Civil Rights and Social Justice
President Donald Trump's unique tweeting habits have helped him build a public persona that is direct, candid, and pugnacious. While he is not the first politician to us Twitter as a direct mouthpiece to the people, he takes his candidness to a new level.
But it's worked, allowing him to control the narrative and keeping media attention on him. And now, his political opponents are increasingly turning to the social network with similar tactics to take back the platform.
Recently, several members and staffers on the House Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russia's role in the Presidential election, visited the National Security Agency, in Fort Meade, Maryland. Inside the enormous black glass headquarters of America's largest spy agency, the congressmen and their aides were shown a binder of two to three dozen pages of highly classified intercepts, mostly transcripts of conversations between foreign government officials that took place during the Presidential transition.
A nationwide movement that began 53 years ago to reform the pretrial incarceration and money bail process has finally reached the legislative committees and political bargaining tables in Washington and Sacramento. Reform advocates – including legislators, prosecutors, attorneys, judges and grassroots organizations – contend that the use of a money bail system for pretrial release is unfair to the poor and unsafe for the public.
It's depressing to admit, but let's do it anyway: there are few politicians in the world more skilled at manipulating Twitter than President Trump.
So over the past few months, 48-year-old Congressman Ted Lieu (D-California) has decided to try and master the platform, slowly emerging as the President's most adept social media opponent. It might seem like an embarrassing game to play — after all, world leaders don't historically conduct foreign policy in 140 characters or less.
Representative Ted Lieu, D-CA, speaks on the meeting between Rex Tillerson and Vladimir Putin. He also discusses the United States policies regarding Syria.
In the packed auditorium at the Creative Artists Agency in Los Angeles, a vortex of entertainment industry power and current progressive political woe, comedian Kathy Griffin — tiny, insistently red-tressed — erupts in full-throttle rasp at the man in the boxy gray suit as he finishes up on stage.
"I saw you on the Joy Reid show on MSNBC," Griffin says, coming up from the audience to address Rep. Ted Lieu, a second-term Democrat from the South Bay who was speaking at the CAA Foundation's Take Action Day. "You're giving us hope!"
In the packed auditorium at the Creative Artists Agency, a vortex of entertainment-industry power and current progressive political woe, comedian Kathy Griffin, tiny, insistently red-tressed, erupts in full-throttle rasp at the man in the boxy gray suit as he finishes up onstage.
"I saw you on the Joy Reid show on MSNBC," Griffin says, coming up from the audience to address Rep. Ted Lieu, a California Democrat speaking at the CAA Foundation's Take Action Day. "You're giving us hope!"
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) are calling on the FCC to take "swift action" on a known cellphone security flaw.
"It is clear that industry self-regulation isn't working when it comes to telecommunications cybersecurity," Wyden and Lieu wrote in a letter they cosigned, on Tuesday.
As if you didn't have other things to worry about, add "think about the threat of nuclear war" to your to-do list.