October 4, 2024 ❧ War brewing in the Middle East, Vance and Walz debate, and Minnesota’s medical debt reforms

Plus: A tentative deal in the port strike, a “weird” typhoon hits Taiwan, and NYC rats are on birth control

It’s 3 PM. Do you know where your news is?

AROUND THE WORLD

❧ By now, you’ve probably heard that Iran launched a salvo of at least 180 missiles into Israeli territory on Tuesday. It was the expected response following escalating Israeli attacks in Lebanon over the preceding two weeks, which killed more than 1,000 people—including Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah—and the launch of a ground invasion into Southern Lebanon, which has brought the death toll up to 2,000. Many of the missiles fired by Iran were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system with some extra help by the United States Navy. According to videos analyzed by the Washington Post, several military bases took damage and at least two missiles landed near the Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv. The Israel Defense Force said damage to civilian infrastructure was “only minor,” though it did include at least one school and a neighborhood where more than 100 houses took damage. The only reported casualty is Sameh al-Asali, a 37-year-old man from Gaza, who’d fled to Jericho in the occupied West Bank and was killed “when a large fragment of a missile slammed into him,” according to the New York Times.

(Image: Al Jazeera)

Iran’s attack on Tuesday was large compared to the one they launched back in April following the bombing of the Iranian embassy in Damascus. But compared with the hugely destructive assaults launched by Israel over the past year in Gaza, the West Bank, and now Lebanon, which have caused numerous civilian deaths, Iran’s attack was quite restrained. Nevertheless, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged that Iran “will pay.” Israeli officials told Barak Ravid of Axios that they plan a “significant retaliation” that could involve targeting oil facilities and potentially nuclear ones, depending on how Iran responds. 

To hear the American media tell it, the U.S. is being helplessly pulled along by Israel into the jaws of a potential war. That’s how CBS News foreign correspondent Chris Livesay put it in one dispatch, saying that Israel’s response could determine “whether the U.S. gets dragged into” a “widening war.” Politico echoed that idea in an article titled “Biden confronts the limits of his influence over Israel,” which stated that the President had “waning influence over events in the Middle East” and that he “may be unable to stop what his administration has spent a year trying to prevent: regional war.” But the idea that the U.S. is somehow helpless to restrain Israel is utter fiction: The U.S. provides more than two-thirds of all Israel’s arms imports and American munitions have been used to commit major acts of escalation, including (likely) the bombing of Beirut which killed Nasrallah.

Former Intercept journalist Ken Klippenstein argues that despite the euphemisms U.S. officials often use to suggest that we are seeking a resolution, the U.S. is already essentially at war with Iran. He wrote for his newsletter:

Washington can try to obfuscate that fact by crediting themselves with avoiding a “full-scale” war, whatever that means, and throwing around jargon like “deterrence” and “escalatory spiral.”

But this is war, and the U.S. is intimately involved. The U.S. cooperated closely with the Israeli Defense Force to prepare for the assault. American ships operating in the eastern Mediterranean shot down Iranian missiles. The U.S. is on the ground, at sea, and in the air, operating along Iran’s entire western border.

There’s a cyber war, a covert war, a special operations war, an espionage war, an influence war, bombing, troops on the ground, ship, satellites; the U.S. is intercepting, thwarting, and countering. Every day. [...]

Full-blown war is like a moving red line. No matter what happens, we’re never quite there in the mealy-mouthed narrative. War rages as a non-war, the money flows, Washington credits itself with averting full-blown catastrophe while never having to take responsibility for today’s (and everyday’s) mess. 

War with Iran was here yesterday and will be tomorrow. There’s no diplomatic solution on the horizon. There’s no cutting off the spigot of weapons and war materiel. There’s no decisive encounter where one side wins and another loses. Israel and Iran are at war, directly and indirectly. The U.S., in attacking Iran’s proxies in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, and now in using its armed forces to directly shoot down Iranian missiles, as it did in April, is equally at war. Maybe not in the lexicon of those sitting at their desks in Washington. Just in the real world.

In other news…

• Typhoon Krathon has struck the west coast of Taiwan, causing at least two deaths and more than 178,000 people to lose power. It’s been dubbed a “weird” storm by the Taiwanese media, as it’s more common for typhoons to land on the east coast, and climate change—which has caused a noticeable increase in typhoons and cyclones generally—is likely to blame. (Reuters)

(Image: Reuters)

• In India, the Modi government officially opposes amending British colonial law to criminalize marital rape, saying it would be “excessively harsh”... for the rapists. Truly horrible. (BBC)
  
  
• Japan's new Prime Minister, Shigeru Ishiba, has called for an “Asian NATO” that would establish mutual defense agreements between countries on the continent, similar to the ones Europe and the United States currently have. (Japan Times)
  
  
• Legislators in Kenya have begun the process to impeach Rigathi Gachagua, the country’s deputy president. It’s part of a backlash against the huge protest movement that upended Kenyan politics this June, as Gachagua and his staff are accused of providing support and funding to student protesters, and two other MPs are facing criminal charges for similar reasons. (BBC)

Gachagua speaking in September. (Image: H.E. Rigathi Gachagua via Facebook)

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

❧ There was, unfortunately, a vice presidential debate Tuesday night. The American public cared significantly less about this debate than they did the Trump/Harris one last month, with an estimated 43.1 million people tuning in compared to 67.1 million for the main event (or 57.9 million for the Harris/Pence VP debate in 2020.) And it’s not hard to see why—as Vox puts it, the exchange between J.D. Vance and Tim Walz was “civil and substantive,” but “something of a stalemate.” In other words, it was kind of boring. 

There were a few noteworthy moments, though not in a good way. The moderators’ first question, “would you support or oppose a preemptive strike by Israel on Iran?,” was completely deranged. And the candidates’ responses were worse: Vance said it was “up to Israel what they think they need to do,” while Walz wouldn’t give a straight answer, saying only that “steady leadership is going to matter.” The word “Gaza” came up only once, in a bland statement from Walz about the “humanitarian crisis” there—and he also said that “the expansion of Israel and its proxies is an absolute, fundamental necessity,” despite Israel being the cause of the “humanitarian crisis” he supposedly finds tragic. There was no discussion of Ukraine whatsoever, and the climate segment was hard to watch. There, Walz took an incoherent stance, boasting about “producing more natural gas and more oil” even as he criticized Trump and Vance’s climate denial. (That’s kind of like saying you don’t want your house to burn down, but you’re smoking in bed more than ever before.)

Gentlemen, would you use ALL THE BOMBS on the Middle East, or just most?

(Image: CBS via YouTube)

The worst aspect of the debate, though, was that Vance did reasonably well for himself. As Branko Marcetic puts it for Jacobin, his mission was to “smooth down the extreme and off-putting nature of Trumpism and to repackage it into something reasonable,” and he largely succeeded. He went out of his way to seem polite and non-threatening, sprinkling his answers with little asides like “I'm sure Governor Walz joins me in saying…” or “I appreciate what Tim said, actually.” In other words, he pretended not to be the creepy authoritarian he really is. He didn’t talk about “childless cat ladies,” or immigrants eating pets, or his desire to fire every civil servant and “replace them with our people,” or that book he blurbed that praises dictators like Franco and Pinochet. And Walz fell right into the trap, taking his overtures of sympathy at face value and saying things like “I believe Senator Vance wants to solve this.” He treated Vance like a normal politician whose views are mainstream and acceptable, and that’s the last thing he should have done. 

The good news is that vice presidential debates don’t tend to affect a race too much, one way or the other. But Vance’s favorability ratings are up by 11 points (although, amusingly, still below 50 percent.) Up until now, the entirely accurate perception of Vance as “weird” was one of the Trump campaign’s biggest problems. By not hitting him harder in the debate, Walz may have allowed his opponent to partly shake the label off. 

MEANWHILE, THE MEDIA CONTINUES TO FOCUS 

ON THE IMPORTANT THINGS

(Headline: The Telegraph)

In other news…

• During the debate, J.D. Vance blamed “illegal immigrants [who] compete with Americans for scarce homes” for the country’s ongoing housing crisis. But in reality, it’s greedy landlords and government policies that favor them causing the problem—including policies put in place by Donald Trump. (The Intercept)
  
  
• The senate race in Nebraska is heating up, as independent labor leader Dan Osborn has a five-point lead over Republican incumbent Deb Fischer in a new poll. Osborn has been criticized for calling Republican campaign staffers “a bunch of Hitler Youth frat boys” (well, where’s the lie?), and he’s also threatening to sue Fischer for calling him a “liberal Democrat” when that isn’t his party affiliation. (Nebraska Examiner)

An Osborn campaign sign on the lonely streets of Nebraska.

(Image: Osborn for Senate via Twitter)

• Without much attention, Congress is advancing reforms to constrain the president’s emergency powers. As Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith write for Lawfare:

The president has over 100 statutory authorities, many quite broad, that can be invoked on the basis of a national emergency declared by the president alone. President Biden has invoked one of these emergency authorities to forgive student loans. President Trump invoked another to fund the border wall. Both invocations of emergency power were contested. Neither situation was a real emergency in the sense of “an unexpected and difficult or dangerous situation, especially an accident, that happens suddenly and that requires quick action to deal with it.” This expanded meaning given to “emergency” through broad invocations of emergency powers is becoming a typical feature of the exercise of these powers.

Among other things, the bills under consideration would restrict emergencies to 30 days unless Congress votes otherwise, which seems prudent. 

• In the latest instance of shameless and embarrassing photo manipulation by politicians, Rep. Mike Collins posted a photo of vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance that was digitally altered to make his jawline look more masculine and rugged. In other words, he gave him a digital version of gender-affirming care. Ironic. (New Republic)

AROUND THE STATES

❧ Minnesota’s “Medical Debt Fairness Act” took effect on October 1. A major political project for Attorney General Keith Ellison and Governor Tim Walz, the Act is aimed at providing some relief for the terrible burden millions of Americans deal with from skyrocketing healthcare costs. It has several important provisions, including:

• Banning collection agencies from reporting medical debt to credit bureaus, and thus ruining people’s credit scores over it
  
  
• Banning “robocalls” and other intrusive collection practices
  
  
• Changing the rules so the medical debt of someone who dies isn’t automatically transferred to their spouse
  
  
• Prohibiting healthcare companies from denying anyone care simply because they have medical debt (or even threatening to deny care as a collection tactic)
  
  
• Capping wage garnishments at 10 percent (down from a previous limit of 25 percent)

Promotional graphic from when the Act was signed in June.

(Image: Minnesota DFL via Twitter)

This is at least some degree of reform to a horribly abusive system, and people in certain situations—especially involving spousal debt—are calling it “life-changing.” But at the same time, it’s not nearly enough. The whole framing of the law assumes that “medical debt” is a legitimate thing that should exist, when it is not. Even the Democratic lawmakers behind it keep making overtures to the for-profit healthcare industry, with AG Ellison saying that “people want to pay their medical bills” (No they don’t! Nor should they!) and state Senator Liz Boldon reassuring her constituents that “nobody’s asking for a free ride.” But free is exactly what healthcare should be, in all circumstances. 

These reforms don’t even apply to existing medical debt, only debt that’s accrued after October 1, so they’re no help at all to anyone who’s currently struggling to keep above water financially. Even for new cases, it’s little comfort to know your credit score is safe when you still have to pay thousands of dollars to a for-profit company just to stay alive. There is a better way available: this May, a group of legislators including Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Rashida Tlaib introduced a plan to eliminate all medical debt through a federal grant program. That’s the right solution. The “Medical Debt Fairness Act,” while well-intentioned, is just a Band-Aid over a gaping wound. 

In other news…

• The International Longshoremen’s Association strike has been suspended, as the parties have reached a tentative agreement with a 62 percent raise for the dockworkers over the next six years. This is roughly halfway between the union’s initial demand of 77 percent and the major shipping companies’ counteroffer of 50 percent, but the issue of automation replacing jobs is still unresolved. Now, a new round of negotiations will begin with a deadline of January 15. In the course of the short strike, ILA president Harold Daggett also reports receiving death threats after the New York Post published photos of his home online, which is unlikely to help tensions. (ABC)
  
  
• In Tennessee, six factory workers at an Impact Plastics plant are dead or missing, swept away by the floodwaters of Hurricane Helene. Survivors say their supervisors wouldn’t allow them to leave work in time to escape, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is investigating. (Jacobin)
  
  
• There’s been an airborne toxic event in Conyers, Georgia, where a fire at the BioLab chemical plant has sent toxic chlorine smoke drifting for miles. On Thursday it reached Atlanta, leading city officials to issue shelter-at-home warnings. To point out the obvious, this is why we need a much stronger Environmental Protection Agency—and why Republican plans to slash environmental regulations would be disastrous. (The Independent)

He's back!

• While trying to purge undocumented immigrants from the voter rolls, Republican officials in Alabama also stripped voting registrations from at least 717 U.S. citizens who were perfectly eligible. Oops. (Popular Information) 
  
  
• New York Mayor Eric Adams was indicted for bribery last week, but he may end up having his hide saved by the Supreme Court. Earlier this year, SCOTUS essentially legalized a form of bribery known as a “status gratuity” — a payment given to an elected official simply because they are an elected official rather than for any specific favor in return. With this ruling, Justices Thomas and Alito protected themselves from accountability for the millions of dollars worth of gifts they received from wealthy influence peddlers. They may end up protecting Adams too. (Politico) 

RAT FACT OF THE WEEK

New York City is giving rats birth control! 

For as long as a place called New York has existed, so too has its mortal enemy: the rat. It is estimated that there are more than 3 million rats scurrying around the city’s streets, subways, sewers, and sandwich shops. A million of those rats have emerged over the past decade. As New Yorkers cowered in the shadow of their rodent overlords, a brave man of the people declared, “Enough!” 

Mayor Eric Adams has no room for rats at his table of success and has spent much of his term waging a “War on Rats.” He appointed an official “Rat Czar” (a title has to rank among the greatest in the history of municipal politics topping even the ominous “city controller”), former public school official Kathleen Corradi. “I don't think there's been a mayor in history that says how much he hates rats,” he said at this year’s annual Urban Rat Summit. “I dislike rats. And I am so happy I have a four-star general who is working on finally winning the war on rats.”

Eric Adams speaks at the annual Urban Rat Summit (not, surprisingly, held in Turkey)

Adams and his “four-star general” have tried countless harebrained schemes to defeat the gray, squeaking menace. The Adams administration requires New Yorkers to purchase official city-branded garbage cans. And to take away the rats’ life force—discarded pizza—they filled city parks with cans designed to accommodate large square pizza boxes, which evinced little more than a shrug from locals. Failing that, they’ve resorted to more extreme methods. They’ve sent exterminators to key “rat-mitigation zones” to blast their nests with carbon monoxide and began filling the streets with tasty rat poison—a program that hit a wall when it became clear that it was poisoning birds too, including the Central Park Zoo’s beloved owl, Flaco. 

With support from animal rights activists, the City Council rolled out a new, more humane method of rat reduction last week: contraception. Over the next six months, the health and sanitation departments will be filling the streets with rat bait designed to make the critters infertile. The city launched a pilot program that attempted to do this last year but found that it was not delicious enough to lure many rats or potent enough to work. But with a new formula, which is supposedly “too good for rats to pass up,” the city is hoping to see rat population growth slow in the coming months. According to ContraPest, the company providing the rats with this mischief planning solution, a single male and female can result in up to 15,000 rats within a year.

Of course, the irony was not lost on some people that rats in New York now have greater access to birth control than human women do in many parts of the country. According to Newsweek, “barriers still exist for those without insurance or with religious exemptions from their employers​. Variations in health insurance policies and a lack of access to family planning clinics can also limit access to free birth control, according to Medical News Today.” Perhaps it is only a matter of time before the rat version of the Heritage Foundation comes out in favor of abolishing rat birth control in order to “return the danger” to rat sex.

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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