September 13, 2024 ❧ Rupert Murdoch’s latest scheme, bankers dying on the job, and Israel kills a U.S. citizen

Plus: Trump’s bizarre debate performance, updates on abortion rights around the states, and sharks love jazz!

Here’s looking at news, kid. 

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

❧ The future of the Murdoch media empire is about to be decided in a Nevada court. Until recently, right-wing media baron Rupert Murdoch had a plan. Upon his death, his vast corporate holdings—which include Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, the Sun, and the Times of London—would be placed into a trust, and his four oldest children would have equal voting shares over major business decisions. (For updates on Murdoch’s corporeal status, by the way, you can always check IsRupertMurdochDead.com.)

But the plan has gone awry. As CNN’s Hadas Gold reports, three of the Murdoch heirs—Elisabeth, James, and Prudence—appear to be somewhat more liberal than their father, with James Murdoch even endorsing Kamala Harris earlier this month. As a consequence, Rupert wants to revoke the original plan for the family trust and give exclusive control over his empire to Lachlan Murdoch—his eldest son, and the one closest to his own politics. As Gold puts it, Murdoch “felt that handing Lachlan control of the media businesses he founded would better protect their value after his death by maintaining a right-wing editorial bent.”

This is rapidly turning into a real-life version of HBO's Succession.

The trouble is, it’s not clear if changing the trust is actually legal, and the other three heirs are fighting the decision in court. Evidentiary hearings are scheduled to start on the 16th, but both sides in the case are trying to keep it as secretive as possible. That’s why the Murdochs (who are Australian) have chosen Nevada as their venue. As Gold writes, the state’s laws “allow parties and judges to lock the cases behind closed doors to such an extreme degree that their very existence is not even publicized on court dockets.” We only have the bare minimum of information about the suit thanks to a petition filed by the Associated Press, Reuters, and several other news organizations earlier this month. 

Chart: Genuine Impact

The outcome of this case will have huge implications, both for the media landscape in the United States and the wider world. If Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch get their way, Fox News and the various News Corp papers will continue to spew right-wing venom. If Elisabeth, Prudence, and James Murdoch win, those outlets may moderate their editorial stances, and our overall political climate may become just a wee bit more sane. 

Still, this just underlines why the news media shouldn’t be privately owned to begin with. When it is, far too much power is concentrated in the hands of a few rich people. News services everyone uses to get information and understand the world shouldn’t be beholden to tawdry, irrelevant nonsense like which of his children Rupert Murdoch likes best. They should belong to everyone, and be run with everyone’s best interests in mind. 

Lachlan Murdoch looks like an AI’s drawing of an evil rich guy.

(Image: Wikimedia Commons)

❧ As you might have noticed, there was a presidential debate Tuesday night. Around 67 million people tuned in, and Donald Trump had one of his strangest performances yet. He rambled about how much he likes Viktor Orbán, said he has “concepts of a plan” for healthcare, and repeated wildly racist conspiracy theories about Haitian immigrants “eating the dogs” in Ohio:

Harris is getting a lot of credit in the media for successfully “baiting” Trump into talking about ridiculous nonsense. And if you judge debates purely as a performance of sanity and competence, then Harris did a good job. But if you look past presentation, Harris was much harder to distinguish from her opponent. She agreed with Trump on basic premises like the supposed need to crack down on immigration. She again stressed the need for a “lethal” military, touted that her administration saw the “largest increase in domestic oil production in history,” and even bragged about the fact that she and Tim Walz are “both gun owners.” Important topics like climate change also went largely unaddressed. It was a mess, as Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson breaks down in a new article:

Harris’s approach seems to be to try to win over Republicans and “moderates” by making sure she doesn’t sound too liberal on guns, the military, immigration, climate change, or economics. Morally, I think that’s wrong. Maybe it’s electorally smart to talk about how you own guns, rather than talk about why gun violence is a serious problem and we need to make sure would-be spree killers don’t get access to military-grade weapons. But gun violence is a serious problem, and the president should be trying to stop it rather than ignoring it in order to get elected. I also don’t think that trying to morph into a moderate Republican is ultimately actually very “pragmatic,” though. People can sense insincerity. They can tell when you haven’t offered anything of substance. Harris may beat Trump, although it’s best never to underestimate him. Even if she does, however, once she gets into office, if she does not do anything transformative to address the most serious crises of our time, she will become very unpopular, very fast, and the next Trump will build political support from her failures. 

In other news…

• After his train-wreck of a debate, some Republicans are concerned that far-right pundit Laura Loomer—who has said America should be a “white ethnostate” and got banned from Uber and Lyft for being too racist—is encouraging Trump to become even more “online” than he already is. (Semafor)

(Photos from Twitter via the Hindustan Times)

• Shortly after the debate, a member of the Central Park Five—the Black and Hispanic teenagers who Trump lobbied to have executed in 1989, before they were exonerated for the assault they had been accused of—confronted the ex-President in the conference center lobby. Trump made no apology. (The Independent)
  
  
• Trump has also rejected Harris’s request for a second debate. Considering how the first one went, that’s probably a smart move on his part. (CNBC)
  
  
• Republicans have made a concerted effort to brand themselves as the new party of the working class. In a new article for his How Things Work newsletter, Hamilton Nolan reminds us why this is nonsense by raising the obvious, but critical point: “Republicans Do Not Want Unions to Exist”:

Yes, there will be specific instances, specific issues, where stars will align and allow certain Republicans to vote with unions on certain things. But please, I beg you, recognize always that support for the Republican Party is the equivalent of opposition to the interests of organized labor, and by extension the working class, because the Republican Party would, if it was possible, prefer to see no unions anywhere doing anything for anyone.

To list every example that demonstrates this basic fact would take volumes—in general, it is enough to know that Republicans as a bloc do not support the PRO Act, the big labor law reform bill that would go a long way towards rebuilding union power in this country, and they do support all of the aggressively anti-union measures like “Right to Work” laws that the PRO Act is trying to do away with. 

When you brush away all the words that politicians say and look at the policies that they do or do not support, these things become pretty simple. When I was covering the National Conservatism Conference earlier this year, there was a panel all about the new and exciting Pro Worker strain of Republicanism. On that panel was Riley Moore, the state treasurer of West Virginia. As an example of his union-friendly bona fides, Moore said that he was against imposing a federal “right to work” law. When pressed, he said that he did, however, support West Virginia’s “right to work” law. In other words, where he had the power to do something, he was anti-union, and where he had no power and was free to take any position, he posed as pro-union. This approach of “I will personally punch you in the face, but I don’t think everyone else should be automatically required to punch you in the face as well” is emblematic of the Republican Party’s definition of being friendly to the working class.

NEW 9/11 QUOTE OF THE YEAR

In our September 10 briefing, we brought you what we considered to be the “9/11 quote of the year,” from New York City mayor Eric Adams. But just after that briefing went to print, Joe Biden—who, you may recall, is the president of the United States—made a baffling declaration on the White House lawn:

“I’m going up to my granddaughter’s birthday in New York,” he said. “Then we’re gonna watch the debate, then tomorrow I’m doing 9/11.”

As far as we know, Joe Biden did not “do 9/11” the following day. That is, he did not fly any planes into the One World Trade Center.

Obviously, what he meant was that he’d be visiting sites affected by the terrorist attack to pay his respects to the victims. But, there’s also no funnier way to describe it than “doing 9/11,” like it’s a really good tapas place you just have to stop by before you leave town. “Oh, you’re visiting Shanksville? You have to do 9/11!”

AROUND THE STATES

❧ J.P. Morgan Chase has reduced its working hours for junior bankers… to 80 hours a week. The decision comes after a Bank of America employee named Leo Lukenas III died on the job earlier this year at the age of 35. Prior to his death, Lukenas had been working more than 100 hours a week, and his co-workers say he’d made comments about wanting to “trade hours of sleep for a 10% (pay) cut.” Although Reuters reports there’s no direct evidence the grueling schedule caused Lukenas’ death (from a blood clot), medical experts say overwork and stress heighten the risk for all kinds of health conditions, including heart disease and stroke. It’s not the first time an overworked banker has literally dropped dead, either. Back in 2013, a Bank of America/Merrill Lynch intern named Moritz Erhardt died from an epileptic seizure after working 72 hours straight without sleep. 

We're not saying banks are built on human misery and despair, 

except we kind of are. (Image: Adam Fagen via Flickr)

Now, the banking industry is making reforms to its notoriously extreme work culture—but they’re still too little, too late. For instance, the Wall Street Journal reports that J.P. Morgan has put a cap on working hours for entry-level banking jobs—but it’s set at 80 hours, double the amount in a normal working week. That’s better than 100 hours, but it’s still abusive by any reasonable standard, and the Independent reports that “the bank will make exceptions to the weekly hour limit in special cases, such as when associates are working on a live deal,” so it’s not even a guaranteed protection. 

Meanwhile, Bank of America has an even worse policy; instead of a cap, the WSJ reports that “Human resources is flagged when hours worked exceed 80 a week,” and will eventually step in “after prolonged periods above that limit to mandate time off.” (The definition of “prolonged” is left unspecified.) At Goldman Sachs, there’s no limit on hours—only a “protected Saturday” with no work, which comes with “certain exceptions.” Finally, Morgan Stanley is the absolute bottom of the barrel; there, the Journal reports no protections whatsoever. 

Bankers aren’t always the most sympathetic people, and it’s true that the junior bank employees in these cases make a lot of money, with six-figure salaries being commonplace. But nobody deserves workplace conditions that put their health and safety in danger. It seems obvious that these workers, like those in pretty much every industry, need a union to protect their interests and give them more control over their work. To get real change, they’ll need to band together and push back. 

In other news…

• Rent is costing tenants more money in nearly every state. In 2019, there were just seven states where the majority of renters spent 30 percent or more of their incomes on rent—enough to be considered “cost burdened.” In 2023, a majority of renters were cost burdened in 21 states. (Stateline)

(Graphic: Tim Henderson, Stateline. Data: American Community Survey)

• Oklahoma’s Governor Kevin Stitt has announced that his state will have a ballot measure on whether to raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15—but in 2026, not this November as many people had hoped. That doesn’t exactly help anyone who needs the money now. (The Oklahoman)
  
  
• A court has struck down North Dakota’s near-total abortion ban, saying that the state’s constitution protects a woman’s right to choose up to the point of fetal viability. (New York Times)
  
  
• Missouri’s Supreme Court, meanwhile, restored an abortion rights referendum to the ballot for this November after the Republican secretary of state unceremoniously removed it. Abortion rights referenda have been successful in every single state—no matter how red—since Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022, and recent polling suggests Missouri’s outcome will be no different. (Common Dreams)
  
  
• Louisiana was pummeled this week by the category 2 Hurricane Francine, which caused flash floods and power outages that have affected hundreds of thousands of people. As Oliver Milman notes in the Guardian, “The storm’s winds increased 35mph in 24 hours – something that global heating is only making more common.”

• In an ironic turn of events, New York City Mayor Eric Adams—who’s been a vocal supporter of mask bans in subways and other crowded public places—has tested positive for COVID-19. (New York Times)

PAST AFFAIRS

Last month, Current Affairs managing editor Lily Sánchez wrote that “Mask Bans Further Empower the Police State” while endangering everyone’s health: 

It’s also notable that these mask bans are being passed by Republican lawmakers who, in particular, have been the ones screaming about mask mandate authoritarianism over the last few years. As Kahn points out, mask mandates and bans are both exercises of state power, and we ought to be critical of both.

• According to a new ProPublica investigation, the NYPD threw out more than 430 police misconduct cases without investigating them this year. 
  
  
• South Carolina’s supreme court has struck down a law that would have used public money to fund vouchers to private K-12 schools. (Post and Courier)
  
  
• Thousands of service workers are on strike across Washington state, including “cooks, gardeners, custodians and more” at the University of Washington. (KOMO)
  
  
• Also in Washington, 96 percent of unionized Boeing workers have voted to reject a new contract with the company, and more than 30,000 of them have walked off the job to form picket lines. The main issue is pay increases, as the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers was seeking 40 percent raises for its members, and Boeing offered only 25 percent. One Bloomberg analyst predicts the strike will be short-lived, with a quick union victory as the company realizes it “needs the workers right now more than the workers need Boeing.” (CNBC)

(Image: Eric Blanc via Twitter)

AROUND THE WORLD

❧ Israel killed a Turkish-American activist in the West Bank. The Biden administration is covering for them. Aysenur Eygi, a 26-year-old human rights activist, was shot on Friday while protesting the illegal Israeli settlement of Evyatar, which was erected in the Palestinian town of Beita in 2021. Since the Israeli government recognized the settlement in June, Palestinians have protested by engaging in symbolic weekly prayers, which have often been dispersed with tear gas and bullets, and been followed by village raids from the IDF. According to the Washington Post, it was Eygi’s first time attending a West Bank demonstration, and she’d hoped to provide a “protective presence” at a time when thousands of Palestinians are being displaced from their homes. On Friday, Eygi’s comrades watched as she suddenly fell to the ground with blood pouring from the side of her head. 

The IDF claimed that the soldier who shot and killed Eygi did so “unintentionally,” and that the bullet “was not aimed at her, but aimed at the key instigator” of a “violent riot.” The White House issued a statement on Wednesday parroting this line, saying that “a preliminary investigation has indicated that it was the result of a tragic error resulting from an unnecessary escalation.” Biden himself told reporters a more specific version of Israel’s story, that, “Apparently it was an accident, ricocheted off the ground and just got hit by accident. I’m working that out now.” Witnesses on the ground immediately disputed this version of events. And it turns out that Israel was not entirely honest about what happened. Shocking, we know! 

The Washington Post reviewed video evidence from the day of Eygi’s killing. They found that, contrary to what the IDF claimed, there was no “violent riot” going on at the time of the shooting. Some demonstrators had thrown stones at Israeli soldiers earlier in the day, and the military fired at them with tear gas and live ammunition. But the violence had died down for about thirty minutes before Eygi was shot. Not only that, but Eygi was more than two whole football fields away from the nearest Israeli soldiers. “Even an Olympic stone thrower cannot make half that distance,” said Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli activist who has attended many of the prayers in solidarity with the Palestinians of Beita. 

Eygi’s family has called for the Biden administration to pursue an independent investigation into her death. But it has refused, instead saying that it “had full access to Israel’s preliminary investigation, and expects continued access as the investigation continues, so that we can have confidence in the result.” In other words, they are content to rely only on evidence provided by Israel, even though they have lied voluminously in countless other “investigations.” In a statement published by the Guardian, Eygi’s family expressed disgust: 

“President Biden is still calling her killing an accident based only on the Israeli military’s story. This is not only insensitive and false, it is complicit in the Israeli military’s agenda to take Palestinian land and whitewash the killing of an American.”

The Biden administration’s callousness towards the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed over the last year is bad enough. But apparently even the killing of American citizens is not enough to get past the boilerplate statements about how “deeply concerned” the administration is. (Eygi is not the first, by the way. Two American teenagers, Tawfiq Ajaq and Mohammad Khdour, have been killed by Israeli settlers previously.) Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Israel’s behavior in the West Bank “has to change,” and said “we’ll be making that clear to the senior-most members of the Israeli government.” But how many times have we been through this song and dance? How many reports have we heard about Biden giving Netanyahu a stern talking-to? It’s clearly not working, and of course it’s not. As long as the U.S. guarantees that Israel will have unconditional weapons support and gives it cover from international accountability, they have no incentive to “change” anything. 

Mourners surround the body of Aysenur Eygi at her funeral in Nablus.

(Photo: Anadolu Agency)

In other news…

• The United States has proposed adding two permanent seats to the United Nations Security Council, both for unspecified African nations. But it would not give those nations veto power, which the current five members (the U.S., Russia, China, the U.K., and France) all have. (The Hill)
  
  
• Sitaram Yechury, the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), has died at age 72. Yechury was a key figure in India’s opposition movement, but even Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed him as an “effective parliamentarian” and “leading light of the Left” in a statement on Thursday. (Tribune India)

Yechury (left) with PM Modi. (Image: Narendra Modi via Twitter)

• Soldiers in Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) rebel group (which receives aid from a U.S. ally, the United Arab Emirates) have been posting videos of themselves committing atrocities, including shooting and torturing detainees. (The Guardian)
  
  
• Wayne Borg, a PR executive with the Saudi Arabian “Neom” project, reportedly went on a racist tirade after the death of three Indian construction workers, complaining that “a whole bunch of people die so we’ve got to have a meeting on a Sunday night,” calling the dead workers “morons,” and saying “that is why white people are at the top of the pecking order.” (Wall Street Journal)
  
  
• The Greek left is in turmoil, as the Syriza party’s central committee approved a vote of no confidence against leader Stefanos Kasselakis this week. New leadership elections are expected soon, although it’s unclear if Kasselakis will run again. (Ekathimerini)

THE REVIEWS KEEP COMING!

The Seattle Times has declared The Myth of American Idealism, co-written by Professor Noam Chomsky and Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson, to be one of its “Four Thought-Provoking Books to Pick Up This Fall”:

Every culture has its myths, and the U.S. is not exempt. Chomsky and Robinson analyze claims by U.S. leaders that the country is a force for good, dedicated to spreading freedom and democracy across the world, by examining the disconnect between what U.S. leaders say and what they do.

THIS WEEK ON THE PODCAST

In other Chomsky-related news, Bev Stohl - who worked in Professor Chomsky's office for many years at MIT - recently joined Current Affairs to discuss her book Chomsky and Me: 

My mind's eye lit up with images of Noam’s body hunching, hands hammering out thesis drafts, editorial letters, articles, statements of solidarity, petitions, lectures, professional correspondence, recommendation letters, arguments, and email. For decades. On countless keyboards. On manual and electric typewriters, then word processors, then progressively streamlined and ergonomically correct wireless keyboards, all the way to the smaller keys of his compact laptop, none of which cramped his fingers or hurt his wrists. His body, unlike mine, seemed to be built for endless typing. 

• Hungary’s President Viktor Orban plans to send around 200 troops to Chad to stop migration from Africa’s Sahel region. Right-wing European militaries policing migrants in Africa: what could go wrong? (Deutsche Welle)
  
  
• In an interview last week, former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland seemed to confirm the long-held suspicion that Western governments—principally that of U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson—helped to kill a potential peace agreement that could have ended the war between Russia and Ukraine as early as April 2022. Had this agreement been reached, hundreds of thousands of casualties could have potentially been avoided. (Responsible Statecraft)
  
  
• After a noisy disruption when dozens of protestors broke onto the Senate floor, legislators in Mexico have passed a set of sweeping reforms to the judiciary, which will see judges elected directly by the Mexican people as early as next year. (CNN)

SHARK FACT OF THE WEEK

Sharks love jazz, but they don’t get classical music.

It’s long been observed that sharks have learned to associate tourist boat sounds with food. But in 2018, scientists set out to learn whether they could distinguish between different types of music. Scientists at Macquarie University in Sydney Australia conducted a study in which they trained juvenile Port Jackson sharks to swim over to a location where jazz music was playing in order to receive a food reward. They found that the sharks quickly learned to swim to the aquatic jazz lounges for a snack. However, when they tried the same thing with classical music, the sharks were perplexed, or perhaps uninterested. 

“The task is harder than it sounds, because the sharks had to learn that different locations were associated with a particular genre of music,” researcher Colum Brown told the Guardian. “Sharks are generally underestimated when it comes to learning abilities,” he added. “Most people see them as mindless, instinctive animals. However, they have really big brains and are obviously much smarter than we give them credit for.” Clearly so, if they have such impeccable music taste!

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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