Mar. 22, 2024 ❧ Pesticides in your food, Texas' insane immigration law, and Hawaii's fight for public elections
Plus: Canada stops selling weapons to Israel, Nathan's "Date with Destiny," Rahul Gandhi's bid to unseat Modi, a Mexican artist trolling Elon Musk, and the magic of manatee farts
Perhaps the news was inside our hearts all along!
STORIES THAT SHOULD BE BIGGER
YOUR FOOD IS FULL OF PESTICIDES
In the United States, most people probably have a vague idea that their fruits and vegetables get sprayed with pesticides before they reach the grocery store. But according to a new study, the sheer amount of toxic chemicals in our food is really staggering. In its 2024 “Shoppers’ Guide to Pesticides in Produce,” the nonprofit Environmental Working Group analyzed a huge set of testing data from the Department of Agriculture and the FDA, covering “47,510 samples of 46 fruits and vegetables.” From that data, they identified a “Dirty Dozen” of 12 popular items—including apples, strawberries, spinach, and other dark leafy vegetables—which had the worst contamination levels.
As Olivia Rosane writes for Common Dreams, the “Dirty Dozen” foods really were dirty, with around 95 percent of samples testing positive for some kind of chemical pesticide or fungicide. Among the chemicals found were diphenylamine, which is banned in the European Union over a possible link to cancer, “neonicotinoids” like acetamiprid which can harm children’s nervous systems, and even borderline illegal compounds like acephate, which—as Rosane notes with alarm— “is essentially prohibited for use on green beans but is still found on them,” with one sample having “levels 500 times the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) legal limit.”
Happily, there’s also a “Clean Fifteen” list of produce items where little or no pesticide was detected, so all the carrot and asparagus fans out there should be safe. Still, this study shows that the United States’ safety and environmental regulations are nowhere near as strict as they need to be.
To make matters worse, there’s a political push to make them even weaker, with proposed legislation like the EATS Act which would stop state governments from making their own agricultural regulations beyond what’s required by federal law. Europe has the right idea here: the use of chemical pesticides needs to be dramatically reined in, and some of these products should probably be banned entirely.
CROOKS vs. SICKOS (or, “What’s going on with our politicians?”)
❧ Bernie Moreno has won the GOP Senate Primary in Ohio. Moreno had Donald Trump’s endorsement, and he defeated his nearest rival by a fairly decisive margin, carrying 50.5 percent of the Republican vote in Ohio compared to Matt Dolan’s 32.9 percent.
It wasn’t entirely smooth sailing for him, though. There was a brief moment when the old guard of the Ohio GOP balked, spooked by claims that Moreno once had (gasp!) a gay profile on a hookup website. (Moreno claims this account, called “nardo19672,” was merely a prank played on him by a friend.) Despite this rather silly mini-scandal, Trump’s endorsement carried the day, proving that the Republican Party is truly his to steer wherever he wants.
For MSNBC, former Ohio Democratic Party chair David Pepper argues that Moreno’s victory is actually a “gift” for Democrats, since Trump’s chosen candidates tended to flop in the 2022 midterms. But in Slate, Ben Mathis-Lilley cautions that this view might be too optimistic:
[Candidates like Herschel Walker] came across as extreme and just plain weird in a way that Moreno does not. The man ran a chain of Mercedes-Benz dealerships; he knows what upper-middle-class suburban sensibilities are all about.
It’s worth remembering that although Donald Trump is cruel, venal, and ridiculous, he’s not actually stupid. In fact, his political instincts are often quite sharp. It’s possible that he’s learned from his blunders in 2022, and is beginning to surround himself with Republicans who can at least pretend to be normal. If that’s the case, it might be a long election year.
⚜ LONG READ: In January, President Biden announced that he was halting approvals of liquefied natural gas exports and processing terminals, a move welcomed by those concerned about their effects on nearby ecosystems, air, and water quality and about worsening the climate crisis. As expected, the move was deplored by Republicans. But 14 Democrats, led by Vicente Gonzalez of Brownsville, Texas, have joined in the chorus of opposition, urging Biden to resume the exports as well. These Democrats claim to be primarily concerned about the loss of oil industry jobs and about competition with Russia. But as Josh Keefe writes for The Lever, “the campaign cash tells another story”:
Gonzalez is one of 14 House Democrats who have either signed on to letters to Biden opposing the pause or voted with Republicans to re-launch natural gas processing and exports. Together, these legislators have received a total of more than $735,000 from the oil and gas industry since the 2022 election. More than a third of that money went to Gonzalez and three other Democrats who signed all of the letters and voted to end the pause on natural gas exports. All four of them are among the top ten Democratic recipients of oil and gas money this election cycle.
The U.S. is the world’s leading exporter of liquid natural gas. Exports have grown 40 percent since Biden’s inauguration until this year, mirroring a similar increase in U.S. crude oil exports.
But as the U.S. has ramped up natural gas production, environmental groups and members of Congress have called on Biden to deny permits for new export facilities, arguing that exports will increase the world’s dangerous reliance on fossil fuels and raise domestic prices.
On Jan. 26, the Biden administration conceded, announcing a “temporary pause on pending decisions on exports of Liquid Natural Gas.” The pause will allow the administration to evaluate and update its standards for approving exports, as the current standards “no longer adequately account for considerations like potential energy cost increases” or “the impact of greenhouse gas emissions,” the administration said in a press release the same day.
Just six days later, ten House Democrats signed on to a letter urging Biden to “refocus on policies that support U.S. liquified natural gas (LNG) exports.”
The letter went on to argue that natural gas exports were essential to helping developing countries transition away from coal. “As the leading producer and exporter of natural gas, the United States has an obligation to assist these countries in their energy transitions,” the Democrats wrote.
The ten Democrats raised a combined $664,000 from the oil and gas industry this election cycle.
AROUND THE STATES
❧ The Supreme Court has refused to block a Texas immigration law that many believed was so extreme that even its 6-3 conservative majority would strike it down. But for now, the law is on hold after the Fifth Circuit blocked it from taking effect. The law, S.B. 4 allows the state of Texas to issue and carry out deportation orders against unauthorized immigrants independently of the federal government. As Vox’s Ian Millheiser writes, the decision upends more than 150 years of established law allowing the federal government “near-exclusive” authority to decide immigration policy.
More importantly, the bill denies the right of due process to legal asylum seekers—who ordinarily have the right to make their case in federal immigration courts. We already know that forcing asylum seekers to wait in Mexico has had dire consequences. One report by Human Rights First found that just six months after Biden re-instated Trump’s Remain in Mexico policy, “Over 1300 people have faced kidnapping, torture, rape, extortion, and other violence while waiting to seek protection in the U.S.” Texas’s law will surely put more people in similar danger.
But its harms do not just stop at those seeking to enter the United States but extend to anyone of Latino origin, including U.S. citizens. The bill also allows Texas authorities to detain anyone merely suspected of being an unauthorized immigrant. As immigration lawyer Jorge Dominguez, a U.S. citizen, said in The Washington Post, “Could I be detained because I’m Brown, speak Spanish fluently and look like someone who crossed into Texas illegally?... This law essentially makes anyone like me vulnerable to any law enforcement officer in the state who wants to play the game ‘Guess the Immigrant.’”
❧ Activists in Hawaii are fighting for publicly-financed elections. Recently, the state’s legislature considered a bill called SB 2381, which would “provid[e] a mechanism to fully fund the elections of candidates for state and county offices”—who would also be “barred from soliciting, accepting, or using contributions from any source other than the program's public funds.”
This would effectively neutralize the influence of “big money” in politics, which has increased dramatically since the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, eliminating things like Super PACs in one fell swoop. Unfortunately, the bill died in committee before it could even reach a proper vote—but people in Hawaii aren’t letting it go quietly, holding a rally at the Hawaii state capitol building on the 18th to keep pushing for what they call “clean elections.” In an op-ed for the Honolulu Civil Beat, political scientist Danny De Gracia makes the case:
What do you think we are doing every time the governor or mayor in the middle of an election year announces a new initiative with a mother-of-all-press-conferences-style unveil? That’s not a public information event, that’s a campaign rally disguised as official executive duties. It sucks all the media air out of the room, and forces everyone — especially one’s opponents — to talk about the official narrative rather than the issues one would want to talk about. For the incumbent, they all fully believe in public-funded campaigning — so long as they alone are the [beneficiary] of public funds[...]
We know that money is a corrupting and controlling influence, and those who have money buy the favors and attention of those who don’t have money. In this regard, there is an iron triangle between political interests, political candidates, and the for-profit media that is difficult to break and impossible to reform using the same system that promotes and encourages the status quo. We need an equalizer, something that forces a change, and that requires courageous legislators who are more worried about what history books will say about them than the momentary rewards of having a title of “committee chair.”
AROUND THE WORLD
❧ Canada has announced that it’ll cease selling weapons to Israel, following a non-binding resolution in Parliament. The measure passed on Monday by a vote of 204-117, and although it is technically nonbinding, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly says the Canadian government intends to honor it. This is a remarkable step for Canada, which often takes its lead in foreign policy matters from the United States, and a breakthrough that could inspire other countries to follow suit.
Predictably, Israeli officials have raised a fuss, with Foreign Minister Israel Katz accusing Canada of “taking a step that undermines Israel's right to self-defense.” But their indignation has been undercut by the recent release of graphic leaked footage that appears to show an IDF drone killing four clearly unarmed Palestinians in Khan Younis—just one of many, many atrocities Israel has committed using the weapons Canada and other countries sold it. On Tuesday, Senator Bernie Sanders said the Canadian Parliament was “absolutely right,” and that the U.S. should follow their example and “not provide another nickel for Netanyahu’s war machine. Although he still refuses to say the word “genocide,” Bernie is right. For the United States, Canada’s moral courage is a glaring spotlight on our own leaders’ shameful lack of it.
NEW FROM THE CURRENT AFFAIRS CINEMATIC UNIVERSE:
NATHAN J. ROBINSON IN “A DATE WITH DESTINY”
For more on the crisis in Palestine, check out editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson’s recent debate with the political streamer Destiny (yes, that’s the name he goes by). Nathan takes the pro-Palestinian side, while Destiny is wrong:
❧ As India’s parliamentary elections approach, millions of people are wondering: can Rahul Gandhi unseat Prime Minister Narendra Modi? As the name suggests, Gandhi is a descendant of the Gandhi/Nehru family that has played an outsized role in India’s politics since its independence. He’s both a grandson of Indira Gandhi and a great-grandson of India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. He’s also a member of Parliament, representing the Wayanad constituency in Kerala—a southern state of India known for its progressive and even socialist politics, in contrast to the more conservative North that’s become a stronghold for Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). And more recently, Gandhi has become one of the most prominent leaders of the Indian opposition, which hopes to deny Modi a third term in office.
As CNN reports, the upcoming vote in India will be the “largest democratic election in human history.” By the most recent estimates, India has 1.4 billion people, around 969 million of whom are eligible to vote. The country is going to stagger its elections in seven “phases” through April and May, holding the first votes on April 19 and announcing results in early June. In that time, an incredible 543 of the 545 seats in the Lok Sabha (the lower house of parliament) will be up for grabs. It’s an event with enormous implications for the future of India, and for the world.
Rahul Gandhi isn’t officially a candidate for PM yet—but to listen to his supporters, you’d never know it. Politicians like Abdur Rashid Mandal, a member of the Legislative Assembly in Assam, have already hailed him as “the next Prime Minister of India,” and Indian media outlets like The Wire have run editorials arguing that “Congress Must Embrace the Idea of Rahul Gandhi as PM Candidate” since “no one in the Opposition space takes the fight to Modi better.” They have a point: for months, Gandhi has been holding huge “unity marches” on behalf of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA)—the coalition of parties who oppose the BJP. The rallies have seen great success, gathering thousands of supporters at sites like Mumbai’s Shivaji Park. So it certainly seems like Gandhi has the political instincts and charisma needed to carry off a successful campaign.
Modi’s governance of India has become so authoritarian—and so harsh to non-Hindus, especially the sizable Muslim minority in India—that almost anyone who successfully opposed him would be welcome. We should always be careful, though, about political dynasties. It’s understandable why many people would want to vote for someone carrying the name “Gandhi,” since Mahatma and Indira Gandhi are beloved national figures. Still, inherited political power and privilege is an ugly form of inequality, and it needs to be guarded against too. Too many generations of people called “Gandhi” in power would be a bad thing for India, even if Modi and his Hindu nationalism are clearly the greater threat right now.
❧ This week, people traversing the streets of Mexico City were greeted by an unusual sight: a nine-ton stone head crushing a blue Tesla convertible.
The scene turns out to have been constructed by Chavis Mármol, a prolific Mexican sculptor of giant stone heads in the style of the ancient Olmec civilization that lived in Mexico between 1200 and 500 B.C. Mármol says he intended the sculpture to “troll” Tesla’s supremely irritating (and now openly racist) CEO Elon Musk. “Look what I do to your lousy car with this wonderful head. This is bigger than you and the rampant technologies,” Mármol said.
The striking image was intended not just to get under the skin of Musk, but to call attention to how the Tesla company’s planned 4,200-acre “gigafactory” in Monterrey, approved last year, could have adverse effects on a community that is already impoverished and struggling with a water crisis. As Tamara Pearson wrote last year in Truthout,
“While the electric vehicles (EVs) that Tesla builds are meant to ease car pollution, the company is passing the water consumption and the high pollution resulting from its manufacturing process on to Mexico. The cars will be sent to the U.S., as most Mexicans could never afford them.”
While Marmol directed his ire at Tesla specifically, his critique extends much further. “Tesla's arrival represented an economic opportunity and an expression of corporate power in modern society,” reads a page on the website for Colima, the hotel outside which the head is displayed. “The work…is much more than a sculpture; it is a provocative statement that seeks to subvert the status quo and question the prevailing narratives surrounding technological progress and rampant consumption.”
⚜ LONG READ: Finland’s right-wing government is trying to dismantle the right of collective bargaining. The country’s powerful unions are fighting back. In Jacobin, Toivo Haimi writes:
As of mid-March, seven thousand dockworkers and industrial workers are on strike, grinding the country’s maritime exports and some imports to a standstill.
Even beyond the stoppages themselves, tensions have escalated more widely…
Before the current administration, political strike action against a government was rare in Finland. But provocations by the current administration have made it increasingly common. Indeed, the current government, which took office last June, has already inspired more politically motivated industrial action than all Finnish governments from 1991 to 2023 combined. What’s going on?...
In Finland’s general election of April 2023, voters swept the center-left coalition government of Prime Minister Sanna Marin from power. Finnish right-wing parties — namely Orpo’s center-right National Coalition Party (Kokoomus) and Riikka Purra’s radical-right Finns Party (Perussuomalaiset) gained a combined ninety-four seats in the country’s two-hundred-seat parliament…The government declared that it would make it easier for bosses to sack employees (though protections are already weaker than the norm for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development), abolish legally mandated sick pay for workers’ first day of illness (thus encouraging the ill to come into work), and restrict workers’ rights to political strikes.
Another proposal is to devolve more collective bargaining to the local, company level. This would mean that in the future, every company could negotiate its own collective agreement, clearing a path for the end of multiemployer, sectoral collective bargaining. This has ground the gears of the trade unions because it would undermine the national collective agreements.
Finland does not have a minimum wage law, but sector-wide and universal collective agreements have long been a backbone of Finnish trade unionism. Universal collective agreements ensure fair wages and decent working conditions for all workers, even if their own workplace is not organized…
The protests and strikes against the Finnish government’s policies have gone on and off since September, with no end in sight. There are two ways this can end. Either the government proceeds with its program despite the widespread strikes, or the unions succeed and bring the government to negotiate…The unions can win if the representatives of Finnish big business determine that the costs of the strikes outweigh the potential profits they stand to gain through the government’s new policies. If that happens, one phone call from EK, the largest federation of businesses, would bring Prime Minister Orpo to the negotiating table.
MANATEE FACT OF THE WEEK
Manatees fart to move up and down in the water.
Unlike most fish, manatees do not have a “swim bladder” that allows them to regulate their buoyancy. According to The Columbus Zoo, They have many adaptations that allow them to swim gracefully, including heavy bones and lungs that extend nearly the entire length of their body and help to keep them horizontal. They also consume an unfathomable 290 heads of lettuce every single day (And we thought gorillas ate a lot of leaves!).
But even with all of these tools at their disposal, manatees still sometimes need a bit of extra help to move their girthy figures to and fro exactly as they please.
That’s where their thoughtful flatulence comes in. All of that lettuce also produces a lot of gas. If manatees wish to drift upward, they may choose to hold it in, whereas if they wish to descend they may choose to break wind, like this:
PAST AFFAIRS
For more information about the magic and mystery of manatees, please listen to the official Current Affairs Manatee Facts Podcast, narrated by editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson.
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. 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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