❧ The Prime Minister of Thailand has been suspended from office. Paetongtarn Shinawatra was suspended from her duties by the country’s Constitutional Court this week after a leaked phone call between her and Cambodia’s former leader. Previously, a Cambodian soldier was killed during a small border clash between the two countries’ militaries this May. On the call, Paetongtarn called Hun Sen, who served as Cambodia’s prime minister for over 30 years and is now a Senator, “uncle,” and criticized the Thai army.
Shortly after the call was leaked, opposition legislators filed an ethics complaint against Paetongtarn, who in the meantime is being replaced by her deputy prime minister. She is still allowed to remain in Cabinet as the country’s minister of culture (she was sworn in hours before the Court ordered her removal as PM), and her suspension may be lifted depending on the results of the Court’s investigation.
Paetongtarn’s family has dominated Thai politics for nearly three decades, amassing enormous wealth in the process. Her father, billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra, was PM from 2001 until a military coup in 2006. He lived in exile for 15 years until returning in 2023; he was promptly jailed upon his return for abuse of power. Thaksin’s sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, was PM from 2011 to 2014, until she was removed by the Constitutional Court for abuse of power. It remains to be seen if the Constitutional Court will ultimately uphold Paetongtarn’s removal, and if this could be the end of the “Shinawatra dynasty,” as some call it. Regardless, it is clear that the Court is set on choosing the future of the Thai government – Paetongtarn’s predecessor was also removed by the Court. (Nikkei Asia)
❧ Benjamin Netanyahu used Israel’s war with Hezbollah to dodge his corruption trial. According to an investigation published this week by Haaretz, the Israeli Prime Minister pushed the IDF to raise the threat level on his life in an attempt to prevent his corruption trial from moving forward. According to the investigation, Netanyahu pressured the Chief of Israel’s internal security agency, Shin Bet, to sign off on restrictions on Netanyahu’s movement that would have prevented him from taking the stand.
Netanyahu was indicted in 2019 for allegedly trading $260,000 worth of luxury gifts, including cigars, champagne and jewelry, from billionaires in exchange for political favors. He also is accused of granting political favors to two media outlets in exchange for favorable coverage of his administration. In the most serious case, prosecutors claim he offered more than $200 million in incentives to a telecommunications company in exchange for positive news stories on a news site it owns. But ever since the indictment, Netanyahu and his allies have characterized it as a witch hunt.
Trump seems to agree. Last week, he posted on Truth social that the case was an “unheard of… horror show,” and threatened to withdraw U.S. military aid to Israel unless the trial was cancelled. The courts granted a temporary postponement of Netanyahu’s testimony in the case, which was planned to take place over the next two weeks, citing confidential information about the Prime Minister’s obligations surrounding the war in Gaza. (Haaretz)
❧ Climate refugees are fleeing to Australia. Last year, Australia and Tuvalu finalized a treaty whereby Australia would grant visas to climate refugees from Tuvalu. Tuvalu, an island nation in the Pacific and the fourth smallest country on earth, is mostly less than three yards above sea level. Rising oceans have hit the country particularly hard, and some scientists predict Tuvalu will be completely underwater within the century. That’s why the country’s agreement with Australia was so important: Tuvaluan refugees desperately need a plan B.
That became especially clear this week, when more than a third of Tuvalu’s population applied for the first round of the “Pacific Engagement” visas. The random ballot system means that only 280 of the more than 1,000 applications (representing more than 4,000 people) will be selected for permission to move to Australia. Once in Australia, refugees will receive assistance from the government including reduced university tuition, access to the country’s Medicare system, and childcare support. (BBC)
AROUND THE STATES
❧ Trump just created baby bonds. Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill became a Big Beautiful Law this week, much to the chagrin of doctors, economists, immigrants, and the planet itself. It is not good. But there is at least one silver lining: baby bonds. Policymakers have advocated for baby bonds for years as a way to reduce the racial wealth gap. In Connecticut, for example, the state gives poor children $3,200 in an investment account when they’re born, which they can access once they turn 18. Thanks to the power of compound interest, that money is worth between eleven and twenty four thousand dollars when withdrawn. That money reduces the racial wealth gap by giving a head start to children whose families otherwise wouldn't be able to give them $20,000.
Of course, Trump’s plan has serious flaws. The government would only give children $1,000 initially, and permit employers or parents to put $5,000 into the accounts each year. The fact that parents and employers are expected to drive much of the accounts’ growth means wealthy children will have a significant leg up. And in a typically humble maneuver, Trump lent his name to the investments, which will be called “Trump Accounts.” The name is incredibly corny, but the silver lining is that we will have proof once and for all that even an infant can manage money better than Trump. (News From The States)
❧ Texas Teamsters just took down Tyson’s. Members of Teamsters Local 577 voted by 98 percent to authorize a strike this week at a Tyson Foods plant in Amarillo, Texas. The more than 3,000 workers are part of the largest Tyson’s beef processing plant in the US, and they voted to strike after Tyson refused their requests for a new contract. The union has alleged that Tyson (whose CEO makes 525 times the median worker’s salary) “harass[ed] union stewards, coerc[ed] injured workers into dropping claims, [and] illegally question[ed] workers about their union preference.”
Fortunately, after threatening the strike, the union won significant concessions from Tyson. Their new contract includes “32 percent wage increases, more paid time off, and expanded retirement benefits,” according to the union. The US meat processing industry is rife with child labor, worker intimidation, and amputations. Tyson is no exception; in 2020, seven plant managers were fired for betting in which employees would catch COVID first. And that doesn’t even cover the horrific abuse of animals that happens behind closed doors. (In some states, it is illegal to film what happens inside factory farms.) But it is heartening that by unionizing, workers can secure better, safer conditions. (Beef Magazine)
CROOKS vs. SICKOS (or, “What’s going on with our politicians and oligarchs?”)
❧ Republican governors have rejected free money for school lunches. Thirteen states, all led by GOP governors, have opted out of a federal program to give states money to feed low-income students during the time they cannot get meals at school. The SUN Bucks program launched in 2024 and gives families $120 each summer to spend on groceries when school isn’t in session. Nearly a fifth of households with children are food insecure, and programs like SUN Bucks can be a lifeline for children who rely on free or reduced lunches in schools.
Alas, in states like Tennessee, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Last year, the state received $70 million from SUN Bucks. But Governor Bill Lee rejected the federal program for 2025 over the fact that Tennessee would have to pay $6 million in administrative costs, and instead proposed a $3 million program that would feed 4 percent as many children as the federal funds. Other politicians have broader objections. Idaho Republican state senator Brian Lenney, one of the legislators who successfully prevented their state’s entry into the program, has argued giving kids food “kills self-reliance and turns families into beggars.” (Hechinger Report)
❧ Is “scientific” racism back in vogue? This week, the New York Timesran a hit piece about New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s 2009 college application. The piece itself is a nothingburger. Mamdani checked that he was both Asian and African American on his college application to Columbia University, which is basically true: Mamdani is ethnically Indian, but was born in Uganda and at the time was only a citizen of Uganda (he now holds dual U.S.-Ugandan citizenship). He also was not admitted to Columbia.
But more interesting is how the Times came about this tip. The article initially credited “an intermediary who goes by the name Crémieux.” That man is better known as Jordan Lasker, a PhD student at Texas Tech. Lasker is a self-described eugenicist and racist, and his writing is centered on one argument: that white and Asian people are genetically superior to those of Black and Hispanic descent. The Times eventually added that Lasker “writes often about I.Q. and race.”
This is one chapter of the extremely troubling rise of “scientific” racism, the belief that some races are genetically more intelligent than others. These views are extremely prominent in Silicon Valley, and they’ve exploded in visibility since Elon Musk began boosting them on Twitter. They’re also being laundered by major liberal media outlets surprisingly frequently. For example, the Timesreported favorably on the “Natal Conference,” a conservative convention on the issue of convincing people to have more kids. They quoted attendees who were dismayed that the natal movement was uncharitably tied to racism and patriarchy. But the Times didn’t note that among the speakers at the conference were Lasker and other eugenicists.
The silver lining is that the Times’ reporting gave us this great series of tweets from columnist Jamelle Bouie.
❧ Trump & Co. have sued a pollster for conducting polls. If you were too online in the days before the 2024 presidential election, you may remember a poll by Ann Selzer that gave liberals some hope. Her survey of Iowans found that Kamala Harris was leading Trump in the state by three points, which, given the voters of Iowa, would have been an enormous victory. That did not happen—Harris lost Iowa by 13 points—but Trump’s allies remember the poll. He is now suing Selzer and the paper the poll was published in, claiming that the poll defrauded readers and reduced his odds of winning the presidency.
This week, Trump’s legal team dismissed his initial federal lawsuit and re-filed in Iowa state court a day before Iowa’s new anti-SLAPP law goes into effect. SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation; SLAPP suits are lawsuits meant to silence and intimidate critics, as opposed to suits that are actually trying to remedy damages. A major story of this administration is Trump’s use of SLAPP suits against his perceived enemies—Paramount recently agreed to pay $16 million as part of a settlement over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris that Trump claimed painted her in too favorable a light. (Des Moines Register)
MUSTELID FACT OF THE WEEK
Pine martens are voracious eaters—but science can help!
The European pine marten is many things: cute, cuddly, and unfortunately, hungry. The ferret-like mammals eat the eggs of cairngorms, a large ground-dwelling grouse, and environmentalists in Scotland sought a way to protect cairngorms (there are only 600 of them in the UK) without harming pine martens. The solution they came to was surprisingly simple; they just fed pine martens so they didn’t seek out eggs! To quote one researcher involved, “our idea was to fill the bellies of pine martens and other predators… predicting that once full of free food they would no longer search for eggs.” And the researchers were right! When martens were fed, grouses were significantly more likely to have chicks. (Anthropocene Magazine)
The pine marten, like the humble bodybuilder, eats too many eggs.
Writing and research by Grady Martin. Editing and additional material by Nathan J. Robinson and Alex Skopic. Header graphic by Cali Traina Blume. 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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