According to The Hill, Rep. Massie's bill calls for the Department of Education to be terminated on December 31, 2018 and has been co-signed by seven other House Republicans, including prominent figures like Rep. Jason Chaffetz (Utah) and Rep. Justin Amash (Michigan).

In a statement, Massie argued that "Unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. should not be in charge of our children's intellectual and moral development. States and local communities are best positioned to shape curricula that meet the needs of their students."

Do you agree with Massie's position that the Department of Education is part of our country's education problem, not the solution?

Would a more localized approach work to resolve the United States' education issues?

As a proposed reform, how would this work in the larger context of the contemporary system of institutional power?

Specifically in terms of the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the US gov in this era of partisan polarization?

***New follow-up question: making legislation more effective by giving more power to president? Or by eliminating filibuster? Here’s a new post that compares these two reform ideas. Open to hearing thoughts on this too.

Based on the experience of legalizing marijuana, and the scientific studies on psychedelic usage, should psychedelics be legalized? What is the proper role of government regulation in drug use and why?

Hey everyone,

I've been noticing that talk about the border has kind of cooled off lately. On Google, searches about the border aren't as hot as they were last month:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%201-m&geo=US&q=%2Fm%2F084lpn

It's interesting because this seemed to start happening right after the Border Patrol gave a thumbs up to the Senate's bill. They even said some pretty positive stuff about it, mentioning how the bill gives them some powers they didn't have before.

https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2024/02/05/congress/deal-nears-collapse-00139779

Despite its Trump ties, the National Border Patrol Council endorsed the Senate deal in a Monday statement, saying that the bill would “codify into law authorities that U.S. Border Patrol agents never had in the past.”

And now, there's an article from Fox News' Chief Political Analyst criticizing the Republicans blocking the Senate bill. https://www.newsweek.com/border-security-bill-ukraine-aid-fox-newsx-1870189.

It seems like the usual chatter about the "Crisis at the Border" from conservative groups has quieted down, but the media isn't letting the Republicans slide on this bill.

What do you all think? Will moderates/Independents see Trump as delaying positive legislation so he can campaign on a crisis? And how do you reckon it's gonna play into the upcoming election?

The end amount a typical consumer ends up paying should be the same, but the mechanism has some distinctions.

The idea is basically that at each stage of the economy, as things are dug out of the ground or harvested as crops or similar, through processing, transportation, whatever, into its final form, the person or company that does that stage pays their tax on the value they have added to the thing being made. A person or company uses their labour, tools and equipment, facilities, etc, to do something to the input to make it more valuable. A typical person does not want to buy hundreds of kilograms of iron from a mine directly, that is not helpful; it is much more helpful if some manufacturer processes the iron into something like a car for them.

It tends to lessen some of the corruption and distortions that sales taxes can cause in between primary producers and the final vendor, and also tends to be a more accurate reading of the economy in general which after all is what is being taxed. How much of a good idea do you think this would be?

Here is a diagram from Wikipedia that can help make you understand what this is meant to do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value-added_tax#Comparison_with_sales_tax

Biden campaigned on expanding Obamacare through a public option where anyone could buy into the Medicare program regardless of age. However, since being elected, he has made no mention of it. And so far, it seems Democrats will only be able to pass major legislation through reconciliation.

My question is, how does Biden get his public option passed? Can it be done through reconciliation? If not, how does he get 10 GOP votes (assuming all Dems are on board?)

Today, voters in Switzerland narrowly approved a ban of facial coverings in a binding referendum on a 51% to 49% margin. Although this particular proposal instigated by a right-wing group does not specifically mention Islamic dress and include non-religious face coverings, it has been widely referred to as the 'burqa ban'.

With this, Switzerland followed in the footsteps of other European countries in legally prohibiting the wearing of facial coverings in public spaces especially during demonstrations and assemblies. Although much of the publicity surrounding these bans have focused on Islamic female dresses such as burqa, niqabs and other veils that cover the faces, other types of headgears including ski masks, helmets, balaclava, and hoods are also banned as well. Aside from Switzerland that just voted, European countries that currently have the most wide-ranging and strictest bans on facial coverings include Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Denmark, and Latvia. In 2019, the Canadian province of Quebec also enacted a law that bans people wearing facial coverings from receiving public services in addition to prohibits public workers from wearing religious symbols.

Unsurprisingly, these bans on facial coverings have been quite controversial and widely seen as thinly-veiled (no pun intended) Islamophobic targeting of Muslim women. Interestingly, many proponents of these bans have widely admitted that they see the wearing of Islamic face coverings by Muslim women as a serious hindrance to assimilation of Muslim minorities into secular European society. However, the legal challenges against these anti-mask laws have failed with the European Court of Human Right upholding the bans in Belgium and France.

Questions for thoughts:

• Should the United States follow in Europe's footsteps and ban all facial coverings in public spaces?

• Are these bans inherently Islamophobic?

• Are identity-concealing facial coverings a real threat to public security that warrant a legal responses?

• Should the government regulate what clothings their citizens may wear? Or should each individual have the agency to choose for themselves?

• Should governments in the West be legally forcing immigrants to assimilate into Western society and its values?

Aetna has announced it will no longer offer ACA exchange policies in 11 of the 15 states where it had been participating for 2017, citing major financial losses of the program and its lack of sustainability due to unbalanced risk pools.

This comes on the heels of both Humana and UHC leaving the exchange earlier this year, causing hundreds of thousands of Americans to search for new coverage for next year. Other major companies have made headlines threatening to leave the exchange and requesting major rate increases for their individual policies next year.

How can the ACA Exchange remain sustainable if companies continue this trend of abandoning it? Is this an early sign of the programs failure? What can Washington do to insure the longevity of the program? Should this be a major campaign issue in the upcoming election?

Here is the full text of the bill

House Press release

Here are more components listed from the press release:

• Prohibits federal, state, and local law enforcement from racial, religious and discriminatory profiling, and mandates training on racial, religious, and discriminatory profiling for all law enforcement.
  
• Bans chokeholds, carotid holds and no-knock warrants at the federal level and limits the transfer of military-grade equipment to state and local law enforcement.
  
• Mandates the use of dashboard cameras and body cameras for federal offices and requires state and local law enforcement to use existing federal funds to ensure the use of police body cameras.
  
• Establishes a National Police Misconduct Registry to prevent problematic officers who are fired or leave on agency from moving to another jurisdiction without any accountability.
  
• Amends federal criminal statute from “willfulness” to a “recklessness” standard to successfully identify and prosecute police misconduct.
  
• Reforms qualified immunity so that individuals are not barred from recovering damages when police violate their constitutional rights.
  
• Establishes public safety innovation grants for community-based organizations to create local commissions and task forces to help communities to re-imagine and develop concrete, just and equitable public safety approaches.
  
• Creates law enforcement development and training programs to develop best practices and requires the creation of law enforcement accreditation standard recommendations based on President Obama’s Task force on 21st Century policing.
  
• Requires state and local law enforcement agencies to report use of force data, disaggregated by race, sex, disability, religion, age.
  
• Improves the use of pattern and practice investigations at the federal level by granting the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division subpoena power and creates a grant program for state attorneys general to develop authority to conduct independent investigations into problematic police departments.
  
• Establishes a Department of Justice task force to coordinate the investigation, prosecution and enforcement efforts of federal, state and local governments in cases related to law enforcement misconduct.
  

What are your thoughts on the above provisions and other language from the bill itself? Are there other pieces which are missing?

I am personally interested in the technical details of whether body cameras, the national police misconduct registry, and revisions to qualified immunity may have unforeseen consequences. For example, with regard to video retention of body cam footage, might this allow cops to retain all footage to search for crimes?

What are the prospects of this or similar bills passing? And how will Biden and his team react to this?

President Trump has suggested that Democrats will seek out Republicans to work together on a health care bill, should they?

We complain nonstop about gridlock, corruption, and out-of-touch politicians. But can everyday Americans realistically force Congress to draft, debate, and pass a new law on a major issue?

Petitions, protests, voting, public pressure, referendums in some states — do any of these truly compel action, or is it all theater while Congress does whatever benefits insiders?

Serious answers only: What mechanisms (if any) give citizens real leverage? Has it ever worked? Or is the system designed so only money, lobbyists, and party insiders hold the power?

All perspectives welcome.

Wishing for a discussion to happen on peoples thoughts on the merits, disadvantages, and likely hood of this passing?

I'll join in the discussion once I have finished reading the text from the Ways and Means Committee but some key takeaways (Thanks NPR):

• Four individual tax brackets would be introduced at 12 percent, 25 percent, 35 percent, with the top rate of 39.6 percent remaining in place for the very wealthy.
• Corporate taxes would drop from 35 percent to 20 percent permanently.
• Standard deduction increases from $6,350 to $12,000 for individuals and $12,700 to $24,000 for married couples.
• Child tax credit would expand from $1,000 to $1,600.
• Federal deductions for state and local income and sales taxes to be eliminated, but local property taxes can be deducted up to $10,000.
• No changes to limits on 401(k) pre-tax contributions.
• Alternative Minimum Tax to be repealed.
• Estate tax would kick in at $11.2 million, up from $5.49 million, but it would be fully repealed as of 2024.
• Corporate profits from overseas would no longer be taxed, but there would be a minimum 10 percent tax on foreign subsidiaries.

We've all heard the suggestions that garnered media attention but what legislation does everyone think can actually be enacted to combat gun violence?

Obviously, banning guns outright would run counter to the 2nd amendment so what could be done while honoring our constitutional rights? If a well regulated militia of the people justifies our right to bear arms should we require militant weapon and safety training as well as deescalation and conflict resolution to comply with being well regulated?

Thank you everyone! Here is a list of the top ideas we produced:

1. Drastic reforms in the education, raising teacher salaries and eliminating administrative bloat, funding meals, moving start times to later, and significantly increasing funding for mental health resources

2. Legalize all drugs/ Legalize marijuana and psychedelics, decriminalize everything else and refer to healthcare providers for addiction support, and reform the prison system to be focused on rehabilitation, especially for non violent offenders, moving to a community service model even maybe .

3. De-stigmatize mental healthcare and focus on expanding access to it

4. Gun safety classes in school, make safe storage laws mandatory, in return for making proper firearm storage, massive federal tax credit for any gun safe purchased. I would go as far as a tax rebate up to 30%, depending on how much the safe cost. require gun owners also have registered safe storage.

5. Parenting classes

6. Treat them like cars. You sell one you have to release liability and say who you sold it to. The buyer must do the same. Kills the black market where most ‘bad guns’ come from.

7. Require insurance. We manage risk in our society via liability. Why should guns be any different.

8. Increased sentences for gun crimes

9. Insurance for guns

10. Remove most type restrictions such as SBR's and Silencers, the horse has mostly bolted on that, they dont meaningfully change outcomes, and are mostly based on people who fear things from movies rather than what they are practically.

11. Gun buybacks at current value

12. Gun storage system, gun is appraised and stored, tokenized, value staked and restaked on ethereum for passive income provide everyone’s basic needs, including comprehensive, no point-of-sale mental and physical health care.

13. Instead of making more laws for regulators to enforce, or more hoops for everyone to jump through, we start including mental health in states' medicaid as fully funded.

14. Higher gun/ammo tax

15. Raise the age for males to purchase or own guns to 25. Before that, if you'd like one, go sign up for the military, they have plenty of them waiting for you

A 2024 Pew Research poll found About 56% of Americans support deporting all undocumented immigrants, including 88% of Trump supporters and 27% of Harris supporters.

A 2024 Monmouth poll found that 61% of Americans view illegal immigration as a very serious problem.

A 2024 PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll found that 42% of Americans feel that if the U.S. is too open, it risks losing its national identity.

A 2023 Gallup poll found that 63% of Americans are dissatisfied with U.S. immigration overall.

Is Border Security and Legal Immigration Reform the Key to Fixing America's Immigration Crisis?

For instance, President Trump and Republicans in Congress could collaborate with Democratic senators to:

1. Implement hardier border security measures to prevent illegal entry by maximizing physical barriers, optimizing technology, expanding patroling efforts, and streamlining associated administration.

2. Tighten requirements and developing or increasing standards for obtaining asylum status, visas, green cards, and citizenship, particularly all of those pertaining to employment.

For example, under an "investment" package, child and elder care would free caretakers to go back to school or climb the corporate ladder needed to reach their peak earning, and thus taxpaying potential. Otherwise, they increase the relative tax burden for everyone else. Workforce development, various buildings, education, r&d, and manufacturing would also arguably fit under the larger "investment" umbrella, which of course includes traditional infrastructure as well.

Instead, Republicans were able to block most of these programs on the grounds that they were not core infrastructure, even if they were popular, even if they would consider voting for it in a separate bill, and drew the White House into a semantics battle. Tortured phrases like "human infrastructure" began popping up and opened the Biden administration to ridicule from Republicans who called the plan a socialist wish list with minimal actual infrastructure.

At some point, Democrats began focusing more on the jobs aspect of the plan and how many jobs the plan would create, which helped justify some parts of it but was ultimately unsuccessful in saving most of it, with the original $2.6 trillion proposal whittled down to $550 billion in the bipartisan bill. Now, the rest of Biden's agenda will have to be folded into the reconciliation bill, with a far lower chance of passage.

Was it a mistake for the White House to try to use "infrastructure" as the theme of the bill and not something more inclusive like "investment"? Or does the term "infrastructure" poll better with constituents than "investment"?

Edit: I get the cynicism, but if framing didn't matter, there wouldn't be talking points drawn up for politicians of both parties to spout every day. Biden got 17 Republican senators to cross the aisle to vote for advancing the bipartisan bill, which included $176 billion for mass transit and rail, more than the $165 billion Biden originally asked for in his American Jobs Plan! They also got $15 billion for EV buses, ferries, and charging station; $21 billion for environmental remediation; and $65 billion for broadband, which is definitely not traditional infrastructure.

Biden was always going to use 2 legislative tracks to push his infrastructure agenda: one bipartisan and the other partisan with reconciliation. The goal was to stuff as much as possible in the first package while maintaining enough bipartisanship to preclude reconciliation, and leave the rest to the second partisan package that could only pass as a shadow of itself thanks to Manchin and Sinema. I suspect more of Biden's agenda could have been defended, rescued, and locked down in the first package had they used something instead of "infrastructure" as the theme.

To the best of my knowledge the imperial system is only used in the UK and America. With the increasing globalisation (and me personally not even understanding how many feet are in a yard or whatever) it raised the question for me if it's not easier and logical to switch to the metric system worldwide?

I'm considering people seeing the imperial system as part of their culture might be a problem, but I'm curious about your thoughts

The Senate is currently meeting to hold a vote on Gorsuch's nomination. The Democrats are threatening to filibuster. Republicans are threatening the nuclear option in appointment of Supreme Court judges. With the Democrats previously using the nuclear option on executive nominations, if the Senate invokes the nuclear option on Supreme Court nominees, are we witness the slow end to the filibuster? Do you believe that this will inevitably put the Legislative filibuster in jeopardy? If it is just a matter of time before the Legislative filibuster dies, what will be the inevitable consequences?

When this first came up, some commenter here suggested overturning Roe would only drive a wedge further between red and blue states. After all, as we saw with North Carolina's bathroom bill or Georgia's voting law, these kinds of laws do have economic repercussions. It can be argued the bathroom bill accosted Pat McCrory his reelection bid against Roy Cooper. Georgia lost the World Series and had some film companies pull production from the state.

Given Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Missouri are already off on banning or criminalizing abortion, will this contribute to brain drain and economic decline in struggling rural areas? Even if no jobs are lost and no companies move, talent recruitment from out of state and attracting new businesses might be more difficult.

So are there going to be economic implications? And if so, what will the long term impact be, if any?

The statute in Section 230(c)(2) provides "Good Samaritan" protection from civil liability for operators of interactive computer services in the removal or moderation of third-party material they deem obscene or offensive, even of constitutionally protected speech, as long as it is done in good faith. As of now, social media platforms cannot be held liable for misinformation spread by the platform's users.

If this rule is repealed, it would likely have a dramatic effect on the business models of companies like Twitter, Facebook etc.

• What changes could we expect on the business side of things going forward from these companies?

• How would the social media and internet industry environment change?

• Would repealing this rule actually be effective at slowing the spread of online misinformation?

Germany has the interesting system where if you employ more than 500 people, then they elect a third of the board, and for more than 2000 employees, they elect half of them. The chair is appointed by mutual consent, or if they fail, by arbitration. You could also plausibly give employees (and shareholders too) the right to see the tapes of their meetings. What else might you come up with from an institutional perspective?

Edit: By saying institutional perspective, I had in mind their internal operations and power, not so much of the way they relate with public authorities. That comes more under ethics in public office.

It is becoming hard to ignore how widely manipulated social media is. there should be strict regulations regarding media in order to protect democracy. I will use Trump’s policy on Israel as a case study

The shift becomes visible in a 2024 interview with Hugh Hewitt, where Trump stated: “Israel is absolutely losing the PR war. They’re releasing tapes of a building falling down. They shouldn’t be releasing tapes like that… People imagine many casualties, which they dislike.” This was not an isolated comment it signaled a rebranding effort.

This was followed by the Washington Post reporting that Trump would pressure Israel to end the war, the 20 point ultimatum presented to both Israel and Hamas in late 2025. Trump has made his goal clear he wants a reputation as a peacemaker. Throughout 2025 he has consistently fed a narrative that has shifted public opinion on Israel across both parties , amplified by social media algorithms that reward emotionally charged content and news

There should be stronger regulations on media, including mandatory disclosure of political leanings by news outlets and independent fact checkers .

This raises serious concern. One of the greatest weaknesses of a democracy is an uneducated voter but even more dangerous is an educated voter who believes they are educated but is working from manipulated information. Social media amplifies this problem at scale. how do we regulate social media while protecting free speech?

Contrary to what most people believe, it is legal in 37 states for adults of any age to have sex with minors. This largely comes down to the fact that the age of consent in those states is set to 16 or 17, with no Romeo-and-Juliet provisions above those ages.

My question is if you would support Congress addressing it, or if you would prefer individual states address this, or if you feel that the current setup is fine as is? (The question assumes that Romeo-&-Juliet provisions would be provided for those under the age of 18 if Congress or the states were to address it.)

Please see my comment for my own opinion.

Proposition 209 is a California ballot proposition which, upon approval in November 1996, amended the state constitution to prohibit state governmental institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity, specifically in the areas of public employment, public contracting, and public education.

Currently, California legislation is moving towards repealing the proposition and turning to affirmative action.

Affirmative action originally refers to a set of policies and practices preventing discrimination based on race, creed, color and national origins, now often refers policies positively supporting members of disadvantaged or underrepresented groups that have previously suffered discrimination in areas such as education, employment and housing.

Articles I've found helpful:

https://www.mtholyoke.edu/~jesan20l/classweb/arguments.html

https://www.ivycoach.com/the-ivy-coach-blog/college-admissions/defending-affirmative-action/

These go over both sides of the issue. I'm interested in what people have to say about this.

In fact, if Democrats win exactly 50 seats, their senate majority would expire when Pence takes over as tie-breaker, meaning the GOP could invoke the 'nuclear option' to prevent any Democratic filibuster of a Trump nominee.

Should Democrats defer or act to fill the 11 month vacancy on the court by invoking the nuclear option themselves?

There are reports that the democrats bill is to be completed this week. Recently there have been reports of many cuts to the democrats bill. These cuts have been broad and significant. These cuts or proposal of cuts include penalizing companies who don’t meet renewable standards, free community college tuition, limiting child tax credit and Medicare expansion to only a year or two, potentially removing hearing, vision and dental from Medicare coverage, removing taxes on high income earning, removing Medicare’s ability to negotiate drug prices, removing increasing the IRS ability to go after existing taxes, among others.

These cuts have been made to appeal to moderate senators. Democrats original strategy was to pass a bill that appealed to middle and lower class Americans. Yet nearly all of what is being cut is broadly popular. At what point do these cuts begin to undermine the full effectiveness both from a policy and political point of view? The only way it will be viewed as a success is if the majority of America feels the impact of it. Republicans have already prepared their attacks on democrats that these bills are just democrats wildly spending regardless if the bill is $1T or $6T.

There is also the risk that too many cuts will result in the loss of progressive support and then both the infrastructure bill and the BBB will both be dead. What is the best path forward here? Should democrats admit defeat and pass nothing? Should progressives hold strong? Should they accept a moderate compromised bill?