We hope you had a good holiday season, if indeed you had holidays in December; we’ve been on hiatus ourselves, and are feeling refreshed with a little extra rest (and eggnog) under our belts. But as we step into 2025, a lot of news has already happened. Let's get right into it, shall we?
AROUND THE STATES
❧ As you’ve probably seen by now, there was a horrible terror attack in New Orleans over New Year’s Eve. At the time of writing, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies believe that Shamsud-Din Jabbar acted alone when he drove a pickup truck directly into a crowd on Bourbon Street, killing at least 14 people before being shot by police. Jabbar was a U.S. citizen and an Army veteran, and he appears to have been inspired by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), whose flag was found on his rented truck. He also appears to have planted multiple bombs in the French Quarter, which thankfully did not explode as planned.
FBI agents photograph the ISIS flag found on Jabbar's truck. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
New Orleans, of course, is Current Affairs World Headquarters, and this attack took place disturbingly close to our offices. In the last few days, several of you have reached out to see if all of the magazine’s staff are okay—and we’re happy to report that, yes, we are, although a bit rattled. Thank you to everyone who asked, and our sympathies go out to the families of those who weren’t as lucky. If you happen to be in the New Orleans area, there’s currently a blood donation drive for victims of the attack, which would be a great thing to contribute to!
Now, though, there’s an obvious political danger: that a terror attack like this one could be a tremendous gift to the incoming Trump government. It could provide exactly the excuse an already-authoritarian GOP needs to ramp up surveillance and police powers and take away people’s civil rights in the name of security, just as George W. Bush did after 9/11. Like in 2001, the American Muslim community will be at risk of increased xenophobia and police harassment. So will immigrants, who Trump and Fox News falsely linked to the attack on Wednesday. They will need our solidarity, and the predictable reaction from the Right will need to be guarded against. We cannot allow this tragedy to have even more damaging ripple effects.
Nothing can stop the Crescent City for long. (Art by C.M. Duffy from Current Affairs Magazine, Issue 8, July/August 2017)
THIS WEEK IN TERRIBLE JOURNALISM
A special shout-out goes to New York Times national security correspondent Eric Schmitt, who decided to imply the New Orleans attack was related to “the conflict in Gaza and Lebanon” on the basis of… absolutely nothing. What a colossally irresponsible thing to do!
All the Schmitt that’s fit to spit. (Headline: New York Times)
❧ Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt raised the idea of a frightening new policy last week as part of his state’s “Colleges to Careers” program. Stitt said in an interview with KOKH Fox 25 that, in order to get a high school diploma, “You’ve got to either be accepted to college, or you have to be accepted into a CareerTech or you have to be going into the army. You have to have some kind of plan post-graduation to go get a great job.”
This implied that students who choose not to go to college or trade school—or those who cannot afford to—would be required to join the military. This was met with wide backlash, and the governor’s office then walked the comment back, suggesting that it had been misunderstood: “Gov. Stitt is not suggesting that we mandate military service,” his communications director said, “Don’t believe everything you see on the internet, folks.”
It’s certainly possible that this was a misunderstanding, though the governor’s comments seem pretty straightforward. More likely, they were simply not prepared for people to resent being required to fight in an overseas war if they couldn’t afford their tuition. (ABC 7 News)
❧ In a win for animal rights, eggs sold in Michigan are legally required to be cage-free starting on January 1. However, there’s a loophole for farms with “less than 3,000 egg-laying hens,” and the term “cage-free” doesn’t prevent things like overcrowding chickens together in huge hangar-like buildings, so there’s still plenty of room for improvement. (Detroit Free Press)
NEWS LANG SYNE
The end of 2024 and the dawn of a new year brings all kinds of annual reports and statistics, some more worrying than others. For instance…
❧ U.S. police killed a record number of people in 2024, with at least 1,356 deaths according to data from Mapping Police Violence. That’s approximately 3.71 killings per day, and there were only 11 days in the entire year when police did not kill anyone—more evidence that cops are a threat to our safety, not protectors of it, and need to be seriously reined in.
Each of these squares was somebody’s parent, child, or partner. Horrific.
❧ According to new data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, homelessness increased by 18 percent in 2023, with a record 771,480 Americans now lacking a permanent place to live. This comes on top of an already alarming 12-percent increase in the previous 12 months—and housing advocates have long criticized HUD’s “point-in-time” survey method for undercounting the actual number of people experiencing homelessness, so it’s likely the crisis is even worse. (Washington Post)
❧ In other news from the definitely good and normal U.S. economy, both credit card debt and defaults on that debt have skyrocketed, as Americans now owe $1.17 trillion and are struggling to pay it back. The trend of people taking on debt to afford basic necessities like groceries can’t have helped. (Newsweek)
OHIO’s REJECTED LICENSE PLATES
The great state of Ohio has once again released a list of all the vanity license plates that were too weird, rude, or political to get approved in 2024, and there are some doozies in there, including:
XXXZXXX
MAGA AF
POO
SHMEAT
MOB BOSS
TUNASUB (Note: What was wrong with this one?)
ECO BOMB
YLL GAY
SCAMMER
HEROIN
NUKE OH
Looks like ours is still available!
AROUND THE WORLD
❧ A new investigative report links Amazon to human trafficking in Saudi Arabia and Nepal. According to firsthand accounts from Nepalese workers like Hari Prasad Mudbari, the international megacorp has been relying on labor recruiting companies who “misled them about the terms of their employment by falsely promising they would work directly for Amazon,” convinced them to travel from Nepal to Saudi Arabia, and “placed them in short-term contract jobs at Amazon warehouses, then siphoned away their wages.” Several workers also report that Amazon has refused to reimburse them for the exploitative “recruiting fees” charged by these third-party companies, “ranging from roughly $830 to $2,300.” (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists)
❧ According to new data from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the population of Gaza has fallen by 6 percent. Since the start of the Israeli assault in 2023, the agency estimates that 45,500 Palestinians have been killed, another 11,000 are missing and presumed dead, and roughly 100,000 have permanently left the territory, leading to a total population decline of nearly 160,000. (It is also likely that the death toll is a considerable undercount since it doesn’t factor in those who have surely died due to knock-on effects of the bombardment, like disease and malnutrition.)
All of this only strengthens the charges of genocide and ethnic cleansing against Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders—especially in light of recent reports that Israel has changed its rules about airstrikes since 2023, allowing IDF soldiers to “risk killing up to 20 civilians” in each one. (Reuters)
❧ In the Punjab region of India, agricultural labor leader Jagjit Singh Dallewal is on an indefinite hunger strike. Dallewall, who’s 70 years old, is a regional president of the Bhartiya Kisan Union. He’s also one of the senior leaders of a farmers’ movement in Punjab, which is pressuring the Indian government to institute price controls on crops, setting what they call a Minimum Support Price (MSP) to ensure they can actually make a living. Inspired by “Gandhian principles,” Dallewal has been on a hunger strike for his cause for 40 days—which creates a significant risk to his health—and is expected to address the Punjab farmers on Saturday with a message about the future of their movement and possible strike action. (Hindustan Times)
❧ Honduras is threatening to end its military cooperation with the U.S. over Trump’s deportation plans. In a statement on New Year’s Day, President Xiomara Castro warned that American military bases would “lose all reason to exist in Honduras” if the U.S. adopts a “hostile attitude of mass expulsion of our brothers.” So far there’s been no response from the Trump transition team. (Democracy Now!)
❧ South Korea’s political crisis rolls on, with a standoff on Friday between President Yoon Suk Yeol’s security forces and investigators who sought to arrest him. Two separate warrants have been issued for Yoon—one for his arrest and another for the search of his residence—after he declared martial law in early December. But investigators were rebuffed on Friday by a horde of troops and presidential security when they tried to enter his home. Despite a mass uprising against Yoon and his attempted impeachment, he still has some support from conservative elements within the country and retains the support of many in his party. Inside, some pro-Yoon demonstrators braved the cold “waving South Korean and American flags while chanting slogans vowing to protect him,” according to the Associated Press.
❧ China built another cool new train. The CR450 bullet train, whose prototype was revealed in Beijing last week, is capable of reaching speeds of 450 kilometers (281 miles) per hour making it the fastest train in the world (and surpassing another train, also in China). If such a train were to be put on the tracks in America, it could carry riders from Miami to New York City in about 4 ½ hours. But alas, compared with China’s more than 25,000 miles of high speed rail, the U.S. does not yet have a single line capable of carrying passengers faster than 125 mph, though lines are under construction in California and Nevada and being planned in other parts of the country. (CNN Travel)
Manmade wonders beyond Americans’ comprehension. (Video: Mint News)
CROOKS vs. SICKOS vs. THE OCCASIONAL DECENT PERSON (or, “What are our politicians and oligarchs up to?”)
❧ Bernie Sanders has joined the influential Senate Finance Committee. Among other things, the committee plays a key role in setting Social Security and Medicare policy, and Sanders is expected to use his new position to push for expansions to both, along with removing caps on taxable income to bring Social Security more revenue. (The Hill)
❧ The Federal Elections Commission has accused Patagonia—the purveyor of overpriced winter wear—of making $1.4 million in illegal “straw donations” to Democratic candidates. They allegedly used a cutout group called Save our Home Planet Action to funnel $1.4 million to various Super PACs supporting Kamala Harris and congressional Democrats at the federal and state level, as well as the League of Conservation Voters Victory Fund. It would not actually be illegal for Patagonia to simply give money to these organizations directly. (Though it should be!) But the use of a shell organization to obscure funding would run afoul of election law. It may be tempting to look the other way when dark money is used for environmentalist purposes. But perhaps the greatest perpetrators of dark money spending have been in the fossil fuel industry, so cracking down on it would certainly be a net good for the environment. (The Intercept)
It seems some people have, uh, vested interests they’re not disclosing. (Image: Patagonia)
❧ In the final months of his administration, the Biden Justice Department has adopted a new policy of going softer on corporate crime, allowing companies who engage in criminal behavior to avoid prosecution if they “make good faith efforts” to come clean and pay damages. The DOJ gave the infamous consulting firm McKinsey & Company a sweetheart deal, allowing the firm to defer prosecution for its role in helping Purdue Pharma “turbocharge” the sale of highly addictive and deadly opioids. Prosecutors have accused McKinsey of “knowingly destroying records, documents, and tangible objects with the intent to impede, obstruct, and influence the investigation,” and a senior partner has pled guilty of doing just that. As the Lever noted in its reporting, “Many top Biden officials have previously received paychecks from the consulting firm.”
❧ In the Nation, Cold War historian Phillip Deery argues that Ethel Rosenberg— executed for espionage alongside her husband Julius in 1953—should be posthumously pardoned by Joe Biden in the final days of his presidency. Documents declassified in August reveal that the National Security Agency had concluded that Rosenberg was not a Soviet spy. However, she was executed anyway. “Now is the time for an historic injustice to be redressed,” Deery writes. “Now is the time for Joe Biden to issue a full exoneration or, at the least, a presidential pardon of Ethel Rosenberg. Truth and justice will thereby be served.”
Elephants are widely regarded as some of nature’s most intelligent creatures. But they also seem to have a great sense of humor.
In November, a video went viral showing a pair of Asian elephants at the Berlin Zoo. As part of a study into what the animals could do with tools, researchers taught an elephant named Mary to shower herself using a garden hose, a move she quickly mastered.
This is intriguing enough, but we haven’t even gotten to Mary’s roommate, Anchali the elephant. Anchali used her trunk to put a kink in the hose, stopping the water flow. She later performed what researchers called a “trunkstand,” placing her trunk over the hose and then lowering her body onto it to obstruct the flow. (Elephants at the zoo are trained not to step directly onto the hose during baths, so the researchers believed that Anchali had thought up a clever loophole.)
It appeared that Anchali was attempting to sabotage Mary’s shower, which raised the question of whether elephants played similar pranks on one another in the wild. That question warrants more research, but they sure seem to have a penchant for mischief. In fact, there are multiple videos online where an elephant uses its trunk to swipe a tourist’s hat, and pretends to eat it or puts it on its head before giving it back:
There’s also this delightful video of a baby elephant tickling the ear of a reporter while on air:
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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