#mike lee

[saywhat-politics]

[proleposting]

“Senator Mike Lee is trying to ban porn on a federal level. He wants to tighten up what the definition of ‘obscenity’ is in order to ban all porn. He is claiming it is to ‘protect the children’. This is explicitly in Project 2025: the act of banning porn, and then criminalizing and deporting sex workers, trans people, gay people—anyone that the ‘alt-right’ decides is ‘pornographic’.

‘Obscenity’ laws are a bad thing—especially for queer people. Queer people are always punished under ‘obscenity’ laws, and so are victims of sexual crimes. These laws make it a lot easier for abusers to fly under the radar, because it makes it near impossible for victims to talk about their experiences or to share proof of their experiences. This also continues to open the door towards banning trans people from public life and encouraging ideas like conversion therapy.

You don’t have to like porn to understand that this is a huge thing impeding the concept of free speech in America—especially with how this administration will implement it to specifically punish marginalized groups. It will be an excuse to put people in jail. It will not do anything good. If they really wanted to protect children, they’d be advocating for comprehensive sex ed and free healthcare for people of all ages including children—but they’re not doing that. They’re trying to ban porn so they can punish queer people.

Call your senators, call your reps, and tell them to protect porn. Tell them to reject Mike Lee’s bills—all of them, the SCREEN Act and any other thing he can propose to try to increase ‘obscenity’ laws in the United States. You all do not understand the type of hell that will be wrought if these bills go through.”

—Cloud

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Mike Lee and Jim Jordan want to kill the law that bans companies from cheating you

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me at NEW ZEALAND'S UNITY BOOKS in AUCKLAND on FRIDAY (May 2), and in WELLINGTON on SATURDAY (May 3). More tour dates (Pittsburgh, PDX, London, Manchester) here.

House and Senate Republicans are on the verge of killing Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, one of the most potent anti-corruption laws on the US statute books:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/house-gop-proposes-eliminating-key

More than a century ago, Congress passed the FTCA, and they made a point of including a clause that granted the new independent agency broad authority to investigate and prohibit "unfair and deceptive methods of competition." As Matt Stoller writes, over the ensuing 100 years, the FTC has used Section 5 to go after "illegal commissions, firms spying on rivals, sabotage, messing around with patents or regulations."

But starting with the Reagan era, both Republican and Democratic presidents have appointed FTC chairs who were loathe to invoke FTCA 5, shying away from the power and duty Congress had given them. This all changed with Biden's FTC chair Lina Khan, who revived the law, using it to punish companies for invading your privacy, blocking repair, locking workers in with noncompete clauses, and more:

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/P221202Section5PolicyStatement.pdf

FTCA has been repeatedly upheld by the Supreme Court, and Congress liked the way it worked so much that when they created the Department of Transport, they copy-pasted the language of FTCA into the DOT's enabling legislation. Pete Buttigieg, Biden's Transport secretary, refused to use this power, but when Khan's chief of staff moved over to Transport, it became a powerhouse regulator, fighting ripoffs and scams in aviation, rail and more:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

Neoclassical economists hate laws like Section 5. The entire basis of neoliberal economics is that the economy can be modeled – and thus controlled – using mathematics. This ideology requires that economists ignore all qualitative aspects of society. Notoriously, economic modeling treats power as irrelevant, because it can't be quantified and plugged into a model:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/03/all-models-are-wrong/#some-are-useful

This is a hell of a deal for the powerful. Ignoring power lets a rich person who buys a starving person's kidneys claim to be engaged in a "voluntary transaction." Ignoring power lets private equity funds claim that gouging you on emergency room care and ambulance rides is fine, because you "freely chose" to be rushed to their hospital while dying of a heart attack. If we can all agree that power doesn't matter, then we can do away with all workplace protections, from the minimum wage to worker safety. Take power out of the equation, and you can claim that any worker on starvation wages who loses an arm in a badly maintained machine "freely contracted" into that situation.

Oligarchs and their lickspittles have waged a generations-long war on the very concept of power, and this assault on Section 5 of the FTC Act is just the latest skirmish. You see, "unfair and deceptive" is a qualitative idea, one that requires consideration of power relationships.

The abolition of fairness as a concept is central to Trumpism. Notoriously, Trump has claimed that any time he successfully rips someone off, "That makes him smart":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/04/its-not-a-lie/#its-a-premature-truth

The Trump movement is full of extremely successful cheats and liars. There's VCs like Mark Andreesen, whose fund paid a $100m bribe Kickstarter execs in exchange for a fake cryptocurrency launch, in a bid to lure more retail investors into the crypto bubble that Andreesen-Horowitz played a central role in:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/untold-story-kickstarter-crypto-hail-120000205.html

And of course, there's Elon Musk, who lies about his cars, his robots, his rockets, his AI, and everything else. No wonder Elon Musk wants to get rid of a law that bans "unfair and deceptive methods of competition."

The bid to kill Section 5 of the FTC Act is hidden deep in a budget reconciliation amendment introduced by Rep Jim Jordan (R-OH), which pastes in sloppy language drafted by Sen Mike Lee (R-UT). The mechanism by which this amendment will neuter Section 5 is eye-glazingly complex, though Stoller does his best to make it comprehensible.

Far more important than the method by which Section 5 of the FTC Act will be gutted is the consequence of doing so. Stripping the FTC of the power to chase unfair and deceptive conduct will fire a starting pistol for even more ripoffs and scams. Worse than that, the Jordan amendment will kill enforcement of existing consent decrees from companies that have been successfully prosecuted under Section 5, allowing them to restart the scams that attracted regulatory scrutiny.

The Trump administration has been touting antitrust as its "alternative to regulation," drawing an arbitrary line between "regulation" and "antitrust." Antitrust is absolutely regulation:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/antitrust-enforcement-not-regulation-doj-163251704.html

Indeed, antitrust is the most important regulation of all, because it's the regulation that keeps companies from getting so large and powerful that they can ignore all the other regulations. Without antitrust, companies become too big to fail, then too big to jail, then too big to care. The Trump admin will absolutely continue to do antitrust, but in the Trumpiest way possible – by attacking companies that offend Trump, rather than attacking companies that harm the public:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/12/the-enemy-of-your-enemy/#is-your-enemyis

This is gangsterism, the thing that comes after capitalism collapses into feudalism. In gangsterism, "fairness" and "power" have no place. All that's left is a kind of caveat emptor brainworm that insists that if you got scammed, you should have shopped more carefully. And if you got scammed at gunpoint, you just need to understand that the gun was held by the invisible hand, and it was pointed at you in an economically efficient manner.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, a d-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/29/cheaters-and-liars/#caveat-emptor-brainworms

[thunderstruck9]

Mike Lee (American, 1983), Secret Trinkets, 2021. Oil on canvas, 30 × 38 in.

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

Dem senator confronts Mike Lee over his ‘cruel’ response to Minnesota lawmaker shootings

"I wanted him to know how much pain that caused me and the other people in my state," Democratic Sen. Tina Smith said, referring to GOP Sen.

“The reaction among too many Republicans to the brutality Paul Pelosi faced was a crushing reminder about the state of the party’s moral compass. The related reaction from some in the party to the lawmaker shootings in Minnesota over the weekend brought these same concerns to the fore.

Though he was hardly alone, Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah responded to the slayings in an especially ugly way, even suggesting that the alleged gunman — a right-wing Trump voter, according to a close friend of the suspect — was a “Marxist.” The GOP senator even pinned his tweet to the top of his social media feed for special emphasis.

It wasn’t the first time Lee amplified garbage from his party’s fever swamps, but given the circumstances — mocking and lying about the bloodshed just one day after the shootings, while the hunt for the suspect was still underway — many of the senator’s critics believed he’d crossed a line.”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Senate rejects bid to revive SAVE America Act, but the war isn’t over

“This doesn't mean Trump and his allies in Congress will stop."

Jim Saksa at Democracy Docket:

The month-long battle to pass the SAVE America Act ended with a whimper early Thursday morning, as the Senate — including three Republicans — voted against adding the extreme voter suppression legislation to the filibuster-proof reconciliation bill. Still, opponents of the measure cautioned that it hasn’t yet suffered a final defeat. An amendment offered by Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) to attach the SAVE America Act to the reconciliation bill was defeated 48-50, with Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) joining every Democrat in voting no.

The Senate spent half of March and a part of April debating the bill, which President Donald Trump repeatedly called his top legislative priority. It would require voters to show documentary proof of citizenship — like a U.S. passport or birth certificate — when they register to vote, and show voter ID when they cast ballots. Trump also sought to add provisions to the bill that would have banned no-excuse mail-in ballots, and targeted trans Americans. Heading into the protracted floor debate, the proposal was obviously doomed. Every Democrat opposed the measure, as did Murkowski, meaning it could never overcome the 60-vote threshold to end a filibuster.  But the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) advocated incessantly for forcing a “talking filibuster” — requiring Democrats to hold the floor in order to prevent a vote. Still, when push came to shove, Lee didn’t even insist on seeing that strategy through. 

[...] On Monday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) suggested to reporters that he is less-than-eager to return to the SAVE America Act once the FISA and DHS spending matters are handled. Thune long opposed bringing the SAVE America Act to a floor debate at all, portraying it as a time-sucking exercise in futility, but eventually gave in to pressure from Trump. 

The US Senate voted against approving the voter suppression-laden SAVE America Act into the reconciliation bill 50-48, with 4 Republicans joining Democrats in rejecting the addition: Sens. Lisa Murkowski (AK), Susan Collins (ME), Thom Tillis (NC), and Mitch McConnell (KY).

[intelligentchristianlady]

In their own words. The SAVE act is NOT about voter fraud.