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Politics News

Dark Brandon

Preventing a cobalt crisis in Congo

Rebels in eastern Congo and the Congolese army have been fighting since the 1990s. The fighting escalated in 2022 as Rwanda-backed rebels, known as M23, invaded and took over several villages. The violence escalated further last summer when M23 moved closer to the area near Goma, one of the largest cities in the region. A war between Congo and Rwanda would not only be a humanitarian disaster, but it would upend the administration’s efforts to get into the cobalt market — a key component for electric vehicle batteries. Congo is home to about 70 percent of the world’s cobalt reserves, and China, one of Washington’s biggest trade competitors, is its main producer and is supporting M23 with drones.

Leveraging Public Streets CCTV and AI Technologies to Enhance Public Safety and Reduce Law Enforcement Costs | Crime in America

Tech firms face new international restrictions on data and privacy

The rapid growth of e-commerce in recent decades has been accompanied by an increase in digital trade barriers. Those include requirements for companies to store their data in the country where it is collected or to hand over their source code to a joint venture partner in order to do business in a particular market. Until now, the United States has been a leading voice on the international stage pushing back against such provisions, which it argued not only hurt big tech companies but small and medium-size companies that increasingly rely on the internet to do business.

Dark Brandon

Biden moves to bring microchip production home

The Covid pandemic sharpened bipartisan fears in Washington about U.S. reliance on microchips produced overseas — primarily in China or Taiwan. As factories shut down in Asia and supply chains snarled, U.S. automakers and other manufacturers were unable to get the chips they needed, idling their plants and spiking prices for cars and other goods. That led the Biden administration and lawmakers from both parties to consider policies to bring production of the most advanced microchips back to the U.S.

cannabis | marijuana | richtea360

Biden recommends loosening federal restrictions on marijuana

Since the Nixon administration, marijuana has been classified in federal law in the same category as LSD and heroin — drugs categorized as having a high propensity for addiction and no known medical value. In October 2022, as more and more states have moved to legalize cannabis, Biden issued an executive order directing the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct a review of all available cannabis science and recommend whether the classification of marijuana should be changed.

Dark Brandon

A new agency to investigate cyberattacks

Organizations that fall victim to hacks often keep tight-lipped about what happened due to fear of legal liability or brand damage. But cybersecurity experts have long warned that the country will never break free from an endless cycle of computer breaches unless companies and government agencies become more transparent about how they got infiltrated. The danger was underscored in 2020 when a sophisticated Russian hack breached nine federal agencies.

Sexy Girl | Dainis Graveris | https://unsplash.com/@dainisgraveris

First over-the-counter birth control pill to hit U.S. stores in 2024

The push to make an oral contraceptive available without a prescription predates Biden’s presidency. But the issue took on fresh urgency when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, particularly as conservatives openly questioned the legal precedent establishing the right to privacy for birth control access. Within weeks of the ruling, a contraceptive maker, which had spent more than six years studying consumers’ ability to use the product correctly without a doctor’s supervision, applied to the FDA for over-the-counter approval.

Dark Brandon

Cracking down on cyberattacks

During Biden’s first six months in office, government agencies and critical companies were beset by cyberattacks. These incidents included the SolarWinds hack, which involved Russian government hackers infiltrating around a dozen agencies for at least a year. Ransomware attacks were also a major source of concern, with the administration forced to reckon with Colonial Pipeline, the source of almost half of the East Coast’s fuel supply, shutting down operations in May 2021. In the years since, cybersecurity concerns have only increased, including a Chinese-linked breach last year that impacted email accounts at the Commerce and State departments, skyrocketing new vulnerabilities opened up by the use of artificial intelligence technologies, and new geopolitical-linked targeting of critical systems.

Building armies of drones to counter China

Building armies of drones to counter China

Defense officials have for years talked about how drones will play a central role in future wars, but other than fiddling at the margins, little has been done to build a large, AI-enabled network of military uncrewed vehicles. The worry in Washington has been that Beijing is ahead of the United States in developing the military use of drones and its growing drone fleets could swarm and confuse the radars and air defenses of U.S. warships, and critical bases in Guam and Japan.

sexy girl | Carlos Augusto | https://unsplash.com/@carlosaugustorj

A sweeping crackdown on “junk fees” and overdraft charges

Biden touted his campaign to eliminate so-called junk fees — the hidden charges that often come as a surprise to the consumer, taking aim at the fees levied by airlines, cable companies, concert ticket-sellers and hotels, among other businesses. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2022 launched an initiative to expand the crackdown to target financial fees, training its scrutiny in particular on credit card late charges and the insufficient-fund fees that banks impose.

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Preventing discriminatory mortgage lending

In 1977, Congress passed a law to combat a practice known as redlining, where for decades the government had discouraged lenders from extending mortgage loans to borrowers in Black neighborhoods. The law requires banks to lend to creditworthy lower-income people in the same neighborhoods where they have branches that take deposits. But the growth of the internet and mobile banking have made those rules increasingly obsolete. Banks, in effect, had a major presence in many neighborhoods where they had no branches.

Guns and Second Amendment | Voters Issues | @stngr

Students in Israel Don’t Carry Guns to Class, Contrary to Social Media Posts

Israel has established strict measures in response to armed attacks on its schoolchildren. But social media posts falsely claim there have been “no school shootings in Israel” and use a photo to misleadingly suggest students carry weapons to class. Only guards and other specific personnel — not students — can carry arms in Israeli schools.

Education | Voters Issues | @claritycontrol

Illinois School District’s Shift to Equitable Grading Is Misrepresented Online

A school district in Illinois is considering implementing “equitable grading,” which would focus more on evaluating student learning than class participation or homework. A conservative website misrepresented the idea as a “race-based grading system” in a story that went viral. The equitable grading system would apply to all students.

Dark Brandon

Making airlines pay up when flights are delayed or canceled

Never mind luxury travel, now some airline passengers pay extra just for the basics. But getting your money back when a flight gets canceled or significantly delayed is one effort the Biden’s administration’s Transportation Department has tried to address as part of a new tough stance on the airline industry, especially after multiple instances of air travel gone awry.

benefits of universal basic healthcare | picsea

Gun violence prevention and gun safety get a boost

After the 2022 massacre of 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, the Biden administration called for stricter gun legislation. Uvalde spurred the first significant gun safety law in 30 years, which Biden signed in June of 2022, and the president took further action on his own.

Strengthening military ties to Asian allies

Strengthening military ties to Asian allies

Biden came into office with the goal of countering China by rebuilding military alliances with Asian allies. In late 2022, a top Pentagon official promised to accelerate that effort, vowing that “2023 is likely to stand as the most transformative year in U.S. force posture in the [Pacific] region in a generation.”

Dark Brandon

Countering China with a new alliance between Japan and South Korea

South Korea and Japan have a mutual antipathy that goes back decades, linked to Japan’s brutal colonial rule of Korea from 1910-1945 as well as long-simmering territorial disputes in the East China Sea. That has fueled such acrimony in South Korea that until relatively recently public opinion polls in the country have rated Japanese leaders only slightly more popular than North Korea’s.

Fixing bridges, building tunnels and expanding broadband

Fixing bridges, building tunnels and expanding broadband

Successive presidents tried for so many years to pass infrastructure legislation that it became a running joke in Washington. Maybe that’s one reason polls show that voters don’t know that Biden finally broke that logjam, and did it with support from lawmakers of both political parties. It was the kind of historic investment — following years of deferred needs — that previous presidents had tried and failed to achieve.

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