Friday, August 4, 2023
Homelessness, lightbulbs, Trump Indictment 3.0, FBI entrapment, AI Jesus, and more...
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STORIES THAT SHOULD BE BIGGER
REP. BUSH REINTRODUCES HOMELESS BILL OF RIGHTS
Representative Cori Bush of Missouri has reintroduced an Unhoused Bill of Rights, which could implement a universal housing guarantee by 2027. The bill proposes “historic federal funding levels” for state and local governments to increase support for the homeless. It provides universal housing vouchers, bolsters funding for the construction of new public housing and shelters, and increases funding for existing housing programs and emergency rental assistance. The memo by Bush, who has herself faced homelessness in the past and established the Congressional Caucus to End Homelessness says,
“The inability of the richest country in the world to guarantee housing, universal medical care, and livable wages to its people represents a moral and political failure at every of our society.”
Nearly 600,000 people are homeless in America (a number that has increased since the pandemic and the resulting rash of evictions after the expiration of pandemic-era eviction moratoriums).
As we’ve discussed in Current Affairs, homelessness is an issue that could very easily be ended if there was political will to do so. Finland, for example, virtually eradicated rough sleeping through a “Housing First” approach, which provided people with immediate, permanent housing rather than temporary accommodation. New Orleans did much the same by funding hotel stays for the homeless during the pandemic, but its homeless population has since rebounded after those policies ended.
Usually, the “solutions” enacted, even in purportedly “progressive” cities, treat homelessness as a criminal offense. Alex Bronzini-Vender, in the most recent issue of Current Affairs magazine, explored the failure of these carceral solutions in the supposed left-wing metropolis of Portland:
[Portland Mayor] Ted Wheeler’s response to Portland’s homelessness crisis has consisted of making homelessness illegal, and then sending the cops to sweep encampments. Wheeler’s sweeps are inhumane, traumatizing, and fundamentally ineffective: forcing people out of sight, rather than housing them, doesn’t actually solve anything. Multnomah County data also shows that, of the roughly 1,700 Portlanders swept from encampments over a 10-month period ending in February 2023, only 11 percent are currently in temporary shelter—just 1 percent have been permanently housed.
Cori Bush’s proposal cuts through this absurdity, treating homelessness not as a crime but as something that can be solved by allocating our abundant resources in a way that is humane and sensible. Though it has little chance of passing through the House given its current makeup, it could create a useable framework for cities that actually want to help their homeless populations rather than just make their lives hell.
GOODBYE, INCANDESCENT LIGHTBULBS! YOU WILL NOT BE MISSED.
New Biden administration energy efficiency standards requiring 45 lumens per watt have effectively outlawed incandescent lightbulbs (with certain exceptions). LED bulbs will now become the norm. We have to say, it’s about time! Incandescent bulbs may be cheaper to buy at the store, but they burn out 25 to 50 times quicker and waste much more energy in the long run. The Department of Energy estimates that the switch to LED will save Americans $3 billion per year on utility bills while cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 222 million metric tons per year, which is the equivalent of the emissions put out by 28 million homes.
As you will be shocked to learn, a lot of conservatives have flown into an incandescent rage about this. They have stridently resisted the shift to LED bulbs for more than a decade (Real heads will remember that this was also an early Obama-era culture war issue after he increased efficiency standards, which Trump then rolled back in 2019).
While the obvious real reason for the resistance by GOP politicians is to placate trade groups that support them, like the G.E.-backed National Energy Manufacturers Association, the moral argument they tend to make is that banning halogen bulbs is an abridgment of individual freedom, such as Republican Representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, who last week sarcastically said,
“I’m happy the Department of Energy is out here, making sure that we can all save money because we’re too dumb to figure out how to do it ourselves.”
But, unironically, yes! The majority of Americans still use incandescent bulbs for no discernible reason. Taking them off the shelves will both save us all money and save tons of carbon dioxide from being needlessly pumped into the atmosphere.
A lot of environmental policies are objected to because they require us (at least in theory) to sacrifice comfort or convenience or pay more for something more energy efficient. But there are no tradeoffs here whatsoever, other than losing the freedom to choose a clearly worse product for its own sake. Getting mad about this is like getting mad about a government regulation that forces you to buy jellybeans for $5 instead of a swarm of flesh-eating bees for $10.
BIG STORY
IT’S INDICTMENT O’CLOCK AGAIN, BABY!
Former President Trump already faces federal charges for numerous document crimes and state charges in New York for hush money payments he made during the 2016 election. He has now been indicted again! The latest indictment, dropped Friday by Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith, charges Trump for his scheme to overturn the 2020 election, which culminated in a gaggle of his supporters attacking the Capitol on January 6, 2021 (We also now know he approved of the riot and resisted calling it off and telling rioters to “stay peaceful” at the time).
The indictment charges Trump with witness tampering, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy against the rights of citizens, and obstruction of an official proceeding. It also lists six unnamed co-conspirators, believed to include Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani (who pushed numerous election claims even after being told they were untrue), Sidney Powell (the infamous “Kraken” lawyer who fabricated claims of Dominion voting systems switching votes to Biden), and attorney John Eastman (who concocted the nonsense legal theory that Vice President Mike Pence could unilaterally reject electors on January 6).
The indictment says Trump demonstrated a clear motive with his actions:
“The purpose of the conspiracy was to overturn the legitimate results of the presidential election by using knowingly false claims of election fraud to obstruct the federal government function by which those results are collected, counted, and certified.
This indictment does not contain the sidesplitting comedic material of the boxes saga from the previous one. But it shows Trump at his most outwardly nefarious—consciously scheming to overturn the results of an election that, as the document reiterates regularly, he knew that he had lost. At multiple points, his appointees, including Attorney General Bill Barr, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency head Chris Krebs, and Vice President Mike Pence (all of whom had every reason to want the claims to be true so they could stay in their positions), as well as many Trump-supporting officials in state governments, told Trump that they could not find evidence of his claims. Trump even chided Pence for his unwillingness to certify his slates of fake electors by calling him “too honest”—this seems to indicate that he understood that it would be dishonest for Pence to try to overturn the election as he’d pressured him to do.
Establishing Trump’s intent may be critically important, says Robert Kelner, a veteran D.C. lawyer, who told The Washington Post:
“At the heart of the case is really a metaphysical question of whether it’s even possible for Donald Trump to believe that he lost the election, or lost anything else, for that matter…[Jack Smith] needs to show that all of the false statements Trump made about the election, which the indictment chronicles in great detail, were understood by Trump to be false; otherwise, it becomes a case about political speech and First Amendment rights, and that’s not where the government wants to be.”
Regardless of whether he knowingly deceived the public to attempt what he understood to be a coup (though it appears he did), the methods he and his co-conspirators intended for keeping power are quite chilling as well. For instance, DOJ official Jeffery Clark (also named as a co-conspirator) suggested using the Insurrection Act and sending the military into major cities to put down protests that would arise following Trump’s undemocratic seizure of power.
It seems increasingly clear from the indictment and the slow drip of evidence that has come out since Trump left office that he consciously attempted a coup and surrounded himself with enablers who shielded him from reality. If nothing else, it’s important to make an example of him to demonstrate to smarter coup plotters who may someday hold office that the consequences for such actions are dire.
AROUND THE STATES
Indiana’s near-total ban on abortion is now in effect after more than a year of being held up in state courts. Providers who violate the ban will lose their licenses and face one to six years in jail. This is a blow to the reproductive rights of not just the more than 3.3 million women who live in Indiana, but the ones in surrounding Midwestern states, like Ohio, Missouri, and Kentucky, which have their own strict abortion bans. For example, you may recall that a 10-year-old rape victim who could not legally receive an abortion under Ohio’s fetal heartbeat law (which could end if a referendum to protect abortion rights passes in Ohio later in November) last year traveled to Indiana to get one. Planned Parenthood in Illinois is expected to see an increase of 20,000 to 30,000 additional patients over the next year.
In 2010, four poor Muslim men were sentenced to 25 years in prison for allegedly planning the bombing of a synagogue in Newburgh, New York. It has since been revealed that these men, known as the Newburgh Four, were goaded into the plot by an FBI informant who posed as a Muslim radical and schooled them in the tenets of radical jihadism, while paying one of them to bring the others into the plot. In light of this, the same judge who sentenced them thirteen years ago has granted the release of three of them (the fourth, who recruited the other three, has not requested compassionate release). The case of the Newburgh Four is one of many cases in which supposed terrorist plots were urged on by FBI agents, so they could then be foiled. According to The Terror Factory by journalist Trevor Aaronson, around one of every three terror attacks he studied over ten years had an FBI agent leading the charge, with the Bureau often providing the necessary weapons, transportation, and money.
Speaking of ludicrous FBI malfeasance, the Colorado ACLU has brought a lawsuit against the Bureau, as well as the Colorado Springs Police Department, for unlawfully targeting racial justice protesters in the summer of 2020. The FBI paid multiple saboteurs to pose as activists and infiltrate the protest movement in Denver with the goal of provoking violence. One entrapped two Black activists into a plot to assassinate the state attorney general (which the activists resisted) and encourage violence at protests. Another attempted to lure two activists into FBI gun-running stings. The lawsuit also alleges that the FBI illegally used social media to obtain a search warrant based on First Amendment-protected speech. The vast capabilities of law enforcement to monitor activists’ social media behavior is something The Intercept first reported on last year. (To read more on the subject of FBI entrapment and other malfeasance by our national security bureaucracy, check out this article in Current Affairs by Stephen Prager about why we need a Church Committee for the 21st century.)
What would Jesus do? Now you can ask him yourself! A new AI chatbot on Twitch called “Ask Jesus” allows you to ask a rather unnerving simulacrum of Mr. Christ any question you can think of (For the Buddhists in our audience, there is also an AI “Buddhabot”. Until recently there was also HadithGPT which took questions about Islamic texts but has since been shut down by its creator.) When we looked at the Jesus chatbot, a user had just asked Jesus his opinion on penguins. He said that “since they are God’s creatures,” he is a fan of them, “even the strange and awkward ones.” When we asked him his opinion on manatees, He did not answer us (Christianity’s general evasiveness on manatees is one of the primary reasons Current Affairs—a stridently pro-manatee publication—does not advocate it or any organized religion. The God of the Old Testament appears quite anti-manatee: telling Moses to keep the Ark of the Covenant covered up with “with hides of sea cows” while traveling [Numbers 4:4-6] and asking for manatee skins to be used for many other projects, which we do not care for. It’s possible that His son may have more compassionate views on our gentle aquatic friends, but we will not know until He tells us.)
Yes, the chatbot’s rendering of Jesus is very white, despite the actual Jesus—a Jewish guy from the Levant—almost certainly not being white. Did Megyn Kelly design this thing?
LONG READ: How did the National Rifle Association become such a powerful force in American politics? In The New York Times, Mike McIntire examines the files of Democratic Representative John D. Dingell, Jr. who helped to build the organization into a juggernaut along with a small group of gun enthusiasts in Congress who not only helped to mainstream the NRA but served in the organization itself:
“As chairman of the powerful House commerce committee, Mr. Dingell would send “Dingellgrams” — demands for information from federal agencies — drafted by the N.R.A. Other times, on learning of a lawmaker’s plan to introduce a bill, he would scribble a note to an aide saying, “Notify N.R.A.” Beginning in the 1970s, he pushed the group to fund legal work that could help win court cases and enshrine policy protections. The impact would be far-reaching: Some of the earliest N.R.A.-backed scholars were later cited in the Supreme Court’s District of Columbia vs. Heller decision affirming an individual right to own a gun, as well as a ruling last year that established a new legal test invalidating many restrictions.
AROUND THE WORLD
War might be brewing in Niger after its military coup last week. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)—a regional body of fifteen countries—has threatened to use force if Niger does not restore the democratically elected president within the week. This intervention is being resisted by some other regional powers, including Burkina Faso and Mali—both of which are ruled by military juntas friendly with Russia—which said intervention would be “a declaration of war.” ECOWAS has also imposed sanctions on Niger, halting all financial transactions between it and other countries in the bloc, which appears to have led to many electricity outages after neighboring Nigeria cut off its supply. Niger already ranks as one of the world’s poorest countries (and often comes dead last on the U.N.’s Human Development Index) and sanctions are expected to make the situation for its 25 million people even more dire.
Extreme downpours around Beijing have caused landslides and floods, leaving at least 20 people dead. Hundreds of thousands have been evacuated to safer places. Beijing, along with most of Northern China, is notoriously dry. But according to the city’s meteorological service, precipitation over the past week reached a 140-year-high. It’s yet another bit of record-breaking weather that has caused death and forced mass evacuation. Unless swift action is taken by politicians to combat climate change, torrential rains will become more common and more destructive.
The Biden administration is moving towards a deal between the U.S., Israel, and Saudi Arabia. Thomas Friedman, in The New York Times, calls the deal “a game changer for the Middle East, bigger than the Camp David peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.” But if Friedman is a big fan of something, it’s safe to say there’s likely a catch. Fred Kaplan writes in Slate that “This pact could trigger a new Cold War more complex and dangerous than any confrontation we’ve ever seen.”:
“President Joe Biden is exploring the possibility of a big deal in which Saudi Arabia normalizes relations with Israel, Israel reopens talks with Palestinians, and the U.S. signs a mutual defense pact with Saudi Arabia…First, the very idea of a U.S. defense pact with Saudi Arabia—a treaty-bound assurance that the United States will come to the royal family’s defense if their country is attacked, in the same way that we have pledged to defend any member of NATO that comes under attack—is, and should be, a non-starter…Second, the move would have a terrible impact on Biden’s broader foreign policy. He has repeatedly described the current play of world politics as a contest between democracy and authoritarianism…This rationale would implode if Biden signed a mutual defense pact with one of the least democratic countries in the world (ranked, by one index, in between Libya and Uzbekistan). U.S. policy would be derided as not only hypocritical but puzzling, and China and Russia would score major propaganda victories…The third reason the deal would be bad is that, as part of the arrangement, the Saudis want not only a mutual defense pact but also nuclear technology—for “peaceful” purposes, of course, under close international supervision. But this is a dangerous course to go down. India began its quest for nuclear weapons under the same pretense. Iran insists that its nuclear program is strictly for peaceful ends, yet many observers have their doubts. Why should the Saudis be granted greater trust?
As Barbie and Oppenheimer have blown up box offices, Warner Bros. sought to capitalize on the synergy by having the Barbie film’s official account post a fan-made image of Margot Robbie’s eponymous doll smiling with the nuclear scientist in front of a fiery background:
Needless to say, many people in Japan did not find WB making light of their national tragedy very amusing. In response, “#NoBarbenheimer” trended on Twitter (No, we’re not going to call it X.) Some Japanese memesters even began posting images of Barbie overlaid with shots of the Twin Towers being engulfed in pink flames to taunt Americans back:
While we certainly understand the outrage of the Japanese over such insensitivity, they don’t seem to get that Americans love making 9/11 jokes more than anyone (Also, just from a comedic perspective, not using Pearl Harbor—or perhaps “Pearl Barb-or”—seems like a real missed opportunity for Japan, right?).
Elsewhere in Japan, a man named Toco has spent $14,000 creating a remarkably realistic-looking border collie costume, which he debuted in a series of videos this week. In this video, where Toco is seen walking around the park and meeting other dogs, he says it was “a dream I had since I was a little child to be an animal.” The YouTube channel, fittingly titled “I want to be an animal,” is full of videos of Toco doing tricks, going for walks, and generally being his best self:
BAT FACT OF THE WEEK
Bats may be the gayest animals in the world! Their rate of homosexual behavior is believed to be higher than any other creature, including humans. More than 20 bat species have been observed to be involved in same-sex relations, and many others are “seasonally bisexual,” according to one study.
Writing and research by Stephen Prager. 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. Current Affairs is 100% reader supported and depends on your subscriptions and donations.