Here are this week’s SWAJ Research Links, compiled by SWAJ Team Member Mark Kurth.
National Inquiries
‘Judeo-Christian’ roots will ensure U.S. military AI is used ethically, general says
Lt. Gen. Richard G. Moore Jr. made the comment at a Hudson Institute event Thursday while answering a question about how the Pentagon views autonomous warfare. The Department of Defense has been discussing AI ethics at its highest levels, said Moore, who is the Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for plans and programs.
“Regardless of what your beliefs are, our society is a Judeo-Christian society, and we have a moral compass. Not everybody does,” Moore said. “And there are those that are willing to go for the ends regardless of what means have to be employed.”
Why does the Barbie movie have Republicans in such a tizzy?
Senators like Marsha Blackburn and Ted Cruz claim a cartoon map depicts the “nine-dash line” which China uses to assert control over the South China Sea. They argue that the movie’s supposed inclusion of the line legitimizes China’s position, which gives it more power over strategically important waters.
Back in Barbie Land, Republicans’ insistence on fabricating culture war issues isn’t limited to disputes over territorial seas. Ginger Luckey Gaetz, the 26-year-old wife of Representative Matt Gaetz, knocked the movie because it “neglects to address any notion of faith or family”. She also lamented the “disappointingly low T from Ken,” Barbie’s famously genital-free companion.
Jason Aldean Addresses ‘Try That in a Small Town’ Controversy at Cincinnati Concert
After releasing a statement on Tuesday (July 18) in response to claims that “Try That in a Small Town” is pro-gun, pro-violence and a “modern lynching song,” Aldean further expanded on the backlash from the stage during his Cincinnati show.
It’s been a long week and I’ve seen a lot of stuff suggesting I’m this, suggesting I’m that,” Aldean told the crowd in a fan-captured video. “I feel like everybody’s entitled to their opinion. You can think something all you want to, it doesn’t mean it’s true.”
He added, “What I am is a proud American. I’m proud to be from here. I love our country. I want to see it restored to what it once was before all this bulls— started happening to us. I love my country, I love my family, and I will do anything to protect that, I can tell you that right now.”
Medical professionals describe a world of uncertainty a year after the Roe v. Wade reversal
Abortion has already become one of the defining issues of the 2024 campaign and is expected to continue to be a key topic as candidates face questions about whether they support banning the procedure on the local and national level.
CNN spoke with doctors and medical professionals who responded to a request for stories about how people’s lives have changed in the wake of the ruling. Those who responded all shared stories of their professional lives being disrupted by abortion bans and severe restrictions — including in Idaho and Arizona.
Some no longer want to practice in states with limitations on the procedure. Others worry about the safety of their patients as more bans loom in the future.
Republicans Are Throwing Temper Tantrums Over 'Barbie'
“Barbie” earned $155 million at the box office during its opening weekend and critics called it “spontaneous and fun.” Movie-goers, made up of mostly women, dressed in all pink to celebrate the occasion. But when there’s a group of women excited about and praising something, rest assured that there are conservatives lurking around the corner, ready to trash it.
Is the Sheer Stupidity of Republican Politics Breaking Through?
The problem Republicans find themselves in is perhaps best summed up by Democrat Eric Swalwell, who texted me that his colleagues across the aisle could use some stronger leadership. “Typically the Speaker of the House sets a party’s agenda in Congress. But there is no functional leader of the House Republican Party. Instead, it’s made up of an ensemble cast of chaos agents providing a comedy of errors each week Congress is in session.”
Biden to Name National Monument for Emmett Till and His Mother
Emmett’s murder and the subsequent activism of his mother helped propel the civil rights movement, and Mr. Biden will memorialize both individuals when he signs a proclamation naming the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument.
DeSantis doubles down on claim that some Blacks benefited from slavery
DeSantis, however, is continuing to defend Florida’s new curriculum, which covers a broad range of topics and includes the assertion for middle school instruction that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
DeSantis said he “wasn’t involved” in writing the new teaching materials, which took effect this week. But he credited “a lot of scholars” with creating “the most robust standards in African American history probably anywhere in the country.”
What Israel’s new judicial law reveals about its democracy
The new law eliminates courts’ power to overturn decisions by Israel’s Cabinet or its ministers that they find to be “extremely unreasonable,” a vague-sounding standard that has a more technical meaning in Israeli law. In the simplest terms, the reasonableness doctrine allows the courts to overturn policies when the government can’t prove that its decisions were made according to some basic standards of fair and just policymaking.
Affirmative action for rich kids: It's more than just legacy admissions
Among a number of other discoveries, the economists find that kids from the richest 1% of American families are more than twice as likely to attend the nation's most elite private colleges as kids from middle-class families with similar SAT scores. The silver spoon these wealthy kids are born with can, apparently, be used to catapult them past other equally bright, but less privileged kids into some of America's best colleges.
Chetty and his colleagues provide compelling evidence that fancy schools are promoting a kind of neo-aristocracy, with admission programs that help to perpetuate a family's class privilege from one generation to the next. The advantages they grant to rich kids are about more than just legacy admissions, a practice in which elite colleges give preferential treatment to kids of alumni and donors. The economists find that other types of evaluation and recruitment play important roles in giving rich kids a leg up, as well.
A New Kind of Fascism
Trump was more like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán or Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan than Hitler or Mussolini, and should be categorized as an “illiberal populist” rather than a fascist. And in one very important respect, Trump differed sharply from the European fascists of the interwar period.
Trump’s ‘Elite Strike Force Team’ Falls on Hard Times
Giuliani had his law license suspended in New York, and early this month, a disciplinary committee in Washington, D.C., recommended that he be disbarred for “frivolous” and “destructive” conduct. A federal appeals court recently upheld court sanctions against Powell for making “entirely baseless” claims and “frivolous allegations of widespread voter fraud.” And in March, Ellis was censured by a judge in Colorado for making false claims “on Twitter and to nationally televised audiences” that “undermined the American public’s confidence in the presidential election.”
White House condemns Fox News over ‘dangerous and extreme’ Holocaust comments from top host
Jessica Tarlov, a liberal-leaning co-host on “The Five,” expressed disapproval of the new history standards and questioned whether arguments used to defend them would ever be made in regard to the Holocaust.
“I’m not Black, but I’m Jewish,” Tarlov said. “Would someone say about the Holocaust, for instance, that there were some benefits for Jews? That while they were hanging out in concentration camps, they learned a strong work ethic? That maybe you learned a new skill.”
Gutfeld replied, asking if Tarlov had read the “Man’s Search for Meaning,” a bestselling book written by psychiatrist Viktor Frankl who was imprisoned during the Holocaust and described the atrocities committed in concentration camps. In his book, Frankl detailed how people can cope with suffering and find meaning in the most horrific of circumstances.
“Frankl talks about how you had to survive in a concentration camp by having skills. You had to be useful,” Gutfeld told Tarlov. “Utility! Utility kept you alive!”
States Fights
Alabama GOP governor approves congressional map with just one majority-Black district despite court order
Democrats blasted Republicans for ignoring a directive from a three judge panel that specified “any remedial plan will need to include two districts in which Black voters either comprise a voting-age majority or something quite close to it.”
“There was never any intent in this building to comply with their court order,” said state Rep. Chris England, a Tuscaloosa Democrat, on Friday.
Along Texas' floating border barrier, migrant children left bloody by razor wire
In the past week, migrants, including many children, have arrived at the Eagle Pass shelter with an array of injuries: lacerations, welts and open wounds. Pregnant women have high blood pressure from stress, said Valeria Wheeler, the shelter’s executive director, and migrants have gashes in their heads and faces. The shelter has also been accepting an unusually high number of migrants recently released from hospitals, she said.
“This is the worst I’ve ever seen it,” Wheeler said. “They’re putting lives at risk.”
Revelations of those injuries have drawn widespread condemnation from immigrant advocates, Democratic leaders and other agencies. By the end of the week, the Justice Department warned Texas that it planned to file suit over the floating barrier.
Nearly two years after Texas’ six-week abortion ban, more infants are dying
In 2021, Texas banned abortions beyond six weeks of pregnancy. When the Supreme Court overturned federal abortion rights the following summer, a trigger law in the state banned all abortions other than those intended to protect the life of the mother.
The increase in deaths could partly be explained by the fact that more babies are being born in Texas. One recent report found that in the final nine months of 2022, the state saw nearly 10,000 more births than expected prior to its abortion ban – an estimated 3% increase.
But multiple obstetrician-gynecologists who focus on high-risk pregnancies told CNN that Texas’ strict abortion laws likely contributed to the uptick in infant deaths.
PragerU Says Florida Teachers Approved to Use Its Class ‘Curriculum’
The Florida Department of Education told The Daily Beast in an email that it determined PragerU Kids’ material “aligns to Florida’s revised civics and government standards” and can be used by school districts at their discretion.
The approval is the latest shakeup in Florida’s education curriculum that’s taken a sharp turn to the right under Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The announcement comes less than a week after the state announced middle school students would be taught that slavery was beneficial to some Black people, and as DeSantis actively cheerleads the Moms For Liberty—classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center—as they fight to restrict education about race and gender.
Note to Florida and DeSantis: Enslaved Africans were already skilled
Here are some simple, historical facts: Africans already were skilled before they were enslaved. And, in many cases, enslavers sought and purchased people coming from specific African societies based on skills common in those societies. Decades of research — slave ship manifests, plantation ledgers, newspaper articles, letters, journals and archaeological digs — by dozens of scholars supports this, much of it compiled in the 2022 book “African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Freedom,” by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Hackett Fischer.
Michigan bans use of conversion therapy targeting LGBTQ+ youth
Michigan becomes the 22nd state to outlaw the practice of conversion therapy, which state lawmakers defined as any practice or treatment by a mental health professional that seeks to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity. That does not include counseling that provides assistance to people undergoing a gender transition.
How Alabama could get away with defying the Supreme Court
The state’s response to this Supreme Court decision was swift and defiant. Last week, the state legislature enacted new maps, which do not comply with the Court’s order. By the state’s own admission, only one of the seven districts in this new map has a Black majority. The district with the second-highest Black representation under the new maps is nearly 55 percent white — and less than 40 percent Black.
At least in the short term, this defiance is unlikely to be tolerated by the courts. The Supreme Court’s decision in Allen v. Milligan affirmed a lower court decision that also struck down the state’s gerrymandered maps. And the three lower court judges who heard this case wrote that it was not a “close one.” The lower court invited the plaintiffs challenging Alabama’s maps to submit their objections to the new maps by Friday, and it’s likely that the lower court will act swiftly to curb Alabama’s defiance.
Vocal Locals
Supporters rally around Vietnamese American City Council member who was called ‘un-American’
Dozens of residents of Morrow, which is part of the Atlanta metropolitan area, and neighboring cities filled the room during the council’s meeting Tuesday to support council member Van Tran and denounce the comments made by council member Dorothy Dean in a previous session.
Tran, who has been a council member in Morrow for four years, spent the last four months advocating during meetings for Spanish and Vietnamese voting ballots. Her colleagues vocally opposed the idea in April, adding that interpreters were already available at polling sites. As Tran continued to advocate for the ballots, earlier this month Dean approached the podium and accused Tran of dishonoring “the oaths” she took as an American citizen.