United States | News & Politics

cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/34652626

I recently read New Bill Would Give Marco Rubio “Thought Police” Power to Revoke U.S. Passports and I wanted to read the actual amendment to the Passport Act of 1926 for myself and I thought some others might also.

I have reformatted it for markdown with hyperlinks from law.cornell.edu to laws that the amendment referenced. So that it is easier to read and cross-reference. Let me know if I made any formatting mistakes.

I want to hear everyone's thought on this.

Right now, the bill is still in committe which means that it will either be cancelled (tabled), amended further, or approved (reported). If approved, the bill will be voted on by the House and then the Senate.

Could something like this reclassify dissidents as terrorists? Maybe allow for any and all naturalized citizens to be sent to a concentration camp? Could anyone who sent political aid to the Democrats be considered a terrorist? Like what could the reprecussions be and how far might they go?

H.R. 5300, page 43

SEC. 226. NO PASSPORTS FOR TERRORISTS AND TRAFFICKERS.

The Act entitled "An Act to regulate the issue and validity of passports, and for other purposes’’, approved July 3, 1926 (22 U.S.C. 211a et seq.), commonly known as the "Passport Act of 1926’’, is amended by adding at the end the following:

"SEC. 4. AUTHORITY TO DENY OR REVOKE PASSPORT TO INDIVIDUALS PROVIDING MATERIAL SUPPORT FOR TERRORISM.

• "(a) INELIGIBILITY.—
  • "(1) ISSUANCE.—Subject to subsection (b), the Secretary of State shall refuse to issue a passport to any individual who—
    • "(A) has been charged with or convicted of a violation of section 2339A or 2339B of title 18, United States Code; or
    • "(B) the Secretary determines has knowingly aided, assisted, abetted, or otherwise provided material support to an organization the Secretary has designated as a foreign terrorist organization pursuant to section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1189).
  • "(2) REVOCATION.—The Secretary of State shall, except as provided in paragraph (3)(A), revoke a passport previously issued to any individual described in paragraph (1).
  • "(3) EXCEPTIONS.—
    • "(A) RETURN TO THE UNITED STATES.— In order to facilitate the return of an individual described in paragraph (1) to the United States, the Secretary of State may limit a previously issued passport or passport card only for return travel to the United States, or may issue a limited passport or passport card that only permits return travel to the United States, prior to revocation under paragraph (2).
    • "(B) HUMANITARIAN AND EMERGENCY WAIVER.—The Secretary of State may issue a passport to an individual otherwise ineligible for such passport or subject to revocation of such passport under this subsection if the Secretary determines that emergency circumstances or humanitarian needs apply.
• "(b) RIGHT OF REVIEW.—Any individual who, in accordance with this section, is denied issuance of a passport by the Secretary of State, or whose passport is revoked by the Secretary, may request a hearing to appeal such denial or revocation not later than 60 days after receiving notice of such denial or revocation.
• "(c) RIGHT OF RESTORATION.—In the event that an individual described in paragraph (1) demonstrates during a hearing described in subsection (b) that the individual has been acquitted of an act described in that paragraph, or the Secretary otherwise changes a determination described in subparagraph (B) of such paragraph, the Secretary may reissue a passport to such individual.
• "(d) REPORT.—
  • "(1) IN GENERAL.—If the Secretary of State refuses to issue or revokes a passport pursuant to subsection (a), or if, subsequent to a hearing pursuant to subsection (b), the Secretary issues or cancels a revocation of a passport that was the subject of such a hearing, the Secretary shall, not later than 30 days after such refusal or revocation, or such issuance or cancellation, submit to the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate a report on such refusal, revocation, issuance, or cancellation, as the case may be.
  • "(2) FORM.—The report submitted under paragraph (1) may be submitted in classified or unclassified form.
• "(e) DEFINITIONS.—In this section—
  • "(1) the term ‘passport’ includes a passport card; and
  • "(2) the term ‘material support’ means the provision of any property, tangible or intangible, or service—
    • "(A) including currency or monetary instruments or financial securities, financial services, lodging, training, expert advice or assistance, safehouses, false documentation or identification, communications equipment, facilities, weapons, lethal substances, explosives, personnel (one or more individuals who may be or include oneself), and transportation; and
    • "(B) excluding medicine or religious materials.
• "(f) RULE OF CONSTRUCTION.—Nothing in this section may be construed—
  • "(1) or applied so as to abridge the exercise of rights guaranteed under the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States; or
  • "(2) to limit the Secretary’s ability to revoke a passport.
• "(g) SEVERABILITY.—If any provision of this section or the application of such provision is held by a Federal court to be unconstitutional, the remainder of this section and the application of such provisions to any other person or circumstance shall not be affected.’’.

With the dust is settling from their defeat on Tuesday, it's becoming clearer that there was some incredible malpractice going on in the Democratic party. As shown in the tweet I linked, Biden delayed dropping out even though his team knew it was going to be a complete blowout for Trump. Then, we have Harris's campaign spending over a billion dollars and still losing all of the swing states she needed to win.

For all the Democrats who would never vote Republican and would have never voted third party, are you now considering voting third party in future elections? If not, what would it take?

Archive link

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Arun Gupta
Nov 08, 2024

It's literally 2016 but worse somehow.

One source close to the Harris campaign tells Rolling Stone they reached out to several staffers in and around the campaign to voice concerns about the candidate embracing Dick and Liz Cheney.

“People don’t want to be in a coalition with the devil,” says the source, speaking about Dick Cheney. They say a Harris staffer responded that it was not the staff’s role to challenge the campaign’s decisions.

A Democratic strategist says they warned key Harris surrogates and top-level officials at the Democratic National Committee that campaigning with Liz Cheney — and making the campaign’s closing argument about how many Republicans were supporting Harris — was highly unlikely to motivate any new swing voters, and risked dissuading already-despondent, infrequent Democratic voters who had supported Biden in 2020. The strategist says they also attempted to have big donors and battleground state party chairs convey the same argument to the Harris campaign.

Another Democratic operative close to Harrisworld says they sent memos and data to Harris campaign staffers underscoring how, among other things, Republican voters, believe it or not, vote Republican — and that the data over the past year screamed that Democrats instead needed to reassure and energize the liberal base and Dem-leaning working class in battleground states. “We were told, basically, to get lost, no thank you,” says the operative.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/22263596

from New York Times
Opinion - Guest Essay
by Peter Beinart
Nov. 7, 2024

You do not vote fascism away. Even though this feels obvious, the right-wing political establishment in the U.S. has accomplished something remarkable with the help of the Democratic Party. They managed to shift the discourse so far right that they normalized positions that were possibly once inconceivable for many liberal voters.

Archive link

Democrats are committed to losing and are turning towards "we gotta be more racist and transphobic".

Seth Moulton also turning on trans people and outright declaring himself transphobic after prior tweets recognising things like Trans Day of Remembrance.

https://x.com/SLCLunk/status/1854597079773200550

"Progressive era has to end" from Elise Jordan. When was there ever one?

https://x.com/LailaAlarian/status/1854151933117788193

That was a laughable election. I would've preferred if Harris had won, because I'm not an accelerationist, but that time is past. Where do we go from here? Can the DNC be dragged back towards the left, or is it done for?

• Most Trump voters were white, a trend that continued from 2020:

Slightly more than 8 in 10 Trump voters in this election were white, roughly in line with 2020. About two-thirds of Harris’ voters were white, and that largely matched President Joe Biden ’s coalition in the last election. White voters make up a bulk of the voting electorate in the United States, and they did not shift their support significantly at the national level compared to 2020.

• Trump’s share of Black voters rose slightly, driven largely by younger men:

Nationally, about 8 in 10 Black voters supported Harris. But, that was down from about 9 in 10 in the last presidential election who went for Biden.

• Slightly more Hispanic voters supported Trump in 2020:

While Harris won more than half of Hispanic voters, that support was down slightly from the roughly 6 in 10 Hispanic voters that Biden won.

• Narrow gains with women benefitted Trump:

Harris had the advantage among women, winning 53% to Trump’s 46%, but that margin was somewhat narrower than Biden’s. Biden won 55% of women, while 43% went for Trump. His support held steady among white women — slightly more than half supported him, similar to 2020.

• Trump saw a modest increase with men:

Trump made a similar gain among men, with a modest shift increasing his advantage. The shifts by gender were concentrated among younger voters, as well as Black and Latino voters. White voters across genders and older voters across genders voted similarly in 2024 as they did in 2020.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/22241305

Jessica Corbett
Nov 06, 2024

"While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change," said the Vermont Independent. "And they're right."

A pygmy hippopotamus named Moo Deng outperformed the pollsters by correctly predicting a Trump victory. Virtually all of the professional prognosticators anticipated either a Harris win or a race that would be too close to call on Tuesday night.

The pollsters have once again been exposed as little more than a glorified Rasputin class, soothsayers whispering into the ears of the elite in Washington and New York. “US election ‘oracle’ predicts surprise Kamala Harris win,” one representative news article declared on Sunday, referring to the widely touted Selzer poll finding Harris leading in Iowa. Trump has since won the state by over 10 points.

Those Rasputins and their council of fools made well over $1.5 billion from the presidential election, advising and advertising Harris to defeat. Whatever we’ll learn about why the Vice President failed so badly, one thing is clear: her campaign advisors don’t know America.

Humility seems in order: about the limits of polling, about the Democratic Party’s lack of working class appeal, about Kamala’s performance in the popular vote, and about the major media’s obliviousness. Instead of humility, though, the “strategic” political class are in full-on We Did Nothing Wrong mode.

Despite the Democrats losing the popular vote in the election to the Republicans for the first time since 2004 - and by more than five million votes - many pro-Kamala Harris social media users aimed their frustrations at pro-Palestine voters, specifically Arabs and Muslims, on Wednesday.

Even if Harris had managed to win Michigan in the electoral college, which is home to a significant Muslim and Arab voting bloc, she would have still lost the election.

"Asian, Black, Hispanic and white voters all moved towards Trump. "Harris only increased her vote share among the over-65s and with white college-educated women," the FT report said.

One X account user posted: "Fuck Gaza at this point! And I mean that from the bottom of my ass! They at harris rally screaming every time she speak and never at a trump rally! Good! Let Israel run wild on them."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/22226888

Matthew Sledge
November 6 2024, 1:47 p.m.

I thought fascism was a Republican thing 🤯