CROOKS vs. SICKOS (Or, “What’s going on with our politicians and oligarchs?”)
Elon Musk has tweeted a recommendation to the congressional GOP for who he’d like to see as Senate Majority Leader: Rick Scott (R-FL), who’s mostly known for wanting to slash Medicare and Social Security funding, along with the time he ran a massively fraudulent private hospital company. If Scott gets in, it would be a disaster for everyone’s grandparents and their prescription bills—but his rivals, Senators John Thune (R-ND) and John Cornyn (R-TX), aren’t a whole lot better. (The Hill)
Unfortunately, Scott is every bit as bad as his creepy grin implies. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
❧ Trump has made several cabinet picks over the past few days. Despite attempts to frame himself as some sort of peacenik, Trump’s foreign policy picks are a who’s who of the same sort of neocons that dominated his first administration:
Trump has tapped his one-time adversary “Lil’ Marco” Rubio to be his Secretary of State. One of the biggest war hawks in the Senate, Rubio has advocated for direct confrontation with Iran, supported Netanyahu’s slaughter of Palestinians to the hilt, advocated for even more hostility towards China, helped Trump implement a more intense blockade on Cuba, and even suggested he’d support a regime change operation in Venezuela. Perennial disappointment Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) has also indicated he will vote to confirm Rubio.
Time heals all conflicts, apparently. (Headline: Slate)
Rep. Mike Waltz, (R-FL) Trump’s pick for National Security Advisor, is a former advisor to Bush appointees Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates. He’s a near Xerox of Rubio, though probably even more extreme towards China (calling them an “existential threat” to America and saying we need to “make significant investments in our own readiness” to face China’s military). He’s also a bit more skeptical of U.S. support for Ukraine, saying European powers need to foot more of the bill.
As ambassador to the United Nations, Trump has picked another House Republican, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY). Her biggest claim to fame is leading last year’s McCarthyite congressional hearings designed to intimidate university presidents into cracking down harder on their students’ pro-Palestine speech. Expect her to block any U.N. resolution that is even mildly critical of Israel, even more than the United States already does.
Trump appointed some other positions as well:
Tom Homan, the former head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a Project 2025 co-author, and one of the architects of Trump’s unconscionable family separation policy is his pick for “border czar.” And he seems positively giddy to launch the “biggest deportation force this country has ever seen,” pledging to raid workplaces nationwide. This time, he says that “Families can be deported together,” which some have interpreted to mean that American citizens who are the children of undocumented immigrants may be deported as well.
Dogs beware! South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has been chosen to lead Trump’s Department of Homeland Security. She’ll presumably be all-in on Trump’s mass deportation plan. But DHS handles more than just immigration—it deals with emergency responses too, and Noem is about the worst person you could put in charge of that. She was famously opposed to wearing masks at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and sent disaster response money to fight migrants at the border rather than help her own constituents with flood recovery. She also got banned from tribal lands in her state after baselessly accusing Native American tribes of helping drug cartels.
Trump has also tapped former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee to be the United States Ambassador to Israel, a role he has no discernible qualifications for.
Finally, Trump has named former New York congressman Lee Zeldin to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. He has made clear that he does not care an ounce about the climate crisis, and has pledged to roll back anti-pollution and energy efficiency measures put in place during the Biden administration.
Republicans are on the verge of officially securing a House majority, with 214 of the necessary 218 seats having been called by the Associated Press as of Tuesday morning. But the GOP could be operating with an equally slim, if not slimmer majority, than in the current Congress. It will be a caucus of people who already hate each other. And while Trump tends to have a sedative effect on intra-party squabbling, he has already decided to shrink their coalition further by poaching two members for his cabinet. So while it is frightening that Trump will operate with a legislative trifecta, he will at least have to deal with the challenge of getting basically all the most annoying, egotistical, and petty people in the world to agree. This will be no easy feat. (Wall Street Journal)
Map: Google, Data: Associated Press
A bipartisan group of legislators is already working to give Trump a new tool that he can use to crush dissent when he comes back into the White House. They are planning to fast-track a bill that would give the Department of the Treasury authority to revoke the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit deemed to be a “terrorist supporting organization.” It does not require officials to explain why a group has been designated as terrorists, nor does it require the Treasury Dept. to provide any evidence that a nonprofit supports them. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a Republican who will likely vote against the bill, says, he’s “not aware of any limitations” in the legislation. The most obvious target for legislation like this is any group that expresses support for Palestinians, as they are frequently smeared as “Hamas supporters” and have been targeted as such by federal law enforcement even for constitutionally protected speech. But it’s easy to imagine how the Trump administration, which has pledged to root out political opponents, could use this to attack any group that opposes him by labeling them “terrorists.” (The Intercept)
The Kamala Harris campaign raised over $1 billion over three months of existence. Not only did they burn through all of it, but anonymous sources told NewsNation they're now $20 million in debt, leaving vendors and staff unsure if they will be paid. Through FEC filings, reporters have unearthed that among other things, the Harris campaign spent roughly $15 million on “event production,” including a town hall hosted by Oprah Winfrey and several star-studded concerts. (Oprah has denied receiving $1 million from the campaign, which is technically true; the filings show that it was her Harpo Productions company, not her personally, that got two $500,000 payments.) They also spent $450,000 per day to project “Harris/Walz” ads on the Sphere in Las Vegas. In the aftermath of Harris’s humiliating election defeat, her campaign immediately began shaking down supporters for more money to finance a “Fight Fund” designed to pay for legal challenges in House and Senate races that were yet to be called.
Ah yes, money well spent. Good thing there isn't a cost-of-living crisis,
Because there’s apparently no depth of corruption or depravity that will permanently end your political career in America, disgraced former representative Anthony Weiner—who went to prison in 2017 for texting pictures of his, uh, wiener to a minor—is attempting to make a comeback in the Democratic primaries for New York City Council. What a country, what a party! (City & State New York)
Guess who’s back, back again. Weiner’s back, warn a friend.
The COP29 climate summit is underway in Baku, Azerbaijan. The talks are already hamstrung by the fact that many of the globe’s biggest polluters—including the U.S., China, India, and Indonesia—did not send their leaders to the summit, and just like last year in Dubai, Azerbaijani officials have been caught using the occasion to arrange fossil fuel deals. The summit’s central topic is climate financing, and so far, the world’s top banks agreed to increase funding for poorer countries. The diplomats settled on a scheme for “carbon credit” trading, which allows countries to pollute provided they pay to offset that pollution by planting trees or paying for green energy projects in other parts of the globe. Many scientists and activists have criticized this policy as merely an excuse for the richest countries, who can afford to buy credits, to keep polluting at the expense of everybody else.
Citing Donald Trump’s election victory, Qatar has pulled out of its role in attempting to mediate a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Trump has promised to let Israel “finish what they started,” with no restrictions on its conduct, meaning that Netanyahu now has even less incentive to negotiate in good faith than he did under Biden. (BBC)
Cuba really can’t catch a break! They’ve just been hit with a pair of earthquakes, one with a magnitude of 5.9 and another with 6.8 on the Richter scale. This comes on top of the hurricanes and blackouts that have been plaguing the country for the past few months, and makes it all the more urgent for President Biden to end the blockade and remove Cuba from the “sponsors of terror” list in his last months in office. (Miami Herald)
An animal welfare group in Indonesia has submitted legislation to end the nation’s notoriously brutal dog and cat meat trades. If successful, they’d join five other countries in Asia that have outlawed this industry. (World Animal News)
Vladimir Putin’s government is reportedly considering creating a “ministry of sex” to reverse the country’s population decline, which has been exacerbated by the high death toll among young men in the Ukraine war. The proposed ministry’s initiatives range from the wacky—including turning off lights and internet service after 10 PM so people have nothing to do but sex—to genuinely good ideas like paying women for doing housework and other domestic labor. Still, anything involving the Putin regime and people’s private lives seems a bit creepy. (Hindustan Times)
AROUND THE STATES
Two New Jersey prison guards have been sentenced to prison themselves, for their role in arranging so-called “going away parties” where inmates would be assaulted shortly before their release. Officers Joshua Hand and John Makos reportedly “orchestrated the assaults and recruited other inmates to carry out the assaults,” which included beatings with fists and broomsticks and “took place in areas of the prison’s kitchen out of sight of surveillance cameras.” It’s good that these particular guards have been brought to justice, but there needs to be a nationwide investigation into how common this kind of thing is, and it needs to be stopped everywhere, not just in New Jersey. (Law & Crime)
Defending his title as the Worst Governor in America, Louisiana’s Jeff Landry has gone out of his way to make sure a live tiger would be crammed in a metal cage and paraded around as a mascot at last weekend’s LSU vs. Alabama college football game. Landry previously wanted a local tiger called Mike to be the mascot, but his keepers at LSU refused, pointing out that being shouted at by thousands of football fans is stressful for animals—so Landry personally arranged for a different tiger called Omar Bradley to be transported from Florida, where his keeper has been cited for animal abuse in the past. Shouldn’t a governor have, you know, real issues to work on? (Times-Picayune)
LSU veterinary medicine students protest Landry’s latest stunt.
In more positive Jeff Landry news, a federal judge has overturned the law he signed back in June which required every Louisiana teacher to display the Ten Commandments in their classroom. Louisiana’s Attorney General Liz Murrill promises to appeal the decision—but hey, maybe the real Ten Commandments was the money we funneled to conservative law firms along the way. (Times-Picayune)
Wisconsin’s Supreme Court just heard oral arguments on whether to allow the state’s 1849 abortion ban to stand. The law went into effect following the overturn of Roe v. Wade, but was blocked by a county judge. The court leans liberal for the first time in a decade and a half, and its judges seem quite skeptical of the archaic law, which does not allow exceptions for rape or incest—only to protect the life of a mother. One telling interaction, reported in the Washington Post went as follows:
“Just to be clear, a 12-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted by her father and as a result became pregnant, she would be forced to carry her pregnancy to term, correct?” Justice Jill Karofsky, a Democrat, asked the team defending the 1849 law.
“That would be correct,” attorney Matthew Thome responded.
Undocumented workers may no longer have protections if they come forward with workplace violations. During the Biden administration, rules were put in place that gave them temporary protections if they testified in state cases related to wage theft or other labor law violations. California—a state with a huge number of undocumented workers—used this program to apply for protection for more than 200 people. However, with the Trump administration coming back into power, undocumented workers will likely no longer have this protection, which will allow their employers to use the threat of deportation to keep them silent. (Cal Matters)
In honor of Veterans Day, the Maryland National Guard posthumously granted the title of brigadier general to Harriet Tubman. The famed abolitionist is best known for leading more than 70 slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad. But she also served as a nurse, spy, and scout for the Union Army, making her America’s first Black female combat soldier. (Washington Post)
Drawing by J.C. Darby, from Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman
Well, some of them can, anyway. These motorized hounds are shelter dogs at the Auckland SPCA, and they’ve been trained to operate the pedals, gearshift, and steering wheels of specially-modified cars that tootle along at only a few miles per hour. They start with wooden carts pulled along on a rope by their trainers, then—if things go well—graduate to a circular racetrack, where they make turns better than plenty of human drivers we could name. Check out the video below:
It’s all part of an effort to show how smart and adaptable shelter dogs are, and to drum up a little publicity to find them homes. The program started in 2012, when a collie named Porter and a schnauzer named Monty became the world’s first driving dogs, and it was still going on as recently as 2022. If you happen to live in Auckland and need a very slow designated driver, the Auckland SPCA’s website is here.
He's going the distance, he's going for speed. (Image: DOGO News)
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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