LAUREN EGAN and PHELIM KINE, Staff Writers - Politico
Stephan:
Here is what I assess as some good news about the U.S. China relationship. I have been increasingly concerned that one of the nuclear powers would give AI some control over nuclear weapons. Biden and XI seem to have recognized the problem and have made an agreement that it will not happen in the U.S. and China. Whether it will survive during the coming Trump administration, however, is not at all clear. It appears that what Trump wants is a dangerous confrontation with China. One that will have a massive effect on our economy.
U.S. President Joe Biden, seen here shaking hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping, is looking for ways to emergency-proof the U.S.-China relationship before President-elect Donald Trump takes over the White House. Credit: Leah Millis
LIMA, PERU — President Joe Biden and China’s leader Xi Jinping met for just under two hours on the sidelines of the APEC summit Saturday, marking the end to their 15-year diplomatic relationship and ushering in a new era of uncertainty as Donald Trump prepares to return to office.
The two leaders agreed to avoid giving artificial intelligence control of nuclear weapons systems, and they made progress toward the release of the two U.S. citizens behind bars in China that the State Department considers “wrongfully detained.” Biden also pressured Xi to rein in North Korea’s support of Russia in its conflict with Ukraine.
Biden is looking for ways to emergency-proof the U.S.-China relationship before Trump takes over the White House. And Saturday’s substantive meeting was a sign that both leaders were trying to make the most of Biden’s […]
This is the best-researched profile of religion in the United States that I have found, and it is quite interesting. Decreasing White Christian religious affiliation but, amongst those Whites who are religiously affiliated, increasing fanaticism about what has become a kind of pseudo-Christianity. Pseudo because while it endlessly quotes the Bible (interestingly particularly the Old Testament) it advocates almost nothing that Jesus actually taught.
Two-thirds of Americans (66%) identify as Christian, including 41% who identify as white Christians and 25% who identify as Christians of color. Over one-quarter of Americans (27%) are religiously unaffiliated, and 6% belong to a non-Christian religion.[1]
Among the 41% of Americans who identify as white Christians, 13% are white evangelical Protestants, 13% are white mainline/non-evangelical Protestants, 12% are white Catholics, and small percentages identify as Latter-day Saints (1%), Jehovah’s Witnesses (<0.5%), or Orthodox Christians (<0.5%).[2] Among the one-quarter of Americans who identify as Christians of color (25%), one in ten are Black Protestants (8%) and Hispanic Catholics (8%), 4% are Hispanic Protestants, 2% are other Protestants of color, 2% are other Catholics of color, and just 1% are Jehovah’s Witnesses, Latter-day Saints, or Orthodox Christians.[3] Just 6% of Americans are non-Christians, including Jewish Americans (2%), Muslims (1%), Buddhists (1%), Hindus (1%), and Unitarian Universalists (0.5%). More than one in four Americans (27%) are religiously unaffiliated; 5% of Americans identify as atheists, 5% identify as agnostic, and 17% claim they are “nothing in particular.”
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC regulates interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories. The appointment of Project 2025 author Brendan Carr to head the FCC I see as a first step in using federal media licensing power to scare and threaten media that if they criticize Trump it may result in a loss of their license to operate.
Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump attends a campaign town hall event at Macomb Community College in Warren, Michigan, U.S., September 27, 2024. Credit: Rebecca Cook / Reuters
Donald Trump on Sunday announced that he has nominated a Project 2025 author to be the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.
“Commissioner Carr is a warrior for Free Speech, and has fought against the regulatory Lawfare that has stifled Americans’ Freedoms, and held back our economy,” Trump said. “He will end the regulatory onslaught that has been crippling America’s Job Creators and Innovators, and ensure that the FCC delivers for rural America.”
Trump’s statement does not mention Carr’s connection to Project 2025, the governance plan from which the former and incoming president has tried to distance himself since polls showed it […]
I have been thinking a lot, as the media announces Trump’s appointment of one criminal after another to cabinet posts, how it is possible that a blatantly criminal convicted rapist, multiple felon, and multiple bankrupt racist huckster could possibly have been elected President of the United States? And then follow his election win by appointing a cast of fellow creeps and criminals. Culture is created by a consensus of individual choices. It is an expression of mass consciousness. I chose this report because it accurately illustrates very well what we have become.
Singers Post Malone and Morgan Wallen performing at the 57th Annual CMA Music Awards on November 8, 2023 Credit: Frank Micelotta / Disney / Getty
Earlier this year, conservatives on social media claimed an unlikely new icon. It wasn’t a podcaster with questionable views or a libertarian businessman selling a course or any particular ideology. It was actress Sydney Sweeney, Euphoria star and the recent lead of the rom-com Anyone but You.
Following her Saturday Night Live hosting gig in March, two conservative outlets publishedcolumns heralding Sweeney as a return to conventional beauty standards of the ’90s and early 2000s — or as, Bridget Phetasy for the Spectator put it, “the giggling blonde with an amazing rack.” Both pieces postulate that, by wearing low-cut dresses and playing up her sexuality, Sweeney was inviting men to gawk at her, therefore raising a middle finger to “woke culture” and the Me Too movement.
Sweeney hasn’t publicly aligned herself with the right in any way. (Her family’s politics, though, were the subject of controversy in 2022, which may […]
Noah Hurowitz, Contributing Writer - The Intercept
Stephan:
This is truly horrifying. Although this report centers around the Israeli/Palestinian war its implications are much much broader than that. Almost every nongovernmental organization that fosters wellbeing in the United States is a nonprofit entity. Think about the organizations you have received help from or someone you know has received help from, or that you support because they do something to foster wellbeing. Every one of them simply by saying or putting on their website something that Trump doesn’t like can, if he tells his Secretary of the Treasury to do so, lose their nonprofit status. Please contact your Congressional Representative, whether they are Democrat or Republican, and tell them to vote against H.R. 9495. If this bill becomes law we are going to see a major, and very negative, change in American society.
Donald Trump at the America First Policy Institute Gala on Nov. 14, 2024, in Palm Beach, Fla. Credit: Joe Raedle / Getty
A controversial “nonprofit killer” bill is back on track after it was blocked earlier this week.
A majority of Democrats in the House of Representatives rejected the bill on Tuesday out of fear that it could grant President-elect Donald Trump the legal tools with which to target his ideological foes, but Republicans are swiftly pressing ahead.
The Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, which would empower the secretary of the Treasury to designate any nonprofit as a “terrorist supporting organization” and revoke its tax-exempt status, is set to go before the Committee on Rules on Monday for a hearing that could tee up the bill for a new floor vote.
The hearing was announced Thursday evening, just two days after 144 Democrats and one Republican voted against the bill as part of a fast-track parliamentary procedure that required a two-thirds majority.
The bill, also known as H.R. 9495, has come under withering criticism from a broad coalition of organizations that say its sponsors are pushing it as a means of cracking down on free speech — particularly […]
