CROOKS vs. SICKOS (Or, “What’s going on with our politicians and oligarchs?”)
❧ Ritchie Torres is taking money from far-right donors. You may know Torres as the Representative for New York’s District 15, the poorest congressional district in the entire United States. You may also know him as the Congress member who rarely talks about his own district and his constituents’ poverty, opting instead to serve as “Israel’s loudest House supporter”—a role that’s seen him lie about the existence of apartheid checkpoints in Palestine, launch harassment campaigns against professors who mention “Israeli genocide against Palestinians,” and frequently come into conflict with Jewish leftists. But now, everyone should know Torres for a whole new reason: his wildly sleazy sources of funding.
Torres in 2019. (Image: Rep. Ritchie Torres via Flickr)
As an exclusive new report from Zeteo details, Torres has been taking huge sums of money from pro-Trump and pro-Netanyahu businessmen, some of whom have ties to far-right Israeli political movements. One of the most important is Ronn Torossian, a public relations executive who’s also an associate of Mayor Eric Adams (always the mark of honesty and integrity) and got arrested for being physically aggressive with student protesters at Syracuse University this May.
Torossian founded a WhatsApp group called “Jews for Ritchie Torres,” helped to organize a committee called “Chutz PAC” on his behalf, and claims he’s helped to raise more than $150,000 for Torres. But as investigative journalist Jacqueline Sweet writes, Torossian is also an avid Trump supporter and critic of Democrats not named Ritchie Torres, speculating wildly that “Jews will be killed in NYC if Biden wins” back in 2020:
In another WhatsApp group, “Zionists for Don Samuels”—who was the centrist challenger to Ilhan Omar—Torossian promoted the conspiracy theory that “Democrats” were behind Thomas Crooks’ assassination attempt on Trump this July:
There’s also Michael Sinensky, a fellow donor and member of “Jews for Ritchie Torres.” As Sweet previously reported for the Intercept, he used the Whatsapp group to advocate being “supportive ON PRESIDENTIAL LEVEL of the alt right Christian Neo Nazis” rather than Democrats, who he accused of supporting “Islamic terrorists”:
Either Sinensky thumbs-ups his own comments, or someone actually agreed with this lunacy. (Image: The Intercept)
That’s not even the worst of it, though. Back in 1994, Torossian attended a memorial service for Rabbi Meir Kahane, the founder of the Jewish supremacist Kahanist movement that was banned in Israel and the U.S. for many years over its links to terrorism. (He reportedly yelled “the only solution is a Kahane revolution” at the event, but now claims the words “from the river to the sea” are unacceptably violent, which seems just a wee bit hypocritical.) For that matter, Torossian himself has endorsed violence and terror in the past, telling Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg that “I think we should kill a hundred Arabs or a thousand Arabs for every one Jew they kill.” That was too much even for Goldberg, who called it “a Nazi idea, rather than a Jewish idea.” But apparently it wasn’t too much for Ritchie Torres, who has only now returned Torossian and Sinensky’s contributions after Zeteo’s reporting put the spotlight on them. That tells you everything you need to know about his values, and hopefully the rest of the Democratic Party will stop taking Torres seriously as a result.
❧ Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans held a massive rally in Madison Square Garden. The event was an outpouring of misogyny, racism, and general grossness, including a moment where Tucker Carlson called Kamala Harris a “Samoan-Malaysian, low I.Q., former California prosecutor.” (She’s none of those things except a prosecutor, which is bad enough.) The real lowlight was a speech from hack comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, in which he called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” and said that he and a Black man in the crowd “carved watermelons together” for Halloween. The Puerto Rico comments may end up costing Trump, as the all-important swing state of Pennsylvania has an estimated 620,000 Puerto Rican citizens. In 2020, the Democrats won Pennsylvania by only around 82,000 votes, so it’s possible these racist jokes could tilt the whole election against the GOP.
And now, some stereotypes that were outdated in 1996. (Image: C-SPAN)
PAST AFFAIRS
Speaking of Puerto Rico, local writer and activist Alberto Medina made “The Case for Puerto Rican Independence” in an April article for Current Affairs, arguing that colonial oppression and neglect have been a constant theme in relations between U.S. leaders and the island. Recent events have certainly proven that point.
The Washington Post has reportedly lost more than 200,000 subscribers, or 8 percent of its readership after oligarch owner Jeff Bezos personally stepped in to prevent the paper endorsing Kamala Harris. As a reminder, Bernie Sanders was lambasted in 2019 for suggesting that Bezos has influence over the paper he owns, which CNN called a “ridiculous attack.” Now, it turns out private control of the mass media has downsides after all! Who knew? (The Hill)
Art by C.M Duffy for Current Affairs Magazine, Issue 23, January/February 2020
New York’s Democratic Mayor Eric Adams seems to be forming a strange alliance with Donald Trump. The former president has claimed that Adams, indicted last month, was being “persecuted by the DOJ for speaking out against open borders.” Adams, meanwhile, rejected the idea that Trump was a “fascist,” when asked about his pending rally at Madison Square Garden. Afterwards, he condemned the rally speakers’ racist remarks in broad terms but refused to mention Trump by name. Unnamed sources previously told the New York Postthat Adams may seek a pardon from Trump should he return to the White House, which could explain his reluctance to criticize him. (New York Magazine)
A nonprofit called Climate Revival is touring churches in American cities in hopes of getting religious Black voters to vote for “climate champions.” Janie Ekere writes for the American Prospect:
For much of its history, the environmental movement has focused on the melting of the polar ice caps, biodiversity, and the endangerment of certain animal species, for example. But the specific effects of climate change and pollution on communities of color were often left out of the conversation. That messaging failure has subsequently led to a lack of knowledge in these communities about how climate change affects them.
AROUND THE STATES
❧ As marijuana is legalized in more and more U.S. states, it was only a matter of time before the cannabis industry became the center of a major union struggle. Now, a cannabis company in Missouri—which legalized recreational weed in 2022—is the subject of a National Labor Relations Board case that could have major ramifications for the labor movement as a whole.
The case surrounds a union drive at one of BeLeaf Medical’s cannabis cultivation and processing facilities, where workers were dealing with workplace hazards like poor air quality and extreme heat while making wages that were about half the average hourly pay for all U.S. workers. However, according to Truthout:
When workers responsible for processing and packaging marijuana at that facility signed union cards and filed a petition to unionize in September 2023, BeLeaf Medical argued that the employees were agricultural workers and not entitled to unionize. Agricultural workers are not protected under the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the federal legislation that ensures employees have the right to form a union.
The employees argue that they are not actually agricultural workers, and therefore have the right to unionize. As the report continues:
Of the dozen workers who first signed union cards, three employees worked in the facility’s lab making concentrates, two worked in order fulfillment preparing packaged products for distribution, and seven others performed various processing tasks with dried and cured marijuana, including operating a machine trimmer, hand-trimming, pre-rolling joints or otherwise packaging the product for sale.
The Biden NLRB—which had previously allowed cannabis industry employees to unionize in several Northeastern states—rejected BeLeaf’s argument in Missouri and ordered the company to hold a union election in February. The Board argued that these employees were more akin to workers in the tobacco industry, who are not considered agricultural workers and therefore protected under the law. Yet there is no established precedent for how this applies to the cannabis industry. If this case is ruled in the workers’ favor, it could establish such a precedent that allows workers in the industry to unionize more easily in the future. As weed has become legal around the United States, more than 15,000 cannabis industry workers nationwide have joined locals of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.
What these workers do seems clearly distinct from farm work. But even if it wasn’t, there’s no good reason why agricultural workers ever should have been exempted from the right to unionize in the first place. The origins of this exemption during the New Deal are well-documented: It was created to get support for the NLRA from Southern congressmen who wanted to prevent the region’s largely Black farmworkers from having the power to unionize and earn fair wages (domestic workers were also excluded from this same reason). This was immoral at the time and remains so now. Farm-workers perform some of the most grueling labor in this country and are in the greatest need of the protection unionization provides.
In other news…
Texas will cut more than $600 million in Medicaid funding slated to pay for special education in hundreds of districts. As the Texas Tribune reports, “The School Health and Related Services (SHARS) program provides hundreds of school districts critical funding for special education services, reimbursing them for counseling, nursing, therapy and transportation services provided to Medicaid-eligible children.”
The Supreme Court of Colorado may soon rule that elephants are allowed to sue for the right to leave a zoo similarly to humans who can sue for the right to leave prison. The suit was brought by an animal advocacy group known as the NonHuman Rights Project on behalf of five plaintiffs—elephants Missy, Kimba, Lucky, LouLou, and Jambo—who reside at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo and have shown signs of brain damage due to their captivity and separation from their herds as infants. (Associated Press)
Elephants are known to be some of the most “human-like” animals—capable of grief, cooperation, altruism, compassion, and, of course, memory. The NhRP also argues that elephants meet the definition of “persons” under the law.
Lawsuits continue to pile up over the Baton Rouge Police Department’s so-called “BRAVE Cave,” a windowless building where cops reportedly strip-searched suspects as young as 11 years old, tased people who were already handcuffed, and generally committed all kinds of brutality and abuse. (WBRZ)
In Oregon, the polls don't look good for a ballot measure to establish a Universal Basic Income ($1,600 a year) by taxing corporations at a higher rate. However, ranked-choice voting still has a shot to pass, with roughly a 50/50 split of voters for and against. (Oregon Live)
Campus police in full riot gear broke down the doors of University of Pennsylvania students and pointed guns at them last week. The police refused to identify themselves or provide a warrant. But when they brought one of the students in for questioning, they revealed that they were suspected of vandalizing a statue of Ben Franklin by throwing red paint on it during a pro-Palestine protest in September. No arrests were made, nor were any charges filed against the student. (The Intercept)
AROUND THE WORLD
The Israeli Knesset has just passed a bill banning the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, from operating in the country or its occupied territories. UNRWA is the main U.N. agency that provides humanitarian aid, education, and medical care to Palestinians. In August, a U.N. investigation found that nine of UNRWA’s more than 32,000 employees “may have” been involved in the Oct. 7 attacks. Those employees were fired, but Israel has continued to use this claim to justify shutting down the entire agency and all the critical services it provides. Israel has been blocking nearly all humanitarian aid entering Gaza in recent months, from UNRWA and other agencies, resulting in widespread malnutrition and the near total absence of medical care, including for tens of thousands of children.
Roughly 10,000 North Korean troops are expected to join the battlefield in Ukraine on the Russian side, in a move that President Volodymyr Zelensky calls a “first step to world war.” (Kyiv Independent)
A video obtained provided by Ukraine’s intelligence service shows what they say are North Korean troops being given Russian military uniforms in Kursk. (Screenshot: CNN)
Evo Morales, the former president of Bolivia, says there was an assassination attempt against him on Sunday. He blames incumbent president Luis Arce, with whom he has an ongoing feud; for his part, Arce claims Morales staged the incident himself. In either case, the strife within Bolivia’s socialist party is a bad sign, and could hand control of the country to the political right. (BBC)
The U.S. and France have announced plans to open consulates in the Western Sahara, and thus to support Morocco’s claim to own the territory—which local nationalist groups like the Polisario Front still strongly dispute. (North Africa Post)
CURRENT-EST AFFAIRS
As The Myth of American Idealismclimbs the Amazon charts, Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson went on Alyssa Milano’s podcast “Sorry, Not Sorry” to discuss the book and his work with co-author Noam Chomsky:
Nathan also sat down with Glenn Greenwald for the latest episode of System Update, discussing everything from Chomsky’s ideas on foreign policy to the upcoming election:
There’s also an excellent review from past Current Affairs contributor Peter Taylor at the North American Congress on Latin America:
“Chomsky and Robinson do not expect a panacea: only well-informed and organized popular movements demanding justice and peace, they contend, stand a chance.”
Have YOU seen the book in your local airport, newsstand, coffee shop, or hookah lounge? Send a photo to briefing@currentaffairs.org!
For the first time in more than a decade, the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan has lost its majority in parliament, making the political future uncertain for newly-elected Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. (Japan Times)
Regional governments in Argentina are battling President Javier Milei’s austerity agenda by creating their own pseudo-currency—the “chacho,” which is equivalent to the peso but only valid locally—and paying government workers with that instead. (Associated Press)
For legal reasons these are technically “bonds,” not “currency,” but
As Halloween approaches, we thought we’d introduce you to one of the animal kingdom’s more unnerving denizens. The amphibian known to science as Trichobatrachus robustushas a lot of nicknames, including the “hairy frog” and the “Wolverine frog,” but it’s also called the “horror frog”—and there’s a good reason for that.
You see, T. robustus has a unique way of defending itself from predators and rival frogs. Unlike most amphibians, it has a sharp weapon at its disposal: it can voluntarily break its own bones, poke the shards through its skin, and wield them as hook-like claws.
This is only “horrifying” to us primates; for the frogs, it’s perfectly normal. Along with self-defense, some scientists speculate that the bone-barbs could also be used to help them get a better grip on slippery rocks. In any case, they’re a highly successful species. Despite being occasionally hunted for traditional medicine by the Bakossi people of Cameroon, the “horror frog” is not considered endangered, and has a habitat throughout the forests of Central Africa. One thing’s for sure: we won’t be tangling with one any time soon.
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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