Latest news with #bipartisan
Washington Post
15 hours ago
- Business
- Washington Post
Arizona governor caps off quarrelsome legislative session with budget approval
PHOENIX — Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs signed on Friday a bipartisan budget that boosts pay for first responders and increases spending on social services, capping a quarrelsome session of the Republican-led Legislature that brought the state to the brink of a government shutdown. The first-term Democrat broke her veto record, sparred with Republicans over agency leadership nominations and got on board with bipartisan proposals that ruffled the feathers of some members of her party. The session unfolded while Hobbs' 2026 bid to hold the reins of the battleground state loomed large.
New York Times
a day ago
- Politics
- New York Times
The Internet Needs Sex
Texas' H.B. 1181, an online-age-verification law, might not sound like such a terrible idea. According to its proponents, it's designed to keep those who are underage from looking at pornography. On Friday, the Supreme Court upheld the law, arguing that using age verification 'to prevent children from accessing sexually explicit content' is within a state's authority. Yet as reasonable as that statement might sound, I worry that these laws could mean the beginning of the end of something truly precious: the internet as an uncensored place to explore human desire in a way that's allowed for safe and private information, titillation and education. Texas is not unique in mandating that porn sites employ online age verification. In early 2023, Louisiana was the first state to pass such a law, requiring consumers to upload a government ID before getting access to adult content. Now a third of the states have passed laws so onerous that PornHub opted to block incoming traffic from said states, rather than collect identification. Most of the time, these bills have passed easily, drawing broad bipartisan consensus. And why wouldn't they? There's a dark side to the internet, and children, in particular, are especially vulnerable to the worst of it. With troves of deepfakes and revenge porn and child sex abuse material just a click away, we all want to do something. But the world of online sex is far more than just a depraved cesspool of the most abusive content. Vague, sweeping laws to rein in online sexual content could end up censoring those who want to share information about sexual pleasure and health, talk about L.G.B.T.Q. issues, celebrate kink or even distribute woman-friendly, consent-focused erotica. Overzealous application of these bans, enforced by people with sexual mores and tastes that might be more censorious, uptight or even bigoted than your own, will almost certainly curtail opportunities to explore sex online that should be preserved. Easy access to information about contraception, sex toys and safer sex are an essential component of safe, pleasurable intimacy. Online spaces can provide L.G.B.T.Q. people with queer and trans peers they might never encounter in real life, and information on queer sex — something that's rarely taught outside L.G.B.T.Q. spaces. Even explicit sexual media — sometimes, yes, hardcore pornographic photos and videos, but also written stories and audio content — can give many people a way to safely explore and learn about their turn-ons and desires. Despite the general belief that terms like 'pornography' and 'obscenity' have fixed meanings, history has demonstrated time and again that it's far from true. There have been several attempts to draw hard lines between what is 'acceptable' and what is 'obscene,' few of which have withstood the test of time. The Victorian Era's Comstock Act was used to bring charges against Planned Parenthood's founder, Margaret Sanger, for using the postal service to distribute her feminist magazine, 'The Woman Rebel.' Hollywood's Hays Code barred filmmakers from depicting queer and interracial relationships. America's current gold standard, the Miller Test, relies on 'community standards' to define what is obscene — but in the fractal age of the internet, it's often difficult to say which 'community' it is whose standards should be given priority. So who gets to decide what is obscene, anyway? While it may be tempting to assume that age-verification laws will remain limited to PornHub and the like, there's ample evidence to suggest that may not be the case. In recent years, the stated goal of protecting young people from potentially harmful material has often become a pretext for conservative attempts at censorship. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
a day ago
- Politics
- New York Times
Our State Cannot Survive This Bill
Across the country, state lawmakers like us are bracing as the federal government considers a bill that will throw state budgets into chaos and add red tape that our social service agencies do not have the capacity to administer. If the budget reconciliation bill that passes Congress in anything like its current form, we will be left to deal with the fallout. The likely impacts from the 'Big, Beautiful Bill' are particularly ugly for our home state, Alaska: Nearly 40,000 Alaskans could lose health care coverage, thousands of families will go hungry through loss of benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and the shift in costs from the federal government to the state will plunge our budget into a severe deficit, cripple our state economy and make it harder to provide basic services. This is not about partisanship. One of us is a Republican and the other is an Independent. In the Alaska Legislature, our State Senate and House are led by a bipartisan governing coalition. Our focus is squarely on the survival of the people we represent. The benefits of Medicaid and the SNAP program permeate the entire fabric of the Alaska economy, with one in three Alaskans receiving Medicaid, including more than half of the children. In remote Arctic communities, Medicaid dollars make medical travel possible for residents from the hundreds of roadless villages to the communities where they are able to receive proper medical treatments. SNAP, which supports 70,000 residents, puts food on the table and is also used to help purchase subsistence gear for essential hunting and fishing. And at a time when many fish runs are collapsing because of climate change and our overburdened agencies are already struggling to get residents their SNAP benefits on time, cutting federal funding for SNAP will have a profound impact here. The bill being rushed through Congress is based on a one-size-fits-all approach that does not reflect these realities on the ground. Unlike the federal government, most states cannot run a deficit and must balance their budget. If the federal government shifts costs to the states, it generally means we need to cut something else. And while the impacts are particularly difficult for Alaska, our state is not alone. Last year, inflation-adjusted tax revenue fell in 40 states. States with large rural populations are likely to be hit particularly hard. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Washington Post
3 days ago
- Politics
- Washington Post
Bipartisan bill seeks to ban Chinese AI from federal agencies, as U.S. vows to win the AI race
WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of lawmakers on Wednesday vowed to keep Chinese artificial intelligence systems out of federal agencies while pledging to ensure the U.S. will prevail against China in the global AI competition. 'We are in a new Cold War, and AI is the strategic technology at the center,' Rep. John Moolenaar, the Republican chair of the House Select Committee on China, said as he opened a hearing on the matter. 'The future balance of power may very well be determined by who leads in AI.'
New York Times
4 days ago
- Business
- New York Times
A Plan to Sell Federal Land Near This Colorado Town Looks Dead. Here's Why.
In the wealthy ski towns of Summit County, Colo., where affordable housing is so scarce that some waitresses and ski-lift workers sleep in parking lots, wide-open land is plentiful, as it is across the housing-starved Mountain West. But much of it is owned by the federal government and off limits for development. And as of Tuesday, it looks like it will stay that way. Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, had pitched a wholesale auctioning of federal land, in part as a way to build housing, and he planned to include it in President Trump's far-reaching domestic policy bill. But it ran into a brick wall of bipartisan opposition even before Monday night, when the Senate's parliamentarian, who judges what provisions can be included in the bill to avoid a filibuster by Democrats, ruled that much of Mr. Lee's sell-off proposal would violate the strict Senate rules that Republicans were using to pass the legislation with a simple majority. Summit County helps show why Mr. Lee's plan now appears moribund. Even where people are desperate for affordable housing, opposition to selling public lands, potentially for housing, was widespread from voters of both parties. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
