The Josh Lafazan Show - Episode 26
Today's top stories in US news, politics, government, and world affairs:
As NBC reports The Supreme Court yesterday said it would take up TikTok's appeal challenging a federal law that would ban the social media app used by over 170 Million Americans by next month. The Supreme Court acted just a day after TikTok filed its appeal, and will hear oral arguments on Jan. 10 before issuing a decision on whether to put the law on hold. Of centrality to the case is whether the law violates ByteDance’s free speech rights under the First Amendment. As NBC writes, the law passed Congress with Republican and Democratic support, and was signed into law by President Joe Biden that would go into effect on Jan. 19, the day before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. The law, called the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, would require TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the platform to an American company, or face a ban. The Supreme Court is hearing this case on appeal by TikTok, as a lower court had sided with the Justice Department in defending the law on national security grounds, focusing on concerns about the Chinese government's potential to influence the company.
This week President Donald Trump gave his first news conference since his victory on Election Night, answering questions on a large variety of issues regarding his central plans for 2025. While I did not vote for Trump - not in 2016, 2020, or 2024 - I do appreciate his willingness to give these unscripted news conferences. And quite frankly, it’s in stark contrast to President Joe Biden, who gave the fewest news conferences since Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. It’s also in contrast to Vice President Kamala Harris, whose inner circle seemed so tightly scripted every word she said as the Democratic Nominee that she didn’t hold a news conference for the entirety of her campaign. Trump’s behavior at his press conferences have run the gamut from meandering to abrasive to rude. But the fact that he gives them helps Republicans, and the fact that our party doesn’t do them hurts us Democrats. As the Wall Street Journal notes, Trump gave answers on a number of key topics facing the country and how his incoming administration is approaching them in 2025. I summarize the 5 major issues he spoke about in this video.
It’s been just over 2 weeks since Luigi Mangione allegedly killed United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, who was killed in New York City on his way to the company’s annual investor meeting. In terms of important updates to the case, the BBC reports that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced that Mangione was indicted by a federal jury and officially charged in the murder of Brian Thompson Mangione now faces charges on both murder and terrorism. The past few weeks have also seen a national conversation take place about the killing, Mangione, and the healthcare industry as a whole. TikTok and Twitter were filled with arguments from people who rightly condemned murder without equivocation, and incredulously there were also many who expressed support for Mangione. We now finally have the first public polling on how the country views the shooting. An Emerson Poll found that an overwhelming majority of voters (68%) think the actions of the killer against Thompson were unacceptable, while just 17% found them acceptable. But what was in my opinion a major indicator of societal decline from the poll was that every single age group vehemently opposed the killing except one: those aged 18 to 29. The poll found that the youngest voters in the country were split on whether murdering United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was justified: 41% found the killer's actions acceptable, and 40% said they were unacceptable — a statistical tie. Whatever the rationale here, the radicalization of this group of Americans - constituting tens of millions of voters in our elections - must be paid attention to and ameliorated with immediacy.
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