The Federal Communications Commission is considering whether political groups should be allowed to send prerecorded and artificial-voice calls, including AI-generated voices, to our cellphones without asking permission first. With the midterms approaching, Club for Growth has requested a waiver of the protections that generally require consent for those calls. Apparently, deciding who gets to govern us requires hearing from a robot we never invited into the conversation.
The FCC hasn’t granted the request. Its September 4 notice opened the proceeding for public comment, and Associated Press reporting today puts the possible change squarely in the final weeks of the election. Initial comments were due October 5; reply comments are due October 19. This is a decision still being considered, which is precisely when it deserves our attention.
Club for Growth argues that easing the rules would improve political outreach and help reach more voters. The National Consumer Law Center warns that it would expose people to unwanted calls and convincing imitations of recognizable voices. The group describes proposed limits of three calls per thirty days and up to ten days to honor a request to stop, while pointing out that numerous political organizations could each come calling. A household could discover that everyone has been very restrained individually while collectively occupying its entire afternoon.
The problem reaches beyond the nuisance. An unsolicited political message can arrive while someone is working, caring for a child, or trying to sort out a confusing ballot. A familiar-sounding voice can lend authority to a claim before the person listening has had a chance to examine it. Other laws against deception and voter intimidation would still apply, as AP notes, but removing a consent requirement would weaken a protection that operates before the phone rings.
People deserve to decide who gets access to their attention. Political speech matters enormously, and so does our ability to hear it on terms that leave room for thought, verification, and the occasional uninterrupted dinner. If a campaign has something useful to tell me, I would prefer it arrive with an actual proposal and a name I can check. The simulated voice of someone who may never have said it adds very little to the democratic experience.
I’m particularly attached to the idea of an uninterrupted anything today because I’m still sick, barely sleeping, and exhausted. My body aches, my head hurts, and my sinuses may as well be a lint trap for phlegm. I did get the kids fed and off to school, so at least I have that going for me.
My husband is putting the trim on the house. He sanded and stained some cedar boards, and they look beautiful. Yesterday I mustered enough strength to plant a few things, then promptly retreated inside when the sanding dust made breathing harder. I cleaned a bit and made dinner for the kids, but I didn’t get to the laundry, which is undoubtedly having the last laugh. Only for now, laundry. I will get to you, although I should probably be careful about taunting something with mystical powers. Those who know, know.
While the laundry continues exercising its unexplained authority, candidates are asking for the much more ordinary kind. Tuesday’s debates in Maine and Georgia gave voters a chance to examine what they’re offering, and whether their records support it.
In Maine, Republican Senator Susan Collins and Democratic challenger Troy Jackson debated health care, abortion, and their competing accounts of her independence from Trump. Maine Public reports that Jackson challenged Collins over her vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, who later joined the Supreme Court majority overturning Roe v. Wade. Collins defended her experience and ability to secure federal resources for Maine.
Their exchange over last year’s reconciliation bill requires some care. Collins voted to allow Senate consideration of the bill, then voted against its final passage. The Senate’s official roll call confirms that final no vote. At the debate, she defended advancing the measure as the opportunity to offer the $50 billion rural health fund; Jackson argued that the fund was inadequate beside the Medicaid cuts.
Those are different votes with different consequences, and voters deserve to understand both. Collins should answer for helping move the bill forward and explain why her strategy was the best protection she could secure. Criticism should also acknowledge her vote against passage. We can make a strong argument without sanding the record down until it fits the shape we wanted.
Jackson supports Medicare for all, according to Maine Public. That’s a substantial policy position, and Democrats who offer it should be prepared to explain financing, the transition for patients, and how they’d expand access to providers. A promise to replace a system that leaves people struggling is welcome. It also creates an obligation to explain the replacement. The question for a Senate candidate is how he would turn that position into legislation and build the support to pass it.
In Georgia’s governor debate, Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms and Republican Rick Jackson heard directly from undecided voters about the cost of living and health care. Georgia Public Broadcasting reports that Bottoms called for full Medicaid expansion, higher minimum pay for state employees, and a pathway to free technical and community college. Jackson emphasized training and higher-paying jobs, and supported Medicaid expansion provided it didn’t jeopardize existing federal funding.
Both also took aim at insurers denying necessary care. Bottoms said insurers that repeatedly deny necessary coverage shouldn’t be allowed to do business in the state, and that consumers should be told when AI is used in coverage decisions. Jackson promised to be insurers’ “biggest nightmare.”
I would like an insurer’s biggest nightmare to involve someone approving the care its customer needs. For voters, though, the useful follow-up is how either candidate would enforce these promises. What authority would the governor use? What would require legislation? How would patients appeal a denial, and how quickly could they get relief?
Bottoms’s proposals deserve the same practical questions: how would the college pathway be funded, who would qualify, and what would higher pay cover? Jackson should explain the federal-funding condition attached to his Medicaid position, and what happens if that condition prevents expansion. A qualification can be reasonable, but voters need to know what it means for the people waiting for care.
The two candidates also faced questions about data centers and license-plate surveillance. Bottoms favored pausing new data-center development and was open to a moratorium on new Flock cameras; Jackson emphasized local choice and community benefits for data centers, and tighter restrictions rather than a camera moratorium.
Those choices belong in the campaign conversation because they shape the places people live. If a candidate promises lower bills, privacy protections, or meaningful local control, we should ask what the rules would say and who could enforce them. A campaign adjective is very easy to produce. A protection someone can use when something goes wrong takes more work.
My daughter, meanwhile, has issued a remarkably specific governing agenda. She will be Elsa for Halloween, and she initially insisted that I be Olaf, the talking snowman. I informed her that I have not reached the stage of my life where I’m willing to don an inflatable snowman costume, but her little brother might be available, considering he has no say in the matter.
She accepted that arrangement and ruled that I must be a princess or a fairy, and nothing else. Obviously, I will now need the most elegant ballgown, a tiara, and whatever else a princess wears. She and I will be the most beautiful queen and princess, and honestly, her being the queen makes sense. She quietly runs this place.
Sometimes I think she might be too smart. I’ll take her tablet away for sassing me, then a haze seems to wash over me, and suddenly she’s sitting on the couch watching it again while I try to reconstruct the negotiations. That girl is going places. My oldest is conducting his own experiment into how far he can push me before I either lose it or cave because I don’t want to hear it anymore. Little does he know I’ve vowed to remain calm, collected, and firm. At least, I hope I can. Please don’t tell him about the doubts. He’ll use them against me.
For a rather more expensive exercise in setting conditions, the Department of Homeland Security announced a proposal today that would require schools to pay $70,000 when they first recommend an international student for Optional Practical Training, or OPT. A subsequent recommendation would cost another $30,000.
OPT allows eligible international students to work in their field of study. Under the proposed rule, the school would have to pay before entering its recommendation, which the student needs to seek employment authorization. The charge would fall on the institution, and it would be triggered by the training recommendation rather than a change of employer. This is still a proposal, scheduled for Federal Register publication October 8.
DHS presents the fees as a way to combat fraud and protect American workers. Those are claims that deserve examination, including whether a fee of this size addresses the misconduct the department describes. An institution with an eligible student and a legitimate training opportunity would face the same enormous price of entry.
There are real questions about wages, exploitation, and whether employers use immigration arrangements to undercut workers. Those questions deserve rules that protect workers, including the international students doing the work. I want to know how making a college produce $70,000 for an individual training recommendation delivers that protection.
The proposed rule itself anticipates that schools may change which students they support because of the cost. Its economic analysis includes a scenario in which institutions pay only for students eligible for the longer STEM pathway. In other words, the possibility that the fee would restrict opportunity is part of the department’s own modeling. How broadly that would happen remains uncertain, but a price this large invites a decision about who is worth sponsoring. We invite people here to study, accept their effort and tuition, and then contemplate placing a $70,000 tollbooth between their education and practical experience. The permission slip has acquired a financing department.
The public will have thirty days after publication to comment on the proposed rule. The advance text specifies a separate sixty-day period for comments on its information-collection requirements. Colleges, workers, students, and communities have reason to examine what this would actually do before it becomes policy.
Back at home, Ezra, my sweet baby pie, my mister boy, remains perfectly unremarkable and absolutely wonderful. He’s the happiest boy, and his obsession with shoes has stayed with him. His father is still not permitted to interfere with them, and he goes to sleep wearing them. He wants hugs, attention, and snuggles, and I’m more than happy to provide all three.
Before I know it, he’ll be plotting my demise alongside his siblings, and I’ll miss those sweet baby hugs. So I’m taking as many as I can now, from my adorable, not-so-little baby who apparently needs footwear for wherever his dreams are taking him.
Odin has also been making me giggle. I mentioned that he’s Ezra’s chosen favorite, and now that mister boy spends more time walking around with snacks and eating in his high chair, their relationship has developed a commercial aspect. Odin will sit there and allow all the petting the baby wants, provided plenty of food falls from the high chair and a few snacks are dropped along the baby’s travels. They seem very satisfied with the arrangement. I love them.
Families have plenty to do already. We’re feeding people, trying to get through illnesses, making dinner, negotiating Halloween, and occasionally planting something beautiful in the middle of it all. We need public decisions that make those lives more secure, and candidates who can tell us specifically how they intend to help.
There are twenty-seven days until the November 3 election. Watch or read a debate in a race on your ballot, choose one promise that matters to your household, and look for the proposal behind it. Examine the record too. Ask how the promise would be funded, who would have authority to carry it out, and what you could do if it failed you. Party affiliation should begin the questions, rather than finish them.
In Oregon, the registration deadline is October 13, and ballot mailing begins October 14, according to the Secretary of State. Check your information through your official election office, make your plan, and help someone else make theirs. Elsewhere, use your state or local election office for the deadlines and rules that apply to you.
My daughter has already decided what I’ll be wearing. The people asking for our votes can expect considerably more negotiation about what they’ll be doing.
If this report gave you a useful question to ask someone seeking your vote, please restack it or share it with a friend. We can help each other look past the performance and examine the job.
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Today’s household has beautiful cedar trim in progress, a few more plants in the ground, and a Halloween wardrobe under royal review. Odin has secured his own funding through a private arrangement with the baby.