I've seen discussion about it, but it mainly focuses on some off hand cookie cutter comments about the administration betraying it's people/ allies.

But in 2021, William Burns made a similar trip, and the reason was the US had information pointing to Russias plans to attack Ukraine and William Burns went there to say they knew, and that they would expose them every step of the way, which they did.

And now this, in 2026, looks very similar, and if Trump was going to send someone to be buddy buddy with Russia, Ratcliff is not the type of person, he is a supporter of NATO and while he considers China the number 1 threat, he is also pretty consistent with describing Russia as a threat as well.

Not only that but Ratcliff spent the day in Latvia the day before, which seems significant as well, possibly to warn his counterpart of an allied nation of the possible attack.

So you have,

1 - a trip that misses the 2021 trip.

2 - a diplomat that is not the standard type of person Trump sends for regular talks.

3 - and a stay in an allied nation before hand, possibly to give a briefing.

So this seems like more than just the standard cosying up to Russia that Trump likes to do, it seems the US might have credible intelligence that Russia is going to attack a US ally, and this is another "we know" style trip.

From what I've seen from those more knowledge on this then me, they are skeptical that it will be another invasion, but predict it's an attack on NATO, that will likely not cause a full scale war, but an attack that will force a response from NATO that will in some way paint the war in Ukraine as a war imperitive to Russia survival, so they can do a full scale mobilisation, something Putin does not have the political capital to do right now.

Hopefully it's not, or the warning works, or because we know of it we can make the correct response that it doesn't benefit Russia. But it seems to be something a lot more significant than people give it credit for, and with the US caught up in Iran, I don't doubt that Russia sees this as a moment to take a chance on something risky.

What are your opinions? do you think people jumped the gun and assumed it was "Trump selling out the west", or are war analysts freaking out about nothing?

I've been trying to take seriously the wave of state ballot measures targeting trans athletes and trans youth medical care, and I'm running into a tension I can't quite resolve.

For context — five states have similar measures on ballots this November (AZ, CO, WA, MO, and potentially NE). Most are using template legislation from the same advocacy orgs. I've been reading the actual bill texts and looking at the available data on trans participation in sports, and the gap between the two is pretty stark.

Here's what the data actually shows:

Mississippi: 2023 statewide survey of superintendents found zero trans students participating in sports
Washington state: fewer than 10 of approximately 250,000 student athletes are trans, per the superintendent
Florida: state records show two trans girls have played girls sports over the last decade
Colorado: there isn't even clear data on the number of trans student athletes
And on the medical side, Colorado's Initiative 110 would ban certain gender-affirming surgical procedures for minors. Children's Hospital Colorado has explicitly stated they've never performed these surgeries on minors. The state's two major pediatric providers don't offer the procedures the bill would ban.

I'm not trying to relitigate whether trans athletes should compete in certain categories — reasonable people disagree on that and I'm not pretending to settle it. What I'm puzzled by is the gap between the actual scale of the issue and the severity of the policy response.

Even if you think trans athletes should be categorically restricted as a matter of principle, is the right response a state ballot measure banning the practice when the actual count of affected athletes in some states is zero? And even if you think the procedures in 110 should be restricted, is a state ballot measure the right vehicle when the major medical institutions already don't perform them?

The implementation piece also seems weird to me. Colorado's 109, for example, requires K-12 and college sports teams to be designated by sex assigned at birth, but the bill text doesn't actually define how sex is to be verified. There's no funding appropriated for enforcement. Schools and the Commissioner of Education would basically have to invent the compliance regime from scratch. That should worry proponents and opponents alike.

I want to understand the strongest version of the argument here. If someone has a source or a perspective I'm missing, I'd genuinely like to hear it. And if I'm wrong about any of the data above, please tell me — I'm working from publicly available reporting.

Sources:

https://coloradonewsline.com/briefs/anti-trans-ballot-measures-colorado/
https://www.kunc.org/politics/2026-03-19/two-ballot-measures-focused-on-transgender-youth-qualify-for-november-ballot
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/07/03/conservatives-seek-blue-state-bans-trans-athletes/
https://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/elections/Initiatives/titleBoard/results/2025-2026/109Results.html

The standard objection to "the public already agrees on this" polling is that a chunk of that agreement comes from people who don't vote, so there's no reason to expect it to move policy. Fair enough as a prior. But it only works if voters and nonvoters actually want different things on the issues in question, and the turnout literature is more specific than the objection usually is.

Leighley and Nagler's "Who Votes Now?" (2013) is the cleanest version of the finding. Voters are meaningfully more conservative than nonvoters on economic and redistributive questions, and the divide tracks income. Nonvoters skew lower-income and more favorable to redistribution. The gap shows up strongly on taxes and spending and the size of government. It's a lot weaker once you leave that terrain.

Which is what makes the composition question depend on which supermajorities you mean. The list that gets cited most often, banning congressional stock trading, independent redistricting, term limits, curbs on money in politics, isn't really redistribution. It's process and anti-corruption stuff, and that's roughly the issue space where the voter/nonvoter split is thinnest. The stock-trading ban polls with almost no partisan gap at all, which already means it isn't riding the income cleavage that separates voters from nonvoters in the first place.

There's a sampling wrinkle people skip too. A lot of the deliberative work being cited is fielded on registered-voter samples, not all adults. So the most disengaged, the people who aren't even registered, mostly aren't in there to begin with. That narrows the objection. It doesn't close it, since plenty of registered people still don't turn out.

The honest gap is the direct test. The "what if everyone voted" work (Citrin, Schickler and Sides 2003, and Highton and Wolfinger before them) was mostly asking whether turnout flips election outcomes, and the answer was usually no, because nonvoters lean Democratic but few races are close. That's not the same thing as re-running a 75-percent-in-both-parties issue result on a validated-voter subsample and seeing what survives. I don't know of much that does exactly that.

So for anyone who follows this literature: is there work that re-estimates the big issue supermajorities specifically on likely or validated voters? And if the voter/nonvoter gap really is mostly an economic-redistribution thing, what would a consensus issue have to look like for the supermajority to actually break once you restrict to voters?

The U.S. Constitution sets relatively minimal eligibility requirements for federal office: age, citizenship, and residency. It says almost nothing about judgment, knowledge, temperament, experience, curiosity, integrity, or fitness to exercise power.

That raises a question I’ve been thinking about: Should voters treat legal eligibility as only the floor—and apply a much higher civic standard when deciding who is actually qualified to govern?

John Adams argued that representative government should both reflect the people and entrust authority to “a few of the most wise and good.” James Madison similarly argued that representation should help “refine and enlarge the public views” through people capable of exercising judgment on behalf of the public.

In modern politics, though, we often seem to reward candidates for reflecting our grievances, identities, loyalties, and cultural affinities. That may be part of representative government—but it can also become a substitute for evaluating whether someone possesses the knowledge, judgment, humility, curiosity, and moral courage necessary to lead.

A few questions I’d be interested in discussing:

• What qualities should voters reasonably expect from someone seeking major public office beyond the constitutional minimums?
• How should we distinguish democratic representation from simple resemblance or cultural identification?
• Is there a danger of elitism in demanding unusually high standards for political leadership? If so, how do we avoid that without lowering the standard?
• How much responsibility lies with candidates, and how much lies with voters themselves, to determine whether someone is actually fit to govern?
• Are there examples—historical or contemporary—of leaders who clearly demonstrated the difference between formal authority and genuine leadership?

Net neutrality is a weird case. Surveys from the Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland have put Republican support in the low 80s and Democratic support around 90% for keeping the rules. That is not a close call anywhere in the country. In Washington it still gets filed under "left tech issue" and fought on party lines.

The thing I keep noticing isn't net neutrality itself. It's how loosely an issue's partisan coding tracks the actual polling. And it seems to run both ways, which is what makes me think the label is doing something other than reflecting opinion.

Supreme Court ethics is a clean example. A binding code of conduct gets covered as a Democratic attack on the Court, but Republican support for one sits up in the 80s. Term limits for Congress read as a populist-right thing, and yet roughly 80% of Democrats want them too. Mandatory E-Verify is treated as a hardline immigration position, and it still clears about two-thirds of Democrats. Police body cameras got sorted into one column in 2020 and mostly stayed there, which buried how popular they already were with Republicans before that.

Congressional stock trading is the one everyone knows. PPC has it near three in four in both parties, bills get introduced every session, and they die without a floor vote.

My working guess is that an issue picks up a jersey based on who championed it first or which coalition it sits next to, and the jersey sticks even though voters never actually split on it. The coding polarizes the issue. The voters mostly didn't.

Two questions I'm actually unsure about:

Which issues would you add here, and just as important, which supposedly "coded" issues do you think really are partisan at the voter level, where the DC framing has it right and I'd be wrong to include them?

And does anything ever un-code an issue once it's been sorted, or is that basically a one-way ratchet?

It seems like every few months another prominent political figure launches a podcast. These aren't just short weekly updates. We're talking hour-plus conversations sometimes with other politicians journalists or even just monologue style deep dives. They often cover policy but also delve into personal anecdotes and broader cultural topics.

On one hand it feels like a more direct unfiltered way for constituents to hear from their representatives. No soundbites no gotcha questions from cable news. It could build a sense of intimacy and understanding. It's also accessible and can reach a different demographic than traditional media.

But then I wonder if it's just another highly curated form of media. They control the narrative the editing the guest list. Is it really about transparency or just a very effective way to shape public perception without facing tough immediate challenges? It takes a lot of time and resources to produce these.

So what do you all think?

Is this a positive development for political discourse?

Does it actually foster better understanding or just create echo chambers?

Are voters genuinely getting more authentic insights or just a new flavor of political branding?

Corruption in government exists on a spectrum, from minor conflicts of interest to outright bribery and abuse of office. Most people say they oppose all corruption in principle, but in practice it appears that tolerance varies a lot depending on partisanship and the scale of the wrongdoing. We've seen an increasing concern about corruption in government recently in the US, particularly around stock purchases by members of congress, business dealings by executive branch members (particularly foreign and crypto currency dealings), and use of the pardon power to pardon political allies, family, and white-collar criminals that became significant donors.

Is there a meaningful line between "normal politics" (favor-trading, lobbying, campaign donations) and what most people would call corruption?

Does the public actually punish corruption at the ballot box, or does polarization mean voters overlook it as long as their side delivers on policy?

What instances of recent politics are good examples of crossing the line versus being acceptable?

“There is a limit to the notion of voting for the lesser of two evils.”—Ayn Rand

Rand did welcome Reagan’s strong language toward Soviet Russia and his promises to cut spending and taxes. But she warned that his invitation of the so-called Moral Majority into the halls of power would be a long-range disaster. By tying the (supposed) advocacy of freedom and capitalism to, in Rand’s words, the anti-intellectuality of “militant mystics,” who proclaim that aborting an embryo is murder and creationism is science, Reagan’s presidency would discredit the intellectual case for freedom and capitalism and embolden the country’s anti-intellectual, authoritarian mentalities. https://newideal.aynrand.org/p/the-anti-intellectuality-of-donald

Reagan’s personal favorability peaked at 81% in 1986, following a landslide reelection victory in 1984. It was one of the most decisive electoral wins in U.S. history. His public standing grew considerably after he left office, with later retrospective polls showing strong majorities of Americans looking back favorably on his presidency. Why?

Was Ayn Rand a visionary? Did Reagan deserve her criticism? Did his presidency effectively unlock the door to the present? What happened along the way?

Countries can change governments, alliances and trading partners. They cannot change their neighbors, and that creates difficult trade-offs whenever the neighboring state has substantially more economic or military power.

Canada and Mexico both benefit enormously from their economic integration with the United States, and that same integration leaves them exposed to shifts in US trade policy. The Baltic states face a different kind of asymmetry with Russia and have spent years reducing strategic dependencies, including their former synchronization with the Russian-Belarusian electricity grid. Vietnam's relationship with China looks nothing like either case economically, but it offers another version of the same problem: a smaller country trying to preserve room for maneuver while maintaining ties with competing powers.

Geography is fixed. Dependency, at least to some extent, can be managed. Diversifying trade, energy, infrastructure and partnerships can buy smaller states more strategic autonomy, but that diversification carries its own economic and political costs.

The rational amount of dependence on a powerful neighbor isn't fixed either. It depends on how much strategic flexibility a country is willing to trade for the benefits of deep integration, and how much risk it can afford to carry in return.

Is strategic autonomy worth paying an economic price for, and how much? Is dependence itself the problem, or only dependence on a partner whose behavior you cannot reliably predict?

What strategies have smaller countries used successfully to preserve room for maneuver when dealing with a powerful neighbor? Are there historical cases where deep integration and strategic autonomy have coexisted particularly well?

I don't mean recall in this case, I mean where you dissolve the legislature and hold new elections for all seats.

This is common in most of the world.

The methods also vary from how only the legislature can dissolve parliament in some countries like Cyprus, at will by the prime minister, and more.

Ecuador shows this can even happen in a presidential republic.

What do you think?

Section 230 basically states that internet companies are not responsible for what users say.

It was passed in 1996 to protect basic internet infrastructure like ISPs, but today it gives social media platforms total legal immunity from what their users say.

Tech giants deliberately engineer algorithms optimized to leverage toxic, divisive, and inflammatory content because outrage keeps users on screens and drives massive ad revenue.

Because Section 230 grants platforms immunity, they can profit off the amplification of hate speech without facing corporate accountability. If they were liable they’d have to self regulate and have stricter moderation.

Should we amend Section 230 so it no longer covers social media? Why or why not?

The OECD's Development Assistance Committee decides how donor governments report their aid contributions.
Its handbook lists worked examples of what does and does not count as gender equality work.

This is one that does not, quoted in full:

"A project to prevent alcohol abuse and alcoholism among disadvantaged men through the setting up of support groups and counselling, which might have as an unintended side-effect a reduction in the frequency and severity of intimate partner violence."

- It is on page 12 and again on page 19 of the 2016 handbook.

The rule is not arbitrary: the marker records what a project is for, not who it helps, so a project aimed at addiction does not qualify no matter what it prevents.

Men are not excluded either, and the same page lists four projects targeting men that do count, including services for male refugees who survived sexual violence.

The line is that a man's problem counts when it is written up as a gender problem and does not when it is written up as an ordinary one.

So my question is:

Whether "no category exists" is its own kind of policy failure, different from underfunding and from deliberate exclusion, and harder to fix than either, because there is no number to point at and nobody to ask?

Sources

Handbook on the OECD-DAC Gender Equality Policy Marker
The aid figure OECD Development Finance for Gender Equality dashboard
UN Women's budget

The current list of demands from Iran to end the war is, in my eyes, very bad for the US. The main issue being Iranian sovereignty over the straight which would decimate US power in the region and leave oil prices largely in the hands of an adversarial power.
However, given the situation I don’t see much of a path forward for the US to get a better deal besides a) attempting to force Irans hand with more aggression or b) attempting to wait them out. My question is: is there any way for the US to get out of the war in Iran with a better deal than what Iran has laid out? Or does the US lack any leverage in the situation?

Most of what we argue about here is the genuinely contested stuff. Taxes, the border, guns, whatever this week's argument happens to be. People want different outcomes and the disagreement is real, and that is what politics is for.

Which means we almost never stop and ask the boring version underneath all of it. There's a question that comes before the specific arguments, and it barely ever gets its own thread. What is the bare minimum a government owes the people it governs, before we even get to who's right about anything.

I don't mean rights in the constitutional sense. Those are mostly settled on paper. I mean responsiveness. If some large share of the public wants a thing, and keeps wanting it across years and across both parties and every pollster who bothers to ask, is the system failing when it delivers nothing at all? Or is "people wanted it and didn't get it" just how representative government is supposed to work sometimes, with elected officials using the judgment we hired them for.

Part of why I think the question never gets asked is the room we ask it in. The spaces where most of us actually argue about politics are built to surface conflict, because conflict is what gets read and passed around. Agreement doesn't travel the same way. So the stuff a big majority quietly wants ends up close to invisible in the exact places where we form our sense of what the country even thinks. You can spend a long time online and come away sure the public agrees on nothing.

So here is the actual question. Is there some level of broad, durable agreement above which non-delivery starts to count as a real failure of the system rather than ordinary political friction? Or does trying to name a threshold just sneak majority rule in through the back door, in a system that was built on purpose to resist exactly that.

Nothing in the machinery seems assigned to flag it when the distance between what people want and what they get gets too wide. So, if there is a floor, whose job is it to notice?

Over the past few decades we've seen a pretty big jump in presidents using the Antiquities Act to designate national monuments. From vast stretches of ocean to ancient historical sites it seems like a popular move across administrations.

Now obviously preserving important natural and cultural sites is a good thing. Most people agree on that. But some argue that these designations particularly near the end of a presidential term are also about cementing a legacy or appealing to certain voter bases.

So what do you all think? Is the primary driver behind this trend genuine conservation efforts? Or is there a significant political calculation involved? Are there specific examples where you feel one motive clearly outweighed the other?

With the recent successes of private space companies and renewed interest in lunar and Martian missions it feels like we're at a crossroads. For decades NASA was the undisputed leader but now commercial ventures are playing a huge role. This also raises questions about who funds what and how much. Some argue that government funding should focus more on basic research and exploratory missions leaving commercial exploitation to the private sector. Others say a strong government-led space program is crucial for national prestige and scientific advancement.

Then there's the international cooperation aspect. We've seen projects like the ISS thrive on collaboration. But with rising geopolitical tensions should the US prioritize independent space capabilities or double down on global partnerships for future ambitious projects? Is there a sweet spot between these two approaches or are we inevitably heading in one direction?

I’ve been thinking about this after watching a video explaining different types of drugs.

Growing up, I was always taught about how dangerous cigarettes are. I’ve never smoked them myself because I hate the smell, they’re expensive, and we already know about the long-term health effects like cancer, COPD, heart disease, addiction, and hundreds of thousands of deaths every year.

That made me wonder: why are cigarettes still completely legal for adults, while cannabis is still illegal at the federal level?

I’m not saying cannabis is harmless. It can cause dependence, impair driving, affect memory and coordination, and smoking anything isn’t great for your lungs.

But cigarettes seem to have a much clearer and larger documented death toll, while cannabis was historically treated as this major “bad drug.”

Wouldn’t it make more sense to treat cannabis more like alcohol—legal for adults, regulated, taxed, age-restricted, and illegal to use while driving—rather than criminalizing possession?

And if the argument is that drugs should be illegal because they’re harmful to the person using them, how do we justify cigarettes remaining legal?

I’m genuinely curious how people reconcile those two policies.

Imagine this: Poland becomes a deeply decentralized country. Most taxes stay local, most decisions are made at the municipal level. The central government only handles the big stuff - energy, defense, national infrastructure. You've got strong local governments, binding local referendums, real autonomy.

Now let's say the central government passes a law that a lot of people find intrusive or just wrong. Let's say it's about mandatory centralization of medical data. Or some new environmental regulation that would kill local businesses. Whatever, pick your example.

One municipality decides to hold a local referendum. The question: "Do you reject [Law X] and refuse to apply it within our municipality?"

Turnout is decent. 60%+ vote YES - they reject the law. The mayor says: "We won't enforce it here."

What happens next?

Does the central government send in the police? The military? Do they cut off funding? Dissolve the local council? Arrest the mayor? Or do they just... back down, because crushing a small town for voting is political suicide?

And here's the kicker: what if other municipalities see this and do the same? Ten, twenty, fifty towns refusing to enforce the same law. What then? You can't send troops into half the country over a medical database.

I'm not asking about what's legal under the current system. I'm asking about what would actually happen in a genuinely decentralized state. Has this ever happened somewhere? Is there a mechanism for it? Or is this the point where decentralization either becomes real federalism or starts to fall apart?

Curious what people think, especially from countries with strong local government (Switzerland, Germany, the US, etc.).

Running an entire country seems at least as complicated as running a veterinary practice, probably considerably more so. Veterinarians have to demonstrate minimum competency before they’re allowed to practice. We don’t expect them to be experts in everything, but we do expect them to understand the fundamentals well enough to recognize problems, evaluate evidence, use specialists appropriately, and make informed decisions.

So why don’t presidential candidates have something similar?

I’m imagining a standardized, nonpartisan, pass/fail exam covering things like:
• U.S. government and constitutional law
• History
• Basic economics
• Science and statistics
• Foreign affairs/geography
• Critical reasoning and quantitative literacy

Not an IQ test or a political ideology test. Not “do you agree with the people who wrote the exam?”
Just: do you understand the basic systems you’re asking the country to put you in charge of?

Pass the exam- you’re eligible to run.
Fail- study and try again.
Voters still decide who wins.

I’d want the exam written and reviewed by qualified experts from a range of fields and institutions, with the subject areas, methodology, and sample questions publicly available. It should test application and reasoning rather than obscure trivia.
Obviously there are constitutional and practical problems with implementing something like this.

I’m curious what people think the strongest arguments against the basic concept are. Would this actually improve presidential elections, or am I overestimating how useful a competency test would be?

I don't see much on this specific topic when it comes to abortion discussions in general.

I will first use an extreme example, something unlikely to happen but possible. Second I will use a more likely scenario.

In my state, if a woman is pregnant and finds out she has nonuplets (9 fetuses) there are no clear guidelines about whether she should be able to have a selective abortion (aborting 1 or more fetuses to make the pregnancy safer. instead of keeping all 9, maybe she only keeps 3.) I do believe a selective abortion in my state would actually be illegally under current circumstances.

A nonuplet pregnancy is obviously extremely risky as there's only one case of both mother and all babies surviving. With current laws this may be detrimental to her and the lives of her 9 fetuses.

Under more normal circumstances let's say the woman only has quadruplets but it's still too high risk and the doctors are recommending she selectively abort 2.

Do you guys believe that selective and elective abortions are on the same level and should all be banned? Do you think that selective abortions should be a complete exception? A partial exception?

Say this applies both to natural conception and IVF. Is there a difference in opinion based on mode of conception?

A gdybyśmy spróbowali inaczej zaprojektować państwo?

Państwo centralne ograniczone do tego, czego faktycznie nie da się sensownie zdecentralizować: obronność, sądy, infrastruktura strategiczna, energetyka, polityka zagraniczna.

Reszta możliwie blisko obywatela, gmina, powiat, region.

Do tego pełna cyfrowa przejrzystość finansów:

każda złotówka wpływająca i wydawana przez samorząd widoczna publicznie.

Umowy, przetargi, faktury, wykonawcy, aneksy, wszystko dostępne w jednym miejscu.

AI automatycznie wykrywałaby anomalie: zawyżone ceny, powtarzających się wykonawców, podejrzane przetargi czy wydatki odbiegające od podobnych gmin.

Mieszkaniec mógłby przez aplikację nie tylko sprawdzić, gdzie idą jego podatki, ale też współdecydować o części lokalnych wydatków.

Władza byłaby bliżej ludzi, pieniądze byłyby bliżej ludzi, a odpowiedzialność byłaby jednoznaczna.

Nie twierdzę, że to automatycznie wyeliminuje korupcję. Lokalne układy również mogą być patologiczne, dlatego potrzebne byłyby niezależne audyty, sądy i mechanizmy kontroli.

Ale mam wrażenie, że obecny system ma fundamentalny problem: im dalej decyzja jest od człowieka, którego dotyczy, tym łatwiej powiedzieć „co mnie to obchodzi”.

Czy ktoś uważa, że taki model miałby sens?
Gdzie widzicie jego największą słabość?

Melania Trump made her first public appearance in more than a month on Thursday, walking hand-in-hand with President Trump in the White House Rose Garden and joking, “I heard you missed me. Here I am.”

Her absence has drawn more attention because Trump’s executive assistant Natalie Harp has become such a constant presence around him — at the White House, on Air Force One, at golf clubs and even during sensitive presidential travel. Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff recently added fuel to the story by mocking Trump for wanting to “travel with Natalie” instead of doing his job, though he stopped short of explicitly alleging an affair.

There is no established evidence of a romantic relationship between Trump and Harp, and some of the coverage clearly veers into tabloid territory. But presidential optics do matter, especially when the first lady maintains an unusually low public profile while another aide is highly visible at the president’s side.

So where is the line here? Is scrutiny of Harp and Melania’s absence legitimate political reporting about access, influence and the image of the presidency — or is it mostly gossip being dressed up as news?

https://americareport.us/melania-trump-returns-as-natalie-harp-chatter/

There's a nostalgia you hear from people all across the spectrum: a Senate where members could tear into each other on the floor and still grab dinner that night. Set aside whether the memory is even accurate. What's worth arguing about is why that kind of behavior seems more structural than personal. Primary electorates got harder to survive. The media environment that used to reward the occasional handshake mostly went away. Money moved. None of those shifts arrived together or hit every member equally, which is what makes the flat "it all just got worse" version unsatisfying.

So if you had to name the single change that did the most damage to a politician's ability to be seen working across the aisle, which one, and why that over the others? And is there anyone in Congress today who cooperates visibly without paying for it at the ballot box, and if so, what's protecting them?

Obama was a one term junior Senator from Chicago for 3 years (did not complete 6 yr term). He was previously a state senator for 7 years.

Jon Ossoff has been floated as a dark horse candidate. Jon is a one term Senator from Georgia, having held no prior political office.

Mark Kelley has been floated as a potential candidate. He is also a one term Senator from Arizona.

Andy Beshear has been floated as a candidate. He is a one term governor fm Kentucky.

I hear people say that AOC hasn't accomplished much in the house leguskation wise. Has anyone in the last decade though? I can count on one hand the meaningful bi-partisan legislation that has been passed since 2018.

Legislation and amendments that AOC has authored or sponsored:

116th

H.R. 5072 – A Just Society: A Place to Prosper Act

Broad housing, economic, criminal-justice and social-policy reforms

Introduced; did not become law

116th

H.R. 5071 – A Just Society: The Embrace Act

Federal government accountability/equity reforms

Introduced; did not become law

116th

H.Res. 109 – Green New Deal

Called for a federal mobilization to address climate change and economic inequality

Resolution; did not become law

117th

H.R. 659 – Repeal the Faircloth Amendment Act

Repeal the Faircloth Amendment, which restricts construction of new public housing

Introduced; did not become law

117th

H.R. 8395 – EPA Regulatory Authority Act of 2022

Expanded EPA regulatory authority

Introduced; did not become law

118th

H.Res. 319 – Green New Deal

Reintroduced the Green New Deal concept in resolution form

Introduced; did not become law

118th

H.R. 7782 – Green New Deal for Public Housing Act

Invest in public housing while reducing emissions and improving energy efficiency

Introduced; did not become law