morrowind

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) put Republicans on the spot with the introduction of his Drain the Swamp Act, a bill aimed at banning White House officials from accepting gifts from lobbyists and preventing them from becoming lobbyists.

The bill directly challenges Trump to uphold his long-standing campaign promise to "drain the swamp" by eliminating government corruption.

President Trump campaigned around the country to 'drain the swamp', yet one of the first things he did was reverse President Biden's executive order that banned White House officials from accepting gifts from lobbyists," Khanna said on the House floor. "I believe that this bill will have support, not just from progressives, not just from independents, but from the MAGA movement."

Khanna's move forces Trump-aligned Republicans to either support stricter ethics reforms—aligning with Trump's past rhetoric—or reject the bill, which could be seen as backtracking on promises to clean up Washington.

Last month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) accused Trump of breaking his promise to "drain the swamp" during his first term in a letter urging him to address "key corruption risks," a likely reference to Elon Musk, who holds a government role while maintaining extensive private business interests.

"The American people have seen that, all too often, government officials use their positions to benefit their own pocketbooks," Warren wrote. "Even the appearance of such corruption is enough to damage Americans' trust in government."

Khanna's bill is the latest effort from Democrats to test whether Trump and his allies are willing to follow through on anti-corruption rhetoric—or if "draining the swamp" was just a campaign slogan.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/26350717

Data scraped from Aviation Safety Network

(I haven't submitted an official rfc yet, want to see what people think)

This is inspired by Ruqqus, a now defunct Reddit alternative.

The idea is simple:

1. There is a "global" or "default" community with no topic or extra rules, ~~moderated only by admins~~
2. Community moderators, when they feel a post is inappropriate for their community can "kick" a post to the global community

The reasoning is as follows: a good amount, probably the majority of posts that are removed by mods, are not removed because they are inappropriate for the site as a whole, but because they are inappropriate for that specific community (off-topic, banned site, low effort, etc.). But currently the only option they have to deal with this is a full blown removal, which is quite frustrating for the poster.

This proposal would allow mods to keep curated communities without needing to do unnecessary removals.

As a bonus, this would create a default community where people can post when they're not sure where to post something. Posts can be later be crossposted into more specific communities.