Jen The Libertarian

It's hard to imagine Trump has ever had a worse week than the one he just had - his tax returns got leaked, he had a horrible debate performance, and he's currently receiving treatment for COVID-19. Since Trump's bad week means the whole campaign season is now in chaos, let's break it down.   Link to my new Substack newsletter (which you should totally subscribe to) - https://jenmonroe.substack.com

Well I started making these episodes for the Democratic primary debates so in order to see the series through to the end I decided to give the presidential debates their own episodes.   This debate series has...not started out so well, to put it mildly.   Link to my Substack (which you should subscribe to) - jenmonroe.substack.com

In this week's roundup - Trump makes dumb mouth noises, the SCOTUS nominee is revealed, and the grand jury makes its decision on who will face charges in the Taylor shooting. And news - I've started a Substack! Here is a link to subscribe and a post with a bit more info as to why I'm changing up the content schedule and delivery method. https://jenmonroe.substack.com 

We may be done with 2020 but 2020 is clearly not done with us. This past week saw frightening levels of overreach from the Trump administration on the TikTok acquisition deal and on what exactly should constitute US history as taught to schoolchildren. And then Ruth Bader Ginsberg passed.   Buckle up.

It was a short week but we still have stuff to talk about, like how for some reason Trump decided to tell Bob Woodward things he probably shouldn't have and the staggering number of deportations that have happened since March

Since Congress won't leave well enough alone when it comes to Section 230, we have two presidential candidates who are openly antagonistic towards Section 230, and two platforms have already changed their TOS to reflect the current environment we need to chat about S230 and its importance again. My RocaNews piece on S230 - https://www.rocanews.com/blog-posts/political-attacks-on-internet-freedom-will-lead-to-censorship

The story of the shooting of Aaron Danielson in Portland comes to a rather troubling end (?), both presidential candidates visit Kenosha and have very different experiences, and The Atlantic drops a piece on Trump that causes a mini freakout on the topic of anonymous sources.   *correction - it was not Kenosha PD that issued a statement about Reinouhl being armed it was Thurston County Sheriff's Office

Left off of the weekly roundup - Trump released his 2020 agenda and the RNC decided that their 2020 agenda what whatever Trump said.   So let's look at this Trump / GOP agenda shall we?

The past week gave us a bunch of dystopian hellscape - between the warnings of impending doom coming from the RNC to another police shooting that has kicked off riots in Kenosha, which lead to the Rittenhouse shootings   Needless to say it wasn't a very good week

The DNC finally took place virtually on August 17 - 20 and I watched the primetime portions of it and recapped it for you, and we got a surprise arrest

I bring you one of the most sordid tales of backstabbing intrigue ever. Alex Morse is the victim of one of the grossest smear campaigns I've seen in a long time and the story is a mashup of everything that's wrong with everything right now

So we now know the entirety of the 2020 Democratic ticket, a controversy / conspiracy involving the USPS and our pending mail voting tsunami, and btw we don't know who is supposed to be running DHS but we know who isn't supposed to be running it and surprise it's the two people who aren't supposed to be running it

Matt wrote a piece for Reason about his journey trying to find decent data on the safety of sending kids (namely his own) back into a brick and mortar school environment. Spoiler alert - it was quite the frustrating experience, not made any easier by the media and its current incentive structure.   And because it's us there's plenty of talk about other stuff too   Link to Matt's piece - https://reason.com/2020/08/12/media-alarmism-is-making-it-difficult-to-assess-school-reopening/

Sure everything is bad is right right now and that includes the current educational mess we find ourselves in for the 2020 - 2021 school year but there may be a silver lining here - parents across the country are going to have to join the school choice conversation   Corey and I discuss what this could all mean for school choice going forward, especially as it relates to the money spent on eduction and the options on offer going forward   Link to the EdChoice public opinion tracker Corey references if you're interested in seeing the raw data - https://edchoice.morningconsultintelligence.com/downloads/

Trump decided this is the week he's granting himself the power to decide if Tik Tok and WeChat get to operate in the US and to institute his own covid relief plan via EO (none of this seems particularly legal btw), and Beirut suffers an explosion that due to social media we all knew about in real time

As I'm sure everyone is aware YAL's Mobilize 2020 got canceled at the last minute by the city of Dallas (insert rage emoji here) so I have a brief chat with Cliff Maloney, president of YAL, to find out what happened. Stay tuned after the interview where I give my own thoughts and explanation as to why I am mad about the cancelation.

I think I can use this episode's title for every weekly roundup for at least the rest of the year... We got Q2's GDP numbers and yeah lol we're boned, Portland seems to be healing now that the feds are leaving, the Trump administration is trying another DHS DACA memo out, Congress having another useless tech hearing, and hey did you remember this is still an election year and that Biden has to name a running mate

So as everyone on Earth knows the feds were sent into Portland to do...I don't know what exactly and Nancy went to go document what was going on and report back to us 

Things in Portland aren't slowing down and neither is the trend of deploying Feds to cities who didn't ask for their assistance, the Trump administration is *still* trying to keep illegal immigrants from being counted on the Census and to keep from having to reinstitute DACA, and a return of the Covington story now that settlements are being made

Where I look into movements that have come and gone in the past (namely girlboss feminism and #MeToo) to predict the future of the current It Movement   Let's just say the future doesn't look bright    Link to Leigh Stein's Medium piece referenced - https://gen.medium.com/the-end-of-the-girlboss-is-nigh-4591dec34ed8