Politics | Voter.org

Why the Fifth Circuit Keeps Making Such Outlandish Decisions

November 29, 2023 decisions, Keeps, Fifth, Making, Circuit, Such, Outlandish0 comment

Where to even start in cataloging the most ridiculous—and alarming—recent rulings to come out of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit? There’s a case about whether a class action could go forward that boiled down to a dispute among three Fifth Circuit judges over the meaning of a Bible verse. There’s a case in which the Fifth Circuit allowed three doctors to sue the FDA over a tweet intended to discourage ivermectin use that read, “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all.…

How Biden Might Recover

November 25, 2023 Biden, might, Recover0 comment

A press release that President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign issued last week offered a revealing window into his advisers’ thinking about how he might overcome widespread discontent with his performance to win a second term next year. While the release focused mostly on portraying former President Donald Trump as a threat to legal abortion, the most telling passage came when the Biden campaign urged the political press corps “to meet the moment and responsibly inform the electorate of what their lives might look like if the leading GOP candidate for…

The ‘Anti-Defeat’ Candidate

November 21, 2023 candidate, ‘AntiDefeat’0 comment

Like many politicians, Representative Dean Phillips likes to look people in the eye. And because he’s a politician, Phillips can glean things, just as President George W. Bush did when he peered into Vladimir Putin’s eyes and saw his soul. “I’ve looked Benjamin Netanyahu in the eye,” Phillips told a group of students at Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hampshire, last week. And? “I did not like what I saw,” Phillips said of the Israeli prime minister. “I do not like his government. He’s got to go.” Philips has also…

The Republicans Have No Majority

November 17, 2023 Republicans, Majority0 comment

Mike Johnson now knows what Kevin McCarthy was dealing with. At the new speaker’s behest, House Republicans today relied on Democratic votes to avert a government shutdown by passing legislation that contains neither budget cuts nor conservative policy priorities. The bill was a near replica of the funding measure that McCarthy pushed through the House earlier this fall—a supposed surrender to Democrats that prompted hard-liners in his party to toss him from the speakership. Johnson is unlikely to suffer the same fate, at least not yet. But today’s vote laid…

Is Biden Toast?

November 13, 2023 Biden, toast0 comment

It’s a year before the presidential election, and Democrats are panicking. Their incumbent is unpopular, and voters are refusing to give him credit for overseeing an economic rebound. Polls show him losing to a Republican challenger. What’s true now was also true 12 years ago. Today, Democrats are alarmed by recent surveys finding that President Joe Biden trails Donald Trump in five key swing states. But they were just as scared in the fall of 2011, when President Barack Obama’s approval rating languished in the low 40s and a pair…

Peter Thiel Is Taking a Break From Democracy

November 9, 2023 from, Break, Taking, Democracy, Peter, Thiel0 comment

This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here. It wasn’t clear at first why Peter Thiel agreed to talk to me. He is, famously, no friend of the media. But Thiel—co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, avatar of techno-libertarianism, bogeyman of the left—consented to a series of long interviews at his home and office in Los Angeles. He was more open than I expected him to be, and…