Jan. 5, 2024 ❧ Insider trading on Capitol Hill, looming threats of war, and Texas' ban on emergency abortions
Plus, arms sales to Saudis and UAE, more bribes for Bob Menendez, a religious school with public funding, and a nonbinary bird
Anchors to the left of me, reporters to the right, here I am stuck in the middle with news
STORIES THAT SHOULD BE BIGGER
INSIDER TRADING ON CAPITOL HILL?
On Tuesday, the website Unusual Whales—which tracks abnormal activity on the U.S. stock market—released its fourth annual report on elected officials’ stock trades. The site’s methodology is simple: take publicly available information about each Senator and Representative’s stock holdings, and compare their portfolio’s performance against the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (or SPY), an index fund that tracks the S&P 500 as a whole. In 2023, the SPY fund was up 24.81 percent—but as Unusual Whales puts it, “Congress blew the market out of the water.” To be specific, out of 100 members of Congress who actively trade stocks, 33 outperformed SPY, some by dramatic margins. Representative Brian Higgins (D-NY) stands out from the pack, beating SPY by 214 percent; he insists those numbers “provide a distorted view of the facts,” but has also gotten in trouble for failing to promptly report stock trades in the past. Other elected Wolves of Wall Street included Rep. Mark Green (R-TN), who was up 122.2 percent on the year, but says his trades are managed by a broker who’s been told to “disregard any instructions from me.” Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was also a big winner with gains of 66.5 percent (via her husband Paul, who trades on her behalf), while nose-picking enthusiast Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) gained 40.1 percent. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) was the most frequent trader, disclosing thousands of individual transactions. The full report is very long and detailed, and worth looking over; for those inclined to follow their Senator or Representative in real time, the website Capitol Trades also tracks this kind of information.
By itself, simply outperforming SPY isn’t evidence of any wrongdoing. It could be that the lawmaker in question got lucky, or had a smart broker, as Rep. Green claims. But members of Congress are privy to all kinds of information that ordinary citizens aren’t, on everything from agricultural policy to impending wars—and in the 2023 stock data, there are some Congressional trades that are, well, odd. For instance, Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) disclosed around $250,000 in agricultural futures trading while sitting on the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, a clear conflict of interest. Rep. Lois Frankel (D-FL) sold shares in First Republic Bank and purchased the equivalent amount in J.P. Morgan, just before First Republic collapsed and was acquired by J.P. Morgan in May. Meanwhile, the Pelosis once again invested millions in the chipmaker Nvidia, despite having divested from the company over insider-trading concerns back in 2022, around the passage of the CHIPS Act (which directly benefited Nvidia and other domestic manufacturers.) With typical slipperiness, they waited until the Friday before Christmas to disclose this fact.
Without a smoking-gun admission, there’s no way to prove that any particular trade was the result of inside information, but all this certainly looks bad. Bad enough, in fact, that it’s led to renewed calls for a total ban on politicians trading stocks. Currently, the only legislation binding them is the 2012 Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, which expanded disclosure requirements after the 2008 financial crisis. (This is how Unusual Whales and sites like it get their information in the first place.) But as Jessica Corbett notes in Common Dreams, Representatives Ken Buck (R-CO) and Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) have both used the new report as an opportunity to promote the Bipartisan Ban on Congressional Stock Ownership Act, which would require new members of Congress to divest from all stocks within 180 days of being sworn in. Former House candidate Melanie D'Arrigo has been more blunt, saying that “Members of Congress shouldn’t be allowed to trade stocks of the companies they regulate for the same reasons referees aren’t allowed to bet on the games they officiate.” They all have a point. Until Congressional stock trading is banned, how can the average American possibly have any confidence their leaders are making decisions to benefit them, and not to line their own pockets?
⚜ LONG READ: Israel’s war in Gaza and with Iran’s proxies in the Middle East is threatening to draw the US into a catastrophic war. But our leaders won’t consider the one option that could prevent it: a ceasefire in Gaza. In The Nation, Trita Parsi writes:
America and Israel’s interests have never been fully aligned on Gaza. But as Israel’s bombardment of the narrow strip has continued for almost 100 days, the Netanyahu government is shifting in a direction that directly threatens the stated goals of the Biden administration: Israel wants to expand the war into Lebanon and appears to welcome open warfare against so-called Axis of Resistance—Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and the revolutionary government in Iran. The assassination of Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut yesterday makes that clear. So far, President Joe Biden has refused the one step that can prevent both this escalation and the US from getting dragged into yet another war in the Middle East: a cease-fire in Gaza…
Instead, Israel appears to be taking advantage of Biden’s near-total deference to Netanyahu to do what previous American presidents have prevented Israel from doing—drag the US into a regional war with Iran and its allies. Another former Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett, argued in The Wall Street Journal only a week ago that “the U.S. and Israel need to take Iran on directly.” There is little doubt that war with Iran, Hezbollah, and the Houthis would be ruinous for the region and for the United States. Though Biden opposes a widening of the war, he has been nonchalant about the risk of escalation.
That risk exists on four fronts: between Israel and the Lebanese Hezbollah, in Syria and Iraq due to attacks on US troops by militias aligned with Iran, the Red Sea between the Houthis and the US Navy, and between Israel and Iran following both the assassination of an Iranian general in Syria and the explosion in Kerman today at the commemoration of the death of General Qassem Soleimani that has killed more than 100. (It remains unclear whether Israel played a role in that attack, but it has nonetheless increased tensions in the region.)
CROOKS vs. SICKOS vs. THE OCCASIONAL DECENT PERSON (or, “What’s going on with our politicians?”)
❧ As the drums ring louder for a new war in the Middle East, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has introduced legislation to block arms shipments to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Omar cited atrocities both countries have committed during their war in Yemen which may soon escalate further amid attacks from its Houthi rebels on Red Sea shipping lanes to Israel. In December, the US approved another $582 million arms sale to the Saudi government and $85 million for the UAE— moves which Omar described as unconscionable. Using American-made weapons, the Saudi and Emirati governments have turned Yemen into what Lama Fakih of Human Rights called a “a disaster zone,” for civilians where “the situation only seems to get worse.” Saudi Arabia’s air campaign alone is estimated by the Yemen Data Project to have killed nearly 9,000 civilians and injured more than 10,000 since 2015. Even more devastating has been its crippling military blockade, which has kept vital food and medicine out of the country and contributed massively to a humanitarian crisis that had taken more than 377,000 lives as of 2021. The UAE has also been involved in attacks on civilians in Yemen and provided weapons to murderous paramilitary groups in Sudan. Omar also cited Saudi Arabia’s execution of 172 dissidents in 2023 and its practice of what she described as “modern-day slavery,” citing Human Rights Watch reporting detailing the coercive treatment of migrant workers. The Biden administration has made policy explicitly outlawing the sale of weapons to countries that use them to attack civilians. Just as he has violated his own rule in supporting massive arms sales to Israel, he is doing the same thing by signing onto arms sales to the Saudis and Emiratis. The sentiment Omar expressed when she attempted to block weapons sales to Israel in November applies again here:
“It is the responsibility of Congress to exercise oversight over weapons sales. That is why we must not allow weapons sales that will be used to directly violate U.S. and international law, human rights, and our own moral standing in the world.”
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
“Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought. Strike against manufacturing shrapnel and gas bombs and all other tools of murder. Strike against preparedness that means death and misery to millions of human beings. Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction. Be heroes in an army of construction.”
~ Helen Keller, from a speech delivered to the Women’s Peace Party in New York
(January 5, 1916)
❧ Senator Bob Menendez, previously accused of accepting bribes from Egypt, is now accused of accepting bribes from Qatar too. The Menendez corruption scandal has been long and cartoonish, involving gold bars shoved into the Senator’s closet for definitely innocent reasons. So far, it’s revolved mostly around shady dealings with officials from Egypt—but on Tuesday, a newly unsealed indictment revealed that Qatar may have paid Menendez for his services as well. It’s alleged that the Senator helped to broker a real estate deal between Fred Daibes, a developer from New Jersey, and an unnamed Qatari businessman to the tune of millions of dollars. For his trouble, the mysterious Qatari reportedly gave Menendez tickets to a Formula One Grand Prix race, while Daibes provided him with luxury wristwatches and yet another bar of gold. Despite widespread condemnation from his Democratic colleagues, Menendez shows no signs of resigning. However, something good has come from his transparent graft; he now has a progressive challenger in Dr. Patricia Campos Medina, a former union organizer who currently runs the Worker Institute at Cornell University. Medina will have a hard fight ahead if she wants to replace Menendez, since Representative Andy Kim is also running for the seat. But really, at this point, anyone who isn’t actively stuffing cash into a burlap sack with “$$$” on the side would be an improvement.
AROUND THE STATES
❧ A federal court has ruled that Texas can ban emergency abortions, even when it violates the most basic federal regulations that protect patients’ lives. The unanimous ruling, handed down by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday, has far-reaching implications. Essentially, the court has decided that Texas’ abortion ban—one of the most restrictive in the nation—overrides the authority of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), which the Biden administration had argued could require emergency abortions to be conducted even in states where they’re otherwise banned. EMTALA is an extremely important piece of medical law, passed in 1986 to prevent hospitals and other healthcare providers from refusing emergency care to patients without insurance—a vile practice more commonly known as “patient dumping.” This new ruling is yet another blow to reproductive freedom in Texas, but it’s more than that, too. By chipping away at EMTALA, it also threatens every patient’s fundamental human right to receive life-saving care, and forces medical professionals to commit severe violations of their ethics. As Current Affairs editor Lily Sánchez wrote after the Dobbs v. Jackson decision in 2022, preserving medical ethics in the face of anti-abortion zealotry will require principled healthcare workers to defy the law:
The medical profession ought to outright refuse to comply. Professionals can be complicit in the state’s overreach and violation of patients’ medical freedom—which will keep us on a path toward state control over women’s bodies and state-mandated unethical healthcare, which Roe rightly treated as unconscionable—or they can be what the public needs them to be: humane professionals who will live up to the great responsibility entrusted to them and who will protect their patients from harm.
❧ A transgender candidate has been kicked off Ohio ballots for not using her name assigned at birth. Until recently, Vanessa Joy was running for the Ohio state legislature, with hopes of representing Stark County. On Wednesday, though, she learned that she’d been disqualified—all because she hadn’t put her birth name on the petitions to get her on the ballot. Joy has legally changed her name, but an obscure Ohio law requires candidates for office to list all names they’ve used within the last five years, and she wasn’t aware of the condition until it was too late. Speaking to NBC, Joy points out that requiring trans politicians to use their “deadnames” presents an unfair “barrier to entry”—especially since the requirement wasn’t included in any of the instructional materials provided to prospective candidates. Notably, no one’s ever forced Ted Cruz to go by “Rafael” in his campaign materials, or Nikki Haley to use the name “Nimarata Randhawa”; it’s only with trans people that former names are policed and regulated in this way. Joy has appealed her disqualification, but it’s unclear whether she’ll be successful, or how the law will affect the other three transgender Ohioans who have filed to run for office this year. What’s painfully clear, though, is that this legal requirement is discriminatory nonsense, and it needs to be discarded immediately.
❧ Oklahoma last week approved the first publicly funded religious charter school in America, setting into motion a case that could undermine the basis for the separation of church and state. The St. Isidore of Seville Virtual Charter School is set to open in 2024 and would, despite being funded by taxpayer dollars, deliver an explicitly religious curriculum to students. The Archdiocese describes St. Isidore “as a genuine instrument of the Church” and says it plans to teach students to “know that Human persons are destined for life with the Holy Trinity … but that in freedom, an individual may reject God’s invitation and … end up in Hell.” The First Amendment’s Establishment Clause has long been interpreted to prevent the state from funding religious institutions. Oklahoma also has its own constitutional provision explicitly barring the use of federal money for religious purposes. But as St. Isidore faces legal challenges that will be reviewed by the Oklahoma Supreme Court—including from the state’s Republican attorney general and a group of parents, teachers, and faith leaders represented by the ACLU—the school is receiving backing from a legal group at the University of Notre Dame closely tied to Leonard Leo, the head of the Federalist Society. This multi-billion dollar right-wing legal group has spent years chipping away at the wall of separation between religion and state, winning many favorable rulings from the conservative majority on the US Supreme Court. According to a report from Heidi Pryzbyla in Politico, the Federalist Society is hoping Oklahoma’s Catholic charter school could serve as “a test case to change the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the First Amendment’s separation of church and state.” In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled in Carson v. Makin that states were required to allow publicly funded school vouchers to be used at religious institutions (Churches are not supposed to receive state funding, but taxpayer-funded vouchers are a “dominant source of funding for many churches,” according to a report from the National Bureau of Economic Research). With SCOTUS having signaled that it’s OK with public dollars indirectly funding churches, it does not seem like much of a leap to suspect that they might be willing to do away with the separation of church and state altogether.
⚜ LONG READ: Over the last few months, as American college students have spoken out against the war in Gaza, campus presidents have been met with accusations that by not punishing pro-Palestinian groups, they are allowing a culture of vile antisemitism to flourish. Bernie Steinberg, who served as the director of Harvard’s Hillel group for 18 years, has written an op-ed in The Harvard Crimson denouncing what he calls the “the cynical weaponization of antisemitism by powerful forces who seek to intimidate and ultimately silence legitimate criticism of Israel and of American policy on Israel.”:
During my long career as a Jewish educator and leader — including thirteen years living in Jerusalem — I have seen and lived through my community’s struggles. Now, as an elder leader, with the benefit of hindsight, I feel compelled to speak to what I see as a disturbing trend gripping our campus, and many others: The cynical weaponization of antisemitism by powerful forces who seek to intimidate and ultimately silence legitimate criticism of Israel and of American policy on Israel.
In most cases, it takes the form of bullying pro-Palestine organizers. In others, these campaigns persecute anyone who simply doesn’t show due deference to the bullies.
The recent effort to smear our new University President, Claudine Gay, is a case in point. I applaud the decision by the Harvard Corporation to stand by Dr. Gay amid the ludicrous charges that she somehow supports genocide against Jews, and I hope Harvard will continue to take a clear and strong stance against any further efforts by these powerful parties to meddle in university affairs, especially over personnel decisions. [Note: since the publication of this op-ed, Gay has announced her resignation]
The toppling of the president of the University of Pennsylvania is a sobering example of what can happen when we empower these unscrupulous forces to dictate our path as university leaders. The stakes are as high as they’ve ever been. Our vigilance must be up to the task.
As a leader in the Jewish community, I am particularly alarmed by today’s McCarthyist tactic of manufacturing an antisemitism scare, which, in effect, turns the very real issue of Jewish safety into a pawn in a cynical political game to cover for Israel’s deeply unpopular policies with regard to Palestine. (A recent poll found that 66 percent of all U.S. voters and 80 percent of Democratic voters desire an end to Israel’s current war, for instance.)
What makes this trend particularly disturbing is the power differential: Billionaire donors and the politically-connected, non-Jews and Jews alike on one side, targeting disproportionately people of vulnerable populations on the other, including students, untenured faculty, persons of color, Muslims, and, especially, Palestinian activists.
Let me speak directly to Jewish students at Harvard.
I know that it’s alienating and hurtful to so many of you when campus Jewish organizations, like Hillel and Chabad, take positions that exclude your voices. To those students, I say: The Jewish tradition is much deeper than any organization. No one has a monopoly on Judaism.
AS THE WORLD SPIRALS INTO WAR AND THE US TURNS A BLIND EYE TO GENOCIDE, WE CAN ALWAYS COUNT ON THE NEW YORK TIMES OPINION PAGE TO REMIND US WHAT TRULY MATTERS: HARVARD.
AROUND THE WORLD
❧ The United States aided South Korea's assassination drills against Kim Jong-un. In a recent television interview, South Korean defense minister Shin Won-sik confirmed that his country’s military is actively conducting what he called “decapitation drills,” intended to prepare South Korean troops for a possible assassination attempt on North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. What’s more, he admitted that “U.S. special operation forces” participated in the training. This is remarkable because, while North and South Korea are technically still at war, the United States is not. The fact that its military personnel were directly involved in a plan to potentially assassinate a foreign head of state, something illegal under both international and US law, is troubling. At the very least, it’s likely to make President Kim more paranoid, which can’t be good for anyone around him. At worst, it may push North Korea closer to a military conflict with South Korea, the United States, or both. In cases like these, it’s always useful to imagine what would happen if the roles were reversed. How would the U.S. State Department, for instance, react if it learned North Korean agents were drilling to assassinate Joe Biden? And if the answer is “badly,” why would the same reckless behavior be acceptable from our end?
❧ Climate change is worsening the spread of malaria across Africa. In Kenya, a coalition of scientists including members of the International Livestock and Research Institute (ILRI) and Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) have conducted an important new study. Using weather stations and insect traps, they’ve uncovered new insights into the way climate change affects the population and range of malaria-carrying insects, especially mosquitoes. As it turns out, the news isn’t good: rising temperatures mean more rainfall, especially during El Nino season, which means more standing water for mosquitoes to hatch their eggs in. As Willis Akhwale, one of the project’s senior advisors, puts it:
There is more breeding, there is more breeding sites and there is therefore a high chance of transmission of vector borne diseases like malaria, like dengue, like Rift Valley fever and chikungunya. And with this therefore,you are likely to see increased cases of these diseases. And in an area like northern Kenya, that is not very well developed in terms of infrastructure, there will be a strain on the health system.
By “a strain on the health system,” Akhwale means an increased likelihood of mass sickness and death. This is a major environmental justice issue, because on the whole, it isn’t African countries who have made the vast majority of the carbon emissions that cause climate change in the first place. It’s the West—but as usual, it’ll be Africans who suffer the consequences. At the bare minimum, this study provides yet another reason to clamp down on the use of fossil fuels around the world. Beyond that, some form of reparations for Kenya and other countries stricken by climate-driven illnesses seems in order.
❧ A Jewish journalist in Brazil is facing a police investigation for “racism” over criticisms of Israel’s war on Gaza, during which Israeli forces have killed more than 22,000 Palestinians—mostly civilians. Breno Altman, the founder of the independent Brazilian news site Opera Mundi was ordered by São Paulo’s Court of Justice to remove five posts on Twitter and give up his personal data from the platform as part of a formal police inquiry… The order was put into motion after a Zionist group, the Israeli Confederation of Brazil, accused him of violating Brazil’s extremely broad law banning speech “practicing, inducing or inciting discrimination or prejudice based on race, color, ethnicity, religion or national origin.” Altman, who is Jewish himself and lost “dozens” of family members in the Holocaust, contends that the criminalization of his speech is premised on “a false association between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.” None of his tweets attack Jews as a people—instead, Altman criticizes Zionism, which he calls a “colonial and racist doctrine” that has enabled an apartheid system in Israel and served as the justification for a bombing campaign more destructive than any in recent memory. We’ve already discussed how cowardly and dishonest it is to dismiss criticisms of Israel as antisemitic—doubly so when its critics are Jewish themselves (as many of them are).
This story also highlights the dangers of giving the state the power to bring criminal punishments against people for disfavored speech. European countries, which lack the free speech protections we enjoy in America, have used hate speech laws to crack down on pro-Palestinian protests. And while the hate speech statutes Brazil used against Altman were already on the books, Brazil also earlier this year expanded its ability to punish speech to those who express anti-LGBTQ sentiments, a power we argued at the time was overly broad and easy to abuse in the wrong hands. While the attempt to prevent harassment and bigoted speech is certainly well-intentioned, the spurious prosecution of Altman is a prime example of how easily the powers to police speech can be misused and why we should, on principle, oppose the government censorship of speech, including that which we find abhorrent.
RIP JOHN PILGER, 1939-2023
The acclaimed journalist and documentary filmmaker died on December 30 of last year, after an illustrious career exposing the crimes of empire around the world. Pilger made more than 50 documentaries, including the groundbreaking Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia, which detailed how Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger’s secret bombing campaign in that country led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge. He was also known for Vietnam: The Quiet Mutiny, which covered American soldiers’ trauma and disillusionment, for 2002’s Palestine is Still the Issue, and for 2019’s The Dirty War on the National Health Service, among other titles. He leaves behind a rich catalog of work, well worth exploring for anyone interested in issues of foreign policy and social justice—and much of it is available to view for free online!
BIRD FACT OF THE DAY
A Colombian honeycreeper has been identified that defies the gender binary.
According to Sci News, this species of bird usually displays clear sexual dimorphism, with females being grass-green and males being bright aqua blue. Bill color and tail and wing length also differ based on sex.
But in October 2021 and again in June 2023, scientists at a feeding station in Villamaría discovered an extremely rare “half female, half male” honeycreeper who has female characteristics on one side and male characteristics on the other—a condition known as bilateral gynandromorphy. Biologist Hamish Spencer describes the condition as the result of a genetic “error” during egg meiosis that causes double fertilization by two different sperm. It’s an extremely rare phenomenon in birds. According to Spencer, “Many birdwatchers could go their whole lives and not see a bilateral gynandromorph in any species of bird.” In the case of this honeycreeper, the result of this “error” is remarkably beautiful, with plumage that is half blue and half green.
In an article expressing admiration for the honeycreeper, James Factora of the LGBTQ news site Them writes that its beauty gives us an opportunity to rethink our rigidly defined ideas of sex and gender:
“What if, instead of calling this anomaly an ‘error,’ we saw the existence of creatures like the half-blue half-green green honeycreeper… as evidence that sex can’t be so neatly defined? As the release states, “[Spencer] hopes the novel discovery will inspire people to ‘treasure exceptions’ as they always reveal something interesting. The notion that gender is what we feel while sex is what we’re born with is a fairly common one in queer communities at this point, but as the green honeycreeper bird shows us, the latter isn’t so cut and dry. And we have always exposed the futility of attempting to categorize the endless possibilities of the natural world. In both birds and humans, there is no error; only infinite diversity in infinite combinations.”
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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