Have YOU tried the Current Affairs News Briefing? 

You’ve probably noticed that this article is dated for yesterday, March 28. That’s because it’s an edition of the Current Affairs News Briefing, our email newsletter service. Every week, we pore over the world’s news outlets—from Le Monde, to the Kathmandu Post, to the Atlanta Black Star—and compile the most important and amusing stories that aren’t being covered by the corporate media. Then we email them all directly to you for just $5 a month. It’s a bit like the news briefing the President gets every morning, except for good people. So, as a free sample, here’s the briefing that went out yesterday—and if you like what you see, why not subscribe today? 

AROUND THE STATES

❧  The MAGA crusade against free speech escalated in a horrifying way this week with ICE’s arrest of a Turkish doctoral student, Rumeysa Ozturk, from Tufts University. A surveillance video shows a group of plain-clothed ICE officers in black hoodies and face coverings grabbing Ozturk on the street and restraining her while she screams in confusion. She was handcuffed and dragged into the back of an unmarked van. According to ICE records, she was whisked away to a detention facility in Louisiana.

What crime did Ozturk—a legal resident of the United States on a student visa—commit to warrant this, you ask? According to the Department of Homeland Security, she “engaged in activities in support of Hamas.” What evidence do they have for this? She co-wrote an op-ed in the Tufts student newspaper calling for her university to divest from companies with ties to Israel and “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide.” The op-ed’s writers also said they affirmed the support for “equal dignity and humanity of all people.” Writing an op-ed calling for a boycott is an unquestionable example of constitutionally protected speech to which even non-citizens are entitled. It’s something we at this magazine do every day—and apparently the only reason we’ve not yet been disappeared by armed goons is that we are American citizens.

But the Trump administration is deliberately pushing the envelope to see how far they can erode the idea of due process. “Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas,” said Secretary of State Marco Rubio this week, bragging that he had already taken away the legal status of more than 300 people. (This week, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was involved in a blood-curdling photo op in front of the Salvadoran labor prison where the administration sent accused “gang members,” without trial, even though many are likely innocent.)

Abducting people off the street because of their speech is not how a free country operates. When foreign countries do it, we rightly condemn them as dystopian, authoritarian hellscapes. It is now happening in America, and though the attack has begun with immigrants for supporting Palestinians, it’s only a matter of time before it is escalated to target anyone who speaks out in protest of any Trump administration policy. It is the duty of all of us, but especially those of us who enjoy the safety provided by our U.S. citizenship, to speak up for those who cannot afford to speak for themselves.

In other news…

• A homeless person, Joe Molloy, is running for mayor in Seattle. Molloy became homeless after losing their job and being evicted during the pandemic, an experience they say has made them realize the city needs to tackle its homelessness crisis “head on” with policies like a guaranteed living wage and access to healthcare. (The Guardian)

(Image: Joe Molloy for Mayor)

•  In New York City, another mayoral candidate, democratic socialist (and recent Current Affairs interviewee!) Zohran Mamdani is running on an ambitious policy to create government-run grocery stores to tackle rising food prices from profiteering supermarket chains. While it may sound radical, it’s an idea that has been done in multiple other cities, and Mamdani is now second in the polls. (The New Republic)
• Texas Governor Greg Abbott has declared war on furries! Spurred on by a now three-year-old internet hoax about children using “litter boxes” in schools, he is supporting a piece of GOP legislation, known as the “Furries Act,” that would ban children from role-playing as animals. Teachers would be fined if they don’t punish students for doing things like “meowing”, “wearing leashes” and “licking oneself or others”… In other words, playing make-believe. Thankfully, Texas doesn’t have any other political issues whatsoever, so the Governor’s time can be used for this very important crusade. (Pink News) 

CURRENT-EST AFFAIRS

What’s new in the magazine this week?

Tom Williams explores how the cryptocurrency industry bought Washington.

Kyle Kulinski of Secular Talk teams up with Nathan J. Robinson to take down Batya Ungar-Sargon’s myth of the “MAGA Lefty”.

Animal rights journalist Spencer Roberts takes a deep dive into why “'Sustainable Fishing' is a Lie”.

Stephen Prager discusses how Jeffrey Goldberg betrayed the tenets of journalism by abandoning the Trump cabinet’s leaked Signal chat.

Jennifer Dines gives a compelling firsthand account of “Teaching in a ‘Sanctuary City’ Under Siege” by Donald Trump and his ICE lackeys.

AROUND THE WORLD

❧ Protesters have taken to the streets across Turkey after Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, who happens to be a top rival of President Erdoğan, was jailed. İmamoğlu was on track to win his party’s primary and become Erdoğan’s opponent in Turkey’s next presidential election, but on March 19, armed officers showed up at his apartment and hauled him off to jail on allegations of corruption, bribery, and leading a criminal network, charges he says “lack credible evidence.” He is also under attack for his alleged support for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which recently reached a ceasefire with Turkey after a 40-year insurgency.

İmamoğlu's arrest is a barely disguised act of political persecution—the kind Erdoğan has wielded countless times as he’s consolidated his autocratic power over Turkey. In response, tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets in the largest outpouring of protest in more than a decade. Erdoğan has described the protesters as “evil” and his authorities have arrested more than 1,400 people, including journalists, while Turkish state TV has instituted a blackout on coverage of the protests. Still, the opposition has remained out in the streets, and the protests have gained worldwide attention, in part due to some demonstrators’ creative getup: 

It’s hard to watch Pikachu flee Turkish police and not become at least somewhat intrigued by what’s going on. (GIF: Times of India)

❧ As it continues full steam ahead with its ethnic cleansing of Palestine, Israel hosted an “International Conference on Combating Antisemitism” in Jerusalem this week. Unfortunately for them, the conference ended up falling apart because many of the invitees were actual antisemites from far-right parties in Europe. These attendees included Jordan Bardella, president of the far-right French National Rally party, which was founded by Holocaust denier Jean-Marie Le Pen (his even more extreme granddaughter was also there) as well as leaders from similarly far-right parties in Sweden and Spain which have direct ties to neo-Nazi groups. As a result, many Jewish attendees wound up pulling out of the conference in disgust.

It may seem counterintuitive for the leader of a Jewish state to welcome such nasty characters with open arms, to a conference against antisemitism no less, but as Em Hilton explains in the Israeli paper Haaretz: 

There is a clear method to this madness: far-right politicians have meetings and photo-ops with Israeli politicians to distract or absolve their historic antisemitism and recast themselves as the protectors of Jews against the “real” threat facing Jews and wider Europe: namely Muslim communities and migrants from the Middle East. Israel, in the meantime, is happy to create alliances with whomever will allow them to continue their expansionist and oppressive policies in Gaza, in the West Bank, and in East Jerusalem.

In other news…

• Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro will go on trial for his attempt to violently overturn the election of his left-wing rival President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. (BBC)
• In the West African country of Sierra Leone, politicians are debating legalizing abortion because too many women and girls are endangering their lives trying to terminate pregnancies on the black market. (ABC)
• One of the Indian subcontinent’s most elusive big cats, the caracal, is making a comeback after being “lost” for nearly 20 years! (The Better India)

The caracal’s most striking feature is its amazing ears, which it loves to flop around in circles. For this reason, perhaps the most famous caracal is the oft-memed cat nicknamed “Big Floppa.” (Video: The Big Cat Sanctuary)

CARACAL OF THE WEEK

Speaking of caracals, they are also native to the Middle East, where they are commonly known as the “desert lynx” or “Egyptian lynx.” And right now one caracal is being lauded as a hero in Egypt after she broke into an Israeli military base and “bit several soldiers,” as Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority described it. 

(Photo: The Israel Wildlife Hospital)

The cat, who reportedly “arrived in a poor physical state,” was captured and taken to a wildlife sanctuary, where she was photographed sleeping. Caracals are not known to attack people, which has led many to take it as a sign of the cat’s fierce moral opposition to the IDF’s occupation of Palestine. One Egyptian newspaper ran an article titled, “From mice to Egyptian caracals, the animal kingdom attacks the Israeli occupation army.”  Memes celebrating the caracal’s act of resistance have flooded Arabic social media. 

(Tweet from @AhadSoab)

One user, who identified himself as a Palestinian surgeon and musician, said, “It's not commonly aggressive towards humans. It made an excellent judgment call.”

CROOKS vs. SICKOS (Or, “What are our politicians and oligarchs up to?")

❧ President Trump just launched the biggest attack on organized labor America has seen in decades. On Thursday, he signed an executive order instructing many government agencies to end their recognition of federal unions and cease collective bargaining with them. The agencies who will have their union contracts shredded include the Department of Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, State, Energy, the Treasury, Justice, and the Environmental Protection Agency, and others. There are more than a million workers represented by various federal unions, and most of them have had their unions taken away overnight. America’s biggest federal union, the American Federation of Government Employees, has denounced the order as “bullying” and immediately launched a lawsuit.

Trump has used vague concerns about so-called “national security” to justify the decision, but has made clear that this is part of an ideological crusade, saying that these unions “have declared war on President Trump’s agenda.” As labor journalist Hamilton Nolan writes for his newsletter How Things Work, this attack on unions will not end here, since Republicans explicitly do not want unions to exist. They will come for all public sector unions and private sector unions too, unless people resist it:

The point of the labor movement is to give working people power. That is what unions do. The unions of America purport to be powerful. If we imagine that all of our power is dependent on the kindness of the president—and that it therefore can be wiped away in one day, because a particular president is willing to stretch the wording of the law as far as his imagination will let him—then we were just bluffing the whole time. In that case, we never really had power at all. We were lying to all of the working people who believed that solidarity would produce a sort of power that was not a polite request, but an inherent fact. Do unions have power, or not? If they do, the time to exercise that power is now.

In other news…

• Private airlines are getting rich by carrying out Trump’s deportation flights. After the GOP’s $485 million hike for ICE’s budget, many are about to see even greater windfalls. (Jacobin)
• DOGE is claiming to “save” the government money, but mass layoffs of IRS employees have led them to drop investigations into high-value corporations. IRS and Treasury employees estimate that the government will bring in $500 billion less revenue than the year before. (Washington Post)
• Trump has spent the week throwing a fit over an incredibly goofy-looking portrait of him in the Colorado state house, which he called “purposefully distorted.” The state GOP has seen that it will be taken down and replaced with a more flattering image. (Associated Press)

Even though this portrait was commissioned in 2019, it is a sort of prescient forbearer to the unsettlingly rotund images of J.D. Vance that have become a viral meme in recent weeks…you know the ones. (Photo: Denverist)

GORILLA FACT OF THE WEEK

Gorillas sing special “food songs” when they eat!

Food-related noises have been documented in other primates, like bonobos and orangutans, but they were only recently discovered in gorillas. According to New Scientist, a German primatologist, Eva Leuf, observed gorillas in the jungles of the Congo in 2016 and documented that, while enjoying a meal, they would make “a series of short, differently pitched notes that sounds a little like someone humming a random melody.” Leuf noted that “They don’t sing the same song over and over. It seems like they are composing their little food songs.” In 2020, PBS caught it on camera for the first time:

Video: Nature on PBS

 The songs aren’t random, nor is the singing confined to wild gorillas. At the Toronto Zoo, one zookeeper says the singing is so distinct that “Each gorilla has its own voice: you can really tell who’s singing” and that “if it’s their favorite food, they sing louder.”

Art by Jesse Rubenfeld from Current Affairs Magazine, Issue 46, January/February 2024