASHINGTON — A campaign to televise former President Donald Trump’s federal criminal trials was launched late Thursday by congressional Democrats, led by California Rep. Adam Schiff.

“Given the historic nature of the charges brought forth in these cases, it is hard to imagine a more powerful circumstance for televised proceedings,” wrote Schiff and 37 members of his caucus in a letter to Judge Roslynn Mauskopf, who leads the administrative office of U.S. Cours.

“If the public is to fully accept the outcome, it will be vitally important for it to witness, as directly as possible, how the trials are conducted, the strength of the evidence adduced and the credibility of witnesses,” the lawmakers wrote.

The letter was released within hours of Trump’s arraignment in Washington, D.C., where the former president pleaded not guilty to four charges related to his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Thursday’s court proceedings marked the third time this year that the former president has been hit with criminal charges, but his first time before a judge in the nation’s capital. Trump has pleaded not guilty in the two other criminal cases.

Hotel entrepreneur Robert Bigelow, the biggest individual donor to a group supporting Ron DeSantis’ presidential bid, told Reuters on Friday he will not donate more money unless the Florida governor attracts new major donors and adopts a more moderate approach.

The comments by Bigelow, who gave $20 million to the pro-DeSantis “Never Back Down” super PAC in March, underscore donor concerns about the Florida governor’s struggling campaign, which has been unable to make a dent in former President Donald Trump’s huge lead for the 2024 Republican nomination.

“He does need to shift to get to moderates. He’ll lose if he doesn’t ... Extremism isn’t going to get you elected,” Bigelow said in an interview, adding that he had communicated these concerns to DeSantis’ campaign.

When asked which specific policies Bigelow did not support, Bigelow cited only DeSantis signing in April a bill passed by the Florida legislature banning abortions after six weeks, a move that came after Bigelow had donated the $20 million.

Bigelow said he would not donate more money for now. “Not until I see that he’s able to generate more on his own. I’m already too big a percentage,” Bigelow said. “A lot of his donors are still on the fence.”

Bigelow, the founder of Las Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace, said he wasn’t waiting for an exact fundraising figure, but that “it’s going to be a lot.”

In a statement to Reuters, a spokesperson for the DeSantis campaign, Bryan Griffin, said they were “grateful” to supporters and donors who gave them “the capacity to compete for the long haul,” without addressing Bigelow directly.

Bigelow’s comments will likely stoke perceptions that DeSantis, once a donor darling expected to put up a real fight against Trump, is in a downward spiral as his right-wing social policies and wooden personality fail to excite voters.

DeSantis has been running to the right of Trump despite many Republican strategists saying he should instead be trying to court moderates concerned about Trump’s policies and electability.

A source familiar with the governor’s strategy told Reuters that “donors don’t set policy for the governor, and they never will.”

Never Back Down did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Even though DeSantis has attracted big donors desperate for a Trump alternative, Bigelow stands out. After him, the second-biggest individual donor to Never Back Down is venture capitalist Douglas Leone, who gave $2 million, according to campaign filings - a tenth of what Bigelow contributed.

DeSantis’ campaign finances have come under scrutiny in recent weeks after his campaign said it had let go 38 employees, or over one-third of staff. The campaign had a high cash burn rate and most of the money raised came from donors who had contributed the maximum legal amount, suggesting more financial tensions ahead.

To be sure, DeSantis’ campaign and Never Back Down had a combined $109 million in the bank at the end of June, well above the combined $53 million of Trump’s campaign and his allied super PAC, known as MAGA Inc, according to financial disclosures to the Federal Elections Commission.

As DeSantis’ campaign struggles, however, he has been relying more on Never Back Down, which as a super PAC can raise and spend unlimited sums supporting him as long as it doesn’t coordinate spending with his campaign.

Bigelow said he remains behind DeSantis. “I think he’s the best guy for the country.”

But the hotelier was incensed by the bill banning abortions after six weeks, saying that was too early and that many women do not even know they are pregnant at that stage.

The abortion restrictions have rattled other donors. Metals magnate and Republican donor Andy Sabin, for example, soured on DeSantis and threw his support behind Senator Tim Scott in part due to the abortion issue.

Bigelow said he agreed with most of DeSantis’ policies, however, and that he was “spot on” in his war on “wokeism.” “Woke” is a term used in a derogatory way by conservatives to criticize progressive policies, often linked to issues of identity in education and the workplace.

After a glitch-filled launch on Twitter in May, DeSantis has struggled to catch fire with voters amid organizational problems, viral videos of awkward interactions with the public, and relentless attacks by Trump.

The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll showed he had slumped to 13% of support among Republicans against 47% for Trump.

Bigelow said he had told DeSantis’ campaign manager Generra Peck that DeSantis needed to be more moderate to have a chance.

Asked how Peck reacted, Bigelow said, laughing: “There was a long period of silence where I thought maybe she had passed out.”

“But I think she took it all in,” Bigelow added, describing Peck as a “very good campaign manager.”

DeSantis’ campaign did not respond to queries about Peck and Bigelow.

Andrew Dorn

(NewsNation) — Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed new legislation Wednesday banning the practice of so-called conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ youth in the state.

Michigan is the 22nd state to outlaw conversion therapy, which aims to “convert” LGBTQ+ people to heterosexuality or traditional gender expectations. Major medical organizations have denounced the practice as unscientific and harmful.

“As a mom of a member of the community and a proud, lifelong ally, I’m grateful that today we’re banning the horrific practice of conversion therapy in Michigan,” Whitmer wrote on Twitter.

Mental health care providers who engage in the practice with a minor are subject to disciplinary action and licensing sanctions, according to House Bill 4616.

A separate bill, which the Democratic governor also signed, amends the state’s health code to define conversion therapy as “any practice or treatment by a mental health professional that seeks to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity, including, but not limited to, efforts to change behavior or gender expression or to reduce or eliminate sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward an individual of the same gender.”

The ban does not apply to counseling that “provides assistance to an individual undergoing a gender transition” as long as the counseling “does not seek to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity.”

Both bills passed the legislature in close votes along party lines. Republican state lawmakers, all but one of whom opposed the measures, argued the definition of conversion therapy was too broad.

State Rep. Neil Friske, a Republican from northern Michigan, said passing the bills would criminalize providers “who are simply upholding natural law and refusing to buy into the new age left-wing gender schemes,” The Hill reported.

On the other side of the aisle, Democrats pointed to the dangers of conversion therapy.

Democratic state Rep. Jason Hoskins, a sponsor of the bills, told The Associated Press conversion therapy “works on the false premise that LGBTQ+ children are wrong and they need to be fixed” and that banning the practice will give LGBTQ+ youth “one less thing” to worry about.

The new measures are set to take effect in October.

Repost to fix broken link from first attempt

“The recent challenges regarding Dr. McElroy have made it clear to me that I must retire immediately,” Banks wrote in her resignation letter. “The negative press is a distraction from the wonderful work being done here.”

“The recent challenges regarding Dr. McElroy have made it clear to me that I must retire immediately,” Banks wrote in her resignation letter. “The negative press is a distraction from the wonderful work being done here.”

Estimated read time: 3 minutes

(Edited to add glossary of terms for labels.)

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@politics on kbin.social is a magazine to share and discuss current events news, opinion/analysis, videos, or other informative content related to politicians, politics, or policy-making at all levels of governance (federal, state, local), both domestic and international. Members of all political perspectives are welcome here, though we run a tight ship.

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Hello @politics!

Estimated reading time: 2 min

Thank you for your patience with us as we compiled users' suggestions and coordinated between ourselves about verbiage to create our sidebar. We captured nearly everyone's suggestion, but we also had to compare notes about our own philosophies on moderation.

I have updated the sidebar for the magazine, and we officially have Community Guidelines and Submission Rules that were co-created between early members of this magazine and the Mod Team!

I hope that everyone who participates in our magazine sees themselves as being on the front line of moderation. If you see something that runs afoul of our rules, please use the report button. We have to rely on you to use the report button because:

I've started compiling some early data from the Way Back Machine as well as the statistics panel available to mods on kbin to look at the recent growth of our magazine. Our subscribers have almost doubled (delta +3255) since June 18, which was about a week after the first wave of the reddit migration to the Fediverse. Note that I am not able to view subscribers from other instances; this represents only the users on kbin.social!

The number of link submissions here has jumped from 86 total submissions on June 18 to 523 total submissions as of this posting. Looking at the federated stats for activity in this magazine, users have submitted between 10-25 articles a day nearly every day since we established our preliminary community guidelines a week ago. Comments/replies created in the magazine each day since the preliminary guidelines were posted have trended upward from 44 (7/15) to 231 (7/21). Again, this is activity per day.

I interpret this as an initial sign that we're creating a space where reasonable people can engage one another (a success, to be sure). But as I hope is evident, the activity here is already outpacing the ability for the Mods to be all up involved in every single conversation that may be unfolding here - let alone simultaneously occurring interactions. We also are all just volunteering, so none of us are planning to turn this into a job.

So please be part of the mod team in a significant way by reporting people who are violating our side bar rules. In short, if you put the trash in the bin, we will roll the bin out to the curb.

Thanks for being a part of our magazine!

Good day to everyone! Heads up: this post is going to be very long.

First off, I want to thank everyone who engaged in some hearty discussion in my mod post soliciting input for community guidelines, vision for the magazine, and submission rules. There were some different viewpoints discussed, but we all had space to express those viewpoints and some minds were even changed (namely, mine) about a few topics. I have to say that it gave me a ton of hope that we are going to make this an absolutely wonderful space to belong to on the Fediverse.

Based on that discussion, we as the mod team decided to add at least a few items to the side bar to establish community guidelines that had a lot of consensus. More community guidelines will be added later, but these topics were repeated by multiple community members enough times that it seemed important to make very clear statements as early as we could that civility is the goal of our magazine's engagement and that we will not tolerate hate speech/ trolling/disinformation/fascism parading as "politics."

If you're visiting our magazine from a mobile device, you may not see the side bar as prominently displayed as compared to using a tablet or computer/laptop. So I'm copy and pasting the guidelines here:

Preliminary @politics community guidelines until further notice

• Be civil. Don't know the difference between the various levels of debate until it descends into incivility? Refer to this graphic for details. Safe zone is everything above tone policing. Engage in too many occurrences of the lower three tiers, and you're likely to be banned.

• Post links to respected or reputable outlets of information. Need a definition of respected or reputable sources of news? Refer to this Media Bias Chart for details. Links to sources that rank in the 32.0-64.0 range on this graph will be permitted. Links to sources that rank lower will be removed.

• No neo-Nazi, fascist, or white supremacy sympathizers or content. We want to encourage community engagement from a variety of positions on the political spectrum. Nazism, fascism, and white supremacy are not political positions; they are postures of authoritarianism, which is inherently anti-democratic, and are methods of exerting control through bigotry and hate. No hate speech will be tolerated.

• Posts must be links to informative or educational content. Memes or links to screen shots/image captures will be removed. Submissions must link to either a news article, opinion/analysis writing, video, or other informative content that relates to politics, policy making, and politicians at all levels of governance both domestic and international. To reiterate: the source of this content must be from respected/reputable outlets.

Submission rules will be established within a week or two.

Thank you for being part of our magazine and helping to create a great community! Please start actively using the report button, but please allow your mod team a few hours to respond to reports.

-The @politics Mod Team

Additionally, all the mod team is up to snuff on how to use kbin's current moderator tools and we have caught up on the reports that have been made in the past 3-4 weeks. We have banned the worst contributors to this magazine already. Please make use of the report button whenever you feel the need for submission and comments! Just be aware that none of the mod team are making this work our full-time jobs, and we also are very involved contributors to other magazines. Please give us a few hours to address any reports that are filed.

What's next for @politics?

Next steps for us as the moderators:

• Sort through all the comments left in that first mod post and start unpacking some of the requests for community guidelines that didn't have clear consensus or were complex and need more qualifications/context. We need time to figure out if everything asked for can even be achieved through moderation in the first place, and then start ascribing consequences and actions that we are capable of following through with.

• Establish submission rules to the content shared here based on that first mod post. It is not our goal to get bogged down as moderators in the bureaucracy of a too-finely set of created submission rules, so please be aware that these rules will be meant to prevent @politics from becoming a cesspool; it's unlikely that these rules will be so stringent that we will start removing submissions for not using a colon in the right place in the title.

• Roll out badges (similar to submission flair from reddit) so that posters can indicate the characteristics of their post and add transparency to the content being shared. As of right now, the functionality of badges is limited, but I trust that this will become more useful in future kbin core updates. On Lemmy, it is possible to filter out posts based on badges, so our goal is to have this established as a culture here in kbin so we're ready for the day that a filter-by-badge feature is ready for use. Early stages on this, but here are the badges so far. Content: Election coverage, SCOTUS, International, Federal Government, State Government, Local Government. Media: Article, Video, YouTube. Slant: News, Opinion/Editorial, Discussion. When you create a thread, there is a text field for you to indicate one (or more? I'm unsure) of these badges.

• Roll out Discussion threads. The crowd was mixed on whether there should be special threads for users to discuss politics without sharing content alongside. I'm picturing a couple of options for this type of thread: 1. Posting philosophical or meta questions about politics to inspire lively and civil debate. 2. Sharing content that isn't breaking news but still educational/informative about politics. I'm thinking here posting an episode of a podcast that focuses on the history of political movements, or a video essayist on YouTube that traces the philosophical underpinnings of modern day politics.

What's next for the users of @politics?

We still need your help shaping the community here. Please add in your two cents about anything you've read above. What's currently on the screen and in the side bar is not set in stone. Keep in mind we're still compiling from the last big discussion, so just because you don't see your specific suggestion highlighted yet doesn't mean it's been ignored.

We now have to count on you heavily to use the report button. Again, the moderation is not likely to be instantaneous, but we won't let abusive commenters and awful content go unabated forever.

Also, we need to ask you to please start testing the badges feature. For now, you have to type in the badges (so I guess stay consistent with how they're labeled above), but I imagine that this would be a drop down menu in the future. Who knows! But give it a shot and let's see if it's working yet.

Next, we still need clarity from you about some questions.

• Do you want this magazine to only be U.S. politics, or is it okay for politics from other countries to be posted here? On that note, should it go without saying that all content must be in English?

• Do you want a Discussion-style thread in this magazine based on the description above? Would you want this style of thread if the description was tweaked?

• What should the consequences be for violating community guidelines? What should the consequences be for violating the submission rules?

• Would anyone like to volunteer to help with QoL issues in this magazine such as rebooting our magazine image? With CSS or JS design?

Thanks for reading this far, and I look forward to another terrific conversation here.