Thursday, June 8, 2023
Debt ceiling ransoms paid, the crackdown on Cop City protesters, looming nuclear conflict, scatological architecture, woke chicken, and so much more...
First, a few words of introduction to this new News Briefing project: You are tired of the news. So are we. And yet: you still crave knowledge. You still want to know what is happening in the world, and have someone sort through all the informational chaos and help you figure out what matters. You are tired of clicking around through a million ad-laden, paywall-ridden sites trying to find disparate scraps of useful information amid the hot takes and erectile dysfunction ads. Fortunately, one of the country's leading independent left periodicals now has you covered. We're introducing the Current Affairs Biweekly News Briefing, which will give you a comprehensive summary and analysis of global events. We're here to draw your attention to what actually matters and discard the stuff that doesn't. No clickbait, no "sponsored content." Our news briefing will save you time and make your brain feel like it's taking a warm bath. Never struggle again with trying to find the important stories buried somewhere in your morning paper. Just open this briefing and be treated to a comprehensive (and sometimes even fun!) account of the Things That Matter. Welcome to our first edition!
I. WHAT’S IN THE NEWS?
DEBT CEILING DEBACLE
The debt ceiling issue is solved! Hallelujah! Our elected officials have managed to solve a calamity that was entirely of their own making in the first place.
It turns out the solution to avoid a cataclysmic default was simple: the Democrats just had to agree to sacrifice the economic well-being of food stamp recipients, student debtors, and senior citizens.
Biden has touted the negotiation as a big win. And sure, it’s nice that we won’t be forced into an entirely avoidable global economic collapse. But Biden and the Democrats had tools at their disposal to prevent the Republicans from holding the global economy hostage in the first place and they chose not to use them. That makes them equally complicit in the effects of this bill, many of which will be quite devastating to a lot of people.
Let’s survey the damage.
First, food stamps: The bill increases the age (from 49 to 54) for those who must meet 20-hour-a-week work requirements. There are some exceptions for groups like veterans, the homeless, and former foster-youth. Still, it leaves nearly 750,000 more adults vulnerable to food insecurity. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:
“The expansion of this requirement would take food assistance away from large numbers of people, including many who have serious barriers to employment as well as others who are working or should be exempt but are caught up in red tape.”
According to the Congressional Budget Office, work requirements lead only to very small, short-term increases in employment. “Work requirements in SNAP and Medicaid,” their report says “have reduced benefits more than they have increased people’s earnings.” The policy does little to promote “self-sufficiency,” as proponents like to claim, and according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation:
“Work requirements make it harder to join and to maintain coverage from assistance programs, while discouraging countless others from even trying to obtain assistance. The result is an exacerbation of physical, mental, and behavioral health problems that make it more difficult, not easier, to obtain or retain employment that is a condition of maintaining assistance.”
Student debt relief, long considered one of Biden’s signature (read: only) real accomplishments, is now in serious jeopardy, too, as the Democrats agreed to end the temporary pause on payments that was put in place during the pandemic. If the Supreme Court overturns Biden’s forgiveness plan (which they likely will), ending the pause could mean that by late August, millions of people could suddenly owe even greater amounts of money than they were paying before.
Astra Taylor, a co-founder of the Debt Collective, a union of debtors, said this about the bill in an interview with Vox:
“It’s worse [than before the pandemic] because people have been counting on relief and other possibilities have been foreclosed. [This policy] is going to really hurt people who are coming out of this whole crisis worse off than they were in 2019. And now with this blow, the whole promise of relief is ‘Okay, we’re going to try to repair the damage’ and now it’s ‘We’re going to compound the damage.’”
The bill also cuts to the bone the IRS’s ability to collect taxes, which will reduce government revenues by nearly half a trillion dollars, according to MarketWatch, which says it will very likely cause Social Security benefits to be cut by 20 percent as soon as 2035. Even worse, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has pledged that “this isn’t the end,” and that he plans on using the debt ceiling again in two years to inflict further cuts to Social Security and Medicare, which is a lifelong dream for many Republicans.
This is the biggest reason why Biden’s decision to negotiate was such a grievous act of political malpractice. He has legitimized Republicans’ tactic of holding the global economy for ransom and shown it to be a valid way of forcing cuts to social programs.
TRUMP HAS ONCE AGAIN ADMITTED TO MISDEEDS
Remember last year, when the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago because Trump had a bunch of classified documents that he said he declassified in his mind, but totally weren’t declassified because that’s not how that works at all? And then the FBI asked him to give the documents back, and he said he did but actually kept a bunch of them?
Well, it turns out that he knew the whole time that some of the files in question were, in fact, classified. We know this because he was recorded on tape talking about how he wished he’d declassified plans for a secret U.S. military attack on Iran.
Will this matter for Trump legally? Some legal scholars say yes, like NYU Law Professor and former Pentagon attorney Ryan Goodman and former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, who say it’s a textbook violation of the Espionage Act. We’ve already seen Trump indicted once for his hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, but this is politically trickier since the charges would be federal and Biden also can’t seem to stop finding classified documents lying around. We’ll believe an indictment when we see one. After all, Trump admits to something illicit on tape seemingly every week.
SMOKE HAS DESCENDED UPON THE LAND
Smoke from Canadian wildfires produced apocalyptic scenes in New York City and across the east coast. Despite abysmal air quality, the worst on record in NYC, some residents couldn’t resist getting in their rooftop yoga class. Health tip: Doing rooftop yoga in the middle of noxious smoky air is not a good idea! The dystopian skies are a further reminder that we should be treating climate change as the emergency it is, but of course pundits on Fox News immediately started reassuring viewers that breathing smoke is Actually Fine. Fox viewers may be interested to know that the pseudo-expert reassuring them about the smoke has also long been paid by the tobacco industry to downplay the effects of tobacco smoke. So perhaps not the most dependable guy to entrust with the health of your lungs.
II. WHAT SHOULD BE IN THE NEWS?
COP CITY CRACKDOWN
Earlier this year, protesters stood up against the city of Atlanta’s plans to build a colossal police training facility. This “Cop City” will be put on top of more than 85 acres of vitally important forest lands and will further militarize a police force that has a long history of brutality towards city residents. According to the nonprofit Atlanta newspaper Capital B:
The facility will include a simulated city for officers to train in, a helicopter landing base, new outdoor shooting ranges, and burn tower sites.
The project is very unpopular with the people of Atlanta—70 percent of the 1,100 people who have spoken to the City Council voiced disapproval of the project. Nevertheless, the council overwhelmingly approved the $90 million project this week (about a third of which will be paid for by taxpayers with the rest being funded by private companies).
Protestors have occupied the forest to oppose this new playground for the cops. And the cops have responded in typical fashion with a violently disproportionate crackdown. One protestor—26-year-old activist and organizer Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán—was shot 57 times by police, who then dubiously claimed that Terán had fired a gun first.
Over the next few months, more than 40 other protesters were indiscriminately swept up and charged with “domestic terrorism” despite none of them being linked to any specific illegal actions in their arrest warrants. Though some violent acts took place, the worst things the people arrested have been accused of are vandalism and criminal trespass (they are not accused of injuring anyone). But due to a loosening of Georgia’s domestic terror statute, many can now face up to 35 years in prison.
This week, three more people were charged with “money laundering” for operating a bail fund for those previously charged with crimes. According to Lauren Regan, executive director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center:
“This is the first bail fund to be attacked in this way…And there is absolutely not a scintilla of fact or evidence that anything illegal has ever transpired with regard to Atlanta fundraising for bail support.”
As the state cracks down on ordinary people protesting the destruction of the natural world and the expansion of police power, we can look to the words of activist and abolitionist Derecka Purnell for perspective. Earlier this year, she tweeted:
“The reason why I continue to focus on police is because no matter your cause—climate, education, reproductive justice, labor, voting, etc—cops will be there, opposing you, arresting you.”
ANOTHER BLOW TO ORGANIZED LABOR
The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that a concrete company could sue its employees after they left concrete out to harden during a walkout. The ruling makes it more likely that companies will attempt to sue employees who strike if the strike results in any loss of profit.
In the process, the Court shredded the longstanding precedent that these types of lawsuits must be brought before the National Labor Relations Board rather than state courts, saying that this case falls under an exception to the right to strike for cases involving “deliberate property damage” (though it’s legally dubious whether unions are obligated to time their strikes to protect company property). According to Ian Millhiser in Vox, the precedent of bringing these cases before the NLRB is meant to protect unions from costly duplicative litigation (where the NLRB makes one ruling while a court is considering same issue separately).
While this is definitely a bad ruling for the rights of organized labor that will likely chill walkouts and lead to more lawsuits, Alexandra Bradbury of Jacobin argues that the ruling could have been far worse:
“Workers and unions are right to be furious at this ruling. But we should be careful not to sensationalize or overstate it—which could do more damage to the right to strike than the ruling itself does, by making workers scared to exercise it. This exception is narrow: property damage that is intentional or caused by a lack of reasonable precautions. It doesn’t include things like economic losses due to temporary closure of a store or factory…”
Even still, it continues the trend of the Supreme Court steadily chipping away at the right to strike. It’s a good moment to remember the words of veteran SEIU organizer Jono Shaffer, who reminded us in a recent interview that the law will always protect the status quo because that’s what laws are meant to do. That’s why, he said, “arguably all the major breakthroughs in the history of the labor movement have occurred outside legal structures designed to address labor relations.” The exertion of worker power is often going to bring workers in conflict with the law.
III. CROOKS vs. SICKOS
or, “What’s going on with the election?”
Ex-U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley claimed in a CNN town hall that her 2024 GOP primary rivals Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis are not being honest in their pledges not to cut Social Security and Medicare. In contrast to her slippery opponents, Haley has nobly stated her intentions to cut these programs outright!
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said the word “woke” seven times in 26 seconds during a campaign event. In the words of Jacobin columnist Ben Burgis, DeSantis’s Twitter-brained obsession over the “woke mind virus” has the potential to resonate with “literally hundreds of voters.” You know it’s gotten bad when even Donald Trump is calling “woke” a meaningless phrase.
Before jumping into the 2024 primary, former Vice President Mike Pence gave a speech urging Americans to resist “the siren song of populism.” To that end, he has chosen to campaign on some of the least popular positions imaginable: national bans on abortion and abortion pills.
Fellow GOP featherweight Vivek Ramaswamy has proposed raising the voting age to 25. But fret not, Gen Z, you can get your right to vote back by joining the military! This position puts Vivek into the growing ranks of Republican pundits and politicians who have explicitly called to disenfranchise large segments of the population.
By now you’ve seen the clip of Slippin’ Joe tripping over a sandbag during a commencement speech at the Air Force Academy. Fortunately, he appears to be fine…but did you know it’s the third time President Biden has publicly fallen down just this year? He has taken tumbles on three different continents: previously flopping on the steps of Air Force One in Poland and down the steps of a shrine in Japan. If you’re a member of the president’s staff reading this newsletter, I advise you to keep him out of South America, Africa, and Australia.
Cornel West is running for president (yay!) … on the People’s Party ticket (uhhh…). While we greatly admire the work of Dr. West here at Current Affairs, we (and many others) are perplexed by his decision to run with an tiny, controversial fringe party. Cornel, we invite you to come on our podcast to explain your reasoning!
OUTRAGE: CHICK-FIL-A HAS GONE WOKE
This week many conservatives are boycotting Chick-fil-A (heretofore considered a right-wing ally for its Christian ownership and donations to anti-LGBTQ groups) because the chicken and waffle fry chain hired a Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion officer. And if you think that’s bad, they also had the temerity to post marketing materials in favor of a “culture of belonging.” (*GASP* Anything but that!) This woke madness has drawn a torrent of outrage. The best overreaction came from Turning Point USA contributor Morgonn [sic] McMichael, who lamented on Twitter: “Chick-Fil-A isn’t the Lord’s Chicken anymore…it’s the Woke Chicken… ” Podcaster Benny Johnson, political strategist Joey Mannarino, and Newsmax host Rob Schmitt have all had similar freak-outs. Apparently even symbolic commitments to diversity by companies that clearly couldn’t care less about equality are a bridge too far.
IV. AROUND THE STATES
Florida’s bill banning gender-affirming care for people under the age of 18 is screwing over many transgender adults, too. “80% of trans adults in the state were getting their health care from a nurse practitioner and now have lost access,” says SPEKTRUM Health Chief Operating Officer Lana Dunn.
In further confirmation that rich people can do whatever they want without consequences, new filings show that the wife of a former governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands had a “quid-pro-quo” relationship with notorious sex-trafficking goblin Jeffrey Epstein, helping him to dodge charges for years. Ironically, JPMorgan Chase brought these allegations forward to defend themselves from a lawsuit by the V.I. government alleging that they were complicit in covering up Epstein’s crimes. Truly a story with no heroes!
The Securities and Exchange Commission is (finally) going after shady crypto trading platform Binance and its CEO Changpeng Zhao. According to the Wall Street Journal, “The SEC said that Binance and Zhao misused customers’ funds and diverted them to a trading entity that Zhao controlled,” much like FTX, which went down last year. The ESC is also going after Coinbase, and has been accused of trying to “strangle” the crypto industry. Good. For reasons explained in Current Affairs last year, the whole crypto sector should die in a fire.
The implosion of Twitter is continuing apace: its ad revenue has declined 59 percent over the last year. Advertisers are likely spooked by the avalanche of racial slurs and pornography that has overwhelmed the site since Elon Musk’s takeover last summer.
AI-led drones are here. God help us all. Over the past week, the media picked up on a nightmarish quote from an Air Force colonel which seemed to indicate that one of these drones “killed the operator because that person was keeping it from accomplishing its objective.” It turns out that the colonel was only describing a “thought experiment”—but the mere existence of AI-guided drones that make their own decisions is blood-curdlingly dystopian enough.
V. AROUND THE GLOBE
This week: a double feature of nuclear powers threatening each other! What could go wrong?
Israel is considering an attack against Iranian nuclear facilities in response to the discovery of uranium particles at enrichment levels high enough to produce a bomb. The International Atomic Energy Agency, however, has said that only a small percentage of Iran’s uranium is enriched enough for a bomb and says that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003. Israel, it should be noted also has nuclear weapons, though it does not acknowledge them publicly. Do as I say, not as I do is the cardinal principle of international affairs.
The United States and China had another terrifying brush with open conflict as an American destroyer came within feet of crashing into a Chinese navy ship in the Taiwan Strait. Both countries are beefing up their military presences around the island, while diplomatic talks have fallen flat. As we have written, a war to “maintain U.S. ‘primacy’” in the region (as one National Security document puts it) would be an absolute catastrophe for all of human civilization. And yet there are plenty in the foreign policy establishment who are pushing us closer and closer to conflict.
But assuming we don’t all die in a fiery nuclear holocaust, we have other matters to think about:
France is cracking down on the scourge of social media influencers. New laws there will prohibit the promotion of harmful products over social media. Euronews quotes French rapper Booba condemning the “influ-thieves” (“influvoleurs”) who scam their followers. Among the regulations: “promotional images—of cosmetics, for example—must disclose whether they have been retouched or use a filter making them more attractive.” If you say “no filter,” there had damn well better be no filter. Influencing has become big business in recent years (see our interview with the author of The Influencer Industry), but there are all kinds of incentives toward fraud and deception, with influencers paid to feign authenticity. France, at least, is starting to give the industry some overdue scrutiny.
It’s no secret that here at Current Affairs, our feelings about contemporary architecture are not especially positive. But it keeps surprising us with new crimes. Scotland has now outdone its hideous (or “innovative,” depending on your aesthetic tastes) parliament building with an even greater architectural monstrosity that is drawing comparisons to a certain popular emoji…
THIS WEEK IN EVIL
The award for worst take of the week goes to…Libertarian Jesus!
A Christian think tank explains why, in their words, “Some People Deserve to Starve.” In his “Biblical View of Work and Welfare,” Jason Mattera of the Standing for Freedom Center (they really are running out of names for these things) makes the “Christian” case for welfare work requirements by arguing that some people are just “indolent bums” who are “not entitled to our generosity. They have chosen the path of poverty.” For as Jesus famously said, blessed are the poor, but only if they get off their lazy asses and go find work in an Amazon warehouse.
VI. MEDIA CRITICISM
The Atlantic - “Inside the Meltdown at CNN”: Tim Alberta provides an excavation of how the decisions by CNN chairman Chris Licht led to last month's disastrous Trump Town Hall and how his attempt to win back conservative viewers has utterly failed:
"Lots of CNN employees on that morning call disagreed with Licht. They thought his execution of the event had been dreadful; they believed his tactical decisions had essentially ceded control of the town hall to Trump, put Collins in an impossible position, and embarrassed everyone involved with the production. These opinions were widely held—and almost entirely irrelevant. Everyone at CNN had long ago come to realize that Licht was playing for an audience of one. It didn’t matter what they thought, or what other journalists thought, or even what viewers thought.”
Surprising few, Licht was fired shortly after this piece appeared, the latest in a long series of failures for CNN. If anyone in (what’s left of) CNN management is reading, we’d like to officially offer to take over your network and run it for you. We’re confident that if you give us complete control, we can actually get people to watch.
Jacobin - “Barack Obama’s New Netflix Series Shows That He Has Critiques but No Answers”: Paul Prescod explains how the former president’s new documentary series Working: What We Do All Day betrays a total lack of understanding of the modern American economy and obscures his own failures to improve the lives of working people during his presidency:
“It becomes tiresome listening to critiques of how working people are treated in our society from a former president who did so little for them. His refusal to support the Employee Free Choice Act, repeal the George W. Bush–era tax cuts for the rich, or prosecute the bankers who wrecked the economy, just to name a few, demonstrated that when it counted the most he chose to stand with corporate elites over workers.”
VII. LOOKING UNDER THE HOOD
In a Hunter S. Thompson-esque sojourn into the depths of the American soul, Slate’s Alexander Sammon arrives at America’s largest gathering of car dealers and learns why the profession—“one of the five most common professions among the top 0.1 percent of American earners”—is becoming a backbone of Republican politics.
“Car dealers are not only one of the richest demographics in the United States. They’re also one of the most organized political factions—a conservative imperium giving millions of dollars to politicians at local, state, and national levels. They lobby through NADA, the organization staging the weekend’s festivities, and donate to Republicans at a rate of 6-to-1. Through those efforts, they’ve managed to write and rewrite laws to protect dealers and sponsor sympathetic politicians in all 50 states. All of which meant that this year, presidential hopeful Nikki Haley and Fox News darling Greg Gutfeld, among others, had made the pilgrimage to kiss the key ring.”
Meanwhile, in Foreign Affairs, Samuel Charap argues that “Washington Needs an Endgame in Ukraine”:
“While the Western response was clear from the start, the objective—the endgame of this war—has been nebulous…Fifteen months of fighting has made clear that neither side has the capacity—even with external help—to achieve a decisive military victory over the other. Regardless of how much territory Ukrainian forces can liberate, Russia will maintain the capability to pose a permanent threat to Ukraine. The Ukrainian military will also have the capacity to hold at risk any areas of the country occupied by Russian forces—and to impose costs on military and civilian targets within Russia itself.”
BIRD FACT of the DAY
When coming out of the water, penguins can jump up to nine feet! If the NBA tinkered with some rules (perhaps by adding a large pool in the center of the court) these flightless birds might become formidable competitors.
Writing and research by Stephen Prager. Editing and additional material by Nathan J. Robinson and Lily Sánchez. 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.