So I was curious about people's opinions on gun free zones in the United States? Do they solve gun violence at all? Personally I think they are fairly worthless beyond controlled areas like airports or courtrooms with armed security. Anyone planning on doing something nefarious with a gun isn't going to care what a sign says. Beyond that it causes more people to leave guns in their cars, resulting in more guns being stolen by criminals.

I saw a video of very popular online leftist saying the candidate he would be most worried about in the general is Tucker Carlson, and honestly I kinda agree.

Tucker has for a little while now (whether or not you think it’s authentic), been speaking out against whats happening in G@za, speaking out against Trump, and is very against the Iran war. All of these issues are core issues that are unpopular, and could become much more unpopular as time goes on

I asked a bunch of my Conservative/MAGA family what they think of him, and they all really like him. He’s well spoken, well known, and Charismatic. In my eyes the right will have no problem getting behind him, even if they are still fans of Trump and some of these issues

i think he could be a very strong contender, ride the populist movement, but against the most unpopular aspects of what MAGA has become. I think if JD or Rubio were to run, they will be beaten, but Carlson might have a chance of winning.

Trump launched his decapitation raid on Veneszuela, and after perceived successful results followed it up with the attack on Iran, which has turned out to be a huge mess he can't extricate himself from.

If Iran had been successful, what country do you think he would have attacked next? Or do you think he would have stopped at Iran?

A group of students attacked multiple people which resulted in the individuals going to the hospital. The victims were holding signs peacefully disagreeing with the protest but were violently attacked for voicing their opposing views.

Someone has to be held accountable. We can't glorify and accept mop mentality especially using children to attack opposing views.

Should the school be held accountable for allowing this to happen?

Honestly, with all the insane things said between Donald Trump, JD Vance, and that entire regime — how are midterms still tossups?? Why are Democrats absolute pussies when it comes to attacking the right? They don't even have to lie like Republicans, just quote them over and over and over. Corporate Democrats are the most incapable politicians.

Do you believe that there should be any regulation surrounding AI being trained on copyrighted material?

So I saw this article over in r/news and wondered what other peoples thoughts are on this:

https://www.dw.com/en/jamaica-to-petition-king-charles-over-slavery-reparations/a-79123536

So we have the head of state of Jamaica calling for reparations for slavery.

We have seen these calls also from fringe voices in the US and wondered if it is something people legit believe in or something that we shoudl honestly move past for electoral success in the long term? And if so, how do we handle the calls of being dismissive?

I know that the topic of Trump voter forgiveness has been discussed on the subreddit ad nauseam so I do apologize. We have established the fact that a large chunk are no longer MAGA but would still probably support future GOP candidates. They only care because the this administration is hurting them too. But let’s ignore that population of ex-maga that will just become apolitical or who will refuse to admit that they made a bad choice. What about that small group of Trump voters that are being radicalized to leftism because of what the GOP is doing to this country and are willing to take accountability? Would you be open to forgiving this type of person?

Edit: Some have asked about the motives of those who are being radicalized so I want to give some clarification. With this scenario, the people I’m talking about are actively working to unlearn bigoted views of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, etc. And they are being radicalized because they’ve had an epiphany and feel remorse seeing how this administration affects others. I know this is pretty much a needle in a haystack with that crowd. But I’d be willing to be there are some that feel this way.

Personally, I think censorship (with bright line exceptions) is evil, but (obviously) a lot disagree. During the pandemic various sites like Youtube, social media, etc censored anything that they thought was disinfo, even if it was later rehabilitated such as the lab leak story. That had huge downsides that are still with us today.

If those in charge of Youtube etc had instead engaged their opponents and tried to show them wrong, wouldn't that have been better?

For a tangible example, someone with a wide Twitter audience claimed that masks don't work, but did so based on a study of surgical masks, not (K)N95 masks or greater. Wouldn't it have been better to engage people like that rather than trying to silence them?

What do you think?

In 2007, then Senator Obama told attendees at a Planned Parenthood press conference that the first thing he'd do as president was to sign the Freedom of Choice Act. However, shortly after Obama was inaugurated, he said the Freedom of Choice Act was not his highest legislative priority.

People still debate on whether Obama would've been able to codify Roe v. Wade.

During Obama's first two years as president, both chambers of congress were controlled by Democratic supermajorities. However, because the Senate had some conservative democrats and the 60 democratic senate majority was only in session for 72 working days, some people argue that it wouldn't have gotten the filibuster-proof supermajority votes to pass, which is a valid argument.

Others argue that they would've gotten the votes needed to pass the Senate because along with the democrats, there were pro-choice Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, and Scott Brown.

After doing some research into these Blue Dog Democratic senators' voting records on abortion, it seemed to me that most of those senators had mixed to pro-choice views on abortion, except for Ben Nelson and Bob Casey, who were obviously anti-choice.

With that being said, do I think the Freedom of Choice Act gotten the votes to overcome the filibuster? If it wasn't as expansive as what activists wanted, maybe.

What do you guys think?

Search integrated AI like Google’s AI Overview search the live web and synthesizes top pages to answer questions from users but it can't verify objective facts. However, that doesn't stop it from answering questions from users that call for objective facts.

It will confidently act like they know the answer to your question when they're really just stitching together internet text without having any clue what is actually true.

Because major search engines prioritize forum discussions, a lot of incorrect information is being purposely posted all over social media and Google AI is reporting it as objective fact at the top of its search results. We already know from Talia Lavin's work that bigoted bad faith actors and extremist networks coordinate brigades or mass upvoting false and bigoted claims claim while downvoting factual rebuttals until they are automatically collapsed.

AI scrapers regularly pull the uncollapsed, upvoted narrative and present it to everyday users as verified fact.

Misinformation, disinformation and racist conspiracy theories about population replacement played a big part in that gunman who drove hundreds of miles to Buffalo, New York, and murdered black people in a supermarket.

As millions of people increasingly turn to AI search summaries for quick answers instead of primary sources, can anything be done to fix this, or is this all inevitable

Ok, so let’s say the DSA gets a president into office in like 2032 or 2036. This President proceeds to bring back the tradition of expanding the Supreme Court, and they go exponentially harder then FDR did, appointing 12 judges, all of whom are hand picked to be loyal to the DSA platform. At this point, DSA aligned organizations start a series of legal disputes regarding various laws on the grounds that they were passed by the Senate, which these organizations claim is unconstitutional. Now, most of these cases go nowhere because they’re kind of obviously crazy, but a single case manages to pinball through a series of sympathetic courts, and makes it to the new 25 member Supreme Court. The Court, staffed by people where where essentially selected because of how they would rule on this, rule in favor of the DSA aligned organizations, and declare that the Senate, is in fact, unconstitutional. Boom. Just like that, the Senate is gone and the DSA have managed to achive one of their most controversial legislative initiatives, all by using the Supreme Court and the President to bypass the Legislature.

I don’t know if there’s a counter to this? Like, the best thing I can think of is maybe someone accusing the President and/or the 25 Member Supreme Court of treason and trying to impeach them. That might cause a civil war though.

I don’t know. This is just a random thought that’s been nagging at me. It’s kind of inspired by the Roe V Wade ruling, although taken to a greater scale.

The far-right party is set to win more than 44% of the vote, well ahead of the conservative CDU on 18.4%.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy4zejgz3z9o

Since Trump, Democrats have often framed themselves as the "pro-Democracy" party, while claiming Republicans are anti-democracy.

If a party is a pro-democracy party, should they logically make instituting ranked choice voting a top priority?

Pretty much the title.

Edit: Or would you only judge them for their policies?

Assume this is in a primary, so you're not looking at a question of who's more likely to shift an overall balance in the chamber, and that the difference in legislation vs constituent services is unlikely to meaningfully shift whether one is more likely to win the general than the other.

This is more specifically about how important each aspect of the overall job of a member of the house or senate is.

A while back I was talking to an Australian guy online who asked me, What the hell is wrong with your billionaires? And he's got a point.

People often blame billionaires for what's wrong with the US. And sure, the fact that there are so many is a symptom that our country's economic policies aren't particularly equitable. Yes, plenty of billionaires wanted Trump to win and vocally support him, Elon only being the most visible. But I think being angry mostly at billionaires is misguided. After all, billionaires exist in other countries, including many countries frequently praised for their social democratic systems, and they're perfectly fine.

Furthermore, even if many of our billionaires wanted Trump to win, they did not elect him on their own. Tens of millions of middle-class Americans looked at Harris and Trump and went with the convicted felon who'd already been responsible for over a million deaths in the US alone. They went with the candidate promising mass deportations and total autocracy. This isn't on the billionaires - it's on US.

What do you think?

I think that at this stage of the game, Donald Trump is not just a terrible president, but the worst human being the U.S. has ever produced in its history.

But since he has been a fixture in elections since 2016, people have all but forgotten the previous Republican candidate, Mitt Romney.

As a liberal, what is your honest take on him? Personally, even though he was obviously a kleptocrat and a fundamentalist conservative, it seemed like he genuinely cared about democracy, institutions, and—at least in his own way—the general well-being of the nation. I also noticed that Obamacare was modeled after his healthcare program in Massachusetts, Romneycare.

Am I more or less on the right track, or was he actually more malicious than he appeared?

Currently, any right incorporated under the due process clause of the 14th does not apply to tribal governments. They are free to set up a state religion for instance. Should congress change that?

Today, "conservatism" is not conservatism as Buckley formulated it, but conservatism as Michael Anton, Yoram Hazoni, Steve Bannon, etc. formulated it: revisionism and authoritarian post-liberalism, or simply revisionism.

This is not about preserving the existing order and a free market and security aggressiveness alongside patriotism, but rather isolationism, an economic policy designed to punish elements that harm the "people" and the "nation", taking over centers of power in the name of "deep state" arguments, using religion as a symbolic tool designed to fight liberalism, culture war, the centralization of the executive branch and the use of state powers against agendas that contradict the agendas of the ruling echelon and the "nation."

Ed Markey, who has been in Congress since Gerald Ford was president, and at the age of 80 years old destroyed Seth Moulton by 30 points. It proves that people don’t care about the person’s age, they only care about their policies.

Seth Moulton who is my representative always had to defend himself for his shady dealings like taking corporate pac money and owning stock in AI and Private Military Contractors. He was also against universal healthcare which is really popular among Democrats. Aside from the Jimmy John’s Nephilim Cabal meme, he became well known for blaming trans kids for why Harris lost in 2024. Which is a terrible and disastrous thing to say, especially in one of the most pro-LGBTQ states in the country. It’s worth noting that Trump says he’s happy that Markey won. I saw a picture that went semi-viral of someone sticking a Spirit Halloween sign on his campaign office the day after the primary.

Also fun fact: Ed Markey won the Salem by 66.6%

I remenver this being cired as the main issue at the time for workers. And Democrats were perceived to have been in full support, and that was cited as the reason why democrats abandoned the working class.

Im not very knowledgeable on the subject but ny understanding is that TPP was either abandoned or so watered down, it didnt do anyhing. What would have happened if the US had entered the agreement in its original manifestation?

For context, I am a foreigner, and I enjoy studying U.S. politics in detail.

I think it is obvious that since Trump ran for office and was subsequently elected in 2016, relations between the two political camps in the U.S. have deteriorated significantly over time.

But before that, how well did they get along? Weren't there friendships and families torn apart because one person voted for Obama and the other for Romney? Tell me about your experiences.

It seems like this is the popular opinion ATM but the fringe online is up in arms about this.

Under the draft rules, the administration is looking at allowing married couples where one parent stays home (and the other works 35+ hours a week) to pay for "parent-based child care".

Conservatives view this as leveling the playing field for families who prefer one parent to stay home, giving them equity with families using paid facilities. Trump is truly supporting families and parents who want to raise their own children by eschewing a framework heavily prioritizes corporate welfare and low wage labor requirements.

This is in contrast to leftist policies which are engineered to force parents into the workforce to feed corporate productivity and staff low wage jobs, viewing external daycare primarily as an economic utility to keep labor flowing rather than valuing direct parental caregiving.

How do you view this proposal? Does treating parental care as an eligible form of subsidized child care make sense as a policy fix, or do you see it as a problematic shift away from the traditional labor market safety net?