Dec. 8, 2023 ❧ Biden moves to close states' welfare loophole, Diego Rivera's birthday, and the House labels anti-Zionism antisemitic
Plus a new Nevada-California rail line, deranged police training, drought in Tunisia, and pufferfish courtship rituals
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STORIES THAT SHOULD BE BIGGER
BIDEN ADMINISTRATION MOVES TO CLOSE WELFARE LOOPHOLE THAT ALLOWED STATES TO MISUSE FUNDS
Without much fanfare, the Biden administration has proposed a set of reforms to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program (usually described as “welfare”) aimed at preventing states from misusing federal funds meant for poor families. It closes loopholes that allowed states to get away with counting donations by private corporations as welfare “spending,” using TANF funds on other state expenditures. The reforms proposed by the Biden administration would require that states provide evidence that their use of welfare funds would actually help needy families while redefining the term needy to encompass only families making 200 percent of the poverty line or less.
The changes follow a rash of reports of states abusing TANF dollars for other priorities. A previous ProPublica investigation found that:
Utah avoided more than $75 million in spending on public assistance over the past decade by taking credit for aid to the hungry and homeless provided by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (Many of the vulnerable Utahns we interviewed felt that in order to access desperately needed aid, they had to participate in Mormon religious rites they didn’t believe in.)
Arizona, meanwhile, was found to have only used 13 percent of its welfare funding on welfare itself while 61 percent was used to fund the state’s child protective services system. As a result, only 6 percent of Arizona families in poverty actually received help, compared to the national rate of 23 percent. As Eli Hager wrote in ProPublica and the Arizona Republic:
In other words, welfare in Arizona largely goes not to helping poor parents financially but rather to the state’s Department of Child Safety — an agency that investigates many of these same parents, and that sometimes takes their kids away for reasons arising from the poverty that they were seeking help with in the first place.
Other states have used welfare funds for foster care and college scholarships, while some states have found ways to divert funds to anti-abortion medical groups. In one notorious example, Mississippi’s governor got caught diverting funds to help Brett Favre build a volleyball stadium at his daughter’s college. Some simply don’t spend it at all.
Biden’s reforms could do quite a lot to ensure that people in the most need get the money they are entitled to. But this still won’t address the root of the problem, which is that states have discretion to decide how to use federal TANF funds, which are distributed as part of block grants. This is a result of the disastrous 1996 welfare reform passed by President Clinton. The bill famously “end[ed] welfare as we know it” by introducing work requirements and imposing time limits. These are reasons why welfare rolls shrunk and deep poverty increased in the following years. But another overlooked cause is that states began to administer welfare themselves and impose their own restrictions, which has allowed for some of the wild misuse of funds listed above. The Biden administration says it will “remind states that there is a large body of research that shows that cash assistance is a critically important tool for reducing family and child poverty.” But it shouldn’t need to “remind” them—they should be required to use welfare money to give people welfare.
FIGHTING BACK
THE WASHINGTON POST GOES ON STRIKE
It might be December, but 2023 still has another historic labor strike left in it. At the Washington Post, more than 750 journalists, editors, and other staffers held a 24-hour walkout on Thursday, in protest against a new round of job cuts. Back in October, the paper announced that it would be eliminating 240 jobs through so-called “voluntary buyouts” (which really come with a threat of “more difficult actions such as layoffs,” and are not “voluntary” at all), from a total staff of approximately 2,500 workers. Of that number, USA Today reports that around 1,000 are unionized under the Washington Post Guild, which has been instrumental in organizing the strike. The Guild has been negotiating for more than 18 months now and has yet to arrive at an acceptable contract. Although they’ve made a few important gains on things like sick leave and discrimination policies, management refuses to come to the table on critical issues like pay rates and remote-work policies. On Tuesday, the Guild released a charming little zine called “Fed Up,” laying out their reasons for striking in cartoon form:
As you can see, these are all perfectly reasonable demands. In the case of minimum salaries for reporters and advertising reps, the Post workers are actually asking for slightly less than what their counterparts at the New York Times already get. It’s worth remembering, too, that the Post is owned by Jeff Bezos—one of the three richest people in the world, who’s estimated to make roughly $321 million every day. The idea that the paper can’t afford to pay its workers the going rate for their industry is ridiculous. In an open letter, the staff have asked that readers stand in solidarity with them:
On Dec. 7, we ask you to respect our walkout by not crossing the picket line: For 24 hours, please do not engage with any Washington Post content. That includes our print and online news stories, podcasts, videos, games and recipes. Instead, share information about our strike and send a letter to Post leaders in support of the people who make this institution run.
At the time of writing, Action Network has recorded 17,104 letters of support sent so far, with a goal of 25,600. If you have a moment—and that’s really all it takes—why not add one of your own?
TODAY IN HISTORY
The 1962-1963 NYC Newspaper Strike
The Washington Post strike echoes another labor action from the past, which kicked off on today’s date: the New York City newspaper strike of 1962-63, which lasted for 114 days. Frustrated by stagnant wages and fearing that automation would eliminate many printing jobs, workers from the New York Typographical Union struck simultaneously against the New York Times, the New York Daily News, and the now-defunct New York Journal-American and New York World-Telegram. Other papers, like the unfortunately-not-defunct New York Post, decided to suspend operations during the strike of their own accord. In the end, the workers won wage and benefit increases of $12.63 per week (you have to wonder how that extra $0.63 was decided), significantly more than the flat $8 the bosses had initially offered. The strike also led to the creation of several alternative publications that endure today, like the now-venerable New York Review of Books—which would soon publish Noam Chomsky’s landmark essay “The Responsibility of Intellectuals” in 1967, and kickstart his long and storied career. Everything is connected…
BIG STORY
US HOUSE PASSES RESOLUTION STATING “ANTI-ZIONISM IS ANTI-SEMITISM”
The House of Representatives has just passed a resolution that “clearly and firmly states that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism,” effectively smearing millions of critics of Israel’s dispossession of Palestinians—including many Jews—as bigots. The Republican-written legislation passed with 311 votes in favor, including all but one Republican and 95 Democrats in support. 14 Democrats voted against the resolution, while the remaining 92 voted “present.”
This is the most extreme step so far in an effort to conflate all criticism of the Israeli government’s war on Gaza with hatred of all Jews—a war that has killed more than 17,000 people in Gaza, the majority of whom are civilians (Israel now admits that two of every three people it has killed have been civilians, though other reports put the ratio of civilians to militants as high as 9 in 10).
It’s worth noting that the resolution does not contain any definition of the word “Zionism,” which leaves it entirely unclear what is meant when it says “anti-Zionism” is antisemitism. Most self-described Zionists can’t even agree with each other on what the term means: Some Zionist factions argue that it simply means that there should be a safe haven for Jews in the Middle East. Others, like Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, argue that Zionism means only Jewish people have the right to self-determination in Israel, and that this includes the right to push Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank to create illegal Israeli settlements. Others who are even more extreme (commonly known as “Kahanists”) say that Zionism means all Arabs must be kicked out of Israel to create a theocratic, ethnically pure state. Earlier this year Israel’s Finance Minister, a member of the ultranationalist Religious Zionism Party, said “there is no such thing as the Palestinian people” and that they were an “invention” created in the 20th century to fight Zionism. Israel’s Security Minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, who was once a member of Israel’s Kahanist Kach Party, says that one of “the values of Zionism” is to “Judaize the Galilee with settlement, and IDF soldiers and the security forces,” which in practice has meant replacing Arabs in the West Bank with Israeli settlers via military force. All of these are examples of “Zionism.” If we take Congress’ resolution literally, it is now considered anti-Semitic to speak out against any of them.
At the hearings that occurred in the lead-up to the resolution, the supporters did very little to hide its aim, which is to incentivize the punishment of those who publicly criticize Israel’s actions, particularly campus activists. Many of the speakers in support of the resolution singled out the common, decades-old chant “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free!” which most pro-Palestine activists describe as a call for political freedom for Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza who currently lack a state and equal rights. The resolution grievously mischaracterizes it as endorsing “eradication of the State of Israel and the Jewish people.” Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY), for instance, blasted college administrators for supposedly allowing “calls for genocide” because they did not consider the phrase “harassment.” Stefanik demanded that Harvard president Claudine Gay rescind the admissions of students who use the phrase. (It should be mentioned that the charter of Netanyahu’s Likud Party also contains the sentence “Between the Sea and the Jordan [River] there will only be Israeli sovereignty.” The same people do not seem to interpret this as a call for the genocide of Palestinians.)
With the broad definition of “anti-Semitism” now officially sanctioned, it’s easy to imagine that schools and employers will feel compelled to root out anyone perceived to have negative opinions about Israel. Comparisons to the McCarthy era are often overwrought, but it’s hard to think of another time since then, in which the U.S. government so openly threatened to destroy people’s lives for holding what they believe are incorrect opinions.
A list of “antisemites” (according to the U.S. House of Representatives)
Historian and son of Holocaust survivors Norman Finkelstein
Distinguished linguist and foreign-policy expert Noam Chomsky
Israeli peace activist Guy Hirschfeld
Ha’aretz Columnist Gideon Levy
Israeli historians Ilan Pappé and Avi Shlaim
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Albert Einstein
Holocaust survivor Primo Levi
Jewish feminist writer Judith Butler
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon
Holocaust survivor Dr. Gabor Maté
Members of Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, and Rabbis for Ceasefire
AROUND THE STATES
❧ The federal government has approved more than $3 billion in funding for high-speed rail in California and Nevada. As Travis Schlepp reports for Los Angeles’ KTLA, it’s the single biggest infusion of cash for the project since voters approved it back in 2008. When it comes to mass transit, the United States is woefully behind countries like China, Japan, and Germany, which have many varieties of cool bullet trains; by contrast, our government puts almost no resources into the vital cool-trains field, preferring to fund distressing things like war. This federal grant is a step toward correcting that sorry state of affairs. The funds will allow the California High-Speed Rail Authority to complete an initial 171-mile section of rails between Bakersfield and Merced, and to place trains on it for the first time in 2030. A long time to wait, to be sure—but when they start to run, the trains are expected to deliver huge gains for the climate, cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 102 million metric tons in the project’s first 50 years. They’re also slated to be entirely solar-powered, and when the project is complete, will run all the way from southern California to Las Vegas, Nevada, eliminating the need for numerous carbon-belching cars on the interstate. Some credit must, reluctantly, be given to “Amtrak Joe” Biden for his role in bringing the deal about. Now, if only we could get him to pursue more train-related activities, and less of… everything else.
❧ Police from across the United States were taught “unconstitutional” tactics by a private training company in New Jersey. In a damning new report, New Jersey’s acting comptroller has revealed that at least $75,000 of the state’s public funds went to a company called Street Cop, which held a six-day training conference for law enforcement officers in Atlantic City. Around 240 New Jersey cops from “all levels of government” paid to attend the training, among roughly 990 from around the country. At the conference, instructors reportedly “glorified violence and an excessively militaristic or ‘warrior’ approach to policing,” “spoke disparagingly of the internal affairs process,” and “promoted an ‘us vs. them’ approach” throughout. There were also “over 100 discriminatory and harassing remarks by speakers and instructors, with repeated references to speakers’ genitalia, lewd gestures, and demeaning quips about women and minorities.” To give an idea of the general tone of the event, former Special Forces soldier Tim Kennedy reportedly said “I love violence. I love fighting. I love shooting” onstage, and talked in glowing terms about “drinking out of the skulls of our enemies.” Shawn Pardazi, a former Louisiana sheriff’s deputy who was arrested for shooting into a fleeing car and livestreaming it on Facebook, was there, telling his fellow cops that “it becomes pow pow pow” if anyone runs from him. In other words, Street Cop put on an elaborate trade show on how to be a jack-booted thug, and taxpayers footed the bill. The next time a news story comes out about New Jersey cops shooting an unarmed person in the back, paralyzing someone with a taser, or committing some heinous form of sexual harassment or assault, we’ll know exactly where the behavior was promoted and normalized. The more time passes and things like this keep happening, the more it becomes clear that the activists trying to defund and demilitarize the police—if not outright abolish them—have a very good point.
❧ A shocking poll out of Nebraska shows an independent union leader beating Nebraska’s incumbent Republican senator, The Intercept reports. Dan Osborn, who has served as president of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union Local 50G, and helped to lead Kellogg’s workers as they went on strike in 2021, which resulted in the company agreeing to raise their wages and benefits. As an independent candidate, Olson has launched a challenge to the anti-union 72-year-old Senator Deb Fischer, who has held the seat since 2013. He’s framed himself as an outsider, striving for “honest government that isn’t bought and paid for” and centering economic issues in his messaging. “I will bring together workers, farmers, ranchers, and small business owners across Nebraska around bread-and-butter issues that appeal across party lines,” he said in his campaign announcement. Though he is not a party member, the state Democrats are considering throwing their support behind Osborn rather than fielding their own candidate. Nebraska has voted Republican for president in every election since 1964. The most recent poll for 2024 from Change Research, a liberal polling group, shows that while the state still prefers Trump to Biden by 16 points, the independent Osborn also leads the Republican Fischer by a 40-38 percent margin. We certainly advise caution in interpreting any poll, particularly polls from partisan researchers as definitive (2022 showed the folly of relying too heavily on conservative polling firms). But in such a red state, a poll like this could point to something significant. As Democrats face a gauntlet to retain their slim Senate majority, Osborn could end up being an unexpected savior.
AROUND THE WORLD
❧ Javier Milei, the president-elect of Argentina, is already having a difficult time. In a famous quip, the conservative journalist Irving Kristol once mocked liberals as idealists who would inevitably get “mugged by reality”—and now, it seems the same “mugging” process applies to South American anarcho-capitalists. When he was running for office, Javier Milei made all kinds of bombastic declarations about the radical new policies he wanted to put in place, but before he’s even inaugurated on December 10, he’s already having to dial them back. As the Wall Street Journal details, he’s dismissed several of the advisers who were supposed to help him abolish the peso and tie Argentina’s economy directly to the U.S. dollar. He seems to have realized that he can’t actually cut economic ties with China, a country he railed against on the campaign trail, since it’s the top buyer of Argentina’s soybeans and beef. Even his plans to privatize state-owned industries look doubtful, as one union leader at Aerolineas Argentinas has warned that Milei “will have to literally kill us” to change the airline’s ownership. Instead, it looks like Milei will have to govern as a more-or-less ordinary conservative if he wants to govern at all. It’s a predictable result. You see, unfettered free-market capitalism might sound good on paper, but it just can’t work in real life. For a sense of just how much Milei has peeled back his ambitions, this was how he promised to govern just a few months ago:
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❧ Tunisia, now in its fourth year of drought, is being devastated by climate change. According to data from the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights, around 300,000 of the country’s 12 million people lack adequate drinking water, and many others have to travel long distances to find usable wells and rivers. “We are the living dead… forgotten by everyone,” says one woman interviewed by the Arab News, and she’s not exaggerating. In the village of Ouled Omar, 22 families reportedly share “the only remaining spring,” which yields just 10 liters of water per day. Across Tunisia, 20 dams have gone out of service, particularly in the south. Droughts like these are a predictable consequence of a warming planet, and they’ve become more and more common across the Middle East and northern Africa, hitting Iraq, Iran, and Syria as well in recent years. It’s a humanitarian emergency, which will require drastic—and immediate—climate action to even begin to address.
⚜ LONG READ: Supporters of Israel’s bombing of Gaza have attempted to justify the massive loss of civilian life as a necessary evil to “destroy Hamas” once and for all. But has the bombing actually achieved that objective? In Foreign Affairs Magazine, Robert A. Pape explains that, if anything, Israel’s indiscriminate slaughter of civilians has only made Hamas stronger:
Whatever the ultimate goal, Israel’s collective devastation of Gaza raises deep moral problems. But even judged purely in strategic terms, Israel’s approach is doomed to failure—and indeed, it is already failing. Mass civilian punishment has not convinced Gaza’s residents to stop supporting Hamas. To the contrary, it has only heightened resentment among Palestinians. Nor has the campaign succeeded in dismantling the group ostensibly being targeted. Fifty-plus days of war show that while Israel can demolish Gaza, it cannot destroy Hamas. In fact, the group may be stronger now than it was before…
Since the dawn of airpower, countries have sought to bomb enemies into submission and shatter civilian morale. Pushed to their breaking point, the theory goes, populations will rise up against their own governments and switch sides. This strategy of coercive punishment reached its apogee in World War II. History remembers the indiscriminate bombing of cities in that war simply by the place names of the targets: Hamburg (40,000 dead), Darmstadt (12,000), and Dresden (25,000).
Now Gaza can be added to this infamous list. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has himself likened the current campaign to the Allies’ fight in World War II. While denying that Israel was engaging in collective punishment today, he pointed out that a Royal Air Force strike targeting Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen killed scores of schoolchildren.
What Netanyahu left unmentioned was that none of the Allies’ efforts to punish civilians en masse actually succeeded. In Germany, the Allied bombing campaign, which took off beginning in 1942, wreaked havoc on civilians, destroying one urban area after another and ultimately a total of 58 German cities and towns by the end of the war. But it never sapped civilian morale or prompted an uprising against Adolf Hitler, despite the confident predictions of Allied officials. Indeed, the campaign only encouraged Germans to fight harder for fear of a draconian postwar peace.
This historical pattern is repeating itself in Gaza. Despite nearly two months of heavy military operations—virtually unrestrained by the United States and the rest of the world—Israel has achieved only marginal results. By any meaningful metric, the campaign has not led to Hamas’s even partial defeat. Israel’s air and ground operations have killed as many as 5,000 Hamas fighters (according to Israeli officials), out of a total of about 30,000.But these losses will not significantly reduce the threat to Israeli civilians, since, as the October 7 attacks proved, it takes only a few hundred Hamas fighters to wreak havoc on Israeli communities. Worse, Israeli officials also admit that the military campaign is killing twice as many civilians as Hamas fighters.
[NOTE: According to Reuters, Israel has not explained how it concluded that one in three people it’s killed have been Hamas militants. The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, a Geneva-based nonprofit, estimates that 90 percent of the people killed in Gaza have been civilians.]
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DIEGO RIVERA!
The iconic painter was born on this day in 1886, in Guanajuato, Mexico. A proud socialist, Rivera is known mainly for frescoes and murals like Pan American Unity and the 27-part Detroit Industry Murals, which are full of heroic portrayals of workers from around the world.
Rivera had a tumultuous romantic relationship with Frida Kahlo, to whom he was married on two separate occasions, and wrote a truly fascinating memoir called My Art, My Life, in which he crosses paths with everyone from Leon Trotsky to Charlie Chaplin. In one memorable chapter, Rivera claims to have dabbled in cannibalism in 1904; in another, he writes that he almost assassinated Adolf Hitler at a rally in the 1920s before being talked out of it:
“Let me shoot him, at least. I’ll take the responsibility. He’s still within range.”
But this made my German comrades laugh still harder. After laughing himself out, Thaelmann said, “Of course, it’s best to have someone always ready to liquidate the clown. Don’t worry, though. In a few months, he’ll be finished, and then we’ll be in a position to take power.”
The whole book is full of outlandish stuff like this, much of which is almost certainly lies. Rivera had real moments of heroism, though. In 1933, when Nelson Rockefeller commissioned him to create a mural called Man at the Crossroads in what’s now 30 Rockefeller Center, he insisted on putting a portrait of Lenin and a Soviet May Day parade in it and refused to back down, leading Rockefeller to destroy the piece. He then re-created it in Mexico, under the title Man, Controller of the Universe.
On what would be Rivera’s 137th birthday, we offer a loud “toot” on the celebratory noisemaker in his honor!
CROOKS vs. SICKOS (or, “What’s going on with our politicians?”)
❧ The fourth Republican presidential debate of the year, hosted by NewsNation, had just four candidates. However, it still contained as much nonsense as ever. With the departure of the great Doug Burgum, we’re now down to four people who actually qualify to appear in these things: Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, and Chris Christie. Of that motley group, Christie probably performed the “best” on Wednesday night, dealing out harsh criticisms of Donald Trump as “an angry, bitter man who now wants to be back as president because he wants to exact retribution,” which is certainly not wrong. Of course, this would be more compelling coming from virtually anyone besides the scandal-prone ex-governor. Meanwhile, DeSantis decided it would be a good idea to refer to traditional Middle Eastern clothing as “man dresses,” and Haley made the truly wild assertion that “For every 30 minutes that someone watches TikTok every day they become 17% more antisemitic.”
Somehow, though, Vivek Ramaswamy managed to be the most deranged person in the room, waving a handwritten sign that said “NIKKI = CORRUPT” and endorsing various far-right conspiracy theories. Among other things, he claimed that January 6th was “an inside job” (???), that “the 2020 election was indeed stolen by Big Tech,” and that the profoundly racist Great Replacement theory is “a basic statement of the Democratic Party’s platform.” These are, obviously, worrying things to hear from a candidate for high office. But there’s some good news: with their actual poll numbers trailing Donald Trump by more than forty points, none of these weirdos are going to be President any time soon.
NEW IN CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE
“The Lessons of Vivek” by Alex Skopic: Some tips on how to bullshit your way through life from upstart, attention-hungry, deeply annoying presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
FISH FACT OF THE DAY
Male pufferfish make elaborate sand circles to impress the ladies.
When they were first discovered in 1995, scientists were perplexed about why strange, symmetrical circles, sometimes reaching up to seven feet in diameter, were appearing on the ocean floor near Japan.
But in 2013, the mystery of these “underwater crop circles” was finally solved: they were created by pufferfish as part of an intricate mating ritual. According to LiveScience, “Males laboriously flap their fins as they swim along the seafloor, resulting in disrupted sediment and amazing circular patterns.” The researcher who discovered this act of pufferfish courtship, Hiroshi Kawase, described how they decorate them with fragments of shell and sediments that give them a unique color.
According to LiveScience, female puffers choose their mates based on their construction skills and often lay their eggs in the center. But scientists still don’t understand why the ladies are so drawn to this particular pattern. One of the researchers speculated that they may not be attracted to the male’s design capabilities, but could simply be after the fine sands at the center of the ring.
This perception may explain the concerning emergence of fish incel (“fish-cel”) forums online, on which some misogynistic male puffers have taken to accusing all females of “sand-digging.” The jewelry industry has also made a massive marketing push to capture aquatic demographics, which could also be contributing to the stigma that female pufferfish are only in it for the sediments.
Writing and research by Stephen Prager and Alex Skopic. Editing and additional material by Nathan J. Robinson and Lily Sánchez. Fact-checking by Justin Ward. 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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