October 18, 2024 ❧ Betsy DeVos donates millions, Texas prisons ban a book, and Israelis plan to settle Gaza

Plus: The latest from the Pyongyang Times, India builds bullet trains, the death of Yahya Sinwar, and a very ambitious Egyptian dog

News: Part of a balanced breakfast. 

CROOKS vs. SICKOS (Or, “What’s going on with our politicians and oligarchs?”)

❧ As the election draws near, Betsy DeVos and her family are opening the floodgates of “dark money.” You might remember DeVos from the Trump years, when she served as Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education. But what you might not remember is that DeVos is almost as rich as Trump himself. When she joined Trump’s cabinet, DeVos and her husband Dick had an estimated net worth of around $2 billion, and it only climbed from there, with DeVos earning anywhere from $225 million to $414 million in outside income during her time in office. (Not that anyone can really “earn” sums like that, of course.) 

The biggest chunk of that wealth comes from the DeVos family’s share in Amway, the gigantic multi-level marketing company that peddles all kinds of overpriced health and beauty products. (Amway has a video on its YouTube channel reassuring everyone that it’s “Not a Scam, Con, or Bad,” so that’s how you know it’s legit.) Another big chunk of revenue comes from the Orlando Magic, which the DeVoses have owned since 1991. And of course, Betsy Devos is also the sister of Erik Prince, the founder of the Blackwater mercenary company, who has an entire ill-gotten fortune of his own. There are also several lesser-known DeVos siblings involved in things like luxury hotels and venture capital. It’s a whole dynasty of right-wing plutocrats, each more shady than the last. 

DeVos at CPAC in 2017. Things haven’t improved since then. (Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr)

Now, all that money—and the political power that comes with it—is once again being used to boost Donald Trump and the MAGA agenda. As Rose White reports for Michigan’s M Live, the various members of the DeVos clan have donated approximately $12 million to Republican campaigns, super PACs, and nonprofits this election cycle. $2.3 million has gone to the Michigan Freedom Network, a lobbying group that pushes right-to-work legislation and other right-wing economic policies. According to Transparency USA, all five of its top donors have the surname “DeVos.” Another $1 million went to the Sentinel Action Fund, which funds Moms for Safe Neighborhoods, an activist group that claims “Donald Trump is the only candidate willing to deliver” those safe neighborhoods. White’s article lists several other PACs and nonprofits with the amounts they received, including $1 million to AFC Victory Fund—the political funding arm of the American Federation for Children, a group Betsy DeVos herself founded. It champions school privatization (deceptively framed as school “choice,”) an issue DeVos has written an entire book about. There’s also an estimated $3.8 million to “a slate of Republican candidates, committees and causes” at the state level, with donations being targeted in a way Northwestern University economics professor Jeffrey Winters calls “unusually strategic.” It’s a highly efficient money machine, and it’s being used to make America worse in every conceivable way. 

The most worrying part, though, is a smaller donation from a few years ago: roughly $800,000 given by the Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation to something called the Sheriffs Fellowship between the years 2019 and 2022. As M Live journalist Matthew Miller reports, the Fellowship is a project of the far-right Claremont Institute. Its goal is to create a network of “patriotic law enforcement officers” to oppose what the Institute sees as “today’s militant progressivism and multiculturalism”—in other words, to make American police more right-wing than they already are by installing so-called “Constitutional Sheriffs” loyal to Donald Trump and the GOP. The model they have in mind looks a lot like Sheriff Mark Lamb of Texas, who’s known for his aggressively anti-immigrant policing and promotion of Trump’s conspiracy theories about a “stolen election” in 2020. Speaking to M Live, Jessica Pishko—an attorney who’s written a book on sheriffs and their abuses of power—warns that if DeVos and the Claremont Institute get their way, these officers could become “shock troops for Donald Trump’s plan to win no matter what.” That’s a scary thought. 

Just what the country needs: more of this. (Image: Sheriff Mark Lamb)

In other news…

• Representative Jared Golden (D-ME) is trying to rebuild the Blue Dog conservative faction within the Democratic party. According to Politico, Golden wants to act as a “bulwark against the party’s left” and make sure Democrats continue to support fossil fuels. If his name is too hard to remember, you can just call him “Joe Manchin 2,” as they’re essentially the same guy.

Get a load of this guy’s pristine Carhartt vest! (Image: NEWS Center Maine via YouTube)

• Embattled GOP gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, now trailing by more than 13 points in North Carolina, has sued CNN for its reporting on his online posting habits, in which he allegedly called himself a “black NAZI” on a porn site. Robinson claims he was hacked, which would certainly be “big if true,” as the phrase goes. (Associated Press)
  
  
• As Democratic Senate candidates have faced criticism (including from us) over their apparent unwillingness to defend trans people from Republican attacks, Kamala Harris actually mounted a half-decent response to a question from Fox News’ Bret Baier in which she defended the practice of allowing prison inmates to receive gender-affirming care. Colin Allred, take notes! (Erin Reed)
  
  
• A New York Magazine feature by Tess Owen took a look at the “Patriot Wing” of the Washington, D.C. jail, which is full of January 6 rioters awaiting trial and sentencing. “The residents of the wing live under what seem to be conditions of remarkable liberty,” Owen writes, including “the power to curate the population of their cell block, reserving the space for true believers.” And the conditions seem uncommonly cushy for an American jail, with millions of dollars pouring in from sympathetic MAGA donors. “The place often sounded like sleepaway camp,” she writes, as “inmates put on a semi-regular variety show with costumes and props” and even host a podcast using state-supplied tablets.

AROUND THE WORLD

❧ This week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party circulated the invitation to an upcoming event called “Preparing to Settle Gaza,” which will be held near the separation wall between Israel and the besieged Palestinian territory, according to Haaretz. The event will be held by the Nachala Movement, a Jewish settler group that has raised millions of dollars to construct settler outposts in the West Bank. This group’s actions are not only illegal under international law—as is the case with all settlements in the West Bank—but under Israeli law as well. Still, this and other illegal outpost groups have been given money and legal protection by the right-wing Likud government, and now that government is supporting Nachala’s efforts to colonize Gaza.

At least ten Likud Party members in the Israeli Knesset have confirmed to Haaretz that they will attend the event, along with members of Netanyahu’s cabinet—Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich, Amichai Eliyahu, and Yitzhak Wasserlauf. Nachala puts their colonial ambitions in unmistakable terms, saying that “the event is not just a theoretical conference, but a practical exercise and preparation for renewed settlement in Gaza.” 

Ben-Gvir and a group of Nachala settlers march to the illegal settlement of

Evyatar in the West Bank. (Image: Nachala Movement)

For his part, Netanyahu has said that he has no intention to settle Gaza. But that’s a little bit hard to believe when all of his latest actions point to the contrary. He has ordered the mass evacuation of northern Gaza and cut off humanitarian aid for the past two weeks. Other reports from Israeli media reveal that he has considered a “Generals’ Plan” to use starvation to depopulate the north. Retired Major General Giora Eiland, the plan’s main architect put it in stark terms: “They will either have to surrender or to starve,” Eiland said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re going to kill every person,” he said. “It will not be necessary. People will not be able to live there [the north]. The water will dry up.” 

Nachala and the attendees at its settler shindig seem to believe that this is not merely a military strategy. The movement has stated that “the return to settlement in Gaza is no longer just an idea but a process that is already in advanced stages, with government and public support.” Lest there be any doubt about the intent, a poster for the event states, “Gaza is ours. Forever.”

This may come as a surprise to consumers of Western media, who are told over and over that Israel’s military actions are purely defensive and undertaken with reluctance. Earlier this year, an op-ed in the Atlantic by Michael Powell dismissed the portrayal of Israel as a “settler colonial” state as “a trendy academic theory,” and stated that “to single out the Jewish state in this way is to echo ancient and ugly tropes.” If Israel as an expansionist power is merely a “trope” and not a reality, somebody should probably tell Israel, because they have certainly not gotten the memo. 

In other news…

• Israel has also killed Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, during an infantry patrol in southern Gaza. The IDF reportedly engaged with three Hamas fighters in Tal Al-Sultan, before tracking one to an abandoned building, where they fired tank shells and a missile at him—only to discover that it was Sinwar when they examined the body. No hostages or “human shields” were found nearby. 

By itself, killing Sinwar could be considered a reasonable thing for Israel to do. After all, it was him—along with the now-deceased Ismail Haniyeh—who actually planned the October 7 attacks and the taking of hostages. But this wasn’t a targeted operation. The IDF just happened to get lucky in the course of their years-long assault on Gaza and its people. This doesn’t justify that assault, or the killing of tens of thousands of other Palestinians who had nothing to do with Sinwar or Hamas’s acts of violence. Nothing can. (Reuters)

Graphic: Al Jazeera

IT'S INTERVIEW TIME!

Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson recently sat down with California’s KPFA radio to discuss the upcoming U.S. elections, the new book The Myth of American Idealism that he co-wrote with Professor Noam Chomsky, and more. It's a great discussion, and you can check it out here:

• The Canadian Senate has unanimously passed a bill to ban the sterilization of Indigenous women without their consent. This is good news, but it also prompts the question “wait, that was still happening?” Horrifyingly enough, it was, with a case last year where the Royal Canadian Mounted Police refused to investigate a doctor in Yellowknife who sterilized an Inuit woman during a routine surgery for abdominal pain. We can only hope the new legislation will end this appalling practice for good. (APTN)
  
  
• The Dutch government has slashed poverty... by redefining the word “poverty” so fewer people technically count as “poor.” It’s unclear whether all the people without money were encouraged by the news. (NL Times)

• In India, the state-owned firm BEML (formerly Bharat Earth Movers Limited) has announced plans to build the country’s first high-speed bullet trains. The vehicles will be constructed entirely in India at BEML’s Bengaluru plant, and are expected to come online in 2026 with top speeds of up to 280 kilometers per hour (or 174 mph, for our metrically-challenged American readers.) If India—which is still a developing country—can build futuristic public transport like this, why on Earth can’t the U.S. seem to? Oh right, it’s because we have Elon Musk sabotaging any attempt to build high-speed rail and reduce our dependence on cars. We should probably do something about that. (Business Standard)

This image makes Tesla shareholders very uncomfortable. (Image: Todd Lappin via Flickr)

• Jair Bolsonaro’s party wants him to run for president of Brazil again in 2026. After a shambling coup attempt that was somehow even more incompetent than Jan. 6, Bolsonaro was barred from seeking office for eight years by Brazil’s Supreme Court. His party is hoping to once again become the largest in the Senate in the country’s next elections. If that happens, they plan to impeach the justices who issued the ruling and bring Bolsonaro back and presumably destroy what’s left of the Amazon rainforest. (Reuters)

TONAL WHIPLASH AT THE PYONGYANG TIMES

Here at Current Affairs, we’ve long been fascinated by the Pyongyang Times—the English daily newspaper put out by the government of North Korea. The Times is a propaganda outlet (although so are most U.S. papers, just in more subtle ways), and its house style is completely unique and bizarre. It has two main types of article: fiery denunciations of rival countries, and charming stories of the bland and banal, like “Farmers Move Into New Houses at Hyongsan Vegetable Farm,” that are supposed to show the superiority of life in the DPRK. (They also have unparalleled photo coverage of Kim Jong Un getting on and off trains.) This week, in response to recent waves of propaganda-carrying balloons from South Korea, the folks in Pyongyang put out a really striking pair of headlines:

Now that’s journalism. (Image: Pyongyang Times)

AROUND THE STATES

❧ The Texas prison system has banned a book written by… Texas prisoners. If you happen to be locked up in Texas right now, there are a lot of books you’re not allowed to read. More than 10,000 of them, in fact, from Beekeeping for Dummies to Alice Walker's The Color Purple. (Although, as journalist Lauren McGaughy points out, Mein Kampf  is still allowed.) But this month, one particular banned book has generated a lot of attention, because it was created by Texas inmates themselves. 

Texas Letters is exactly what it sounds like: a compilation of letters from people in Texas who have been placed in solitary confinement, talking about their lives, their experience in solitary, and how they felt about it. It’s a multi-volume series, edited and published by the activist Damascus James, and both Volume 1 and 2 have been banned. In an Instagram post from this August, James reports that he received a notice from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice stating that Texas Letters contained material “designed to achieve a breakdown of prisons through offender disruption such as strikes, riots or security threat group activity,” along with material that would “encourage deviate criminal sexual behavior” and information about “the setting up and operation of criminal schemes,” and would therefore be forbidden in 101 prisons and jails statewide. 

Dangerous contraband, apparently. (Image: Anthologic Press)

Speaking to the libertarian magazine Reason (which is actually pretty good on prisons and policing, although terrible on economics) James says he’s pored over both volumes of Texas Letters, and can’t find anything that promotes “criminal sexual behavior.” He also denies the allegation that the books promote strikes or riots. What they do contain plenty of, he says, is criticism of solitary confinement as an institution. As a reminder, the practice is widely considered to be torture by human rights experts, and causes long-term harm to prisoners’ mental health. Texas Letters discusses these facts, and James says that’s why it’s been banned. He points out that the Texas prison system doesn’t like to discuss the punishment publicly: 

“They've euphemized torture, calling it 'administrative segregation' and 'restrictive housing' for years in an effort to conceal the harsh realities of torturous isolation for thousands of people,” James tells Reason. The ban “was clearly an attempt to silence the voices of those who have suffered the torture of solitary confinement.” 

The good news is that you can buy a copy of Texas Letters for yourself, and judge whether it’s too dangerous to let anyone read. (Spoiler: It isn’t. No book is.) All proceeds go to the prisoners who wrote it, and the project also has a “How You Can Help” page with a list of contact information for Texas state officials so you can yell at them for this awful decision. That’s probably worth doing, too. 

There’s also a Texas Letters box truck that drives around showing pictures of the letters themselves, which is pretty cool. 

In other news...

• Also in Texas criminal (in)justice, a man named Robert Roberson was nearly put to death for allegedly murdering his two-year-old daughter in what would be the first execution in the United States tied to “shaken baby syndrome”— a diagnosis with zero scientific basis. His execution was put on hold by a state judge for 30 days after a bipartisan group of legislators issued a subpoena for Roberson to testify next week before a state House committee. (This was done as a delay tactic, as failing to allow him to testify would be a violation of the state legislature’s authority.) The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles will then have the “opportunity to reconsider the evidence of Roberson’s actual innocence.” Governor Greg Abbott and the U.S. Supreme Court could intervene to stop his execution entirely but have thus far refused. (New York Times)
  
  
• Thanks to GOP paranoia about election fraud, you can now watch live video streams of all the ballot drop boxes in Douglas County, Colorado. You know, if you’re having a slow Friday night or something. (KDVR)

Exciting stuff. (Image: Douglas Votes)

• In a major victory for voting rights, the Supreme Court of Nebraska has ruled that people convicted of felonies should have their ability to vote restored once they serve their sentences. It’s estimated that the ruling will affect around 7,000 Nebraska voters this November. (PBS)
  
  
• Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) has accused Kroger of planning to use facial recognition software to assist with “surge pricing.” Congressional Democrats have already raised alarms about the chain’s implementation of digital price tags, which can be quickly changed to jack up prices in cases of high demand. Tlaib suggested that these could be used in tandem with the store’s facial recognition tools “to invade a customer's privacy and employ biased price discrimination.” (USA Today)
  
  
• Earlier this week, a group of 500 Jewish anti-war demonstrators shut down the New York Stock exchange in protest of weapons industry profits, which have been surging over the past year of genocide in Gaza. Elena Stein, director of organizing strategy for Jewish Voice for Peace, was one of 200 people arrested by the NYPD. She writes for the Guardian:

At least 50 members of Congress or their spouses are owners of [weapons contractor] stock. While they should be voting based on the will of their constituents, they have profits to gain from voting to send billions of dollars in military funding to Israel while it carries out a genocide.

The reason I am alive today is because the day that my entire family was massacred in their shtetl in Lithuania, in another genocide – the Holocaust – my grandmother just happened to be away. I grew up aware that I am not supposed to be here. I also grew up agonizing over these questions. Where were the neighbors? Why did they just stand by? Why didn’t they hurl their bodies between the killers and my family? As the NYPD dragged me by my arms and legs out of the New York Stock Exchange, I felt all of my Jewish ancestors at my back, the one who survived and all those who didn’t. We say now, with more conviction than ever before: we refuse to be neighbors who just stand by.

DOG NEWS OF THE WEEK

A dog climbed up one of the Pyramids of Giza!

A paraglider, Alex Lang, captured the scene this week while flying over the 3,800-year-old monument. Perhaps in honor of the sun god Ra, the dog was recorded “barking and chasing birds from the very top of the pyramid,” which stands 455 feet above the ground. It was the tallest structure in the world for nearly four millennia, until the 1300s when it was topped by Lincoln Cathedral in England.

Nobody knows exactly how a dog managed to ascend such a gargantuan structure, but it seems like no big deal to him. A video shows him traipsing down the pyramid with ease to the amazement of onlookers as if he’d made the journey a thousand times. 

This makes a lot of sense. According to Dog Law, if he peed up there even once, the pyramid is now his property.

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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