US news

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Alabama executes man on death row by controversial nitrogen gas method

      by

      An Alabama man convicted of helping to burn a man alive was executed by nitrogen gas – a form of suffocation which defense lawyers have described as cruel and unusual punishment – on Thursday shortly after the US supreme court signed off on the seventh execution using the contested method.Anthony Boyd, 54, was sent to the death chamber at the William C Holman correctional facility on Thursday evening.“I didn’t kill anybody. I didn’t participate in killing anybody,” said Boyd in his final words, per the Associated Press. “There can be no justice until we change this system … Let’s get it.”He was strapped to a gurney and forced to breathe nitrogen through an industrial mask, fatally depriving his body of oxygen. He was pronounced dead at 6.33pm.On Thursday, the six conservative justices on the supreme court denied Boyd’s petition for a stay of execution over the fierce opposition of their three liberal peers. Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote an excoriating dissenting opinion in which she invited readers to use a stopwatch to time four minutes.“Now imagine for that entire time, you are suffocating … That is what awaits Anthony Boyd tonight,” Sotomayor said.Boyd’s execution was the eighth time the gas has been used to kill a man after its initial experimentation by Alabama on Kenny Smith in January 2024. In March, Louisiana became the second state to deploy nitrogen as a killing method, with the execution of Jessie Hoffman Jr.Advocates of the death penalty have embraced the nitrogen method, which they insist is an acceptable alternative to the prevalent execution method in the US, lethal injection. A boycott of medical drugs sold to corrections departments has made it increasingly difficult for states to procure the chemicals used in lethal injections, and as a result they have turned to other methods including nitrogen.But the track record for this new killing procedure has been deeply troubling. The first prisoner to die by the gas, Smith, was seen by witnesses writhing and convulsing on the gurney.At a recent hearing in federal court in which Boyd appealed against his execution by nitrogen, Smith’s widow, Deanna Smith, likened the process of watching her husband die to “watching somebody drown without water”.The second person killed by Alabama using nitrogen, Alan Miller, also visibly shook and trembled for about two minutes in September last year. In the Louisiana execution, Hoffman was recorded still breathing 16 minutes into the procedure.Boyd’s lawyers argued in federal district court that the method was a violation of the eighth amendment of the US constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. They said that previous nitrogen executions had caused prisoners “extreme pain and terror of suffocation while still conscious, inflicting gratuitous suffering beyond what is constitutionally permitted”.Earlier this month the federal judge in the case, Emily Marks, declined to stop Boyd’s execution from going ahead. She said she had no doubt that a person deprived of oxygen “experiences discomfort, panic and emotional distress”, but ruled that the constitution does not guarantee a painless death.Boyd was sentenced to death for the murder of Gregory Huguley in 1995. Prosecutors said he was one of four men who kidnapped Huguley after he failed to pay $200 for cocaine, then doused him in petrol and set fire to him.Boyd has always protested his innocence. The prosecution case depended on the testimony of an eyewitness with no forensic evidence connecting Boyd to the crime.“I didn’t kill anybody. I didn’t participate in any killing,” Boyd said when he phoned in to a recent press conference held by his supporters.His death sentence was handed down by a jury vote of 10 to two. Alabama and Florida are the only states that allow people to be sent to death row on the basis of a non-unanimous jury verdict. More

    • 188 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      US Senate fails to pass bill to pay federal essential workers and troops through shutdown

      by

      The Senate failed on Thursday to pass legislation that would keep federal workers deemed essential and troops paid throughout the ongoing government shutdown, which stretched into its 23rd day with no end in sight.The upper chamber held a vote on Republican senator Ron Johnson’s “shutdown fairness act”, which would guarantee pay for certain federal employees even when government funding lapses.“With Democrats continuing the Schumer shutdown, they should at least agree to pay all the federal employees that are forced to continue working,” Johnson said when he introduced the bill last week.But Democrats opposed the legislation, arguing that it would just give Donald Trump more power by letting the president choose which employees receive pay.“The bill, the Republican bill, is a ruse. It’s nothing more than another tool for Trump to hurt federal workers and American families and to keep this shutdown going for as long as he wants,” Schumer, the Democratic Senate minority leader, said.The bill did not receive the 60 votes necessary to advance, with only three Democratic senators – John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, and the Georgia senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff – breaking with their party to support it.Congress has been paralyzed since the start of the month, after Democrats and Republicans failed to reach an agreement on extending government funding beyond the end of September. The ensuing shutdown has led to an estimated 700,000 federal workers being furloughed, while hundreds of thousands of others are working without pay.Last week, Donald Trump authorized the defense department to pay US military personnel, using funds meant for research and development. Budget experts who spoke to the Guardian have described the move as likely illegal.The Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, has kept his chamber out of session since 19 September, in a bid to pass a Republican-backed government funding bill that cleared the House along near party lines.Democrats have rejected the measure, which would extend funding through 21 November, and instead demanded that Republicans extend subsidies for Affordable Care Act health plans that are set to expire at the end of the year. They also want curbs on Trump’s use of rescissions to slash funding that Congress has approved, and the reversal of cuts to the Medicaid program for poor and disabled Americans.The Senate’s Republican leader, John Thune, has said he is willing to negotiate over the Affordable Care Act subsidies, but only once the government reopens. He has held 12 votes on the Republican spending bill, which has yet to receive enough Democratic support to advance.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Thursday, Democratic senators debuted two counterproposals to pay federal workers. The “military and federal employee protection act” proposed by Michigan’s Gary Peters would provide a one-time payment to federal workers from the start of October to the date the bill is enacted.The “true shutdown fairness act”, proposed by Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, would pay all federal workers during a shutdown, whether they are furloughed or required to continue working.Neither received a vote in the Senate.Fetterman, whose state broke for Trump last November, released a video after the Senate vote in which he urged his fellow Democrats to change their approach.“Reopen this government and have an earnest conversation about extending those tax credits,” he said, standing alongside Dave McCormick, a Republican who is Pennsylvania’s junior senator. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump cancels plans to send federal troops to San Francisco for immigration crackdown

      by

      Donald Trump has canceled plans for a deployment of federal troops to San Francisco that had sparked widespread condemnation from California leaders and sent protesters flooding into the streets.The Bay Area region had been on edge after reports emerged on Wednesday that the Trump administration was poised to send more than 100 Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and other federal agents to the US Coast Guard base in Alameda, a city in the East Bay, as part of a large-scale immigration-enforcement plan.But on Thursday, the president said he would not move forward with a “surge” of federal forces in the area after speaking with the mayor, Daniel Lurie, and Silicon Valley leaders including Marc Benioff, the Salesforce CEO who recently apologized for saying Trump should send national guard troops, and Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia. Lurie said he spoke with the president on Wednesday night, and that Trump told him he would call off the deployment.“In that conversation, the president told me clearly that he was calling off any plans for a federal deployment in San Francisco. Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, reaffirmed that direction in our conversation this morning,” Lurie said in a statement.Trump confirmed the conversation on his Truth Social platform, saying: “I spoke to Mayor Lurie last night and he asked, very nicely, that I give him a chance to see if he can turn it around.”The operation had been expected to start as early as Thursday.The sudden reversal came as protesters had mobilized in anticipation of a surge in troops. Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the US Coast Guard base in Alameda on an overcast Thursday morning, holding signs with slogans such as “No ICE or Troops in the Bay!” Police used flash-bang grenades to clear a handful of demonstrators from the entrance as CBP vehicles drove through.View image in fullscreenLater on Thursday morning, protesters were walking in a slow circle at the gates of the Coast Guard base. Many were carrying signs that read: “Protect our neighbors, protegemos nuestros vecinos.” There was at least one person dressed as Batman, and Marvin Gaye was blasting through a loudspeaker.Josh Aguirre, 39, had come to participate in his first ever protest. “It’s scary what’s going on right now, and we’ve got to just stand in solidarity,” said Aguirre, who had come, along with his dog, from East Oakland – a largely Latino and immigrant community.He found out that federal agents would be deployed to the Bay Area from his four-year-old daughter’s school administrators. “And the first thing I thought was the families that I know who bring their kids to school are going to be affected the most,” he said. “It’s important to show up for your community.”Raj, an educator who asked to be identified only by his first name, had come with his 10-year-old daughter. “In the Bay we’re involved … and our kids know what’s happening,” he said. “When federal troops come in here, they won’t just see what they think they’re gonna see, which are like violent agitators. They’re going to see entire communities come out with their kids, with their families, with their teens.”By Thursday afternoon, local leaders and organizers had gathered outside San Francisco’s city hall, where they grappled with the whiplash. It remained unclear whether Trump’s decision to pull back was focused only on San Francisco, or if other Bay Area cities such as Oakland would still be targeted.“At this time, we do not know which federal agencies are being called off. We don’t know if that’s the national guard. We don’t know if it’s ICE, if it’s border patrol,” said Jackie Fielder, the San Francisco city supervisor representing parts of the city’s Mission neighborhood.Fielder also criticized Benioff, Elon Musk and other tech leaders who had voiced support for a national guard deployment in the Bay Area. “I condemn every tech billionaire who supported this,” she said. “This city doesn’t belong to them.”Fielder and other organizers emphasized that even as the region awaits clarity on whether and where there will be a federal deployment, and the extent to which the administration plans to ramp up immigration enforcement in the city, local leaders are going to continue to mobilize rapid response networks, legal aid and other support systems for the residents most affected.“We don’t need to get ready because we’ve been ready,” Fielder said. “This is not a time for panic. It is a time for power across this area.”Trump had signaled for weeks that San Francisco could be the next Democratic city to face an administration crackdown. In an interview on Fox News on Sunday, the president claimed “unquestioned power” to deploy the national guard and argued that San Francisco residents want the military in their city.It was unclear if the national guard would have played a role in operations in the region. But state and local leaders on Wednesday had responded swiftly and strongly to the news of the CBP operations, and vowed to fight any potential deployment of the military.California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, called Trump’s moves “right out of the dictator’s handbook”.“He sends out masked men, he sends out border patrol, he sends out ICE, he creates anxiety and fear in the community so that he can lay claim to solving for that by sending in the [national] guard,” Newsom said in a video statement. “This is no different than the arsonist putting out the fire.”Lurie said earlier in the week that his city was prepared.“For months, we have been anticipating the possibility of some kind of federal deployment in our city,” he said.Oakland’s mayor, Barbara Lee, said: “Real public safety comes from Oakland-based solutions, not federal military occupation.”View image in fullscreenRob Bonta, California’s attorney general, vowed to “be in court within hours, if not minutes”, if there is a federal deployment, and the San Francisco city attorney, David Chiu, has promised the same.San Francisco’s district attorney, Brooke Jenkins, said she was ready to prosecute any federal agents who violated California law.San Francisco has been the latest major US city to face Trump’s threats. The administration has previously sent the military to Los Angeles and Chicago, and has tried to deploy troops in Portland. All deployments have faced legal challenges from local and state authorities.Trump in recent weeks argued that a federal operation in San Francisco was necessary to combat crime. “Every American deserves to live in a community where they’re not afraid of being mugged, murdered, robbed, raped, assaulted or shot” he said at an appearance on 16 October.Local leaders, including the city’s mayor and district attorney, have said crime in the city is under control, pointing to falling crime rates and growing police recruitment. The city’s homicide rate this year is expected to be the lowest since 1954, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.Community groups had readied themselves to support affected residents. Organizers have mobilized to stage a mass rally in the city, as well as vigils at local libraries.City supervisor Jackie Fielder told reporters last week she and her constituents in the Mission district had been bracing for this moment.“The moment that people stop going to work, when anyone Black or brown can’t freely walk outside without the fear of Trump’s federal agents racially profiling and arresting them, the moment when parents stop sending kids to school, become too afraid to go to the grocery store or doctor,” Fielder said. “What we have been preparing for in the Mission is essentially a shutdown the likes of which we haven’t seen since Covid.” More

    • 150 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      Eric Adams to endorse Andrew Cuomo in New York City mayoral race

      by

      The New York City mayor, Eric Adams, will endorse Andrew Cuomo in the city’s mayoral race, following months of tension between the two Democrats turned independents.Adams revealed his intention in an interview with the New York Times a month after he ended his own re-election campaign which saw him register poor polling numbers.The race has been dominated so far by the fight between Cuomo, the former New York governor, and the democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, whose rise in the polls has created headlines around the world and symbolised hopes for a rejuvenated left wing of the Democrats.Just last month, Adams lashed out at Cuomo, calling him a “snake and a liar”, and accusing him of having “a career of pushing Black candidates out of races”. Despite that, Adams reversed course on Thursday, telling the New York Times that he now plans to campaign alongside Cuomo in neighborhoods where he maintains strong support.“I think that it is imperative to really wake up the Black and brown communities that have suffered from gentrification on how important this race is,” Adams told the newspaper.“They have watched their rents increase in terms of gentrification and they have been disregarded in those neighborhoods, and I’m going to go to those neighborhoods and speak one on one with organizers and groups and I’m going to walk with the governor in those neighborhoods and get them engaged,” he added.At an unrelated press conference later on Thursday, Adams told reporters asking about the endorsement plan: “I’ll be with Andrew later today.”On Thursday afternoon, Adams reiterated his endorsement, telling reporters: “I’m fighting for the family of New York. That’s why I’m here today to endorse Andrew Cuomo: to be part of this fight. And I’m going to give him my all these next few days.”The Guardian has contacted Cuomo’s campaign for comment.Adams’s interview with the Times took place a day after he and Cuomo were seen sitting courtside together at the New York Knicks’ season opener at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday evening. The game occurred right after a heated mayoral debate featuring Cuomo, Mamdani and the Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa.During the debate, both Mamdani and Sliwa said they would refuse Adams’s endorsement.Earlier this year, Adams launched his re-election campaign as an independent after being indicted on federal corruption charges which were later dismissed by Donald Trump in exchange for Adams’s cooperation with federal immigration raids across New York City.In response to Adams’s endorsement of Cuomo, Mamdani wrote on X: “The Art of the Deal” – referring to Trump’s 1987 book. More

    • 213 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      Silly inflatable costumes are taking over anti-Trump protests. What are they actually saying? | Julia Carrie Wong

      by

      There was little reason to imagine that the inflatable frogs would become an actual thing. Protests at the ICE detention center in Portland, Oregon, in recent months have reflected the city’s penchant for whimsy and weirdness, and tactics such as naked bike riding, organized public knitting and “ICE fishing” with doughnuts have largely remained a local affair.But when a federal agent in riot gear ran up behind a protester wearing an inflatable frog costume and sprayed a chemical agent directly into his costume’s air vent with all the casual menace of an exterminator, the inflatable frog went viral. “I’ve definitely had spicier tamales,” the 24-year-old protester, Seth Todd, told the Oregonian, cementing the frog’s status as a leftist folk hero.Soon, activists had launched “Operation Inflation” to equip Portland protesters with an entire menagerie of inflatable animal suits, and the costumes began appearing at other protest hotspots, including the ICE detention center near Chicago where police have deployed teargas, pepper balls and batons against protesters in recent weeks. By the time millions of Americans took to the streets in last weekend’s No Kings marches, inflatable costumes were ubiquitous.“I obviously started a movement of people showing up looking ridiculous, which is the exact point,” Todd said. “To show how the narrative that is being pushed [that] we are violent extremists is completely ridiculous.”View image in fullscreenMove over pussy hats. Step aside safety pins. The resistance 2.0 has a new visual language, and this time it’s polyester, battery-powered and full of hot air. The colorful costumes lent a festive air to the No Kings protests and offered an implicit rebuke to the Trump administration’s attempt to smear his political opponents as violent terrorists.“Frivolity and absurdity are kryptonite to authoritarians who project the stern father archetype to their followers,” wrote author Gary Shteyngart in a New York Times op-ed celebrating the profusion of playful and joyful imagery at Saturday’s marches. “Once the pants are lowered and the undies of the despot are glimpsed, there is no point of return.”It’s a lovely idea, but nine months into the second Trump administration, it’s hard to argue that Americans have yet to catch sight of the president’s dirty laundry. Kryptonite, like the emperor’s new clothes, is just a fairytale. As Americans seek to harness the energy of No Kings and direct it toward building an effective opposition to Trump’s authoritarian agenda, it’s worth considering what the inflatable costumes are actually saying.Street protest movements have many aims and many outcomes, but one of the most important is the production of imagery that conveys a message and outlasts the event itself. Activists are keenly aware of symbolism and optics – they aren’t called “demonstrations” for nothing – and often work to imbue protest aesthetics with their particular ideological and ethical commitments.Nonviolent resistance movements tend to adopt aesthetics that emphasize the inherent dignity and humble humanity of their members. From the Sunday best donned by marchers in the US civil rights movement to the simple dhoti worn by Gandhi and the modest white dress shirt and black slacks of the Tiananmen Square Tank Man, aesthetic choices by peaceful protesters are an effective way of manufacturing imagery that, by contrast, illustrates the sadism and brutality of an oppressive state.The rejection of respectability politics by subsequent generations of Black liberation activists in the US – from the Black Panther party to Black Lives Matter – reflected not just an aesthetic but also an ideological shift. The Panthers were not seeking equality within a white supremacist system, but a revolution of the system itself; their signature berets, black leather jackets and firearms asserted their militancy and tied them visually to other leftwing revolutionary movements around the world.View image in fullscreenRebel clowning or “tactical frivolity” represents a another aesthetic tradition of protest, one that deploys humor and buffoonery to pierce the aura of invincibility relied on by despots and dictators. From Charlie Chaplin’s lampooning of Adolf Hitler in the 1940 film The Great Dictator to the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (Circa) protests against globalization and capitalism in the early 2000s, clowning has a storied history within leftwing and antifascist resistance movements.“The clown puts their absurd body in the way of the harm of others. It is politically more expensive to club a clown!” wrote performance artist LM Bogad in a 2020 essay about his experience with Circa. Confrontations between clowns and riot police create what Bogad calls “irresistible images” – “images that are so compelling that our ideological opponents cannot help but reproduce them even though they undermine their worldview and support ours”.Portland’s inflatable frogs fit squarely into this tradition, co-opting and subverting the aesthetic of intentional cruelty that has been so assiduously cultivated by the second Trump administration. Maga’s exaggeratedly sculpted faces and glorification of human misery convey the underlying ethos of the Trumpist worldview: beauty is pain, and pain beauty. When Donald Trump conjures up a false image of Portland as “war-ravaged” and “under siege” by antifa “terrorists”, he asks his supporters to embrace the cleansing power of state violence. But when federal agents and riot cops are forced to carry out their attacks on inflatable cartoon characters rather than figures clad in the all-black uniform of recent iterations of antifascist activism, government forces are enlisted in the project of debunking their own lies.But there is a difference between facing down a riot cop outside an ICE detention center, and dancing in the streets during a permitted march on a sunny Saturday morning. When a Vietnam war protester placed flowers down the barrels of rifles wielded by military police at the 1967 march on the Pentagon, or when anti-occupation activists clucked like chickens before IDF soldiers in the West Bank, they clowned in the face of real danger. Without the implicit threat of state violence, without the bravery of offering up a comically unprotected body as a target for real violence, tactical frivolity can devolve into little more than entertainment.View image in fullscreenThere are very good reasons to hold family-friendly protests away from the threat of riot cops, but different contexts require different tactics; what is ridiculously effective in front of an ICE detention center can end up looking just a bit ridiculous when there is no danger in the frame.Already, one mainstream media outlet has published an affiliate link-laden article promoting cheap inflatable costumes on Amazon: “You too can join in on the movement today with this steeply discounted inflatable elephant costume that’s less than $20 – a record-low price, according to Amazon.” Similarly, the aesthetics of the flower power movement were adopted and commodified by the fashion industry over and over again, losing political potency along the way. The revolution may well end up being televised, but it is sure as hell not going to arrive in a cardboard box with free shipping from Amazon Prime.It is also worth keeping in mind that Trump is not a straightforward “stern father” autocrat. While some of his rhetoric and actions invoke violence and terror against disfavored groups, he has also played the role of his own court jester, to great effect. His disinhibited remarks and frequent buffoonery are doing their own work to disarm and discredit his opponents, who have often struggled to convince the broader public of the seriousness of the threat he poses. So while tactical frivolity certainly has the power to deflate the menace of the Department of Homeland Security’s anti-immigrant security apparatus, it is not clear that it has much to offer when confronting Trump directly. After the No Kings protests, the president posted an AI-generated video of himself dumping shit on protesters; it’s impossible to make him look like more of a clown than he already is.Finally, remember that clowning is a fundamentally de-escalatory tactic. When activists turn rifles into vases and riot cops into zookeepers, they are interrupting the cycle of escalating tension that can turn protests into dangerous confrontations. We absolutely need to de-escalate the violence that is being aimed at immigrants and other disfavored communities by Trump, ICE, DHS and the national guard – but it’s not clear to me that de-escalation is the right tactic for nationwide, popular protests. The Democratic party leadership has overwhelmingly failed to operate as an actual opposition party since Trump’s re-election; they don’t need to calm down, but to wake up.So please, wear your inflatable frog costume if you plan to use your body to obstruct the workings of Trump’s violent deportation machine: in addition to provoking irresistible images, it might help protect you against teargas and pepper spray. But let us be strategic about deploying tactical frivolity against Trumpism. When millions of people take to the streets to demand that our leaders and institutions stop capitulating, the message should not be mistaken for anything other than deadly serious. More

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      What we misunderstand in the debate over free speech | Avram Alpert

      by

      For all the opinions about free speech and censorship that rage around us, there is remarkably little argument about what the “free” in free speech means. Most defenders of “free speech” only seem to care about the freedom to express themselves. They fight for the right to say anything, not whether the speech itself comes from a position of freedom.Focusing on what makes free speech free is fundamental to our moral and political futures. Because free speech, properly conceived, is not just about the right to say what one wants. It is also about being the kind of person who has been so conscientious in their thinking, learning and discussion that they have become a free subject whose speech is directed toward the pursuit of truth. And there are serious threats today against the freedom of thought on which free speech relies.John Stuart Mill makes the connection between free thought and free speech in his classic defense of speech, On Liberty (1859). The first chapter of Mill’s book is not called “Of free speech”, but rather “Of the liberty of thought and discussion”. That’s because speech for Mill is not an end in itself. It is rather one part of a broader freedom to find the truth that begins with a conscientious, trial-and-error attitude in which we are open to criticism and willing to learn from others and through experience. If we are beholden to prejudice, or hatred, or the pursuit of profit, or a desire to manipulate others, then our speech is constrained by these ulterior ends and not free.Mill in fact criticizes those who “think it enough if a person assents undoubtingly to what they think true, though he has no knowledge whatever of the grounds of the opinion”. For our speech to become free, we have to undertake “due study and preparation”. We have to carefully compare what we believe with experience and reality and consult others with both humility and skepticism. We have to learn the best arguments from different points of view and then come to a considered conclusion.Free speech is both part of this process as we try out ideas and engage with others, and the necessary end of the process when we express our findings. Starting out wrong or misguided is part of how we learn. This imperative to be considerate in how we come to our speech isn’t about putting legal limits on what can be said. Instead, the goal is to change our cultural and political norms to encourage free speech as part of a process of becoming a freer thinker.This process is not easy. There are many factors – both benign and malign – that have incredible power to influence our thinking. Our minds, for example, tend to overemphasize negative and frightful information through what psychologists call “affect heuristics” and “availability heuristics” – shortcuts in our thinking bequeathed by evolution so that we quickly recall information and react immediately to danger.But these same shortcuts can make us susceptible to manipulation – even when we know we’re being manipulated. That’s what makes a false idea like “immigrant crime” so powerful. Even though statistics show that migrants commit far less crime than others, these heuristics trick our minds into recalling recent news stories and becoming afraid. So when someone insists on their right to demonize immigrants, that is not free speech – it is fear speech. Again, we neither can nor should make fear speech illegal, but we can create cultural norms that promote genuine free speech.This includes an open and engaged public sphere, an educational and scientific research system that expands knowledge, active public venues that encourage people to learn about each other’s points of view, and public labors to produce and circulate factual information and counter propaganda and misinformation.As this list implies, any attempts to undercut science, to spread propaganda, to diminish educational opportunities or to consolidate control over information systems run counter to the freedom of thought. And it is thus not particularly surprising that we are seeing scientific and educational institutions attacked, while a simultaneous curtailment of free thought is being mounted by billionaires attempting to own increasing shares of the media ecosystem – from the ongoing legacy of the Murdoch family, to Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, and to the Ellison family’s moves to consolidate media companies and TikTok.While these assaults on institutions are the most wide-scale and pressing dangers to free thought, there are also interpersonal concerns. The truncation of free thought can happen on an individual level when we don’t hear out dissenting views, however distasteful or even dangerous such views may be. Engaging with people we disagree with is fundamental to any robust system of free thinking and discussion.To consider just one example: NPR reported a story in 2021 about a woman who turned against vaccines after the birth of her child. She had originally had her newborn vaccinated, and it appeared that her child had an abnormally bad reaction. The doctors didn’t take her concerns seriously, but people online did. She went down a rabbit hole and diminished her freedom of thought in exchange for a community of care.Over time, she broke with the antivax movement because she found a doctor who listened to her concerns and explained the science without accusation. Free thought arises not only through experience and research, but also patience and listening. This is what Loretta J Ross speaks of as creating a “call-in” rather than a “call-out” culture.True defenders of free speech are first and foremost defenders of free thought and discussion. They support not only education and scientific research, but also the kinds of caring engagements with their fellow humans that allow for the accurate transmission of ideas and shared pursuit of truth. To protect free speech, we should embody both these political and interpersonal ideals.

      Avram Alpert is a lecturer in the Princeton Writing Program. His most recent book is The Good-Enough Life More

    • 263 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Shouting and ready to ‘bump chests’ with Trump – but nobody moved the needle in the final New York mayoral debate

      by

      The second and final debate before early voting in New York City’s mayoral race was a bitter affair, with sharp exchanges and few courtesies.Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, worked to defend his polling lead while his chief rival, Andrew Cuomo, sought to puncture his credibility – dismissing the 34-year-old state lawmaker as a “kid” who, he said, Donald Trump would knock on his “tuchus”.Over the course of the hour and a half forum, the deep seated-rivalry between Mamdani and Cuomo – the 67-year-old former governor now running as an independent after losing the Democratic primary – dominated the stage.“Like two kids in a schoolyard,” said the swaggering Republican nominee, Curtis Sliwa, who has defied pleas by Cuomo, wealthy donors and even his own former employer to drop out of the race.They clashed over education reform, transportation funding, Israel policy and whether to close the notorious prison on Rikers Island. But Wednesday’s showdown offered few breakthroughs that would shift the race’s trajectory.Both Cuomo and Sliwa argued that Mamdani lacked the experience required to lead the nation’s largest city, a familiar charge for the assemblyman, who is roughly half their age.“The issue is your inexperience,” Cuomo said of Mamdani, highlighting his own lengthy service in government at the state and federal level.“The issue,” Mamdani retorted later, “is that we’ve all experienced your experience.”To draw attention to Cuomo’s record as governor, the Mamdani campaign brought several guests to the debate, including Charlotte Bennett, one of the women to publicly accuse Cuomo of sexual harassment. Cuomo resigned during his third term as governor amid the scandal, which he has described as “political”. He has denied the allegations and on Wednesday noted that a portion of Bennett’s lawsuit was dismissed by a judge.Stepping into the fray, Sliwa – whom moderators described as “more of a New York character than a policy expert” – supplied some of the evening’s sharpest zingers: “Zohran, your résumé could fit on a cocktail napkin, and Andrew, your failures could fill a public school library.”Mamdani leads Cuomo in nearly every recent poll by at least a dozen points. Unless Sliwa drops out, Cuomo seems unlikely to close the gap before the 4 November election.Mamdani’s rise has excited progressives across the country, offering a fresh model of leadership at a time when the Democratic party’s old guard is under pressure to exit stage left.Throughout the evening, Mamdani sought to cast himself as the candidate of generational and political change. Cuomo and Sliwa, he said, “speak only in the past because that is all they know”.“I am the sole candidate running with a vision for the future of this city,” he continued, harshly denouncing Cuomo as “a desperate man, lashing out because he knows that the one thing he cares about, power, is slipping away from him” and “Donald Trump’s puppet”.Trump has not endorsed a candidate for mayor of his home town, but suggested on Tuesday that he’d prefer Cuomo to Mamdani.“You have never had a job, you’ve never accomplished anything,” Cuomo said, during one heated exchange with Mamdani. “There’s no reason to believe you have any merit or qualification for eight and a half million lives.”Yet the president loomed large over the race, as the candidates each insisted they were best equipped to handle the president.Cuomo, who is courting Republicans and Trump voters, returned repeatedly to his record of confronting the president, invoking the pandemic and their public feuds as proof that he alone has the mettle and experience to stand up to Trump’s threats. A Mamdani win, he warned, would be Trump’s “dream” scenario, arguing that the president would use his opponent’s progressive policies as a pretext for taking over the city.Mamdani pledged to “end the chapter of collaboration between City Hall and the federal government” and said he would oppose federal interventions in the city, calling ICE a “reckless entity that cares little for the law” in response to a question about an immigration enforcement raid that targeted Canal street vendors in Manhattan this week.But to Cuomo’s claims, Mamdani accused the former governor of fear-mongering.“I know what actually keeps you up,” Mamdani said, speaking directly to New Yorkers. “It’s whether or not you can afford to live a safe and dignified life in this city. I have plans for our future. My opponents only have fear.”Sliwa criticized his opponents’ approach, warning against antagonizing the famously mercurial president, whom he said holds “most of the cards”.“My adversaries have decided to bump chests with President Trump to prove who’s more macho,” Sliwa said. “You can’t beat Trump.”The bickering continued until the end, when the candidates were asked to name one thing that New York got right during the pandemic.Sliwa, who before taking the stage said he would rather be impaled Braveheart-style than work for Cuomo, said the former governor got nothing right.Mamdani recalled that it only took him 15 minutes to get his Covid-19 vaccine shot. “That was an efficient experience,” he said.“Thank you for the compliment,” Cuomo said, with a broad smile.Mamdani deadpanned that it was a “city-run vaccine site”.“No, it wasn’t,” Cuomo insisted. More