The Political Puerto Rican

In another video featuring a prominent GOP House Representative, Lauren Boebert of Colorado made an inflammatory statement against fellow Representative Ilhan Omar regarding the January 6 riot. However, in this instance, the blowback was not as bad as Rep Gosar received for his video against Rep Ocasio Cortez. Boebert was accused of making an Islamaphobic comment in the video and was altogether not an unsurprising move for the Republican from Colorado. So when Gosar made his video, he was censored in the House, whereas Boebert has not received any for of professional reprimand from party leaders. While Rep Omar has repeatedly asked for a public apology, probably on social media, Boebert maintains her innocence and is quite honestly being shielded from having to do so by GOP leadership. Will representatives ever truly be held accountable for their statements made against colleagues? Only time will tell.  https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-business-religion-middle-east-lauren-boeber

Getty Editorial  As we have discussed a little throughout the semester, as the world becomes more and more connected, local news organizations become more and more nationalized. While this is still the exception and not the rule, as media corporations continue to amass organizations under their umbrellas, uniform and national reporting of local stories will be on the rise, but the Build Back Better Agenda is hoping to provide a boost to the industry as a whole, including the little guys.  In President Bidens multi-trillion dollar social relief package hoping to pass the Senate, there is a large sum of money for a relatively unpublicized sector: local news organizations. The relief package will set aside $1.67 billion over the next five years for outlets that primarily cover local news. If this seems too good to be true, it sort of is. The package is not disregarding national news organizations and media conglomerates as many of the local and regional outlets are actually under those co

                                                            Mike Kai Chen for The New York Times It is no secret or surprise that social media and the fast spread of the internet has allowed the world to become more connected than ever before. In a study done two years ago by the Pew Research Center, they found that the internet and the advent of more communication technologies has allowed for greater impact on politics. This got me thinking about if the public is influencing policy more or if we are just more aware of decisions being made in the government. As I was contemplating these questions, Biden announced his plan to ramp up vaccine production as well as vaccine distribution around the globe . As pointed out in the article, this move was made amid recent outcries against the administration for the lack of a role the United States has played in increasing vaccine rates globally. Not only completed vaccine distribution but earlier this year when the United States and much of the

https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud/#choose-a-state The short answer: no. The longer answer: still no.  Following the 2020 presidential election and former President Trump's defeat by now President Biden, the GOP and other higher up party officials began spewing rhetoric that the election was "stolen" and began to do everything in their power to find instances of voter fraud that contributed to Trump losing his reelection bid. In a report done by The Heritage Foundation , they found that since 1982 (yes, you read that right. Just under 40 years ago) there have only been 1,334 cases of proven voter fraud. While that could be considered enough to turn a single  presidential election (e.g. Bush/Gore 2000 and those ~500 votes), that has been spread across decades and cannot account for the "millions" of votes that were claimed to had been stolen in 2020. The math simply does not add up. The article I found that sparked this deep dive into voter fraud was about a man

In a rare move made by the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday, Republican Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona was formally censured by the House in a near straight partisan split. This was done after the representative had posted a video to his social media portraying him m-rdering fellow representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  So what exactly is a censuring? As defined by the U.S. Senate : " It is a formal statement of disapproval...". While it is not outlined by the Constitution it is a power featured in both chambers of Congress and censure can come from either or both. For Rep. Gosar, his censure removed him from the committees he was serving on, and while it is considered a severe rebuke, it does not remove a congressmember from Congress, therefore they continue having the job, they just have this stain on their legacy.  While social media censuring, as mentioned many times on this blog, are not considered first amendment protections, formal House censuring is a measure

AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File In a rather unprecedented, but not altogether unsurprising move recently, former President Trump and his team announced the creation of a social media platform after being banned off of several of them earlier this year due to false claims of campaign fraud as well as content relating to the January 6 riot.  In a deliberate move to counter the sites Trump was pushed off of earlier this year, in the platforms Terms of Service it " bar users from annoying any of the site’s employees and from statements that “'disparage, tarnish, or otherwise harm, in our opinion, us and/or the Site.'”  In essence, users of the platform cannot make aggressive or inflammatory statements against the site - and one can assume former President Trump.  So how does this relate to the First Amendment again? In one of my earlier blog posts, I discussed how at the very base, social media platforms do not fall under the protection of the First Amendment. When many political ac