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WASHINGTON, D.C. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) announced today four amendments she has filed to fiscal year 2022 appropriations bills. The House Rules Committee will consider the amendments next week.

Nortons first amendment would prohibit the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) from using its funds to enforce the prohibition on marijuana in federally assisted housing in jurisdictions where recreational marijuana is legal. The second amendment would prohibit HUD from using its funds to enforce the prohibition on medical marijuana in jurisdictions where medical marijuana is legal. Cannabis Caucus Co-Chairs Congressman Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA) are cosponsors of both amendments. Earlier this Congress, Norton reintroduced her bill to permit marijuana in federally assisted housing in jurisdictions where it is legal. Norton has also sent a letter to HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge asking her to use executive discretion to not enforce the prohibition on marijuana in federally assisted housing in jurisdictions where it is legal.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development should not be allowed to remove people from their homes or otherwise punish them for following the marijuana laws of their jurisdictions, Norton said. More and more states are moving toward legalization of marijuana, especially of medical marijuana. It is time for HUD to follow the rest of the country and allow marijuana use in federally assisted housing in jurisdictions where it is legal. This should especially be the case for individuals living in jurisdictions that have legalized medical marijuana. Nobody should be evicted for following the law and the advice of their doctors.

Nortons third amendment would direct the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to prioritize efforts to combat airplane and helicopter noise. While the FAA and the aviation industry face many high-profile challenges, aircraft noise, which causes disruption to human health and local economies, is often overlooked. As co-chair of the Quiet Skies Caucus, I have been leading members for many years to get the FAA to take aircraft noise seriously, Norton said. As a result of aircraft noise, Americans suffer from sleep disruption, exacerbation of high blood pressure and other chronic diseases, and learning loss in schools.

Nortons fourth amendment would prohibit the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from using its funds to enter directly into leases for a headquarters. Nortons amendment would effectively return the SECs leasing authority to the General Services Administration (GSA), the federal governments real estate arm. As a former chair and ranking member of the Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management, Norton led oversight of the SECs real estate activities.

For three decades, the SEC has consistently stumbled through leasing mistakes at great expense to taxpayers, Norton said. It is incredibly inefficient, wasteful, and redundant for the SEC to be involved in the nuances of real estate decisions when GSA exists for that very reason.Like other federal agencies, the SEC should continue to have input and involvement in the decision-making process, but the ultimate real estate authority should lie with GSA, where it belongs. Earlier this Congress, Norton introduced a bill to revoke the SECs leasing authority and return it to GSA.

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Norton Files Amendments to Allow Marijuana Use in Public Housing, Combat Aircraft Noise, and Block SEC from Entering into Lease for Headquarters -...

When people act like jerks on social media, one permanent response is to ban them from posting again. Take away the digital megaphone, the theory goes, and the hurtful or dishonest messages from those troublemakers wont post a problem there anymore.

What happens after that, though? Where do those who have been deplatformed go, and how does it affect their behavior in future?

Assistant Professor Jeremy Blackburn, Department of Computer Science, Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science Image Credit: Jonathan Cohen.

An international team of researchers including Assistant Professor Jeremy Blackburn and PhD candidate Esraa Aldreabi from the Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Sciences Department of Computer Science explores those questions in a new study called Understanding the Effect of Deplatforming on Social Networks.

The research performed by iDRAMA Lab collaborators at Binghamton University, Boston University, University College London and the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Germany was presented in June at the 2021 ACM Web Science conference.

Researchers developed a method to identify accounts belonging to the same person on different platforms and found that being banned on Reddit or Twitter led those users to join alternate platforms such as Gab or Parler where the content moderation is more lax.

Also among the findings is that, although users who move to those smaller platforms have a potentially reduced audience, they exhibit an increased level of activity and toxicity than they did previously.

You cant just ban these people and say, Hey, it worked. They dont disappear, Blackburn said. They go off into other places. It does have a positive effect on the original platform, but theres also some degree of amplification or worsening of this type of behavior elsewhere.

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The deplatforming study collected 29 million posts from Gab, which launched in 2016 and currently has around 4 million users. Gab is known for its far-right base of neo-Nazis, white nationalists, anti-Semites and QAnon conspiracy theorists.

Using a combination of machine learning and human labeling, researchers cross-referenced profile names and content with users that had been active on Twitter and Reddit but were suspended. Many who are deplatformed reuse the same profile name or user info on a different platform for continuity and recognizability with their followers.

Just because two people have the same name or username, thats not a guarantee, Blackburn said. There was a pretty big process of going through creating a ground truth data set, where we had a human say, These have to be the same people because of this reason and that reason. That allows us to scale things up by throwing it into a machine learning classifier [program] that will learn the characteristics to watch for.

The process was not unlike how scholars determine the identity of authors for unattributed or pseudonymous works, checking for style, syntax and subject matter, he added.

In the dataset analyzed for this study, about 59% of Twitter users (1,152 out of 1,961) created Gab accounts after their last active time on Twitter, presumably after their account was suspended. For Reddit, about 76% (3,958 out of 5,216) of suspended users created Gab accounts after their last post on Reddit.

Comparing content from the same users on Twitter and Reddit versus Gab, users tend to become more toxic when they are suspended from a platform and are forced to move to another platform. They also become more active, increasing the frequency of posts.

At the same time, the audience for Gab users content is curtailed by the reduced size of the platform compared to the millions of users on Twitter and Reddit. This might be seen as a good thing, but Blackburn cautioned that much of the planning for the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol happened on Parler, a platform similar to Gab with a smaller user base that skews to the alt-right and far-right.

Reducing reach probably is a good thing, but reach can be easily misinterpreted. Just because someone has 100,000 followers doesnt mean theyre all followers in the real world, he said.

The hardcore group, maybe the group that were most concerned about, are the ones that probably stick with someone if they move elsewhere online. If by reducing that reach, you increase the intensity that the people who stay around are exposed to, its like a quality versus quantity type of question. Is it worse to have more people seeing this stuff? Or is it worse to have more extreme stuff being produced for fewer people?

A separate study, A Large Open Dataset from the Parler Social Network, also included Blackburn among researchers from New York University, the University of Illinois, University College London, Boston University and the Max Planck Institute.

Presented at the AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media last month, it analyzed 183 million Parler posts made by 4 million users between August 2018 and January 2021, as well as metadata from 13.25 million user profiles. The data confirm that users on Parler which briefly shut down and was taken off of Apple and Google app stores in response to the Capitol riot overwhelmingly supported President Donald Trump and his Make America Great Again agenda.

Regardless of what Parler might have said, publicly or not, it was very clearly white, right-wing, Christian Trump supporters, Blackburn said. Again, unsurprisingly, it got its largest boost right at the 2020 election up to a million users joining. Then around the attack at the Capitol, there was another big bump in users. What we can see is that it was very clearly being used as an organization tool for the insurrection.

So if banning users is not the right answer, what is? Reddit admins, for example, have a shadow-banning capability that allows troublesome users to think theyre still posting on the site, except no one else can see them. During the 2020 election and the COVID-19 pandemic, Twitter added content moderation labels to tweets that deliberately spread disinformation.

Blackburn is unsure about all the moderation tools that social media platforms have available, but he thinks there need to be more socio-technical solutions to socio-technical problems rather than just outright banning.

Society is now fairly firmly saying that we cannot ignore this stuff we cant just use the easy outs anymore, he said. We need to come up with some more creative ideas to not get rid of people, but hopefully push them in a positive direction or at least make sure that everybody is aware of who that person is. Somewhere in between just unfettered access and banning everybody is probably the right solution.

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Study shows users banned from social platforms go elsewhere with increased toxicity | Binghamton News - Binghamton University

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), a member of the Budget Committee, said in an interview Wednesday that he remains optimistic about the bipartisan talks, but added that, if for some reason the bipartisan version doesnt work out, then we ought to be looking at a reconciliation bill thats at $4.1 trillion.

Any talk of such a backup plan, however, is in the early stages as Democrats await another week of bipartisan talks in the Senate. But the fight over whether to increase the party-line bill's price tag is one of several potential problems that would bedevil Democrats if those bipartisan Senate negotiations fail underscoring the tenuous peace that both Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi will need to hold throughout the falls high-stakes floor action.

Right now were trying to [see a] silver lining moving towards how we can get this done and not assume that we have members that are also going to be problems, said Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) hold a news conference in the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center May 17, 2019. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Still, Democratic impatience is mounting by the day, particularly on the House side. Many progressives there have spent months airing loud skepticism of Bidens talks with the GOP.

The whole thing is really disappointing. I think it does slow down the process, said Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), adding that he hopes the Senates failed vote leads to a willingness on the part of a couple senators to go ahead and ditch the GOP talks in favor of a Democrats-only bill.

Theyre eating time, added Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), referring to the bipartisan Senate group. And having been burned back in 09 and 10 by the Republicans in the Senate on the Affordable Care Act, we are understandably wary.

Schumer set a Wednesday deadline to get all 50 Democratic senators to get on board with the $3.5 trillion package that's poised to include an expansion of Medicare and child care assistance, among other items. The majority leader has further vowed that the Senate would move forward on a budget before the August recess.

But the Wednesday deadline is likely to slip, in part because the $3.5 trillion proposals future is tied closely to the bipartisan negotiations. That's frustrating to many House Democrats who had hoped to see action before the lengthy recess begins.

House Democrats have, instead, acknowledged that theyll likely need to return to Washington mid-August to vote on the budget blueprint and potentially the Senates bipartisan infrastructure deal, should one be reached.

While Democrats are far from finalizing the specific policies they plan to add to the social spending package, party leaders plan to take the first step in the coming weeks by voting on a budget that will determine how much each relevant committee can spend. If the bipartisan deal fails, then, the party might have to raise its top line number in order to tackle physical infrastructure while leaving its social spending priorities intact.

I cant give you an exact timeline, but I think that we are going to have every Democratic senator on board, said Senate Budget Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). At the end of the day ... the $600 billion in physical infrastructure, you can do it in the bipartisan bill, or you can combine it with one bill. One way or another, its going to happen.

Sanders is not alone in pitching the idea that roads, bridges and broadband could be rolled into the social spending bill. Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said this week she would push for the physical infrastructure plan to be included in the broader spending package if the Senate talks fail: That has to be incorporated.

But that Plan B is already drawing sharp pushback from moderates, especially in the House, who are anxious about signing on to a $3.5 trillion package amid concerns about the debt and GOP attacks over rising inflation.

Heck, no, said Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.), when asked about a top line number potentially above $3.5 trillion. We cant afford to keep spending money we dont have.

Another pivotal moderate, Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), said that "I need to see specifics but that number is aggressive."

Other Democrats argue that placing everything in a $4 trillion package, if it comes to that, shouldnt matter to moderates.

I dont know why theyd change their mind on infrastructure spending depending on the vehicle through which its accomplished, said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). That wouldnt be a very logical position in my view.

The White House privately warned Democrats this week that if the bipartisan talks fall apart, they could have to make some painful decisions related to the budget blueprint. Given that moderates are wary of going above $3.5 trillion, that could mean important progressive priorities have to be altered or cut to make room for infrastructure funding.

And not all Senate Democrats have even signed onto the $3.5 trillion number. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), who is negotiating the bipartisan package, said Wednesday she hadnt made a decision yet on whether shed support that figure.

Im still focused on infrastructure, Shaheen said. Were going to reach a deal.

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), another bipartisan negotiator, said that hed support moving forward on the $3.5 trillion package but added: Ill reserve the right to do whatever the hell I want once I see whats in the bill and how its funded and how its distributed.

While Republicans blocked Wednesdays vote to begin debating the bipartisan infrastructure plan, senators are aiming to reach an agreement by early next week. A group of 11 Senate Republicans sent a letter Wednesday to Schumer indicating that theyd be willing to move forward Monday, if they reach an agreement and have a score from Congress' nonpartisan budget scorekeeper.

Schumer on Wednesday voted against proceeding with the measure a move that allows the majority leader to bring the vote back up again at a later date. Senate Democrats said in interviews Wednesday that they expected Schumer to maintain his focus on the bipartisan plan before moving to the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package.

I dont know the exact sequencing, but the goal right now is to get that bipartisan bill done, said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), another member of the Budget Committee.

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With bipartisan infrastructure talks in limbo, progressives eye $4.1T silver lining - POLITICO

Skip to contentAt the local level, sidewalk socialists represent a movement whose time has come.July 21, 2021

India Walton.

EDITORS NOTE: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvels column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrinas column here.

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In 1910, during the United States first Gilded Age, Milwaukee elected Emil Seidel as its first socialist mayor. For much of the next 50 yearseven during the Red Scare led by Wisconsins notorious Senator Joseph McCarthythe city elected and reelected socialist mayors. These mayors, author Dan Kaufman wrote in The New York Times, were known for their integrityuncompromised by the local business community that despised themand for their frugality, their commitment that public money should be spent carefully and not squandered in smarmy deals with private contractors. They installed hundreds of drinking fountains, prosecuted restaurants serving tainted food, and modernized public services. Seidel appointed a new health commissioner whose department oversaw a reduction of more than 40 percent of the cases of six leading contagious diseases.

Their opponents tried to deride them as sewer socialistsa term Seidel, his successors and their supporters soon would proudly adopt. Now, chapters of the ref, the Working Families Party and other progressives propelled by the energy of the Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns are gaining traction at the local level and recalling sewer socialisms proud history.

In Buffalo, India Walton, running as a democratic socialist, defeated a four-term incumbent in the Democratic primary for mayor, propelled by local activists and those of the Working Families Party and the Democratic Socialists of America. In Richmond, Calif., a small working-class community outside San Francisco with a population that is 80 percent people of color and a large immigrant community, the Richmond Progressive Alliance has succeeded in electing a majority slate to the city council while battling Chevron to counter the poisonous effects of its local refinery and force it to pay its fair share of taxes.

Read the full text of Katrinas column here.

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Progressives Around the Country Are Recalling Sewer Socialism's Proud History - The Nation

On Aug. 3, both parties will hold primaries for two open Ohio congressional seats. But the outcome of the Democratic clash in the Cleveland-area 11th District may have greater significance than the identity of any of the days other winners.

Thats because the race between former state Sen. Nina Turner and Cuyahoga County Councilwoman Shontel Brown, both African Americans, is the latest in a series of contests stemming from efforts by self-styled progressives to push the Democratic Party to the left and increase liberal pressure on President Joe Biden.

So far this year those efforts have flopped, notably in last months New York City mayoral primary, where centrist Eric Adams was the winner and another moderate, Kathryn Garcia, finished second. Earlier, more moderate Democrats captured Louisiana and New Mexico congressional races, and former Gov. Terry McAuliffe won the Virginia Democratic gubernatorial primary over more liberal challengers.

Progressives have high hopes that Turner, a prominent 2016 and 2020 backer of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders insurgent presidential campaigns, will win the majority minority Ohio seat vacated when Rep. Marcia Fudge became Bidens secretary of housing and urban development.

That has prompted several top Black Democrats, led by House Majority Whip James Clyburn and the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio, to support Brown, who backed Biden in the 2020 nominating race. So have other top Ohio Democrats and Hillary Clinton. They fear a Turner victory would play into Republican efforts to portray their party as dominated by its left wing, led by New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The New York congresswoman and fellow members of the progressive group known as the Squad have endorsed Turner, as has Sanders, who said the election has everything to do with the future of the Democratic Party. Ocasio-Cortez plans to canvass with her this weekend. In practical terms, a Turner victory would augment the ranks of progressives and make it even harder for Speaker Nancy Pelosi to manage the closely divided House, where the half-dozen Squad members already have substantial leverage.

Clyburn, who also plans a weekend appearance, said he endorsed Brown because of his long relationship with her and not because of antagonism toward either Sanders or Turner. Meanwhile, a pro-Israel Democratic political action committee is backing Brown because of Turners past criticism of Israel, a potential factor in a district with many Jewish voters.

Turner has refused to say if she voted in 2016 for Clinton, after the former secretary of state defeated Sanders for the Democratic nomination. And in an interview with Peter Nicholas of The Atlantic before the 2020 election, she said the choice between Biden and Trump was like saying to somebody, You have a bowl of [expletive] in front of you, and all youve got to do is eat half of it instead of the whole thing. Its still [expletive].

Progressives seeking a greater voice in the Democratic Party have taken encouragement from the elections in 2018 of Ocasio-Cortez and Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and in 2020 of Reps. Cori Bush of Missouri and Mondaire Jones and Jamaal Bowman of New York.

They have been able to command considerable attention, especially on Twitter and cable television. But most represent very liberal areas with substantial minority populations and are well to the left of the overall party, making them outliers in the House Democratic caucus. Still, Democratic leaders like Pelosi and Clyburn are concerned their outsized media presence is allowing Republicans to use the progressives advocacy of issues like defunding the police, the Green New Deal and Medicare-for-All to paint Biden and the entire party establishment as tools of left-wingers and socialists.

Meanwhile, in a related move, House Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries, the New York congressman seen as a potential Pelosi successor, is joining with two prominent moderate Democrats to form a political action committee called Team Blue PAC to bolster incumbents against potential left-wing primary challenges.

First on their list are two veteran urban Democrats, Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York City and Danny Davis of Chicago, who are facing 2022 primary challenges from their left.

These and the other recent clashes between progressive and moderate Democrats mirror the partys 2020 nominating fight between moderates like Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar and progressives like Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren. So have the results.

Despite pre-2020 speculation that progressives were taking control of the party, Sanders never polled more than about one-third of the primary vote and wound up being defeated even more decisively than four years earlier. And progressives have lost every significant primary fight so far this year, though they won some local New York contests.

The winner of the Turner-Brown primary contest 11 other Democrats are running will almost certainly be elected in the November general election as the 11th District voted nearly 80% for Biden last year.

Similarly, the GOP primary winner in the suburban Columbus 15th District will likely win the general election in that Republican majority district.

But it wont likely have the lingering impact of the latest showdown between the progressive and moderate forces within the Democratic Party, a battle destined to continue next year and into the 2024 presidential race.

Carl P. Leubsdorf is the former Washington bureau chief of The Dallas Morning News and a frequent contributor. Email: carl.p.leubsdorf@gmail.com

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Are progressives taking over the Democratic Party? - The Dallas Morning News