Defense Bill Amendments, Threads Strategy, Guatemala Chaos
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House republicans were supposed to vote on military funding, but someone to build a restrict abortion and transgender health are.

We're gona lose seats. We're gona lose races because of this.

So what's the way out of the standard?

I mean, Martina, is that Steve and skip? And this is up first from N. P. R. news. Gua mol is trying to elect a president, but of course, throughout one of the final two candidates. What's that mean for the stability of a region that made people .

fleet to reach the united states? Also, can a competitor to twitter succeed without the political that made twitter? What IT is.

lots of political commentators have got very used to the blood sport of twitter.

Now S S. Attracting many twitter refugees, but wants to shape which conversations are popular. Stay with us. We've got the news unique .

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Culture wars are holding up an effort to approve military spending.

the house of representatives, the hundred eighty six billion dollars to pay for the U. S. military. But some republicans want to amend the big authorization, build to shape military policy on things such as abortion access, transgender health care and diversity and recruiting. Now that's trigger ing ning from representative adam smith, the top democrat on the house armed services committee.

A small group of people isn't saying we want to vote on things that we care about. They want to say, if we don't get what we want, we'll tell the whole thing down.

Mary, on a sort of my eyes, is a congressional reporter for the washington post, has been watching all of this good morning, good OK. So how many republicans are trying to make culture war changes to this bill? And who are they?

There are several in the far right flink, the republican conference, who would like to amend the N. D. A. A.

I think the most notable issue is that there are dozens of house republicans, some in the far right, some in the more mainstream republicans in the conference, who actually want to change and abortion pentagon policy that actually reverse a policy that reimburses service members for travel expenses if they get an abortion. Now this is a pretty controversial issue. There are some republicans like Nancy maze who has said you will vote against this provision.

Republicans, of course, only lose four votes, but more notably, democratic caucus chairman pete aguilar said yesterday that if that amendment is adopted, that would likely be a red line for the party, meaning republicans will have to rely on two hundred and eighteen votes to pass that through their own majority. Abortion isn't the only contentious issue. There are several others, including on L G B T rights, that are particularly targeting trans service members.

And there's other issues too, like rolling back diversity inclusion initiatives, many of which are worded in the latest supreme court of firm of action ruling. And I should also mention there's a lot still focused on foreign policy. Congresswoman margry tailor Green introduced a ton of amendments going after ukraine funding. One of them is also included in part of this amendment process.

I want to follow up on one of the measures that you mentioned, military funding for service members who travel to get an abortion. This is essentially a follow up to the supreme court's ruling on abortion rights. correct? Because now abortion is legal in some states, illegal in other states. If you're in a state on a base where abortion is illegal, the military will pay for you to travel and the house members, some of them don't want that to happen. Is that right?

That's exactly correct. Conversant and Nancy mace, again, who has been extremely outspoken about preserving abortion rights and saying that any kind of infringement on that will be damaging for the party because women are just not going to be voting republican. SHE was passionate when I talk to her about having to vote down this amendment. And, you know, she's not a vulnerable republican, but this puts a lot of swing district republicans, particularly those in district set by in one and twenty twenty and pretty parallel st positions. They don't want to vote on any kind of whether it's a portion or other social issues that could put them in a pretty tough spot in the real election campaigns.

And this is even republicans who oppose abortion rights generally. They don't want to bring that up in this bill, which is also about mainly about weapons and pay for service members and funding the military and military Operations around the world is something that needs to pass. So what does how speaker Kevin mccarthy want? Is he trying to get this bill through?

That is exactly what he's trying to do. And he's walking a pretty in line here, as he has often been seen on different issues. But of course, the N, D, A, A is bipartisan.

It's actually one of the very few must pass piece of legislation that actually do pass with democratic and republican votes that could be in peril if a number of amendments do get introduced into the underlying bill, which, as you says, focuses a lot more on what the panic on can do. Now of course, this bill gonna change because the senate is involved here. They are drafting their own version without any of these poison pill amendments. And eventually, if any of these amendments get included into the bill, it's likely IT will get stripped out. At that point, it's going to be difficult for mccarthy to convince far right to support this piece of legislation if their priorities are not included.

My washington.

thanks for.

Guamos presidential election is getting even more complicated. Yeah.

we've been talking about the central american country, which is one of the sources of migration to the united states. The country held the first round of a presidential elections by chaos. Last night. Officials finalized a result of that, first around leaving two candidates for a run off, but a court says one of the two candidates is disqualified.

What does that mean? mr. Later, proto, a joint header.

Hey, sieh.

how do bottom I get to this point?

The first round of elections was total chaos. As you guys mention, courts disqualified three leading candidates in decisions that were widely viewed as political and that they were seen as employs yed by the country's political leads to remain in power and assure that they would never be tried for corruption as they had in the past. And a lot of watermelon had lost hope.

They viewed most of the nearly two dozen candidates as corrupt, and they were sure that the political elite would get their way, that one of them would win. But the results, Steve, were stunning. Yes, sand authorities, a former first lady who was at one point jailed on corruption charges, came in first, but second came about of notable iao o, who's a reformist who ran on an anti corruption campaign and who also happens to be the sun of watermelon.

First democratically elected president. No one expected that, not even his party. But almost as soon as that happened, the political elite went into overdrive trying to overturn the result. They banded together to pressure the courts, to pressure the electoral commission, not to certify the votes.

So the effort to stop this reformist candidate seems to be a source of the chaos, but is IT working for the elites?

Well, I mean, remember how I told you that the courts had thrown out promising candidates before the first round of elections? 我， they're trying that again. Prosecutors accused sema the party of the reformist candidate.

They accused the party of fraud, and the court ordered electoral authorities to stop them from participating in politics. But then things got more complicated. Just after that court decision, the supreme electoral tribunal certified the results of the first round and said that, Better not idea, I know the reformers would indeed move on to the second round. I envelope was on CNN and this .

and you're last night, and he said this was a done n that is the he said they would not oy a space and .

illegal decision that came from a court known for making political decision. Nevertheless.

there is a court. It's made his decisions. So where does that leave for the second round of the election?

That is the question that everyone in what in my life is asking themselves. Electoral officials were asked if they would listen to the court, and they had no good answers. They said they didn't know if the court order held any sway.

So the best answer I can give you is that this election is in limbo. But the bigger picture here is that over the last decade, what the milla has suffered major blows to what used to be a promising democracy. And just a couple of months ago, there was very little hope that what the others democracy could be saved. But this election has actually become a real test with huge stakes. It's an election that might very well mark the end of what the male's democracy or IT could give me another chance.

M. P. S. Eight, a. parte. Thanks so much.

People on social media have intently followed a war between platform .

a twitter is a huge cultural force, the arena for news in politics. But just as the platform is disrupted by the erratic moves of new or elon mask, a new platform as is attracting a lot of users, threats s has become the most rapidly looted APP average running by the folks who make facebook and looks a lot like twitter. But its major say they do not want to emphasize news and politics. Well.

how does that work? N, P, R, tech reporter bobbi Allen is here. bobbie. Good morning.

Hi, Steve.

So we're talking about meta, which owns facebook, which owns instagram, and also now runs threats. Why would they avoid news and politics on that platform?

Well, that to learn long ago that if they deemphasize politics and news, they can make more money. When people share content about influencers, about celebrities, when people are chatting about our, sharing photos, about friends and family, that's what really keeps people engaged. That's what keeps people scrolling, and that's what keeps the advertising dollars rolling in. So mata executive adam usi, when he announced that threads was going to not put an emphasis on news and politics, he had an eye towards making more money honestly, but also, you know thought that that would be a way to avoid nasty politics of dates and avoid scrutiny.

As i'm listening to you though, i'm thinking about a reality of social media told that we make IT, we make social media. But really the experience is shaped a lot by the companies and their algorithms and which posts they promote or which posts they.

That's right. I mean, facebook years ago made a decision to downtown k, uh, hard news, and instead with the emphasis on interactions between friends and family, wedding announcements, vacations and the like. And that's what really keeps people engage.

I mean, politics and news is what made twitter so relevant and so powerful. Quite the opposite. I talk to alex stamos. He's the former achieve security officer at facebook, and he says, you know, threads can try to turn the algorithmic nobs upper down on different types of discussions. You know, downplay links to news stories on the main feed. But stamas, who now leads stanfords internet observe tory, says that so many people coming over from twitter, it's really just a matter of time before threads becomes like twitter. He calls IT a real battle ground as he exactly put IT well, in intellectual, the pal comtat ors have .

got very used to the blood ford of twitter, and they're gonna want to bring that kind of fighting over to this new community. And whether or not the platform can actually shape. That is a really open question.

If threads manages to tamp down the ugliness, what would be their instant threads?

A IT can become, and its kind of our ideas, overrun with influence or continent, with means, with jokes, with people just tweet kind of about very trivial affairs. It's lighter, fair, right and threads wants to keep IT that way below me somewhere ized what soul messing told me. He's a former top research of facebook and he says, if news and politics are deemphasize, it's hard to imagine how the APP doesn't make society dummer.

But it's even more serious than that, Steve now, as an academic at n yu messing has research how social media shapes the public s understanding of news and events and politics. And you know what you and I, everyone see on social media influence what we think about the world. And here's what his .

recent findings have found. Win folks see more political content in their news fears. They tend to become more interested in politics. They tend to develop more consistent policy preferences. They tend to report voting at higher rates.

Yeah, so missing is saying that if threats does disport twitter, the politics and news go to the way side, the public could become less engaged with policy and politics. And you know what, they might even vote less. A big debate is happening now to see if we really try to zoom out.

And it's what responsibility does not to have to encourage civic dialog, ground news and politics. And Better is saying IT doesn't have much responsibility, right? The mark sucker k says he wants threats to be a friendly refuge on the internet, but we shall see how that tricks out.

And your tech reporter, bob elon.

thanks so much. thanks.

And that's at first for this thursday, july thirteenth. I'm Steve and .

skip and I my Martina at first is produced by navini shelby hawkins and kd kine, our editors, our Olivia hampton and Alice wolf ley, our technical director. Is that common with engineering support from C C. abbott? Start your day here with us .

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