NEWS ARTICLES THAT CAN BE USED AS EXAMPLES - POLITICS
OCTOBER 1, 2021 - US
Congress Kept The Government Open. The Rest... They're Still Working On.
Congress kept the government open but Democrats are still working out how to pass the two major
pillars of the Biden agenda. And the president's approval rating has somewhat recovered as the
public thinks less about Afghanistan, but the midterms could be bad for Biden if Congress stalls out.
OCTOBER 6, 2021 - US
Why Trump's Former Press Secretary Worries About His Influence In 2022
SUMMARY: Former White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham was part of the Trump
administration from the beginning and, in a conversation with Tamara Keith, offers a clear picture
into what she used to actively obscure: the chaos, pettiness, and mismanagement that characterized
his four years in power. Her book is I'll Take Your Questions Now.
Stephanie Grisham was the least publicly conspicuous of all Donald Trump’s press secretaries,
declining to hold a single White House press briefing during her nine-month tenure in 2019-20.
When she left the job to become chief of staff to Melania Trump, her public profile sank even
further.
Ms Grisham generally paints a picture of Mr Trump as psychologically volatile and insecure, alluding
not just to his rage but his vanity. That paranoid streak also extends from the personal to the
political, Ms Grisham writes, with Mr Trump apparently refusing anaesthesia during a colonoscopy
so as to avoid handing over political control to his vice president, Mike Pence.
And on the matter of message control and image management, Ms Grisham claims that the
president told her flat out to issue a blanket denial of E. Jean Carroll’s claim that he raped her in a
department store in the 1990s. “You just deny it,” she recalls him saying. “That’s what you do in
every situation. Right, Stephanie? You just deny it.”
Ms Trump’s political disengagement also comes in for criticism. She apparently went to bed before
the results of the 2020 election began to trickle in, only waking up to appear on stage with her
husband at 2:30am. The first lady also apparently refused an opportunity to denounce the attack on
the Capitol on 6 January, bluntly refusing to put her name to a tweet condemning lawlessness and
violence.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/grisham-book-trump-ivanka-
melania-b1929936.html
,NEWS ARTICLES THAT CAN BE USED AS EXAMPLES - POLITICS
OCTOBER 7, 2021 - US
What's Next For The Afghans Now In The United States?
SUMMARY: Tens of thousands of Afghans have been brought to the United States but most have not
yet been resettled in communities. The process is complex, with multiple visa categories and gutted
resettlement infrastructure all making the challenge more daunting for the Biden administration.
The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021 caused tens of thousands of Afghans to flee,
often by taking desperate measures. Many others who want to flee are still seeking secure safe
passage out of the country. Countless Afghans remain at risk of being targeted for their past work or
association with coalition forces, Afghanistan’s former government, international development
programs, media, civil society, and other organizations promoting human rights.
The US Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) was established for those who had previously worked alongside
the US military or government. Under US law, humanitarian parole is an alternative allowing some
immigrants to enter the country temporarily and then seek asylum or complete other visa
applications. On August 23, the US Department of Homeland Security announced that it would
“parole certain Afghan nationals into the United States, on a case-by-case basis, for a period of two
years and subsequent to appropriate vetting, provided their movement to the United States is being
carried out pursuant to Operation Allies Refuge (the August 2021 airlift of 125,000 people conducted
by the United States and its coalition allies).” The US government should adjust its policies so that
Afghans allowed to enter the United States on humanitarian grounds are automatically provided
work authorization, allowing them to integrate and secure livelihoods.
I spent years asking myself, what is it that makes Americans not like refugees? Is it because of the
economy, or is it about jobs? And I spent a long time asking this question. And the answer I got over
and over again is it's a question of leadership. So it depends on what the president says about them.
By and large, Americans support resettling refugees, and they have since 1980. It's been a bipartisan
program. But in the last four years, we saw that it wasn't, that the Trump administration demonized
refugees, demonized immigrants, and it turned the tide of politics. It's the only explanation for why
it's jumped back so quickly.
How much support, economic or otherwise, do these refugees get once they get here? It depends on
what status you're in. So if you're a refugee, it's pretty much laid out. You get, you know, somewhere
around $1,200 for the first three months. Your rent is paid for the first three months, but then you
have to be working, and then it's on you. If you're an asylum-seeker, the way that the Trump
administration did it is you can't work for a year. So it's very hard to be an asylum-seeker and survive
here. If you are - if you came here on humanitarian parole, you have no benefits whatsoever. You
are just safe. That's all that provides for you. And you have to figure it out.
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1044144903
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-58352130
, NEWS ARTICLES THAT CAN BE USED AS EXAMPLES - POLITICS
OCTOBER 12, 2021 - US
Let's Talk About Young Voters
SUMMARY: Young voters broke for Joe Biden in 2020, but are shirking party affiliations in greater
numbers than older generations. And it remains to be seen how millennials and Gen Z legislators will
fit into existing political power structures: many top Democrats have been at the helm in
Washington for decades and recruiting young candidates can be a challenge.
We had 50% of young people who voted in 2020, and that's an 11-point increase from 2016. And
now we're like, all right, let's show them what that voting gets you. Let's remind these elected
officials that they owe these young voters for their seats.
And younger - the youngest voters still had a lower turnout rate than all the other older cohorts,
which is what happens in every election. So what I'm wondering is, does she have a sense - do you
have a sense of what - was there something particular that motivated young voters? Or were they
motivated by the same things that motivated a lot of other people?
So when I talk to her, she said she believed that there were a lot of things that led young people to
turn out. Now, of course, her group is largely talking to young people on the left. But - so she talked
about a response to then-President Trump and his campaign. She talked about the fact that young
people were living through a pandemic that was impacting them disproportionately, particularly
young people of color. And she talked about the fact that she believed that a lot of young people do
not see systemic change happening that's been impacting their lives on a day-to-day basis. And so
they turned out in response to the promise of that kind of change.
You know, there's not a ton of great data, actually, about how many young people run for office in
the United States each year, what levels of government they run at, whether or not they're
successful. There just aren't groups that really track that. But I don't think it's too much of a leap to
just point out that the ranks of elected officials in this country are much older than the generation
that we're talking about, folks under the age of 30.
Yeah, Snapchat does. They launched earlier this month a big initiative to attempt to connect young
people who might want to run for office themselves one day with resources and tools about what
local offices they could run for in their communities, as well as resources. They have partnered with
a number of campaign recruitment organizations across the political spectrum to try to give these
young people more info. And I think one big thing to point out here is who is on Snapchat. The
company tells me that this app has a really wide reach among young people. Snap says the app
reaches 90% of people in the U.S. between the ages of 13 and 24, which is pretty big.
