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February 16, 2023 [Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American]

By William McClain
In Heather Cox Richardson [Letters from an American]
February 17, 2023
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  • Dominion Voting Systems is suing Fox News Corporation for defamation after the network’s personalities claimed that the company’s voting machines had corrupted the final tallies in the 2020 election.
  • The filing suggests that FNC personalities didn’t believe what they were telling their viewers, and made those groundless accusations because they worried their viewers were abandoning them to go to channels that told them what they wanted to hear: that Trump had won the election.
  • FNC went to “war footing” to “protect the brand” when one of its reporters accurately fact-checked a Trump tweet, and the filing claims that not a single witness from FNC testified they believed any of the allegations they were making about Dominion.
  • The report of the special purpose grand jury investigating possible criminal interference in the 2020 election in Georgia was released today, and it found “by a unanimous vote that no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election.”
  • A bipartisan group of 28 former officials who were part of the Church Committee wrote an open letter to Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) today, reminding him that while the chair of the committee had been a Democrat, its work had been carefully bipartisan, and it protected ongoing intelligence and law enforcement operations.
  • They warned Jordan that if he wanted to claim the mantle of that committee, he would need to move forward with the “same spirit of cooperation and bipartisanship.”

Published February 17, 2023
Visit Letters from an American to read Heather Cox Richardson’s original post February 16, 2023

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Progressives need to engage with the specific questions about youth gender care [Matthew Yglesias, Slow Boring]

By Spencer Chen
In [Slow Boring]
February 16, 2023
252 views
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• Jamelle Bouie wrote a powerful column titled “There Is No Dignity in This Kind of America” which examines conservative attacks on trans people in America.
• Bouie argues that the denial of dignity to one segment of the political community threatens the dignity of all, and calls for solidarity.
• Chris Hayes wrote a column urging Joe Biden to address America’s low and declining life expectancy, which is largely due to the opioid epidemic.
• The opioid epidemic was caused by pharmaceutical companies’ deceptive marketing of new opioid painkillers, and doctors’ overprescription of opioids.
• Mainstream liberal commentators are avoiding the details of the policy questions surrounding trans rights, such as the politicization of medical treatment for children, biological males competing in women’s sports, and physical transitioning at a young age.
• Affirmation of an equal right to human dignity does not determine a unique answer to all of these questions, and facts are important.
• NYT Opinion published the results of a focus group headlined “These 12 Transgender Americans Would Love You To Mind Your Own Business”, which highlights the need for trans people to be treated with dignity and respect.
• The focus group discussed the controversial issue of puberty-blocking medications, which are used off-label to treat gender dysphoria in minors.
• The current World Professional Association for Transgender Health recommendations say that hormones can be started at age 14 and some surgeries done at age 15 or 17.
• Reuters investigated gender clinics and found that most are comfortable prescribing puberty blockers or hormones based on the first visit, if there are no red flags and the child and parents are in agreement.
• Asking questions is important, but it must be done in good faith and with the aim of discovering answers grounded in facts.
• The rapid increase in the number of children identifying as trans raises questions about the extent to which gender-affirming medications have been clinically studied, the actual operation of clinics, and the concept of affirming children.
• There is also the question of why the increase is preponderantly among people with XX chromosomes.

Published February 16, 2023
Visit Slow Boring to read Matthew Yglesias’s original post Progressives need to engage with the specific questions about youth gender care

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February 15, 2023 [Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American]

By Spencer Chen
In Heather Cox Richardson [Letters from an American]
February 16, 2023
277 views
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• President Joe Biden visited the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 26 in Lanham, Maryland to celebrate his administration’s investment in the economy.
• Biden praised union labor and said that the nation’s investment in green energy would mean “good-paying jobs for electricians, plumbers, pipefitters, laborers, carpenters, cement masons, ironworkers, and so much more.”
• Biden’s economic plan is in stark contrast to the Republican’s “top-down, trickle-down economics” and their 2017 tax cut that has already added $2 trillion to the federal deficit.
• The economy continues to perform better than expected in 2023, with retail buying increasing 3% in January and the job market remaining strong.
• Biden accused the Republicans of proposing measures that would raise the deficit, while he wants to address it with taxes on wealthy Americans and corporations.
• The derailment of fifty Norfolk Southern train cars near East Palestine, Ohio, released highly toxic chemicals into the air, water, and ground, causing a massive fire and forcing about 5,000 nearby residents to evacuate.
• Republican Ohio governor Mike DeWine has refused federal assistance from President Biden, while Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said that Norfolk Southern had botched its response to the accident.
• The Trump administration got rid of a rule imposed by the Obama administration that required better braking systems on rail cars that carried hazardous flammable materials.
• Ohio’s new far-right Republican senator J. D. Vance blamed the Biden administration for the accident on the Fox News Channel show of personality Tucker Carlson.

Published February 16, 2023
Visit Letters from an American to read Heather Cox Richardson’s original post February 15, 2023

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Yes, Elon Musk created a special system for showing you all his tweets first [Zoë Schiffer, Platformer]

By Spencer Chen
In [Platformer]
February 15, 2023
269 views
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• Elon Musk’s tweet about the Super Bowl got less engagement than President Joe Biden’s, prompting Musk to fly back to the Bay Area to demand answers from his team.
• Engineers worked through the night to investigate why Musk’s tweets weren’t performing as well as they should.
• They discovered that Musk had been blocked and muted by many people, and that Twitter’s system had been promoting other users’ tweets over his.
• To fix the issue, they deployed code to automatically “greenlight” all of Musk’s tweets, boosting them by a factor of 1,000 and bypassing Twitter’s filters.
• This caused an uproar, and Musk acknowledged it with a meme. The artificial boosts remain in place, although the factor is now lower than 1,000.
• The incident highlights the tension between why some posts are more popular than others, and the difficulty of understanding why people see certain things and not others.
• Google previewed Privacy Sandbox, its answer to Apple’s App Tracking Transparency.
• Instagram will shut down its live shopping feature in March.
• Meta updated the “Why am I seeing this ad?” feature on Facebook to include information about how the company uses machine learning to analyze users’ behavior.
• Andy Jassy says Amazon is doubling down on the company’s grocery store business despite slow growth.
• Spotify removed a clause that let Apple use human voices from Findaway Voices to train Apple’s machine-learning systems.
• Twitter and other big companies are cutting Slack and Salesforce contracts.
• The NFT market been inching back up, with sales on the ethereum blockchain jumping from $546.9 million in December to $780.2 million in January.
• BuzzFeed launched “infinity quizzes,” letting users build personalized narratives using technology from OpenAI.

Published February 15, 2023
Visit Platformer to read Zoë Schiffer’s original post Yes, Elon Musk created a special system for showing you all his tweets first

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February 11, 2023 [Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American]

By Spencer Chen
In Heather Cox Richardson [Letters from an American]
February 12, 2023
266 views
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• President Biden’s statement during the State of the Union address that some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset every five years was true.
• This statement was based on Florida senator Rick Scott’s 11-point plan, which promised that all federal legislation would sunset in 5 years.
• Republicans have a long history of calling for cuts to Social Security, including Trump, Mike Pence, Ron Johnson, and the Republican Study Committee.
• Biden’s statement comes from the “reality-based community,” which was famously dubbed in 2002 by a senior advisor to George W. Bush.
• Trump’s campaign hired a consulting firm to try to prove that the election had been stolen, but the firm could not find anything that would have changed the outcome.
• Representative George Santos and Anna Paulina Luna have both been accused of fabricating their biographies.
• Political decisions that are not based on reality rob us of our right to make informed decisions about our government and what it will do.
• Social Security and Medicare can be stabilized by cutting benefits, raising taxes, rearranging government funding, or by some combination of the three.
• Voters need fact-based information to elect people who will enact the policies a majority of us want.

Published February 12, 2023
Visit Letters from an American to read Heather Cox Richardson’s original post February 11, 2023

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February 10, 2023 [Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American]

By Spencer Chen
In Heather Cox Richardson [Letters from an American]
February 11, 2023
274 views
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• The article discusses the current struggle between democracy and strongman governments, and how this struggle is playing out in Turkey, Syria, Russia, Moldova, and Brazil.
• In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been criticized for his government’s slow response to the devastating earthquake that occurred on Monday, and for his attempts to shut down media coverage of the crisis.
• In Syria, President Bashar al-Assad has blocked western aid to areas controlled by his opposition, and the US has issued a six-month sanctions exemption for relief in Syria.
• In Russia, Ramzan Kadyrov, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, has spoken openly of attacking Poland after conquering Ukraine.
• In Moldova, the government has resigned and the new prime minister intends to continue orienting the country toward Europe.
• In Brazil, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva met with President Joe Biden at the White House and emphasized democracy, rejecting political violence and putting great value in our democratic institutions.
• Elon Musk’s SpaceX has blocked the ability of Ukrainian troops to use the Starlink satellite system to advance against Russia.

Published February 11, 2023
Visit Letters from an American to read Heather Cox Richardson’s original post February 10, 2023

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TGIF: Real Housewives of the SOTU [Nellie Bowles, The Free Press]

By Spencer Chen
In [The Free Press]
February 10, 2023
264 views
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• Jamie Reed, a whistleblower, exposed the “morally and medically appalling” treatment of transitioning children at the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital.
• Sen. Josh Hawley and Missouri’s Attorney General Andrew Bailey launched investigations in response to Reed’s piece.
• President Biden delivered a State of the Union address, during which Marjorie Taylor Greene heckled him.
• Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is attempting to seize control of Disney’s Reedy Creek Improvement District.
• Atomwaffen founder was arrested for plotting to attack the power grid outside Baltimore.
• Kamala Harris is struggling to gain support from her own party.
• Don Lemon is having public breakdowns.
• John Fetterman was hospitalized.
• James O’Keefe was reportedly suspended from Project Veritas.
• The New York Times published a puff piece on Kamala Harris that went horribly wrong.
• Jews are still being talked about, with Joe Rogan making an antisemitic comment.
• Salman Rushdie is back with a new book and a new face.
• Dr. Fauci is now charging $100,000 per speech.

Published February 10, 2023
Visit The Free Press to read Nellie Bowles’s original post TGIF: Real Housewives of the SOTU

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February 9, 2023 [Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American]

By Spencer Chen
In Heather Cox Richardson [Letters from an American]
February 10, 2023
263 views
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• Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) have differing opinions on the decision to wait and shoot down the suspected Chinese spy balloon.
• House Republicans have used “investigations” to spread the idea of Democratic wrongdoing, but this narrative is being challenged by journalists and Democratic lawmakers.
• The House Oversight and Accountability Committee investigated Twitter for allegations that the company hid the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop before the election of 2020.
• Twitter executives testified that the Trump White House routinely demanded that tweets be taken down, while the Biden White House has not.
• The House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government held its first meeting under chair Jim Jordan (R-OH), with witnesses including Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and former Democratic representative Tulsi Gabbard.
• Special counsel Jack Smith has issued a subpoena to former vice president Mike Pence for documents and testimony, suggesting the investigation into former president Trump is moving into a new phase.

Published February 10, 2023
Visit Letters from an American to read Heather Cox Richardson’s original post February 9, 2023

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Margin and Opportunity [kyla scanlon, Kyla’s Newsletter]

By Spencer Chen
In Kyla Scanlon [Kyla's Newsletter]
February 9, 2023
277 views
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• Things are still weird in the economy, with speculative mania continuing despite the Fed raising rates.
• Bing could be the new Google as Microsoft goes into AI-Powered search.
• Adam Neumann came out to explain his new company, which is focused on community-owned apartments.
• The economy is a circuit board of people, interacting with each other and other things, money is the electric current.
• Emoconomics is the combination of feelings and expectations, fueled by data.
• George Soros and his work on reflexivity and Keynes and animal spirits show that if prices are bad, people feel bad and the economy feels bad.
• Fischer Black’s 1986 paper Noise states that the price level and rate of inflation are literally indeterminate and determined by expectations.
• Wealth inequality has only gotten worse, and the divergence in ‘vibes’ is demarcated by the widening gap between those that can shrug off inflation and those who cannot.
• The Fed’s primary tool to reset the vibes has been to raise rates, which has a direct impact on consumers.
• The combination of a lack of belief with a breaking macro environment has made it so we can talk ourselves into a downturn through tipping dominoes and feedback loops.

Published February 9, 2023
Visit Kyla’s Newsletter to read kyla scanlon’s original post

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February 8, 2023 [Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American]

By Spencer Chen
In Heather Cox Richardson [Letters from an American]
February 9, 2023
183 views
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• U.S. intelligence has determined that the spy balloon found in U.S. airspace was part of a larger Chinese surveillance program operating around the world.
• President Joe Biden issued an executive order in May 2021 to improve the nation’s cybersecurity.
• U.S. intelligence was able to detect the balloon due to the enhanced surveillance of the Biden administration.
• Republicans have complained that Biden didn’t shoot the balloon down earlier, but defense officials said they were collecting intelligence from the device.
• Biden said the balloon did not change the developing patterns between the U.S. and China.
• The U.S. has signed a deal with Japan and the Netherlands to limit exports of semiconductor technologies to China.
• The Republican House has come up with 17 new bills to counter China.
• The Australian Lowy Institute has assessed that China’s isolation because of Covid has set it back, permitting the U.S. to retain its position as the key player in Asia.
• The Senate and the House will receive classified briefings on the balloon and Chinese intelligence this week.
• House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) complained by tweet that Biden hadn’t mentioned China in the first hour of his State of the Union address.

Published February 9, 2023
Visit Letters from an American to read Heather Cox Richardson’s original post February 8, 2023

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