Oct. 3, 2023 ❧ A free school lunch bill, a war in the House GOP, and panda extradition
plus fighting back against Oklahoma school censorship, shoddy military aircraft, the flooding of New York City, a fire alarm mishap, a Kelce-sized stingray and much more!
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STORIES THAT SHOULD BE BIGGER
FETTERMAN INTRODUCES A PAIR OF BILLS TO END SCHOOL LUNCH DEBT
Amid the (deeply silly) national controversy about his hoodie, Pennsylvania’s junior senator has done something else that should be getting more attention. Along with Senators Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Peter Welch of Vermont, he’s introduced the School Lunch Debt Cancellation Act, which would direct the USDA to pay off the debt balance for every K-12 student in the United States who hasn’t been able to afford their daily school meals. “‘School lunch debt’ is a term so absurd that it shouldn’t even exist. That’s why I’m proud to introduce this bill to cancel the nation’s student meal debt and stop humiliating kids and penalizing hunger,” Fetterman said in a press release.
The humiliation is real. According to figures from the Education Data Initiative, 68.8 percent of U.S. schools have at least some students with unpaid meal debt, and 30.4 million kids can’t afford to eat at school. Depending on the district, they can be met with all kinds of demeaning treatment, from an inked hand stamp with the words “LUNCH MONEY” written on it to having their meals taken away and thrown in the trash. As Fetterman points out, the whole concept of children having debt to eat nutritious food is grotesque; it would be a disgrace to any nation, let alone one of the richest in human history.
Not stopping there, though, Fetterman has also introduced the Universal School Meals Program Act of 2023, a more ambitious bill originally introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN). It would “provide free breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack to every school-age child,” along with free summer meals for low-income kids. Astonishingly, universal free lunch is a measure that was already taken in 2020, causing childhood hunger to decline by seven percentage points before the Biden administration allowed the pandemic-era program to expire. It’s been proven to work, and the federal budget didn’t implode from the cost. In a sane world, both of Fetterman’s bills would sail through Congress without a single vote against them. As it stands, anyone who opposes them will have to look the voting public in the eye and explain why they want their constituents’ children to continue to go hungry.
AND NOW, A WHOLLY UNRELATED POEM BY WILLIAM BLAKE:
Is this a holy thing to see
In a rich and fruitful land,
Babes reduced to misery
Fed with cold and usurous hand?
Is that trembling cry a song?
Can it be a song of joy?
And so many children poor?
It is a land of poverty!
And their sun does never shine.
And their fields are bleak & bare.
And their ways are fill'd with thorns.
It is eternal winter there.
For where-e’er the sun does shine,
And where-e’er the rain does fall:
Babe can never hunger there,
Nor poverty the mind appall.
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FIGHTING BACK
AN “INAPPROPRIATE MATERIAL IN SCHOOLS” TIP LINE GETS FLOODED WITH JOKES
Ryan Walters, the State Superintendent for Oklahoma’s public schools, is the type of guy that’s become all too familiar lately. He writes op-eds for the Daily Caller, wants an “actively anti-woke education system,” pushes PragerU propaganda as curriculum material, and has publicly suggested that the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre wasn’t about race. He is, by any measure, an obnoxious person, and old ladies flip him off at school board meetings.
Walters’ latest big-brained idea was “Parent Watch,” an email tip line where Oklahoma parents (but really just the conservative ones) can report material they consider “inappropriate” in public schools. From there, Walters clearly hoped he could launch censorship and intimidation campaigns against particular teachers and librarians, something he’s done in the past. But as Dylan Goforth reports for regional news outlet The Frontier, things didn’t go according to plan:
Some people signed the state email account up for news alerts from food delivery services, newsletters for LGBTQ+ news, sex toys, and a Peppa Pig Theme Park in Florida. One person emailed the lyrics to the songs Teenagers by My Chemical Romance, Mambo No. 5 by Lou Bega and Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice. Many sent links to news stories detailing sexual misconduct by religious figures and Republican lawmakers in Oklahoma and across the country. One person emailed a lengthy portion of the script to the Bee Movie, a 2007 film written by Jerry Seinfeld.
In fact, in more than 4,000 emails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Goforth found only one actual complaint from a conservative parent. Otherwise, the tip line has been rendered unusable, as Oklahomans band together to bury it under a mountain of nonsense. If anyone would like to give them a hand, the address is parentwatch@sde.ok.gov, and the lyrics to Vanilla Ice’s entire discography can be found here.
BIG STORY
AS GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN IS AVERTED, KEVIN McCARTHY DEALS WITH A FAR-RIGHT MUTINY
Amid threats of a shutdown from his hard-right flank, Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) agreed to a compromise with Democrats to fund the government through mid-November. McCarthy had spent the last few weeks making promises to colleagues in the far-right Freedom Caucus who had asked for a 30 percent cut on everything from healthcare subsidies for the poor to cancer research to nutrition aid for pregnant mothers to toxic waste cleanup, and even more draconian policies at the border. Though they extracted some modest cuts to Ukraine aid, they didn’t get much else that they wanted.
Now that McCarthy has spurned the Freedom Caucus, he is facing a mutiny from their leader Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) who yesterday filed a motion to oust him as speaker—the first time the House’s prestigious gavel-wielder has been challenged in more than 100 years. This has been a long time coming. Gaetz was among the most intransigent Republicans during McCarthy’s bid to become speaker back in January, and showed a willingness to force the government into a catastrophic default if he didn’t get his desired cuts during the spring debt ceiling showdown. Another of Gaetz’s biggest gripes is McCarthy’s unwillingness to stop American funding for Ukraine’s defense against Russia. As one Republican staffer put it, the Freedom Caucus has morphed into the “we-just-hate-Kevin coalition” under Gaetz’s auspices.
Gaetz is attempting to use the “motion to vacate” —a procedural maneuver earned as a concession during January’s leadership fight. The motion will put McCarthy’s speakership to a simple majority vote on the floor. Because Republicans only hold a 221-212 majority, McCarthy can only afford four Republican defectors. [UPDATE: By a vote of 216-210, McCarthy has failed to secure enough votes to remain Speaker of the House and has become the first to ever be ousted from the position. The office has been declared “vacant.”]
This creates an odd situation in which the Democrats—despite being in the minority—likely hold McCarthy’s fate in their hands. They have the option to embrace the chaos, let McCarthy fall, and leave the Republicans to tear each other limb from limb as they once again fight over the speakership. But they could also jump in to save McCarthy in the hopes of avoiding the ascent of somebody even worse and possibly extracting some concessions from him along the way. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), the Chair of the more than 100-member Congressional Progressive Caucus, has said her bloc has no intent to save McCarthy but would be open to a power-sharing agreement between Democrats and Republicans. Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jefferies is not tipping his hand at all. McCarthy has already had a miserable experience as Speaker, and it’s about to get even more nightmarish. That he still even wants the job after all of this is befuddling, but perhaps just speaks to the beguiling nature of power.
AROUND THE STATES
❧ A man in a MAGA hat shot a Native American protestor in New Mexico, severely wounding him. The protest in question was against the return of a statue, which had been taken down during the George Floyd uprising in 2020, honoring the Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate. Even by the standards of his time, Oñate’s legacy is a bloody one. In 1599, in the process of establishing colonial New Mexico, he declared war against the Acoma Pueblo people, massacred “at least 800 warriors, women, and children,” and “cut a foot off of 24 young men as a warning to other rebellious pueblos.”
Like many people, Jacob Johns—an artist, climate activist, and indigenous water protector of Hopi and Akimel O’odham heritage—found the statue an affront to Native Americans everywhere, and traveled across the country from Spokane to attend a peaceful protest. For his trouble, he was shot in the chest by 23-year-old Ryan Martinez, a Trump supporter who—with the cowardice typical of right-wing extremists—“pulled a handgun from his waistband, fired one shot and fled.” At the time of writing, Johns is in stable condition, having gone through emergency surgery, but is likely to have extensive medical bills. His family has set up a GoFundMe, available here.
❧ Over the weekend, New York City saw dramatic flash flooding that submerged streets and subways. Experts say it’s only the beginning. At times, the flood waters in the Big Apple looked downright apocalyptic; Governor Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency on Saturday, and at one point a sea lion was able to swim out of the Central Park Zoo to freedom.
For Vox, a panel of four scientists weighed in on what they call “the new abnormal,” and how things may escalate if nothing is done about carbon emissions and their effect on the climate:
Increasingly, we’re going to be seeing events, whether they’re heat waves, flooding events, or droughts that we thought looking back at our climate records would never be possible. Because of human-driven climate change, that’s going to create situations where things that have never happened before are going to become routine. [In] another 10 or 20 years, we won’t be thinking they’re so abnormal, because these things are going to be happening more and more frequently.
❧ Days after an F-35 military jet crash-landed in South Carolina, a new report was released by the Government Accountability Office revealing that the exorbitantly expensive aircraft can only fly 55 percent of the time. For those unaware, flying is one of the most important functions of an airplane, and what distinguishes them from other, lesser vehicles like cars and trains. But these jets, which the military owns 450 of and which cost the U.S. taxpayer $100 million apiece, have fallen well short of the Pentagon’s projections. Don’t worry, though! The good people over at Lockheed Martin won’t be losing any revenue—according to the Financial Times, the Department of Defense plans to spend $1.7 trillion to buy 2,000 more of them by the mid-2040s. Surely, nobody else could make better use of that money.
❧ Amid a massive strike wave in the state, California’s Governor Gavin Newsom has vetoed a bill that would have allowed striking workers to collect unemployment benefits. It’s a major thumb in the eye from a politician who has benefitted mightily from the labor movement’s support, and a blow to a “hot labor summer” that has seen strikes by tens of thousands of TV writers and actors, Kaiser Permanente healthcare employees, and hotel workers, among others. But Newsom, facing down the need to pay off California’s debts, sided with business associations like the Chamber of Commerce who have complained about a tax increase, even though California already loses $69.2 billion annually through corporate and personal tax breaks that mainly go to the state’s wealthiest people. During strikes, employers are often able to avoid coming to the bargaining table by simply waiting until strike funds run out and employees start struggling to pay for the cost of living. Allowing them to collect unemployment benefits—as New York and New Jersey already do—would level the playing field. As Alex Press argues in Jacobin, “The right to strike,” which has been recognized in American law since 1933, “is an ostensibly fundamental distinction between free and unfree labor, but it isn’t genuine if people can’t realistically exercise it.”
AROUND THE WORLD
❧ In South Africa, a xenophobic vigilante group has registered as a political party. Operation Dudula was formed in 2021 after riots broke out across South Africa in the wake of former president Jacob Zuma’s arrest on contempt of court charges. Initially focusing on armed anti-looting efforts, the group soon became known for its anti-migrant politics, demanding that anyone in South Africa without official documentation be deported. In Zulu, their name literally means “to force out.” As Sibusiso Ndlovu, a hospital supervisor with Médecins Sans Frontières, relates to the Guardian, one of their most notable tactics is to surround hospital entrances and deny access to anyone they believe is a foreigner “based on their appearance and accent,” and they “have even demanded that critically ill patients who are migrants must be ‘unplugged’ and taken out.” Now, Operation Dudula is making a change; noting that “the military angle did not appeal to a lot of people,” they’re registering to field candidates in elections instead. With a general election scheduled for 2024, it’ll soon become clear just how much support their agenda has.
❧ Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland, held some highly questionable elections last Friday. The problem is that Eswatini is an absolute monarchy, one of the world’s last, and political parties of any kind are banned there. Once elected, members of parliament “only have an advisory role and do not wield any tangible power,” per the BBC. In the past few years, there have been fierce political struggles over the African nation’s future, but they’ve taken place outside the law, with thousands of citizens rallying in protest against King Mswati III and demanding real democratic reforms. Rather than listen, the government has responded with violent repression: in 2021 alone, at least 40 of those protestors were killed by police, and another 150 were hospitalized. Pro-democracy activists have also been assassinated in their homes. Clearly, this is a government with no intention of actually allowing its people a voice—and Friday’s elections offered only the form of democracy, without the content.
❧ China is taking back its pandas from America. As relations have chilled between the two superpowers, the People’s Republic has announced that it will not renew its agreement to lend its rotund black and white bears to the Smithsonian’s National Zoo. As Megan K. Stack writes in The New York Times,
The bears have lived in the National Zoo under a carefully negotiated agreement with the Chinese government, which maintains ownership of the world’s giant panda population…The government in Beijing has long practiced panda diplomacy, lending the bears to (or withholding them from) zoos in a reflection of favor or annoyance. The presentation of pandas, for example, has often coincided with trade deals favorable to Beijing…When it comes to pandas, China giveth — and, now, China taketh away.
The Smithsonian held its Panda Palooza event on Sept. 23, which featured “hashtag-worthy photo backdrops, hands-on arts and crafts, 'Kids Area’ in the Great Meadow with a soft play section; chalkboard, coloring and stamping activities; morning family stretching and yoga along with panda talks, temporary tattoos, a conservation-themed scavenger hunt, live music concerts on the Mainstage by Lion Tiger Hill and free film screenings of Kung Fu Panda and The Miracle Panda in the Visitor Center Theater.”
The Smithsonian held a “Panda Palooza” to wish its beloved bears Tian Tian, Mei Xiang, and Xiao Qi Ji a mournful farewell. They are among just seven pandas currently on U.S. soil, all of whom will likely be extradited to China by the end of 2024.
Current Affairs has long expressed horror at Washington’s ever-increasing lust for conflict with China, a conflict we believe would be an act of suicidal folly that could destroy human civilization. We have also pointed out our nation’s rank hypocrisy about things like the dreaded spy balloon that menaced our country earlier this year (America, of course, spies on China constantly). But, we must say, this is an unprecedented escalation from China. The abduction of our dear pandas is an affront that we simply cannot bea–… uh, tolerate.
VIDEO: Giant Panda Tian Tian, who will soon depart the Smithsonian Zoo, recently celebrated his 26th birthday by enjoying “a special panda-friendly fruitsicle cake.” (Source: Smithsonian’s National Zoo)
A ROYAL SCREWUP
To celebrate the 57th anniversary of Botswana’s independence from Britain, the UK-based intergovernmental group the Commonwealth Foundation honored the nation’s sovereignty on Twitter by posting an image of…South Africa.
CROOKS vs. SICKOS (or, “What’s going on with our politicians?”)
❧ Representative Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) inexplicably pulled the fire alarm in the House’s Cannon office building this weekend, leading up to the passage of the stopgap spending bill. The Squad member is now under fire himself, facing two investigations for what might be a federal crime—but the reason he did this is still totally confounding. Republicans claim that Bowman pulled the alarm to delay the stopgap vote (McCarthy has tried to say this was as bad as January 6, which is beyond absurd). But the idea that this was an act of Machiavellian sabotage seems unlikely: Bowman and most Democrats supported the bill, and it passed 335 to 91. Why would Bowman commit a crime to delay a bill he intended to pass, particularly when it was all but guaranteed to pass anyway?
Bowman, meanwhile, claims that he simply did something very dumb. “As I was rushing to make a vote,” he said in a statement, “I came to a door that is usually open for votes but today would not open. I am embarrassed to admit that I activated the fire alarm, mistakenly thinking it would open the door.” Apparently, the door had this sign on it, which Bowman says led to his confusion.
It’s a bit surprising that he would not think twice before pulling the fire alarm, which was very clearly labeled with the word “FIRE” in big white letters (this is especially the case since he was a school principal for ten years and would presumably have taken part in dozens of fire drills). But we can also see how, in a rush, someone could misread the sign as saying “Push Alarm Until Sounds.” As our editor Nathan Robinson wrote on Twitter, “This is actually a story about the importance of good typesetting.”
We honestly have no clue what to make of this, other than to say that it’s generally wrong to pull fire alarms when there is no fire afoot. But, since Bowman has one of the better voting records in Congress (and did us all a service by ridding the House Democratic caucus of the horrid Eliot Engel), and because this was very funny and nobody got hurt, we’ll give him a mulligan. Congressman, please accept this coupon:
❧ Trump is in court this week as part of a civil fraud trial that could cost him and his business $250 million, a nice pallet cleanser before the criminal proceedings for his four separate indictments begin. He is accused by the New York attorney general’s office of overvaluing his properties in order to obtain loans and insurance while undervaluing them when it came time to file tax returns. As he always does, Trump has labeled the proceedings as a politically-motivated “witch hunt.” But this is belied by his business’s own filings. According to the lawsuit, as summarized by ProPublica,
“Trump Organization statements of financial condition overstated [his 40 Wall Street property’s] value by nearly $200 million. Though the company had received an appraisal in 2015 saying the building was worth $540 million… Trump statements of financial condition put the value at $735.4 million that same year.”
DEEP DIVES
⚜ LONG READ: The IRS is starting a pilot program to create a free, publicly funded tool that would help Americans file their taxes online. It would be expected to help out low-income taxpayers who would no longer need to pay for costly services like TurboTax for help. According to a new investigation by Paul Kiel in ProPublica, in order to save its business model, Intuit (TurboTax’s parent company) is pushing fishy talking points claiming that the program will hurt Black taxpayers:
It’s a new chapter in the long-running conflict over free tax filing, but Intuit has fallen back on some tried-and-true tactics, ones previously documented by ProPublica. In Washington, D.C., the company has deployed 63 lobbyists this year, according to OpenSecrets, to stalk the halls of government. Meanwhile, op-eds and stories that parrot Intuit’s talking points have appeared in at least 20 newspapers and other publications across the country…
“IRS Free Tax Service Could Further Harm Blacks,” is how the Defender, a Black paper in Houston, put it in a June headline. The piece cited unnamed “industry experts” as raising the concern but quoted only one person by name: Intuit’s spokesperson Derrick Plummer…
Internal Intuit documents from last decade, previously divulged by ProPublica, made clear that “pushing back through op-eds” was part of the company’s strategy against what it called government “encroachment.” One specific goal: “Buy ads for op-eds/editorials/stories in African American and Latino media.” ProPublica did not find evidence that Intuit has paid to place stories this year, but otherwise, the 2023 campaign seems to be following that template…
“The fact of the matter is that the industry is targeting black and brown communities trying to stoke fear of a direct file tool,” said Brandon Tucker, senior policy director of Color of Change, an online activist organization devoted to racial justice that supports direct file. “Black people are critical to their profit margins.”
Earlier this year, a study by a team of academic and government researchers found that the IRS audited Black taxpayers between three and five times the rate of other taxpayers. As a result, Intuit argued, having the IRS prepare the taxes of Black taxpayers “would likely increase these inequities.” Chavis more timidly offered that it “may increase racial income inequality.”
The study itself, however, lends no support to that conclusion. The authors pinpointed audits of people who claim the earned income tax credit as the driver of the racial disparity. The EITC is one of the main anti-poverty programs in the U.S. and is aimed primarily at low-income, working parents: Most recipients earn under $20,000 a year. For decades, the IRS has disproportionately audited EITC claimants because of pressure from Republicans in Congress as well as laws that require a special focus on “improper payments.”
⚜ VIDEO ESSAY: Matt Stoller, a former policymaker and the author of the monopoly-focused BIG newsletter on Substack, breaks down the FTC’s antitrust lawsuit against Amazon and explains how the company operates as “basically a giant money laundering scheme.” Here he is on Breaking Points’ “Big Breakdowns” segment:
STINGRAY FACT OF THE WEEK:
Stingrays can grow a lot larger than you probably expected!
Over the past week, scientists with the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection were working on a “trawl survey” of Long Island Sound, in which they putter around on a big boat with nets to document what kind of sea creatures live there. Among several interesting finds, they encountered a really impressive roughtail stingray, or Bathytoshia centroura. At five feet wide and more than six feet long, CBS News described the creature as “nearly the length of Travis Kelce,” weighing in at an estimated 400 pounds.
This is a far cry from the stingray most people are familiar with from beaches and aquariums, the humble round stingray (Urobatis halleri), which has an average diameter of 10 inches or less. But it’s not the biggest stingray ever seen; that crown goes to a 13-foot-long, 661-pound giant freshwater stingray (Urogymnus polylepis) found in Cambodia’s portion of the Mekong River, which holds the record for the largest freshwater fish of any kind!
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. Current Affairs is 100% reader-supported and depends on your subscriptions and donations.