House Votes to Block U.S. Funding to Rebuild Gaza
House Votes to Block U.S. Funding to Rebuild Gaza
The Republican amendment to the annual defense budget is just one of several proposals to restrict humanitarian aid to Gaza.
The House voted on Wednesday to block the U.S. from funding the reconstruction of Gaza, whose destruction was financed by the U.S. to a large degree.
Other Republicans filed amendments combating the movement to boycott, divest, or sanction Israel for its illegal occupation of Palestine.
The provision was introduced by Reps. Brian Mast, R-Fla.; Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y.; and Eli Crane, R-Ariz., as an amendment to the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, the annual defense budget. While Democrats opposed the amendment, which passed by a simple voice vote, they did not request a recorded vote.
Among the amendments with Democratic sponsors are ones expressing support for joint military ventures between the U.S. and Israel.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., for his part, filed an amendment to require an assessment of the accuracy of the Gaza Ministry of Health’s death toll accounting. Over the last eight months, supporters of Israel have pointed to the fact that Hamas — as Gaza’s governing entity — controls the health ministry as a way to undermine its death count. Nonetheless, the Ministry of Health’s figures have in the past been corroborated by the United Nations, Doctors Without Borders, and even the Israeli government itself.
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If you don’t like how Congress represents you, vote in congressional elections. Democratic congressional election turnout is consistently less than 50%.
Make note of your state election dates and vote for change.
If you don’t like how Congress represents you, stop voting Democrat or Republican.
So stop doing the most influential thing citizens can do to affect the government?
What’s step two? Accept the Republican takeover or fail to violently overthrow the government resulting in massive losses?
You and givesomegucks should stop encouraging voter disengagement.
We’re only here from repeated failure to vote and fruitless attempts to elect third-party candidates.
You and givesomegucks should stop encouraging voter disengagement.
That's like asking leopards to become vegan or fish to breath oxygen
I agree with the sentiment, but I think you mean air. Fish breathe oxygen from the water through their gills. That’s one of the many problems with climate change deoxygenating the ocean.
Haha yeah, I literally paused for a moment to decide which was most correct -- I chose wrongly I suppose.
It’s all good. Your point is correct.
One thing I quite like about Lemmy is that it's very easy to recognize individual users and the type of comments they usually leave.
"If voting made a difference, they would make it illegal"
"One party is trying "
Minor nitpick: while participating in voting is an important component of politics, I don't think it's accurate to say it's the most influential thing you can do. It's not even the most influential thing you can do if you're strictly operating in the framework of electoralism.
How would you influence this vote? Writing your Representative would help if they weren’t block voting Republicans.
Volunteering in a campaign, running for office, designing and/or distributing pamphlets. All of these are potentially more effective than voting because you could get more than one vote for your preferred candidate that way.
And that's just the obvious conventional stuff. If we get into theoretical strategies shit gets wild.
That’s fair.
Okay, I'll bite:
How does not voting either Democrat or Republican help us right now?
You can see both parties support Genocide in the article.
Voting Democrat does not appear to change this.
Conveniently side stepping the question
Standard voter disengagement advocate response. No suggestions for improvement, just don’t vote. This is how Republicans have been winning for decades. Good on you for calling it out when you see it.
So who do I vote for that will change it? Because my sample ballot only has genocide supporters on it. Am I writing in a name and just hoping the majority of the country writes the same name or what?
Moreover, while a lesser evil is still an evil, we are in a situation where these are the choices we have. By choosing Biden we have a chance to shift the lesser evil towards a greater good. Though four years isn't a long time I sincerely feel we can make those changes if we just. stop. bickering. Cause fuck me if the Right won't come together just to nail someone to a cross. Most the rest of us will have heated arguments over whether day old spaghetti is better than fresh.
Don't you dare. I see you starting to make spaghetti claims, dammit.
Third parties rarely run for Congress. This is actually how you can tell that the US has no serious third parties. None of them make Congress even a remote priority. If they somehow won the presidency, they wouldn't be able to do anything because they have no Congressional support.
You've inadvertently highlighted why your only options are to vote Democrat or Republican. No other party is serious about trying to win. If they were, they'd be building up a local presence in all 50 states and winning local elections. Then they'd look at state legislatures and governors. Then Congress for the House and Senate, and then the presidency.
That's a lot of work though, so they'd rather run presidential candidates and grift for donations. The argument typically goes that they're trying to bring awareness to their party through the presidential election -- but how exactly is that going for them? It's readily apparent that strategy doesn't work, and they'd be better off putting in the hard work to become actual political contenders.
If you don't like how Congress represents you, support your desired representatives and senators in primaries, and then vote for the person you dislike least in the general election. Or, encourage a third party candidate to run who has statewide recognition and plenty of political experience.
Democrats and Republicans are the only options because all the other choices are batshit insane or just want to steal your donations.
Absolutely. Anyone who would waste a lot of money on an election they stand zero chance of winning and spends nothing on elections they actually could win. Is not a serious group. Until you know basically all third parties in America are simply presidential spoilers. Outside of the likes of the DSA Etc who have run candidates in a few state and local races as well.
Yeah they're pretty much the only group that seems to understand this. They have other struggles though with having greater appeal -- mainly from what I can tell, there's a lot of discord between different chapters.
That said, there actually is one socialist who did win a state legislature election, in Virginia. And they were able to get an insulin cap bill passed because they worked cooperatively with democrats.
This is the model that people need to follow if they want to move beyond Democrats and Republicans. This single socialist legislator in one state has done more than the entire green party combined.
Unless you're capable of reasoning in which case you'd see that there are only 3 possible outcomes:
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vote democrat to reduce the amount of harm done
-
vote third party and convince literally millions of other people to do so also (very very very unlikely to the point of basically impossibility)
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take literally any other action which at worst fully enables Trump and at best remains complicit in him amping up support for slaughtering Palestinians.
Options two and three are the same option in reality. But I know that Extra-Militant-Joffrey is in denial of these facts.
Voting for Democrat doesn't reduce harm it increases harm
Stop repeating the same thing and tell us who we should vote for then. You're worse than a politician.
Why should I blanket tell people who to vote for?
Because you're blanket telling people not to vote and offering zero solutions while your high horse beggs your fat ass for reprieve.
Hey take that back. Extra-Militant-Joffrey has the best horses!
False. On balance Democrats improve conditions, which is especially obvious when compared with Republicans.
Are you a liar or a moron?
Yes.
But in all seriousness, Linkerbaan is an obvious bad faith actor. They're actually campaigning for Trump by trying to get people to not vote for Biden.
Maybe I should go into right-wing spaces and start encouraging people to vote Libertarian.
It might not even be that hard. Look how easily they're manipulated by Trump.
Great idea
Let's just say for a moment you're right and Democrats increase harm. Sure, they take Korporate Kampaign Kash (the other KKK), and are always about the donor class, and we can sure hit them on this. They're feckless, always finding reasons we couldn't POSSIBLY do Left-Wing priorities, and yeah, I'm pissed about how many times Manchin Lucy-Yanked the football on us this last term. They'd rather please the donor class than us, because, well, frankly, I can't pay for an all-expenses paid junket to exotic places with exotic food and exotic people quite the same way as Mr. Gates and Mr. Dimon and Mr. Bezos and Mr. Musk can. It pisses me off that I have to sit so far back on the table while all the big names get to wine and dine President Biden and the Democratic Party, while I get a few scraps from the table.
We'll ignore the fact that the scraps I have gotten have finally made it so I can quit schooling and realistically pay my Student Loans now that it's capped to 5% of your disposable income, and that I only have to pay that for 10 years rather than 25 or more because of PSLF. We'll ignore the fact that I got quick and free access to a vaccine that ended COVID as a threat to me, and that I am able to work from home because my (Democratic) governor said 'we're out of the business of commercial real-estate. Everyone, your home is your office now.' Between the vaccine and the not having to crowd on public transit with people who are frankly nasty, I haven't gotten sick more often than once a year. But hey, the Dems increase harm according to you, so let's go with that. Why trust my lying eyes eh?
OK. The Democrats are the equivalent of slow-driving a car towards a cliff. The Republicans? They have a plan for what they want to do. What does it include?
- Fire Federal employees who refuse to implement Trump's conservative manifesto for the USA.
- End FBI attempts to police misinformation (oh, sorry, "Speech").
- Ban abortion pills federally.
- Enforce Comstock Act to ban the mailing of abortion pills.
- Exclude abortion coverage from Medicade
- Ban unfriendly news media from the White House press pool.
- Enforce unitary executive theory practices.
- Schedule F - Replace tens of thousands of career bureaucrats with hand-picked conservative plants, which will require a similar overreach by the next Democrat, assuming we are allowed to pick one as POTUS, to undo.
- Reverse liberal policies.
- Removing references to abortions.
- Defunding clinics that provide abortion services
- Defund Dept of Justice and FBI
- Target Political foes and unfriendly media orgs.
- Restrict LGBTQ+ rights.
- Rollback of climate policies.
- Force Conservative policies on us
- "Family Values"
- "Christian Values"
- "Traditional Gender Roles"
So, when I say the Democrats are slow-driving the car towards the cliff, if you let the Republicans behind the wheel, they're gonna stomp on the gas as hard as they can, and they're gonna rocket that sucker off the edge.
It may suck to you having to make this choice, but it's what America offers. There are no other options in the USA thanks to our antiquated system of electing representatives. Pick the slow choice, or the fast choice will rocket you and everyone else off right...fucking...now.
PS: in case it's not clear, I disagree with the heart of your argument, but for the sake of pointing out that even under your own assumptions, it's better to vote D than R, I entertained it long enough to explain why you're a fucking moron for pushing not to vote for Dems.
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It was a republican amendment
Until and unless we get ranked voting, we're stuck using the shit two-party system if we want to actually have a chance for our votes matter.
No you're not.
I'm Canadian. We have first past the post. Largely its a toss up between 1 of 2 parties federally but our far left party has won provincial elections and was within spitting distance of winning federally in recent memory.
It isnt fptp that's prevenring you from electing a third party. Its your share delusion that it can't happen.
Your election system allowed Doug Ford to win the Premiership of Ontario with 2.3 million votes, despite the NDP winning 1.9 million votes and the Liberal party winning 1.1 million votes. In fact, Ford won Ontario with a net margin of victory of -991,722 votes. That is to say, he lost the popular vote by almost a million votes, and still win the majority of seats. Here's a few highlights
8 ridings went for the Progressive Conservatives in a margin narrower than 1000. These are:
- Ottawa West - Nepean (175 MoV, 16.4k NDP, 14.8k Lib)
- Brantford - Brant (635 MoV, 23.8k NDP, 5.6k Lib)
- Brampton West (490 MoV, 14.5k NDP, 7.0k Lib)
- Sault Ste. Marie (414 MoV, 13.1k NDP, 3.2k Lib)
- Kitchener-Conestoga (686 MoV, 16.3 NDP, 6.0k Lib)
- Kitchener South - Hespeler (770 MoV, 15.7k NDP, 6.3k Lib)
- Eglinton-Lawrence (957 MoV, 9.0k NDP, 19.0k Lib)
- Scarborough-Rouge Park (963 MoV, 15.3k NDP, 8.8k Lib)
Had less than 1000 people in each of these ridings from the smaller left wing party given their votes to the larger left-wing party, 8 seats would have been taken from the Progressive Conservatives (leaving them with 68 seats), and the NDP would have gained 7 seats (47) and the Libs would have gained 1 (going up to 8).
This is the same for another 23 ridings, but with a larger margin of victory. These ridings were nevertheless won by fewer votes than were sent to the smaller left-wing party. If we subtract these 23 seats, the PCs would have been down to 45 seats, enough for the NDP to have more seats before we allocate these 23 seats between the Libs, NDP, and Greens.
I like a lot of things about Canada, but I don't like this fact about your country, and I don't want it imported into the United States. Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania went to Trump in 2016 not because more people voted for Trump's policies than against them, but because enough people bought the bullshit that Clinton was corrupt and no better than Trump and voted third party or stayed home. Had the Stein voters used a bit of common sense and rethought their votes, we could have avoided 4 years of utter shitshow here. Canadian politics won't help us here. All we need to do is look at your province of Ontario and see that clear as day.
An interesting thought exercise. What if Ontario used Proportional Representation. Ford would have gotten 76 seats, but he'd have seen an Ontario Parliament that was 187 or 188 seats. Of these:
- The NDP would have gotten another 22 seats, in addition to their 40 won seats, for 62 total seats.
- The Liberals would have gotten another 29 seats, in addition to their 7 won seats, for 36 total seats.
- The Greens would have gotten 7 additional seats, plus their 1 won seat, for a total of 8 seats.
- 5 seats would have to be allocated between the NDP, Liberals, and Greens since the Progressive Conservatives shouldn't be entitled to more than 40.5% of the seats as they got 40.5% of the vote.
We'd have to amend the US constitution to make this happen here, but I think you guys could just do it with a law there. But this is what ifs and coulda-bens. The as-is shows clearly why we don't want to import your political system here. Democrats would never win an election again if we split our votes like Ontarians split theirs...
strategic voting consolidates parties. values voting is the only way to elect someone with your own values.
The Data presented does not support the conclusion. This suggests dishonesty on your part.
This was a Republican bill that Democrats opposed. Fuck your "both sides" bullshit
I'm 13 and I think you're right. What are primaries btw?
A true big brain (rot) take. Keep trying genius
bOtH sIdEs, amirite? Clown
That's not realistic in America with our duopoly and FPTP voting system. Voting for progressive candidates locally is our best bet and being represented, and supporting Ranked Voting systems in place of FPTP.