A 'change of heart'

Balloons and confetti left on the ground after the end of this year’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago. A sign that says USA is centered in the image.

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

It’s Tuesday, the traditional day for elections and for our pause-and-consider newsletter on politics and policy. We think of it as a mini-magazine in your inbox.

YOUR POLITICAL WORD OF THE YEAR IS …
By Lisa Desjardins, @LisaDNews
Correspondent

Folks, we made it. 2024 is very near its end.

And reading through your suggestions for Political Word of the Year, the country is happy to close out this particular election cycle.

As usual, you impressed us. We will get to the winner for political word of the year in a moment, but we want to get to the full conversation you sparked first.

Health check

A number of you raised words that speak to a need for recovery.

“Broken,” Heidi Finger of Maryland, wrote. “Traditional methods of campaigning and communicating no longer are effective,” Finger argued. “Ethical norms have been ignored.”

“Unstable,” suggested New Jerseyan Vito Gallo. That included “unstable climate” and “unstable politics.”

For Utah’s Susan Steffen, 2024 was about “whiplash.” “It’s like being on a rollercoaster,” Steffen wrote us, concluding, “I think I need a hot dog, a 32-ounce Coke and a large ice cream sundae. And then a nap.”

But our favorite way to describe this feeling of being injured by politics came from Tommy Petronio of New York. “Banjaxed,” an Irish slang term that means broken, not working, messed up.

It is a term we plan to incorporate on and off air in the immediate future.

The opposite of united

Another group of you raised terms about our nation’s political fracture. And, interestingly, questioned whether they were true to reality.

“Polarized,” proposed Gail Kong of California, with a question. “I wonder [when] the election results were so close if that was an accurate term?” Kong wrote. “We might have been firm in our positions but polarized seems to imply that we were on the far ends of the spectrum.”

But Colorado’s Ian Pearson felt “polarization” was a perfect fit. “No word or idea more defines the state of American politics and how we feel about those who don't share our political beliefs today,” Pearson told us.

No surprise, we had a number of “divided” or “division” suggestions as well.

Broader terms

“Determined” was a choice we did not predict and really liked. AJ Cho of California backed up the suggestion, writing, “Everyone in government was determined to win: Republicans and Democrats, third-party candidates, underdogs and incumbents alike.”

One more reader word speaks to the winner of the election. “Trumped” was the choice for Steve Walsh of Missouri. Walsh explained, “At every key juncture, Trump outmaneuvered his opponents.” He listed Trump’s debate against Biden as well as his attorneys' ability to delay Trump’s court cases, as well as the Supreme Court’s grant of immunity.

And the winner is …

Let us at last get to the winner. This year’s political word of the year.

We presented you with three finalists: exhausted, weird and shift.

And there was a landslide winner.

Visual representation of our chosen Political Word of the Year. Image by Joshua Barajas/PBS News

Exhausted. Of those responding, a whopping 56 percent of folks chose it.

And I am grateful. Right to the end, 2024 tried to wear us out. I am still recovering, reporting on, and catching up on sleep from last week’s frenetic circular chaos over funding the government.

Which is why I have never been happier to wish all of you a good, peaceful, cozy, easy-lifting, low-drama holiday week.

Perhaps reader JM White of Massachusetts put it best, kindly concluding, “Take your vitamins and get your rest.”

More on politics from our coverage:

Read: Read the full House Ethics report alleging that Matt Gaetz paid for sex with minor, used illicit drugs as a member of Congress.
One Big Question: Trump will take office as a lame duck. Will he have a smooth path for his agenda? NPR’s Tamara Keith and Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter discuss.
A Closer Look: Ravages of war in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria leave millions of children in dire need.
Perspectives: A former U.S. ambassador to Syria outlines the challenges to rebuilding the war-torn country.

BIDEN'S 'CHANGE OF HEART'

Watch the segment in the player above.

Thirty-seven of the 40 people on federal death row had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. It’s President Joe Biden’s latest big move against capital punishment.

The historic decision, which Biden announced Monday, is the largest mass clemency grant of death-sentenced people by any U.S. president since President Abraham Lincoln, and the first in the modern death penalty era, said Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

The move is also believed to be motivated, in part, by President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to expand the use of the death penalty.

Biden, once a strong supporter of the death penalty, had a “change of heart” around the time then-President Donald Trump rushed to execute 13 people — 12 men and one woman — in the final six months of his first term, Maher said.

“I think [Biden] recognized at that point that the federal death penalty deserved his closer examination,” Maher told PBS News. “I think he's looked at his conscience. I think he's looked at his own faith. And he most especially listened to the calls of many thousands of people who were asking him to make that decision.”

THIS WEEK’S TRIVIA QUESTION

A Christmas tree outside the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., circa 1913. Photo courtesy of Harris & Ewing collection via Library of Congress

By Joshua Barajas
Senior Editor, Digital

After a chaotic scramble to avoid a partial government shutdown last week, many members of Congress have gone home for the holidays.

Lawmakers were not so lucky in 1963, when many House members were summoned back to Washington, D.C., for a rare Christmas Eve session to push a foreign aid amendment.

Our question: This urgent bill authorized some 4 million tons of an agricultural product to be sold and shipped to the Soviet Union. What was the product?

Send your answers to [email protected] or tweet using #PoliticsTrivia. The first correct answers will earn a shout-out next week.

Last week, we asked: In 2009, PolitiFact debuted its Lie of the Year, giving it to this politician who falsely claimed there were “death panels” in the Affordable Care Act. Who was it?

The answer: Sarah Palin. There was no basis for the former Alaska governor’s claim — the law never had “death panels” — but the lie persisted. PolitiFact said about 30 percent of the public at the time believed this piece of fiction from the then-2008 vice presidential candidate. Drew Altman of KFF Health News, in looking back on this health misinformation, likened it to “pouring gasoline on the already fiery partisan battles about the law.”

Congratulations to our winners: Carol Rutz and Kate Eguchi!

Thank you all for reading and watching. We’ll drop into your inbox next week.

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