On the heels of his suicidally reckless decision to allow Ukraine to fire U.S.-made long-range missiles into Russia, President Biden has also agreed to supply the Ukrainian military with antipersonnel land mines. These horrifying weapons are banned in more than 160 countries, including Ukraine, which is a signatory to the 1997 Ottawa Convention—although the U.S. is not. And it’s easy to see why: land mines don’t know if they’re being stepped on by an armed soldier, or by a child or a dog, but they’ll blow them to bits just the same. This is just completely indefensible.
These should not be deployed anywhere in the world, ever. They shouldn’t even be made. (Image: U.S. National Archives via Picryl)
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant of Israel, along with Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif (who may no longer be alive), for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The 124 nations who have signed onto the treaty creating the ICC are now obligated to turn over any of these men should they happen to enter into their jurisdiction.
Israel is not a signatory to the ICC, so it’s unlikely that either of these men will actually be turned in anytime soon. They are also presumably free to visit the U.S., which refuses to recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction (Though they may want to stay out of Dearborn, Michigan, whose mayor vowed to have Bibi arrested if he ever paid a visit.) The U.S. has even sanctioned Hague officials in the past for attempting to investigate military and CIA war crimes during the War on Terror. Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) even made the deranged threat to invoke America’s “Hague Invasion Act,” which is a real thing, in response to this ruling.
While Netanyahu and Gallant likely won’t find themselves in the dock any time soon, this ruling further isolates Israel from the rest of the world and could complicate weapons sales between it and European allies like Germany, who are forbidden from providing weapons that may be used to commit atrocities.
Maybe someday…
Brazil’s disgraced former president Jair Bolsonaro and 36 of his associates have been indicted for attempting to overturn his loss in the 2022 election. Bolsonaro was previously barred from running for office until 2030 by Brazil’s Supreme Court but continues to insist on standing in the 2026 election regardless—he and his followers are apparently emboldened by Trump’s win under remarkably similar circumstances. This indictment, and others he faces for alleged diamond smuggling and faking his vaccine status, will make this quite a bit more challenging. (Associated Press)
The Pacific island nation of Tuvalu is on track to be the first country on Earth to become completely submerged due to climate change. According to international law, a nation needs a “defined territory” to maintain its sovereignty. But there’s no requirement that this territory be a physical piece of land. So, as the prospects of Tuvalu’s survival become more and more dim with each passing year due to the total global failure to pursue meaningful climate action, it has turned to a rather unnerving solution: recreating a digital version of the island in the metaverse. According to the BBC:
As the physical reality of the nation slips beneath the ocean, the government is building a digital copy of the country, backing up everything from its houses to its beaches to its trees. It hopes this virtual replica will preserve the nation's beauty and culture – as well as the legal rights of its 11,000 citizens – for generations to come.
In 2022, for the COP 27 climate summit, Tuvalu’s Simon Kofe gave a speech from inside an unfinished digital version of the island, urging the world to “take bold and alternative action today” to halt climate change. (Video: Simon Kofe on YouTube)
CROOKS vs. SICKOS (Or, “What's going on with our politicians and oligarchs?”)
Donald Trump has nominated Linda McMahon for the role of Secretary of Education. If McMahon’s name sounds familiar, it’s probably because she was a Republican candidate for Senate in 2010 and 2012—although she could never quite seal the deal electorally—and one of the co-founders of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), along with her husband Vince McMahon, from whom she’s now separated. Both Vince and Linda have been named in a sexual abuse lawsuit, which alleges they ignored the sexual exploitation of “ring boys” as young as 12 and 13 by a WWE announcer in the 1980s—an accusation they’ve denied. By itself, this murky past makes it troubling that McMahon could now be placed in a position of authority over the nation’s schools and universities, and would be making decisions about things like Title IX protections against abuse and harassment. But she also has very little in the way of actual educational experience, having never worked as a teacher and only served for roughly a year on the Connecticut Board of Education (where she claimed to have a teaching degree but didn’t.)
Still, none of that has stopped her from having strong opinions about education, which she wants to privatize through taxpayer-funded “vouchers” that would encourage parents to “choose” private charter or religious schools. (For a detailed explanation of why that’s an awful idea, check out this Current Affairs article from 2016.) Trump says he wants to end the Department of Education outright, and McMahon is the perfect person to accomplish that task, as she’s both obviously unqualified for her job and ideologically opposed to providing decent public education in the first place. Like Elon Musk, she’s yet another billionaire trying to dismantle basic services that nearly everyone relies on.
Bah gawd, that's the Secretary of Education's music!
After being named as Trump’s Attorney General, Former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz withdrew himself from consideration on Thursday. The swirl of sexual assault and sex trafficking suspicion around Gaetz had simply become too much of, in his words “a distraction.” Gaetz appeared fine to forge ahead for the AG job despite a House Ethics report into allegations of untoward relationships— including one with an underage girl—which Republicans did their damnedest to ensure never saw the light of day. But ABC News unearthed records from the probe detailing more than $10,000 in Venmo and PayPal payments from Gaetz to two other adult women, who testified that they were paid in exchange for sex. Even for someone as notoriously shameless as Gaetz—who previously insisted that this was nothing more than “generosity to ex-girlfriends”—this was too much to bear.
Whom amongst us has not paid a friend simply for “being awesome” or “just because?”
Trump has already named a new nominee for Attorney General, Pam Bondi. She served as one of his lawyers during his first impeachment trial in 2019. She previously served as Florida’s attorney general, and as a lobbyist for Amazon, General Motors, Uber, and the Qatari government, according to the New York Times (“Drain the swamp!”). Bondi’s bond with Trump appears to have been forged through blatant corruption on his behalf: In 2013, when Trump University came under scrutiny for fraud, the Trump Foundation made an illegal $25,000 payment to a political group backing Bondi. After this, Bondi’s office chose not to pursue the investigation into Trump, despite nearly two dozen complaints about his business in the state.
Regrettably, we must once again tell you about the “Department of Government Efficiency.”A new Wall Street Journal op-ed from Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk gives us a bit more insight about how D.O.G.E. will work. A few key points:
It will rely on recent Supreme Court decisions for its authority—including this year’s Loper Bright decision and 2022’s West Virginia v. EPAdecisions, which both restricted the ability of federal agencies to make rules based on federal statutes.
They will attempt to revive the president’s ability to impound funds appropriated by Congress, which was curtailed by a 1974 law.
They sidestep the question of whether they intend to go after entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. (Though Musk has strongly implied that they will with his comments about how Americans need to endure “temporary hardship.”)
They do acknowledge that they intend to cut funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Planned Parenthood, which they call “progressive groups.”
And they plan to carry out “mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy” by identifying “the minimum number of employees required at an agency.” (Look to Musk’s stewardship of X for an indication of how mass-firings like this tend to work out.)
A piece by John L. Dorman and Alice Tecotzky in Business Insider breaks down many of these key points in more detail.
CURRENT-EST AFFAIRS
A centrist Democratic congresswoman, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, is being floated as the future of the Democratic Party. She gained notoriety for introducing the “Banana Act,” which spawned from a claim that “burdensome regulations” were preventing Washington daycare employees from serving fresh fruit to kids. But, Nathan J. Robinson looked into her story and found that no such regulation actually exists. So why is a congresswoman lying about bananas?
In an utterly predictable piece of pointless cruelty, House Republicans have introduced a rule to ban transgender people from using the restrooms that match their gender on Capitol Hill. The rule is targeted specifically at Representative Sarah McBride (D-DE), the first trans member of Congress—but unfortunately, McBride’s response hasn’t been great. She has announced that she’ll abide by the transphobic rule, and says that she’s “not here to fight about bathrooms,” but to “bring down costs facing families.” As journalist Erin Reed writes, McBride’s quiet compliance may mean that “similar laws in state legislatures could gain traction as ‘acceptable compromise,’” and trans organizers are furious, saying that “she should be using [her] power to defend and protect her community, not falling in line.” (The Guardian)
Rahm Emanuel, who may soon become the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee, has spent the Biden years getting rich from his position as ambassador to Japan. As Daniel Boguslaw reports for the American Prospect:
Periodic transaction reports filed with the Office of Governmental Ethics over the past two years suggest that Chicago’s golden boy may be better served returning to his roots on Wall Street, given the six-figure trades he executed at highly opportune moments in U.S.-Japanese trade relations.
Among the millions of dollars of stock trades Emanuel conducted between 2021 and 2024 while serving as ambassador, one purchase jumps out. On September 29, 2023, Emanuel bought between $250,000 and $500,000 worth of stocks in CoreWeave, a leading AI cloud computing service […]
“There is a disease in Washington of Democrats who spend more time listening to the donor class than working people,” New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted last week in response to reports that Emanuel is considering a bid for DNC chair. “If you want to know the seed of the party’s political crisis, that’s it. The DNC needs an organizer who gets people. Not someone who sends fish heads in the mail.”
(In case you are wondering, no, this is not just a rhetorical flourish by AOC… Rahm Emmanuel did once send his political rival a dead fish in the mail, Godfather style.)
Speaking of Ocasio-Cortez, she just voted for a House resolution labeling many legitimate criticisms of Israel “antisemitic.” The resolution endorses the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s “working definition of antisemitism,” which—in addition to actual heinous examples of anti-Jewish bigotry like Holocaust denial, includes “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” “applying double standards” to Israel, or “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.” A spokesman for AOC, Mike Casca, was quick to point out that the resolution is “non-binding,” which is true. But he also blatantly lied, saying that the resolution “simply stated that the IHRA definition exists,” when it actually calls for “endorsing and embracing” the guidelines that include the false definition.
After Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan Robinson pointed out on Twitter that Casca was lying, Casca decided to act like a petulant jerk and accused our magazine of “trying to profit from anti-AOC outrage.” … We’re a non-profit, so this is not true either. (Screenshot: Twitter)
In fairness to AOC, this is not an easy position for any legislator to be in. The resolution also included language condemning “an increase of antisemitic rhetoric and acts around the world,” which is absolutely worthy of condemnation. By voting no, AOC would have been left open to disingenuous claims that she “refused to condemn antisemitism,” even if she only objected to the IHRA definition. But that’s still not a good excuse — after all, her “Squad” colleagues—Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, and Ilhan Omar—were self-assured enough to take this heat and responded much more effectively, making very clear statements that they unequivocally oppose antisemitism, but also disagree with the false IHRA definition. By voting yes, AOC has given credence to this mendacious definition of antisemitism, which has been used to justify the silencing and persecution of those who criticize Israel’s overt policy of ethnic cleansing toward Palestinians and also left her colleagues out to dry.
And speaking of silencing and persecuting critics of Israel, the House also just passed a bill that will give the incoming Trump administration unprecedented powers to punish nonprofit groups for their political speech. It will allow the Treasury Department to unilaterally strip the tax-exempt status of organizations deemed to support “terrorism.” There are no guidelines for what constitutes “support for terrorism” within the law, nor will the department be required to provide evidence for why it chooses to strip a non-profit’s status. Groups that criticize Israel’s policy or advocate for Palestinian human rights are frequently smeared as supportive of Hamas, which is a U.S.-designated terror organization. Others have suggested that a Trump administration bent on rooting out “enemies within” America could use a law like this to chill the speech of any nonprofit organization that criticizes him. Still, the bill passed the House with support from 15 Democrats. (The Guardian)
AROUND THE WORLD
The family of Botham Jean, a 26-year-old Dallas man who was killed by a police officer in 2018, was awarded nearly $100 million in damages by a jury this week. Six years ago, Jean was sitting in his home, eating ice cream, and watching TV, when his upstairs neighbor, police officer Amber Guyger entered his apartment by mistake, believing it was her own. Guyger shot Jean, believing him to be a home intruder. She was subsequently found guilty of murder and sentenced to ten years in prison.
Though Jean’s family has been awarded compensation, the New York Times reports that they may never see any of the money. Guyger has very little to pay them, and they’d need to prove that the Dallas Police Department was itself liable in order to get a payout from the city, which successfully filed a motion to be removed from the lawsuit. They were able to do this because, although Guyger was in uniform and armed, she was technically off-duty when the shooting occurred. As the family’s attorney Daryl K. Washington said, the Dallas PD still obviously bears responsibility for Jean’s death: “The city of Dallas hired Amber Guyger. The city of Dallas was responsible for training Amber Guyger on the night that Botham was killed...The city of Dallas, the police officers, protected Amber Guyger. And yet when you have a situation like this, they kick police officers under the bus, and they run away from the liability.”
A conservation group is encouraging Hawaiians not to feed the Big Island’s many feral cats, who threaten the local population of native Nēnē geese. The group Nēnē Research & Conservation has been compiling a “cat map” with crowdsourced data on where colonies of strays live. Cat advocates have urged them not to make the data public, as they fear it could lead the local government to begin efforts to trap and euthanize them. However, as the population of feral cats grows into the hundreds of thousands, the danger they pose to local biodiversity is increasing, putting the goals of each conservation group increasingly at odds. (Honolulu Civil Beat)
Photos: Nēnē Research & Conservation
A Republican group in Indiana is trying to push its GOP-dominated legislature to support legal marijuana. The group, whose spokesman was previously an executive for the Indiana GOP, released an ad this week, saying “It’s time, Indiana — time to tax and regulate marijuana for adults 21 and up, just like alcohol,” and urges viewers to call their congresspeople about it. Indiana’s neighbors—Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio—have all legalized recreational weed for adults. Kentucky has legalized it for medical purposes. (Indiana Capital Chronicle)
WHAT YOU CAN DO
A lot of people are feeling pretty helpless right now. In a time when things feel this bleak, it’s easy to turn inward and retreat from politics and activism altogether. But there are still meaningful things you can do to make a small difference for a person who needs it. It won’t change the world overnight, but it can make it a little more hopeful. As the holidays approach, each briefing will highlight simple actions you can take:
Write a message to an incarcerated person for the holidays!
The group Just Detention has a program, Words of Hope, to deliver holiday greetings to individuals who have survived sexual assaults in prison. Being behind bars can be a profoundly lonely experience, especially for victims of abuse. By sending a letter, you can remind someone that they are not alone.
Four major potato companies—McCain Foods, Cavendish Farms, Lamb Weston and J.R. Simplot—are accused of forming a “potato cartel” that practices “matching” (not “mashing”) price increases on products like frozen french fries and hash browns, otherwise known as price fixing. It’s yet another scandal like the bread price-fixing one our old friend Pete Buttigieg was involved in a few years back, and more evidence for why price controls on foodmight be a good idea. (CBC)
950 physicians and fellows at Rhode Island’s major hospitals are trying to unionize. They seek to join the Committee of Interns and Residents, the largest union of physicians in the country. According to the Providence Journal:
Doctors in residencies say they regularly work 80 hours a week for first-year pay that can amount to as little as $15 per hour. The combination of demanding schedules and inadequate pay has a ripple effect that challenges their ability to treat patients and weakens the overall health care system, doctors say.
BEETLE FACT OF THE WEEK
There’s a “Darth Vader beetle” that kind of looks like him!
The beetle (whose scientific name is Agathidium Vaderi) resembles the Sith Lord in more ways than one: It has a shiny, black shell that resembles his armor and sees the world out of thin slit-like eyes. Quentin Wheeler, the scientist at Cornell who named the bug, explains that it is able to exist with such rigid armor because, “Unlike its relatives, it eats the jelly-like immature slime mold by crawling around in deep leaf litter at high elevations, where it does not need to see or fly.” Wheeler says that the Darth Vader Beetle is his favorite insect.
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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