❧ The man who assassinated UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson last week has been identified—at least according to police. Luigi Mangione, a 26-year-old Penn graduate, was apprehended at a McDonalds in Altoona, PA on Monday. To put it bluntly, everything about his arrest was strange. Mangione was reportedly found after a McDonald’s employee identified him and called the cops, which is quite a stroke of luck. Police determined they had the right guy because, per the New York Times, he was found with “fake identification,” (which you should always have handy for a trip to McDonald’s) “a weapon similar to the one seen in video of the killing” (which any thoughtful criminal knows to carry with them while fleeing a murder scene) and a “manifesto decrying the health care industry.”
Even stranger is Mangione’s trail of social media activity. It was generally assumed that someone who decided to assassinate a health insurance CEO might have, well, political persuasions of the left-wing variety.(His short manifesto, published exclusively by independent journalist Ken Klippenstein, says that insurance companies “continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it,” which sounds like it was ripped straight from a Current Affairs article… though we have checked, and he’s not a subscriber.)
While we don’t know what radicalized Mangione specifically, people who knew him have said he suffered from chronic back pain and recently underwent surgery for it. There’s no direct evidence that he had a bad experience with UnitedHealth or any other insurer, but there’s certainly no shortage of stories of these companies screwing patients over. The fact that someone with Mangione’s otherwise idiosyncratic politics had such a clear-eyed loathing for the insurance industry just underscores that hating the healthcare system is one of the most universal American experiences.
❧ Meanwhile, criminal defendant Daniel Penny has been acquitted for negligent homicide in the 2023 killing of Jordan Neely. As we wrote last week, there’s no question about the facts of the case; Neely had done nothing worse than shout on the subway in a way other passengers found alarming, and Penny responded by putting him in a chokehold and refusing to let go until he was dead. And yet, thanks in part to a right-wing GoFundMe campaign that gave Penny more than $2.9 million for lawyers, who then portrayed Neely as a “psychotic madman” in court, Penny was found not guilty.
Coming at the same time as the UnitedHealth assassination, this is a stark reminder of how money makes all the difference in the U.S. criminal punishment system. If you’re rich and get murdered, the state will pull out all the stops to find your killer; if you’re poor, your killer will walk out the courthouse doors whistling and get a celebratory drink. Ain’t America grand? (CNN)
As journalist Jon Schwarz writes, “It's rare you get such a clear illustration of whose lives have value in America and whose don't” (Cover: The New York Post)
In other news...
According to a new investigative report, officials in Baltimore County, Maryland are spending more than $4.5 million to retain the law firm Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough—all to fight a court case in which the county is trying to avoid classifying prisoners as “employees” and paying the minimum wage for their work in recycling centers. Surely it would be cheaper, not to mention less cruel, to just pay them properly? (Baltimore Banner)
Bird flu is running rampant through farms in California. The H5N1 virus has been found in more than 500 dairy cow farms in the state (more than half) after jumping from chickens. Three children in California have been infected in recent weeks, joining the more than 60 Americans who have caught the virus since March of this year. This is a frightening development—as the people who have previously been infected had almost all worked in the dairy industry. It suggests that the disease could be mutating to be more transmissible between humans—creating a potential pandemic. Recent research published in Science found that bird flu was just a single mutation away from being able to latch onto human cells. But according to Los Angeles Timesenvironmental reporter Susanne Rust, “Very little is being done to stop it.” (As if that’s not bad enough, the guy who’ll probably be in charge of the pandemic response loves virus-filled raw milk and hates vaccines!)
As this video explains, the FDA is also ordering the nationwide testing of milk for bird flu.
A prosecutor in Florida’s Broward County is trying to clear the criminal records of roughly 2,600 people who bought “police-made crack” in the 1980s. Hang on, police-made what now? Yes, it’s true: in the ‘80s, Florida cops manufactured their own crack cocaine, then ran sting operations where they sold it near schools (so the penalties would be higher) and arrested anyone who tried to buy. This is such a comically blatant form of entrapment that even Florida authorities have a problem with it. But keep in mind: if it took until 2024 for this scandal to come out, what are cops up to right now that hasn’t yet come to light? (Associated Press)
A court in Wisconsin has just struck down an anti-union law, passed by the infamous Governor Scott Walker in 2010, which made it effectively impossible for most public-sector workers to organize and bargain for better wages. And the reason couldn’t be more quintessentially American: cops were exempted, creating two different classes of workers and violating the principle of equal protection, which made the whole law unconstitutional! Hey, a win’s a win. (NPR)
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.
❧ You’ve probably seen the massive news out of Syria from this weekend: After more than five decades of family rule, Bashar al-Assad has been driven from the country by rebel forces. For a useful roundup of everything that’s happened over the past few days, Derek Davison’s Foreign Exchangesnewsletter, which is free in this case, breaks down the many implications in more detail than we can do here. But if you are shorter on time, a few key points:
Assad has fled to Moscow, where the Kremlin is sheltering him in exchange for a deal to ensure the safety of Russian missile bases.
The fall of Assad has been a joyous occasion for many in Syria, but particularly for the thousands of political prisoners he held in detention, who have been freed by rebel forces. In many cases their families had gone for years without knowing the whereabouts of their loved ones.
The most powerful person in Syria is now Abu Mohammad al-Julani (but he has recently taken to calling himself Ahmed al-Sharaa). He’s the leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham rebel group. HTS is a breakaway group from Al Qaeda, though they have tried to gain international legitimacy by focusing less on global jihad and more on the unification of Syria. We’ll see if this continues now that they have power.
This is a big geopolitical win for Turkey, which has backed several of the rebel forces that swept through the country. It’s been bad news for the ethnic Kurds who have had their villages and refugee camps attacked by Turkey’s militias throughout the 10-day military surge.
Iran is also a big loser here, as Assad was a close ally who allowed them to run supply lines through Syrian territory to supply Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.
Israel is already using the instability to claim more land. Immediately after Assad was driven out, it invaded the Syrian-controlled buffer zone between the Israeli occupied Golan Heights and Southern Syria, entering the area for the first time since 1974. Benjamin Netanyahu described the move as “temporary” in his English communications, but not in Hebrew.
TERRIBLE TAKE OF THE WEEK
In Politico, opinion writer Nahal Toosi has a big-brained idea for how to address a delicate Middle Eastern crisis: get Donald Trump involved!
So far, Trump has taken a hands-off approach to Syria, posting in all-caps that “THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!” And since there really appear to be no “good guys” in this situation—besides Rojava— that’s actually not the worst idea. But the foreign policy establishment isn’t having it, with Toosi writing that Trump should step in partly because Syria has “plenty of talent and wealth, much of it oil and gas driven.” (But remember folks, if you say U.S. wars are about power and resources rather than Freedom, you’re unpatriotic.)
Thomas Friedman also writes in the New York Times that Trump needs to “figure out our interests and use the events in Syria to drive them.” (Friedman also describes Syria as “too late for imperialism, but they failed at self-government,” which seems to indicate that he believes imperialism was a good thing.)
Considering that when Trump does “get involved” in the Middle East, he tends to do things like illegally assassinate Iranian generals and drop the “Mother of All Bombs” on Afghanistan, pushing him to intervene more is a spectacularly bad idea, and Toosi and Friedman win our anti-award for this week.
In Britain, the police are once again trying to imprison a 77-year-old climate activist. Gaie Delap was first arrested in 2022, when she took part in a Just Stop Oil protest that blocked the M25 highway in London. She was finally sentenced to prison time this August, after a long and controversial court case, but was released to house arrest after a few months. Now, though, there’s a new warrant out for her arrest—all because her wrists are too small to fit the tracking bracelet she’d been ordered to wear, and she can’t be monitored effectively. Delap’s member of Parliament calls it “completely absurd,” and that’s an understatement. Really, she should be getting a medal for public service. (The Guardian)
The parliament of New Zealand is rushing through a bill to prevent greyhound dogs from being killed by racetrack owners. The country has just banned greyhound racing itself, citing the animals’ welfare, and now there’ll be a complementary law preventing the owners from just disposing of the dogs when they’re no longer profitable. In an ideal world, that wouldn’t need to be said, as everyone would find the idea too appalling to even consider—but as it stands, this is a good move from Parliament. (Radio New Zealand)
It’s the end of an era... a cruel, stupid era. (Image: Greens MPs via Flickr)
The president-elect of Namibia, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, is promising “radical shifts” in policy to deal with extreme poverty in the country. Nandi-Ndaitwah, the first woman to be elected president of Namibia, is a member of the political party that has governed it since its independence from apartheid South Africa in 1990. But she has pledged to enact a change from her predecessors, including “land reform and more equitable distribution of wealth,” according to Reuters.
The South American nation of Guyana may soon re-open Jonestown as a tourist site. The infamous compound where 900 members of the People’s Temple cult committed mass suicide in 1978 has become overgrown with vegetation and has been largely left alone save for the occasional visit from reporters or family members of victims. But Guyana’s tourism authority now hopes that visitors seeking a morbid adventure will bring new revenues into the country. Some survivors of the People’s Temple and their family members view it disrespectful to the victims while others think the site could be an opportunity for education, in a similar fashion to the Holocaust museum at Auschwitz. (The Guardian)
The entrance to Jonestown in the jungles of Guyana (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
For the first time in his four-year presidency, Joe Biden went to Africa. Specifically, he went to Angola—a choice fraught with historic significance, since the United States supported the invasion of Angola by apartheid South Africa in 1975-76. On this visit, though, Biden wasn’t interested in addressing the sins of the past. Instead, he was boasting about a new railroad project the U.S. has financed there, which will reportedly “divert critical minerals away from China.” So as usual with U.S. politicians in Africa, he didn’t really care about Angola itself so much as the resources and strategic positioning he could get from it. (Reuters)
Do you think he told them the story about how he totally got arrested for supporting Nelson Mandela? (Image: U.S. Africa Media Hub via Twitter)
CROOKS vs. SICKOS (Or, “What’s going on with our politicians and oligarchs?”)
❧ Trump keeps talking about annexing Canada. In a wide-ranging Meet the Press interview on Sunday, the president-elect made the following comment:
We’re subsidizing Canada to the tune over $100 billion a year. We’re subsidizing Mexico for almost $300 billion. We shouldn’t be — why are we subsidizing these countries? If we’re going to subsidize them, let them become a state.
For starters, we are not “subsidizing” these countries. Trump is talking about our trade deficits with Mexico and Canada, which are simply the difference between how much our consumers buy from them vs. how much theirs buy from us—nothing to do with government subsidies. Like when Trump says that tariffs are taxes on other countries, he is lying about what a trade deficit is. (His numbers for the size of these trade deficits are also wildly wrong.)
As for the point about annexing Mexico and Canada, this is a joke that Trump has latched onto after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau criticized his threat to place 25 percent tariffs on all goods from Canada. When Trump was asked whether American families would pay more as a result of his tariffs (which they absolutely will), he said, “I can’t guarantee anything. I can’t guarantee tomorrow.” (Always comforting to hear from someone with the nuclear codes.) But instead of taking these concerns seriously, Trump has been spending time making jokes about “the Great State of Canada”—repeatedly referring to Trudeau as “governor” and even posting this A.I.-generated image to Truth Social:
(As many have pointed out, that mountain more closely resembles the Matterhorn in Switzerland than anything in Canada.)
Does Trump actually plan to annex Canada? Probably not. But he seems to hope that he can use all this ridiculous bluster to distract people from the fact that he is lying to their faces about the policy he is about to implement.
Trump is also pledging to carry out a “bloodbath” of death row inmates once he takes office. There are 40 people currently on federal death row, and with just over a month before inauguration day, a group of human rights activists is petitioning Joe Biden to commute their sentences before leaving office. Some congressional Democrats have urged Biden to pardon other incarcerated people including those who are older or women who defended themselves from abusive partners. A letter from House Democrats notes that “90% of people are convicted of non-violent offenses.” Biden is, of course, not squeamish about issuing pardons for lesser reasons, having given one to his son last week. The least he could do is use that extraordinary power for good. (New York Times)
The Biden Labor Department is moving to axe a Depression-era program that allowed employers to pay disabled employees well below minimum wage. The policy was initially put into place under the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act to as an incentive for bosses to hire injured veterans. But today, it is used to pay more than 37,000 workers sub-minimum wages. (Washington Post)
As he prepares to depart Congress, Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) has decided to do something good for the first time in his life. Along with Peter Welch (D-VT), he has introduced a constitutional amendment to put term limits on the Supreme Court. The proposal would allow justices to serve a single term of 18 years and stagger vacancies so that one comes up every two years. This is vastly preferable to the current system, and two-thirds of Americans support it. But since amendments require two-thirds support in both houses, there is a zero percent chance of this actually passing. It could also be passed as a simple act of Congress, though that would then allow the Supreme Court itself to rule on it, and you can guess how that would probably go. (Washington Post)
There’s a new wrinkle in the Murdoch family succession drama: Earlier this year, family patriarch Rupert attempted to change his family trust to leave his vast media empire in the hands of his eldest son Lachlan, who shares his conservative worldview more than the other Murdoch spawn. But a Nevada court has ruled that he can’t do this. Barring a successful appeal—this means that all four of the Murdochs will share the company equally after Rupert departs this mortal coil. We shouldn’t get our hopes too high. (These are, after all, still the children of a multi-billionaire.) But there’s at least some hope that the other Murdochs could turn NewsCorp into a slightly less malevolent force than it has been under Rupert’s watch. (Axios)
PAST AFFAIRS
Nathan J. Robinson on “How Rupert Murdoch Destroyed the News.”
When you see a picture of a wobbegong, you’d be forgiven for saying “Shark? What shark? I just see a blotchy patch of moss.” And it’s true—unlike the sleek bullet-like silhouette of most sharks, the wobbegong is a master of camouflage, flattening itself against the bottom of the ocean where it feeds on small octopi and crustaceans. The “tassles” are the fern-like fronds of skin that extend from the edges of its body, really driving home the “I’m a plant, nothing to see here” routine.
Like a lot of funky-looking animals, wobbegongs live almost exclusively in Australia. They’re also one of the only sharks that keeps their eggs within their bodies until they’re ready to hatch, then give birth to live shark pups!
Writing and research by Stephen Prager and Alex Skopic. Editing and additional material by Nathan J. Robinson and Lily Sánchez. Header graphic by Cali Traina Blume. This news briefing is a product of Current Affairs Magazine. Subscribe to our gorgeous and informative print edition here, and our delightful podcast here.
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