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When President Biden hosted a celebration with lawmakers on the South Lawn last month to mark the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, Democrats' signature spending package, there was an unique group of guests joining them.
More than 20 influencers — content creators with devoted followers on platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube — received special invitations.
It's part of a White House strategy to reach younger people where they are — which often is scrolling on a device.
"I got a magical email from the digital communications team at the White House saying they were going to be doing essentially a creator briefing for the Inflation Reduction Act," said V Spehar, who hosts "Under The Desk News," which provides daily news wraps in about a minute to their 2.7 million TikTok followers.
"I thought perhaps it was going to be similar to what we see from legacy media groups who get a press briefing from the press secretary," Spehar said. "This was a little bit more intimate than that."
The influencers got their own briefing, and Biden dropped in
Spehar and the other influencers gathered in the Roosevelt Room ahead of the ceremony and were briefed on the legislation by members of the National Economic Council, the climate policy office and Biden and Vice President Harris themselves.
"Honestly, I don't care what side of the aisle you're on, when the president and the vice president walk in the room, it's a cool moment," Spehar said.
This isn't the first time the White House has worked with influencers. Spehar was part of a virtual briefing earlier this year on the war in Ukraine — a briefing that Saturday Night Live was quick to parody.
Spehar has a sense of humor about the spoof, but said the joke really is on people who underestimate what TikTok has to offer.
"Legacy media had a good time making a joke about TikTokers being invited to a White House briefing," Spehar said. "It just showed how out of touch people are with what the current state of communication is for young people."
Americans are increasingly getting their news from social media, including the billion-user strong platform TikTok. According to Pew Research, 33% of U.S. adults ages 18-29 and 15% ages 30-49 say they prefer to get their news from social media.
The White House sees this as a way to reach people where they are
Democrats want to get credit from voters for the climate and health care measures in the Inflation Reduction Act. To explain it to more people, the White House decided to hold briefings to "educate and activate prominent content creators to amplify our message on their own online social media channels," according to an August memo.
"The White House social media accounts, they're big, they reach a lot of people. But very often, we're talking to an audience of people who have opted in to hear from us," said Rob Flaherty, the White House director of digital strategy.
"The reality is, if we want to go out and talk to a wide amount of people whose lives are going to be impacted by the Inflation Reduction Act, and both take credit and also tell people how they can access some of the benefits, then we need to get out into the digital communities that people exist in — and that means spending time with digital creators who have huge reaches into those audiences," he told NPR.
It's a strategy that acknowledges the White House is not necessarily the most effective messenger for all audiences.
"Influencers on social media, they need to project authenticity to come across as being genuine," said Yini Zhang, a professor at SUNY Buffalo who studies social media and political communication. "That persona really is effective in terms of creating this bond between influencers and their followers. I think that partially explains why young people might place more trust in influencers than in journ*lists."
In addition to the briefings on Ukraine and the Inflation Reduction Act, the White House has engaged with influencers on student loan forgiveness and Biden did a YouTube town hall about COVID-19 vaccines.
"It's an incredibly fragmented, polarized media environment, and that means we have to go to a lot of different places to make sure people are hearing from the White House and hearing from the president," Flaherty said.
These influencers are into policy, not just products
A.B. Burns-Tucker, also known as "iamlegallyhype" on social media, was part of the influencer briefing in September. She said some people still associate the term 'influencer' with consumerism.
"At first it was just the flat tummy tea girls, right?" she chuckled. "And now, you see people like me and others who are outside of mainstream news and people are gravitating to the information we present."
Burns-Tucker is a law student and shares political and legal content.
"My followers don't necessarily follow mainstream news all the time, but they still have this desire to be in-the-know," she said. "It's that group of people who are just like, 'I want to hear it straight, no chaser. I don't want to hear all those syllables that they say on CNN, just tell me the tea.' "
Burns-Tucker said being in a room with the people who helped shape Biden's policy gave her important context, and she plans on doing more posts breaking down the legislation. She said it shouldn't be shocking that the White House wants to tap into networks like her own.
"We have these large platforms and our supporters really rock with us," she said. "They trust us and they look forward to what we have to say, and I think it was smart of [the White House] to use [these] resources."
Most followers were excited to see the posts from the White House, but some were skeptical
Burns-Tucker said she got mostly positive feedback from her 633,000 TikTok followers after her visit. "Some people were like, 'Cool, now I could get some solar panels — like now my granny's prescriptions are going to be cheaper,' " she said.
But there was some skepticism, too. "One of the things is always like, 'Oh, you went to the White House. So now you're gonna say whatever the White House telling you to say,' right? And it's like, no, just because I earn my space doesn't mean I'm gonna be a puppet for somebody."
The White House told the influencers they recognize they're independent.
"We're not expecting them to become Biden administration propagandists," Flaherty said. "But we want to make sure that they have the best information that they can get and be able to ask questions, just like reporters would, to be able to inform their audiences."
Past White Houses have also looked to use the latest technology for messaging
There's a long history of White Houses trying to take advantage of the latest tool to get its message out.
"Presidents have recognized the benefits of culture and technology for well over a century," said Tevi Troy, a presidential historian and head of the presidential leadership initiative at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Franklin D. Roosevelt had his radio fireside chats. John F. Kennedy was first to show a press conference live on television. But the advent of social media gives the White House the ability to "aim for specific audiences that they want to reach and put out the tailored message without going through the various filters of the news media," Troy said.
Troy said the George W. Bush campaign in 2004 pioneered micro-targeting — a nascent tool that campaigns would quickly replicate.
Four years later, Barack Obama championed the use of Facebook as both a campaign and governing tool. His White House worked with content creators to share information about the Affordable Care Act, said Nathaniel Lubin, who led digital strategy at the time. "We were afraid those people wouldn't have heard of it otherwise."
Jason Goldman, who worked as the chief digital officer at the end of the Obama administration, recalled working with social media creators during the 2016 outbreak of the mosquito-borne Zika virus.
"We could put out the surgeon general, and say, 'You don't have to be concerned unless you go to these areas,' but it's a scary situation. There's only a certain amount of trust that the government medical experts have," he said.
"So we did a thing where we put the surgeon general in a Facebook group of concerned parents and it was an opportunity for that group to ask questions of the surgeon general on their home turf."
After my interview w/President Obama my dawgs was barking so I walked The White House Shoes off. #YouTubeAsksObama http://t.co/tYuQJjkhCP
— GloZell Green (@GloZell) January 25, 2015
The strategy may have some pitfalls
Troy acknowledged there are potential pitfalls of using influencers to spread policy messages. "They may not be sophisticated political actors, they may not be policy focused," he said. "Maybe they say, 'OK, I'll go to the White House, but I'm not going to do much else.'"
And access to the White House doesn't automatically guarantee content. In fact, some members of the group last month didn't seem to post much beyond a selfie.
Zhang said social media influencers can expand the reach of policy messages, but "they're not professional information gatherers," she said, noting keeping things short and buzzy could affect the quality of the content.
"They might have to tailor the information and make it more palatable to their respective followers," she said.
Flaherty said both the creators and the White House are still learning what it means to work with each other — but that's to be expected.
"I am sure the first time the White House was like, 'Hey, we're going to put a bunch of reporters in a room and they're gonna shout questions at us,' somebody was like, 'What are you doing?!' But now it's like standard operating procedure."
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.webp?h=10 "Current Thing (support) - Slava Ukraini!")
)
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For some basic context Antonio Brown took a hit to the head 6 years ago and went full schizo. Maybe he was off before this but everything I've heard about him happened after it.
After alienating every team in the league that would take him he's now begun a rap career. His greatest hits of 2022 includes shoving his butt in some mayo woman's face and jerking off in a public pool in Dubai
https://x.com/Notdojaaa/status/1576211101775450113
Iran: Leaked documents reveal top-level orders to armed forces to ‘mercilessly confront’ protesters - 4
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This is totally end Iran now, amirite?
https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/xypbbq/iran_leaked_documents_reveal_toplevel_orders_to/
https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/xsbrv3/iran_leaked_documents_reveal_toplevel_orders_to/
https://old.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/xswj6i/iran_leaked_documents_reveal_toplevel_orders_to/
Iran: Leaked documents reveal top-level orders to armed forces to ‘mercilessly confront’ protesters
Iran’s highest military body instructed the commanders of armed forces in all provinces to “severely confront” protesters who took to the streets following the death in custody of Mahsa Amini at the hands of Iran’s morality police, Amnesty International said today after obtaining leaked official documents which revealed the authorities’ plan to systematically crush the protests at any cost.
The crackdown has left at least 52 identified victims dead and hundreds injured to date.
State denial and coverup after a week of unlawful killings Amnesty International has obtained a leaked copy of an official document which states that, on 21 September 2022, the General Headquarters of Armed Forces issued an order to commanders in all provinces instructing them to “severely confront troublemakers and anti-revolutionaries”.
Protesters tortured and otherwise ill-treated Amnesty International has documented widespread patterns of torture and other ill-treatment by security forces, including severe beatings of protesters and bystanders.
Her clothes were coming off her body and the security forces kept pulling her by the hair…” “Two nights ago”, the protester added, “several of my friends were beaten with batons.
Any force used in response to such violence must at all times comply with the principles of legality, necessity and proportionality in accordance with international law.
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Residents of a small community in Vermont were blindsided last month by news that one official in their water department quietly lowered fluoride levels nearly four years ago, giving rise to worries about their children’s dental health and transparent government — and highlighting the enduring misinformation around water fluoridation.
Katie Mather, who lives in Richmond, a town of about 4,100 in northwestern Vermont, said at a water commission meeting this week that her dentist recently found her two kids’ first cavities. She acknowledged they eat a lot of sugar, but noted that her dentist recommended against supplemental fluoride because the town’s water should be doing the trick.
Her dentist “was operating and making professional recommendations based on state standards we all assumed were being met, which they were not,” Mather said. “It’s the fact that we didn’t have the opportunity to give our informed consent that gets to me.”
The addition of fluoride to public drinking water systems has been routine in communities across the United States since the 1940s and 1950s but still doesn’t sit well with some people, and many countries don’t fluoridate water for various reasons, including feasibility.
Michigan lawyer caught allegedly assaulting girlfriend with belt 
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https://old.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/xy4ca6/michigan_lawyer_running_for_judge_caught_on/
https://x.com/hausofpettymnn/status/1578467249371086848#m
https://x.com/The_Heathan/status/1578463351721508864#m
Michigan lawyer running for judge caught on camera allegedly belt-whipping girlfriend
MUSKEGON, Mich. – Two weeks after winning the August primary, judicial candidate Jason Kolkema appeared to viciously whip his girlfriend with a belt during an argument in his western Michigan apartment, presumably unaware that nearby witnesses were recording the scene.
I understand the anger and disappointment, especially from the people who voted for me and supported me ... All of the facts will be revealed in due time," Kolkema wrote.
The Free Press does not name domestic violence victims or alleged victims without their consent.
What's everyone talking about?:Sign up for our trending newsletter to get the latest news of the day In the door-knob incident, police submitted charges for both Kolkema and his girlfriend, though the Ottawa County prosecutor opted not to charge the couple, concluding "this is a strange set of facts."
'You could see the belt connecting' "It was sick, makes you just sick to your stomach, and that's all you can think about for days and days and days," said the woman, adding she is outraged by Kolkema's claim that he hit the chair.
One day after his arraignment, Kolkema pressed his campaign in a Facebook post: "My experience as an attorney is unmatched and I remain the best candidate to preside over the types of cases within the jurisdiction of the Circuit Court in Muskegon County."
Uvalde School District Suspends Entire Police Force - 14
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https://old.reddit.com/r/news/comments/xy4eqq/uvalde_school_district_suspends_entire_police/
https://old.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/xy4wm1/uvalde_school_district_suspends_entire_police/
https://x.com/tplohetski/status/1578430543145771008#m
https://x.com/JoshuaPotash/status/1578439947500998656#m
https://x.com/ReallyAmerican1/status/1578445092997562368#m
https://x.com/ChuckCallesto/status/1578452187046629377#m
https://x.com/Reuters/status/1578458321690021900#m
https://x.com/DonLew87/status/1578431776300888064#m
https://x.com/OccupyDemocrats/status/1578445037314093057#m
https://x.com/OANN/status/1578460511808561152#m
https://x.com/ABC/status/1578455392098680839#m
https://rdrama.net/post/111176/uvalde-school-district-suspends-entire-police
https://rdrama.net/post/111177/hshtrsrhhsre
Uvalde school district suspends school police force, 2 school officials placed on administrative leave
CNN — The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Friday said it had suspended its school police force, less than five months after the attack that left 19 children and two teachers dead.
Officers currently employed will fill other roles in the district,” the district said in a statement.
The moves come in the wake of a CNN report Wednesday which identified newly hired Uvalde school officer Crimson Elizondo as one of the state troopers under investigation for her actions during the response to the Robb Elementary School massacre in May. The school district issued a statement on Thursday, following CNN’s report, announcing Elizondo’s termination.
The school police chief was fired and now seven DPS officers are being investigated.
A source close to the investigation also confirmed that to CNN.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko on Thursday banned price increases with immediate effect to curb galloping inflation in the former Soviet country.
Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus with an iron fist since 1994, is known for folksy eccentricities and radical suggestions, such as drinking a shot of vodka daily to ward off the coronavirus.
"From Oct. 6, all price increases are forbidden. Forbidden! From today. Not from tomorrow, from today. So that prices aren't driven up in the next 24 hours," Lukashenko told a meeting with officials.
He said consumer prices were "outrageous" and had increased by 18% year-on-year.
Belarus Strongman Says Pupils Should Harvest Potatoes
"Meat, dairy products, poultry... are getting more expensive. In Minsk there has been a shortage of eggs in recent days," Lukashenko, 68, said.
"The task is to return to an inflation rate of 7-8% by next year," he added.
Belarus, which borders Ukraine, is a staunch ally of Russia and allowed its territory to be used by Moscow's troops to launch its military campaign against Kyiv in February.
Belarus has been hit with a wave of Western sanctions for aiding Russia's military action in Ukraine and for a ferocious post-election crackdown in 2020.
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President Biden: "Let me start off with two words; Made in America." pic.twitter.com/z83hNBtIMX
— Jeremy Art (@cspanJeremy) October 7, 2022
I'm ron burgundy
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It's still early but it's picking up steam on reddit.
https://old.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/xy16a4/mayor_adams_declares_state_of_emergency_over_nyc/
https://old.reddit.com/r/news/comments/xy2eql/nyc_mayor_eric_adams_declares_state_of_emergency/
https://old.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/xy2vsi/nyc_mayor_eric_adams_declares_state_of_emergency/
https://x.com/search?q=adams+emergency
Abbot gloating https://x.com/GregAbbott_TX/status/1578422776159166464
Sanctuary cities like New York City experience a FRACTION of what Texas border communities face every day.
We'll continue busing migrants to NYC, DC, & Chicago to relieve our overwhelmed border towns until Biden does his job to secure the border.
Mayor Adams declared a state of emergency Friday over the city’s migrant crisis and pleaded for financial and legislative assistance from the federal government and state lawmakers.
The emergency declaration will suspend certain land use requirements in order for the city to more rapidly construct tent camps to house migrants, such as the controversial facility set to be constructed on Randalls Island, Adams said in a speech from City Hall.
But the declaration only goes so far, Adams said. With more than 17,000 South and Central American migrants currently in the city, the homeless shelter system is nearly at 100% capacity and social services are being strained to the brink of collapse, he said.
“It is burning through our budget,” he said, predicting that the city will spend more than $1 billion on the crisis in this fiscal year alone.
“It is not sustainable, and it is not right,” he added.
As a result, Adams demanded that President Biden’s administration and state lawmakers in Albany do what they can to help, including allocating emergency funding and passing legislation that would expedite work permits for the migrants.
“This is an all-hands-on-deck moment,” he said.
Conservative Anchor Has Meltdown Over Velma Being a Lesbian 
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Chicago Marathon's quiet nonbinary division addition 'feels hurtful,' runner says
Chicago Marathon's quiet nonbinary division addition 'feels hurtful,' runner says
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Unless you're a Pure (Dairy) Queen that is 🐄
As with most shots, they haven't been tested alongside other shots
"In addition, the potential interference of COVID-19 vaccine mRNA with the immune response to multiple routine vaccines given to infants during the first 6 months of age needs to be considered."
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A transgender politician in Mexico’s ruling MORENA party is under fire for posting pornographic videos of herself on Twitter.
But María Clemente García Moreno—a federal deputy in Mexico City who made history in 2021 when she and another politician became the first trans people elected to the country’s congress—also moonlights as a s*x worker and contests that it's within her rights to post whatever she wants.
“I have human rights, I have the right to the free development of my personality, I have the right to the free self-determination of my body,” García Moreno told VICE World News. “The constitution, human rights and the federal labor law in Mexico support me in exercising my rights, in the performance of s*x work in any form, which can be the creation of pornographic content for digital platforms.”
Twitter is one of the only widely used social media sources that allows users to post sexually explicit videos, and has become a popular platform via which s*x workers advertise their services and post content. And García Moreno said that she posted the videos for the same reasons as other s*x workers use Twitter: “To get more clients.”
The videos, posted over a three-day period beginning on September 30, started with one of a man’s erect peepee, which she captioned in Spanish: “This is the first that I'm going to show you how I suck it like the popsicle that my dad bought me when I was a girl and took me to the park.”
The following day, she posted a graphic video of her performing oral s*x on a man, writing, “This papacito came by very tired from work and I gave him a few sucks and a massage so that he could arrive at his home relaxed. Uff” with the hashtag #TransIsHot.
The final video, posted on October 2 and now pinned to the top of her Twitter page, is again of a blowjob, writing “I love that this papacito stops by to see me after leaving work to relax with me. A true male worker, I love to pamper him, and give him massages after I attend to him so that he can take a nap and rest after work. #TransIsHot #Maria #Mexico.”
The posts received near instantaneous backlash from conservative politicians along with numerous transphobic insults from civilians and anonymous accounts. A representative from MORENA also said that their ethics commission will be investigating the videos before the party decides if there will be any sort of punishment for the posts.
América Rangel, a Mexico City deputy from the conservative PAN party who has repeatedly posted transphobic comments online, tweeted “Gender ideologues are quick to say that it is transphobic to criticize [García Moreno] for uploading a porn video. But no, the criticism is for not having even the slightest respect for society and the position. It is a major insult that must have repercussions.”
García Moreno tweeted a response, saying, “This lady is frustrated because I accept my skin color, not like her who thinks she’s white, frustrated because I have jurisdiction and she doesn’t, she’s frustrated because I have s*x and she doesn’t, she’s frustrated because my [MORENA Party] is more badass than hers. Poor crazy lady.”
She also retweeted a number of supporters. One from the LGBTQ community wrote “To [García Moreno], I am going to question your legislative work. Your performance as a federal deputy. Your commitment to the causes. The standard will NEVER be: What do you remove or put in your Twitter. People frick. (And that’s good.) Free development of the personality is what it’s called.”
The day after the third video was posted, García Moreno released her first yearly report about her legislative activities in congress, tweeting each page individually. With many of the images outlining what she’s accomplished over the year, García Moreno wrote, “My body is mine, mine alone, I have the right, like every human being, to the free development of the personality and the free self-determination of my body. My body is mine, only mine, not my husband's, not my boyfriend's, not the church's, not the State's.” With another image, she tweeted, “Women have the right to pleasure.”
García Moreno told VICE News that she intends to present new legislation for s*x workers in Mexico that will give them the same “social security and rights” as workers in other industries. She said that it is particularly necessary in Mexico City, where she is an elected representative, because she alleged that many s*x workers are exploited and extorted by local police.
García Moreno thinks that her s*x-positive attitude is an important step to toward “putting [s*x work] in the national public narrative of Mexico, and elsewhere outside of Mexico at the international level.” She hoped that it could have an effect particularly on other countries in Latin America where Mexico is a regional leader.
While she said that she was “saddened” by the negative response from the country’s conservative population and politicians, she added: “The truth is that I transcended hate speech since high school, not since the latest beatings that I received for my gender identity.”
Instead, García Moreno believes she’s “calling attention” to the issue of s*x worker rights and transphobia in the public domain. And the support she’s been receiving from the LGTBQ community, s*x workers, and allies are proving her point.
“It gives me great pleasure to see that the people, society, ordinary citizens are living with courage, sexual freedom, and that they are willing to defend the sexual and reproductive rights of other people, in this case mine, their representative,” said García Moreno.
“The Mexican youth want the right to sexual freedom, they want sexual and reproductive rights, they want to have the right to the self-determination of their bodies.”
over kids smoking themselves
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selling suicide kits to households. Unlike other products that could be used for suicide (i.e. knives, ropes), there is no other use for Sodium Nitrite at this level of purity outside the laboratory. And Amazon was bundling SN with other products to basically create 5/
— Carrie Goldberg (@cagoldberglaw) October 6, 2022
orange site: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33118475
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I've Lived As A Man And A Woman — And Our Worlds Are Very Different 
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I've Lived As A Man And A Woman — And Our Worlds Are Very Different
It’s been a topic that has been on my mind for so long, but I have yet to find a way to vocalize my experiences.
As a woman, it was always acceptable for me to walk up to a mother/father and ask them how old their child was, and I could even get away with engaging with the child.
Countless times, I’m so caught up walking alone in a parking lot that I’m not aware of the other women (because women are socialized to believe other women aren’t a threat).
Unfortunately, I’ve learned, that as an unknown man, there really is nothing I can do in a similar situation to make a woman feel safe.
Either, the trans man realizes that privilege is nice (whether consciously or not) and takes their privilege to heart, going so far as to diss women or hate them — becoming misogynists.
Reprinted with permission from the author.
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