❧ Catastrophic wildfires have broken out in and around Los Angeles. At the time of writing, at least 10 people have died and countless more are homeless, as the Associated Press reports that “more than 10,000 homes and other structures” have burned. There are five separate wildfires: the Palisades Fire (which has burned more than 20,000 acres so far), the Eaton Fire (more than 13,000 acres), the Kenneth Fire (roughly 960 acres), the Hurst Fire (roughly 831 acres), and the Lidia Fire (roughly 341 acres). As of Friday morning, the Palisades fire was only 6 percent contained, although firefighters had more success with some of the smaller fires. To make matters worse, California law allows people in prison to be pressed into service as firefighters, so nearly a third of the emergency responders currently risking their lives are effectively enslaved, making as little as $1 an hour for their labor.
Reddit user u/Perfect-Cause-6943 captured this terrifying image of the fires from above.
To point out the obvious, human-caused climate change has made this catastrophe both more likely and more intense. This past year was the hottest on record, with more “strong to extreme heat stress” around the world than ever before, and the link between “warmer, drier conditions” and wildfires is well-established. Companies like Exxon knew as early as 1977 that burning oil, gas, and coal would likely cause a global warming crisis, but they hid the information from the public and instead funded extensive propaganda campaigns to deny the reality of climate change. Today, we see the results.
For Democracy Now!, climate scientist and former Current Affairs interview guest Dr. Peter Kalmus emphasizes the fossil-fuel industry’s ultimate responsibility for these fires, and warns that disasters like this will only get worse and more common if the industry isn’t reined in:
For the political Right, though, acknowledging climate change is a third rail, especially since so many U.S. conservatives are actively taking money from fossil-fuel companies. Instead, they’ve chosen to blame the California fires on Woke. On Fox News, host Jesse Watters has faulted the LA Fire Department’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) program for the crisis, saying that “California is committing suicide before our very eyes. DEI is deadly.” Elon Musk, who never met a stupid idea he didn’t like, has reposted tweets saying that “DEI means people DIE.” Donald Trump Jr. has blamed “those who place woke virtue signaling far above competency.” The implication is that women and minorities are simply worse at being firefighters—Daily Wire pundit Matt Walsh thinks women shouldn’t be allowed to hold the job at all—so LA’s efforts to hire them weakened its emergency services and led to all this death and destruction. (The use of inmate slave labor is, of course, ignored. So is the fact that L.A.’s firefighting services are chronically underfunded, while police budgets have only grown.)
This is utter nonsense, but it’s becoming an increasingly common narrative on the Right. When a cargo ship ran into a bridge in Baltimore last March, conservatives immediately leaped to blame the city’s “DEI mayor”—meaning Brandon Scott—purely because Scott is African American, even though he had nothing to do with the ship’s malfunction. When Boeing planes malfunctioned, they blamed the company’s DEI practices rather than the fact that it was cutting corners on its safety protocols in order to save money. As climate change continues to get worse, we’re likely to see more and more unhinged narratives from politicians and pundits who want to avoid confronting the reality that’s right in front of their faces. If we’re going to prevent further climate horrors, it’s essential to see through them.
CURRENT-EST AFFAIRS
Legendary filmmaker Adam McKay (who you might know from Vice, The Big Short, or Step Brothers) recently joined Current Affairs to discuss his 2021 film Don’t Look Up, which is all about the absurdities of climate denial.
❧ In happier news, the members of a New York City tenants’ union have won a $250,000 court case against their landlord. A judge ruled that landlord Jason Korn, described as the “king of rat and roach infestations, lead-paint violations, and collapsed ceilings” by Curbed magazine, had failed to make necessary repairs to his properties for multiple years, and that the tenants of 1616 President St. were justified in holding a rent strike against him. This is great news, and a perfect example of why every tenant needs a union of their own. (Prism Reports)
❧ New York University has suspended 11 students until January 2026 for participating in peaceful pro-Palestine demonstrations last semester. In December, these students held a sit-in at the school library in order to “demand a meeting with administration officials regarding disclosure of and divestment from institutional investments in Israel.” Additionally, two professors at the demonstration were arrested and deemed “personae non gratae” by school security. A statement from NYU Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine calls it “a draconian case of collective punishment.” The school has justified the suspensions by citing “a significant disruptive impact…during a particularly critical time.” But as the demonstrators pointed out, whatever disruption was caused by their “distributing flyers and chanting for fifteen minutes” was “intended to highlight the much more significant disruption of teaching, learning and scholarship that has taken place in Gaza.” (Middle East Eye)
NYU students and faculty block the entrance to Bobst Library on Dec. 12, 2024.
❧ Idaho Republicans have introduced a resolution calling for the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the right to gay marriage and calling for the court to return to the so-called “natural definition” of marriage as between one man and one woman. It’s widely known at this point that both Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are itching to overturn the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision. However, if the Court indeed ends up sending the question of gay marriage back to the states, red states that ban it will still have to honor marriages that happen in other states as a result of the Respect for Marriage Act signed by President Biden in 2022. (Newsweek)
❧ In a case straight out of Les Misérables, a homeless man in Indiana may face six years in prison for stealing bread. According to local reporters, the man “walked into a McAlister’s Deli and helped himself to a bite of bread and a cookie” after a delivery driver left the door open on December 28. The cops quickly showed up to arrest him, the business owner pressed charges, and county prosecutors chose to pursue a Level 5 felony charge of breaking and entering—which is absurd, since the door was open, so nothing was “broken.” This is just another example of how U.S. law and policing serve to protect property and wealth while harming human beings who desperately need help. (Fox 59 Indianapolis)
Unlike the subject of Raffaëlli’s 1879 painting, the guy in
CROOKS vs. SICKOS (or, “What are our politicians and oligarchs up to?”)
❧ While desperate hungry people are facing bread-related imprisonment, a New York judge has sentenced Donald Trump to an “unconditional discharge” with “no further penalties.” In other words, Trump will get no actual punishment whatsoever for his 34 felony convictions over falsifying business records. See how this works? (NBC)
The house always wins. (Art by Nick Sirotich from Current Affairs Magazine, Issue 51, November-December 2024.)
❧ Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA) says congressional Democrats dropped the ball on securing the future of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). According to Khanna, Democrats had a narrow window to re-elect Lauren McFerran as the board’s chair before her term expired, since the notoriously anti-worker Representative Joe Manchin (I-WV, formerly Democratic) was absent and unable to vote, as were two Republicans. But the Democrats delayed voting, seemingly for “no reason,” and allowed Manchin time to return. They also failed to get Kamala Harris down to the House to break a potential tie and confirm McFerran. As a result, Republicans will have a majority on the NLRB two years sooner than expected, and will likely use it to decimate workers’ rights across the country. Great job, Dems! (Truthout)
❧ Former President Jimmy Carter was given a televised state funeral on Thursday. Carter was eulogized by a wide range of former friends and colleagues, who praised his work with Habitat for Humanity and his efforts to eliminate the parasitic Guinea worm in Africa. However, the speakers avoided mentioning one of the most admirable parts of Carter’s record: his 2007 book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, and his principled opposition to Israeli human rights abuses in Gaza and the West Bank. The closest anyone came to acknowledging what Carter actually believed was when his grandson Jason said that his “heart broke for the people of Palestine,” which doesn’t really give an accurate picture of his activism.
The funeral was also a reunion for the four living ex-presidents: Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. Trump’s attendance was a little surprising, since Obama and Biden had spent the last few months calling him a “threat to democracy.” But apparently all was forgiven between them, as Trump and Obama shared a hearty chuckle about something during the ceremony. It kind of looks like these people are an insular in-group of elites who don’t care very much about anyone else, doesn’t it?
“It’s a big club and you’re not in it.” (Image: 10 Tampa Bay via YouTube)
❧ Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) is co-sponsoring a GOP deportation bill. Fetterman—who, believe it or not, once called himself a “progressive”—has added his name to the Laken Riley Act, which would make it much easier to deport even legal immigrants, lowering the thresholds for ICE and other agencies to detain immigrants who commit minor property crimes like shoplifting. The bill has already been passed by the House, and has enough votes to be debated in the Senate. Fetterman also says he’d be open to Donald Trump’s ludicrous idea of buying Greenland, calling it a “responsible conversation” to have. At this point, why doesn’t he just switch parties and become a Republican? (TribLive)
❧ Joe Biden has announced a new policy banning credit reporting agencies from including medical debt on credit reports. This feels like a bit of a cruel joke, since Trump will be taking office in 10 days and is very likely to reverse the policy. It was also proposed all the way back in June, so why did Biden not enact it then? Was it only so Kamala Harris could use it as a campaign promise? And lastly, while the policy isn’t bad in a vacuum, and will hopefully allow people who want loans to get them more easily, it doesn’t actually address the root of the problem, which is that medical debt exists at all. (Vox)
❧ In the latest example of corporations virtue signaling to the incoming Trump administration, Sweetgreen—America’s favorite destination for $15 salads—is rolling out a new menu containing “NO SEED OILS.” For those not in the know, “seed oils” is the pejorative adopted by much of the online right—led by incoming Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.—to describe vegetable oils. Along with flouride in water and pasteurized milk, “seed oils” are one of the things Kennedy believes are “poisoning” Americans. In fairness, they do often appear in unhealthy food. But as Shannon Palus writes for Slate:
Seed oils are commonly used in unhealthy foods because they are cheap and because they can be neutral in flavor. But, really, they can pop up in a lot of stuff, including, of course, salads. The problem with eating tons of seed oils isn’t the seed oils; it’s that such a diet might be heavy in junk food. Seed oils contain mostly unsaturated fat, the “good” kind of fat. “The claim that seed oils are ruining our health is especially rankling to nutrition scientists, who see them as a big step forward from butter and lard,” Alice Callahan, who holds a Ph.D. in nutrition, wrote in the New York Times. Although olive oil, one of the biggest alternatives to seed oil, is enjoying a moment in the spotlight as a health food, its unique positive qualities are possibly overblown. The gist of what we know is: It’s all just oil!
We never thought we’d miss woke corporate pandering, but MAGA corporate pandering is even worse. (Photo: Sweetgreen marketing)
AROUND THE WORLD
❧ The U.S. has accused the Rapid Support Forces, one of the major paramilitary groups involved in Sudan’s civil war, of committing acts of genocide. In a statement Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, theRSF had “launched a conflict of unmitigated brutality that has resulted in the world’s largest humanitarian catastrophe, leaving 638,000 Sudanese experiencing the worst famine in Sudan’s recent history, over 30 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, and tens of thousands dead.” He accused them of “crimes against humanity” and “ethnic cleansing,” citing “direct attacks against civilians, including having “systematically murdered men and boys—even infants—on an ethnic basis, and deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence. Those same militias have targeted fleeing civilians, murdering innocent people escaping conflict, and prevented remaining civilians from accessing lifesaving supplies.”
Blinken committed the U.S. to “holding accountable those responsible for these atrocities,” announcing sanctions on seven Emerati companies that have been accused of supplying the RSF with weapons. Though it did not sanction the UAE’s government—a U.S. ally—itself, despite reports that it has helped facilitate weapons transfers through Chad.
While acknowledgment of the atrocities in Sudan is certainly a welcome development, the declaration of “genocide” comes off rather hollow given that Blinken’s State Department has continued to provide unflinching support to Israel as it carries out war crimes against innocent people and wages a campaign of starvation, displacement, and sexual violence, that is every bit as evil as the one carried out by the RSF. We should not mistake America’s condemnation of genocide in Sudan for any sort of moral awakening, or recommitment to human rights, but rather an affirmation that America’s allies are not held to the same standards as everyone else.
❧ Donald Trump may carry out a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities once he takes office. According to a report in Axios this week, Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer left a November meeting at Mar-a-Lago believing “there was a high likelihood Trump would either support an Israeli military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities — something the Israelis are seriously considering — or even order a U.S. strike.” Netanyahu has, of course, been trying to goad the U.S. into direct conflict with Iran for years, and was instrumental in pushing Trump to leave the Nuclear Deal that was limiting Iran’s nuclear program in the first place. So if it is indeed a “nuclear threshold state,” then he only has himself to blame. And if that is indeed the case, then that means that Trump is gearing up for a war with a state that possesses the ability to produce nuclear weapons. This could have unthinkable consequences.
The “Pro-Peace Ticket” wants war with Iran, Panama, and Mexico and to annex Canada and Greenland. (Image: GOP on Twitter)
Even worse, Biden’sadvisors have also reportedly been urging him to attack Iran’s nuclear sites before Trump takes office. So we could be directly at war with Iran in a matter of days.
❧ [CONTENT WARNING: Sexual harassment, workplace abuse.]
In the United Kingdom, McDonald’s is facing a class-action lawsuit over horrific allegations of sexual harassment and other labor abuses. More than 700 current and former workers from 450 different McDonald’s restaurants have joined the suit, bringing “claims including discrimination, homophobia, racism, ableism and harassment” against the fast-food chain.
Some of the most disturbing allegations involve McDonald’s managers who reportedly took advantage of the U.K.’s “zero-hours” labor contracts—which allow employers to schedule workers as much, or as little, as they like—to pressure workers to “exchange sex for shifts.” The Labour government is currently working on reforms to the “zero-hours” system, but it won’t ban the contracts outright, and workers themselves say that’s not good enough.(Morning Star)
❧ Bernie Sanders did not become the president of Lebanon on Thursday. The U.S. senator received a single protest vote in a session where disgruntled legislators also wrote in the phrase “O, pity my homeland” in lieu of an actual candidate. Sanders is popular in Lebanon because he was one of the only American politicians to condemn Israel’s exploding pager terror attacks in Beirut last September. However, he is neither a citizen nor a Maronite Christian, the traditional religious background for the Lebanese president, so he was deemed ineligible and the vote was stricken from the record.
Instead, Lebanon has elected Joseph Aoun, the former commander of the army, as its next leader. Aoun won a large democratic mandate, with the Hezbollah candidate endorsing him in the second round of voting for a 99-29 final vote. But Aoun is also the U.S. and Saudi Arabia’s preferred candidate, and he may even attempt to disarm Hezbollah, as he promised to “affirm the state’s right to monopolise the carrying of weapons” in his acceptance speech.
❧ Lynx have been seen roaming around Scotland for the first time in 1,000 years. Environmental groups have been hoping to bring the big cats back to the Scottish Highlands—which can support an estimated 400 of them—for a while. After nearing extinction in the 1950s, their populations in Europe have rebounded to as many as 10,000 after they became a protected species. But conservationists believe the four lynx found in Scotland were released by “rogue rewilders,” who they’ve condemned as “reckless” and “highly irresponsible,” since it can disrupt the local ecosystem if not done methodically and carefully monitored. The cats were quickly trapped by a zoo and quarantined. (The Guardian)
❧ A United Nations watchdog has ruled that Australia has violated a human rights treaty by detaining asylum seekers on the remote island of Nauru, even after they’d been granted refugee status. Many of the asylum seekers are minors who have fled war in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Myanmar. The 25 migrants involved in the case are among thousands who were detained after a 2012 policy introduced “offshore processing” facilities on Nauru and on another remote island in Papua New Guinea. The panel found that the refugees were given insufficient water and healthcare. Nearly all the minors suffered a deterioration in wellbeing there, including weight loss, self-harm, kidney problems and insomnia. The U.N. has recommended compensation for the victims and for measures to be put in place to prevent similar treatment like this, but has no power to actually enforce the ruling. Australia says it will respond “in due course.” More than 100 refugees still remain on Nauru, the highest number in over a decade. (Al Jazeera)
CATERPILLAR FACT OF THE WEEK
3D goggles work on cuttlefish, too!
A venomous caterpillar called the “Gum leaf skeletonizer” has a real head for fashion… or, actually, it has several.
Like most caterpillars, the skeletonizer grows out of its exoskeleton—the hard shell that protects its body— several times during its larva stage. But unlike other species, which discard the old head casings when they are through with them, the skeletonizer stacks them on top of one another to form a stylish hat. Scientists believe the caterpillar’s sticky hairs keep the hat glued to its noggin.
This isn’t just a unique look for red carpet season (green carpet season?), but a form of defense that the caterpillars use to ward off predators like stink bugs. It has earned them a fitting nickname (even more fitting than the name “skeletonizer,” which is already pretty great), the “Mad Hatter-pillar.”
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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