❧ Israel has launched a new aid program in Gaza, with devastating results. Israel, which controls a complete blockade around Gaza, has taken the responsibility of delivering aid to its people away from the United Nations, and has given the job to military contractors. Israel selected the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to replace the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) after years of baselessly accusing UNRWA aid workers of being Hamas members. And, to Israel’s credit, they did a great job of selecting an organization that would weaponize food to advance their military agenda.
While little is known about who is funding the GHF, CBS News has reported that its men on the ground include “at least 300 American contractors, all heavily armed,” with “as much ammunition as they can carry.” In its first week of operations, Israeli soldiers shot and killed dozens of Palestinian civilians at aid sites. One AP journalist reported hearing Israeli tank fire and seeing military helicopters drop flares around civilians waiting for food, while members of Doctors Without Borders report treating Palestinians who had “visible gunshot wounds in their limbs, and their clothes were soaked with blood” and “looked shattered and distraught after trying to secure food for their children, returning instead injured and empty-handed.” Others, according to the nonprofit, were simply “massacred,” with “gunshot wounds to the head and chest,” and “medical staff themselves have had to donate blood” because no supplies have been allowed to reach them through the blockade since March 2.
The Foundation has also facilitated Israel’s efforts to depopulate the north of Gaza by only opening four aid stations, all initially in southern Gaza. (The UN aid system had 400 distribution points.) Most aid centers have not been open on most days, meaning Gazans have to walk through miles of Israeli military encampments to get food.
The devastation led the Foundation’s CEO to resign, saying it would be “impossible to implement the plan” without sacrificing “humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence.” And earlier today, the Washington Postreported that Boston Consulting Group, which has played a large role in the Foundation’s rollout, has withdrawn support for the Foundation and placed a senior partner leading the project on leave.
❧ The idea that America is actually distributing aid in anything approaching an ethical manner is further undermined by a horrifying statistic released this week about the Trump administration's cuts to USAID. Brooke Nichols, an infectious-disease mathematical modeler and health economist at Boston University, developed a tracker that uses previous data to estimate the effects that cuts to global humanitarian aid have had on the global populations relying on it. Her model estimates that because of cuts to funding for malaria, HIV, tuberculosis, and other disease prevention programs, more than 300,000 people, including over 200,000 children, have already died. To be clear, this is just a model based on previous data about how many lives these programs saved. There is no way to count for sure how many deaths are the direct result of U.S. funding cuts. But we know these programs have saved countless lives, so cutting them will no doubt result in countless deaths. (Washington Post)
❧ The Australian government has approved an extension for a major liquified natural gas plant in Northwest Australia, meaning the plant can now run until 2070. This was not surprising, but the decision threatens the nearly 50,000-year-old rock art in the area. The hundreds of thousands of carvings (also known as petroglyphs) include the oldest known depiction of a human face. Aboriginal communities made the carvings by scraping away the top layer of volcanic rocks to reveal a lighter color underneath. But acidic emissions from the plant dissolve the top layer of rock, rendering the images unreadable. In the wake of the decision, UNESCO recommended that the art not be made a world heritage site due to the impending degradation. (The Conversation)
This kind of ancient artifact could disappear entirely, unless something is done fast.
❧ Everyone is suddenly selling “Dubai chocolate.” The treat—a milk chocolate bar filled with pistachio cream, tahini, and shredded phyllo dough—was created by a chocolatier from Dubai and quickly became a TikTok sensation. Now big brands, including Shake Shack, Trader Joe’s, and Dunkin’, are hocking it to American consumers. The proximate reason for this trend is that America controls a large portion of the pistachio market, which makes the bar’s signature ingredient tariff-proof. But the UAE quickly capitalized on its popularity to elevate its soft power, with its Crown Prince Sheikh Hamdan partnering with the bar’s creator, Sarah Hamouda, to launch an exclusive flavor with her brand “FIX,” whose bars sell for more than $16 apiece.
It seems the latest attempt by the UAE, and the Gulf states more generally, to promote a luxurious image on the world stage, with the company strategically partnering with powerful influencers to turn the bar into an online sensation. But like its luxury golf tournaments and courting of high-end fashion brands, this new symbol of decadence is helping the UAE’s leaders paper over the uglier realities of life in the country, which has built its vast fortune on the back of slave labor and ruthless political persecution. Whether wittingly or not, the influencers helping to promote Dubai chocolate are helping to launder the rosy image the Royal Family wants to promote. (Gulf News)
FIX founder Sarah Hamouda meets with the UAE’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, giving new meaning to the phrase “Blood & Chocolate.” (Photo: Fix on Instagram)
AROUND THE STATES
❧ Texas police used 83,000 automated license plate readers (ALPRs) across the US to search for a woman who had a self-managed abortion, according to an investigative report by 404 Media.There is no way to avoid being tracked by ALPRs — police often hide them in mundane objects like light posts and cacti to track where a vehicle has been. Abortion is almost entirely illegal in Texas, but the officer in this case also searched cameras in Washington and Illinois, where abortion is legal. But don’t worry, the dystopian nightmare doesn’t end there. Local police agencies have also begun performing ALPR searches on behalf of ICE to facilitate deportations. (404 Media)
Cactus cam put up by the city of Paradise Valley, Arizona in 2015.
❧ Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, has placed himself firmly in the running for “worst Democrat you’ve never heard of,” vetoing two bills aimed at stopping corporations from ripping off their consumers. On Thursday, Polis vetoed a bill that would ban landlords from colluding to raise rents with rent-setting algorithms. In cities where a handful of landlords control vast swaths of the housing stock, renters have no options when landlords raise rents in lockstep. In Denver, the use of these algorithms led landlords to raise rents by $1,600 in 2023.
Polis also vetoed a bill that would have ended surprise ambulance billing in Colorado. This bill has passed both chambers of the legislature unanimously, but the timing of the veto means legislators can’t override the veto until January. Until then, Coloradans will have to pay thousands of dollars for out-of-network ambulance rides. Or they can Uber. (The Denver Post)
Veto! Veto! That’s the sound of the Polis. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
❧ Driverless big rigs are now delivering cargo between Dallas and Houston. Aurora, the company behind the trucks, launched their driverless vehicles last month and plans to expand to a fleet of 20 autonomous vehicles by the end of the year. Just as the rollout of the untested technology risks the lives of fellow drivers if something goes wrong, it risks the livelihoods of truck drivers, who are already some of the most overworked and underpaid workers in America. (More Perfect Union)
❧ Unions scored two wins against Jeff Bezos in recent weeks. On May 23, the Washington Post Tech Guild overwhelmingly voted to unionize. And earlier in May, the NLRB certified the first unionization of a Whole Foods, despite parent company Amazon’s objections. Noted union buster Bezos will fight these developments, but they come as recent polling suggests American support for unions is at a record high—and growing. According to an analysis of national survey data by the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, support for unions has grown since 2012 among Democrats, Republicans, men, women, and people of all educational backgrounds. Americans are now more supportive of unions than big businesses by the largest margin in 60 years of polling. (Editor & Publisher)
Chart: Economic Policy Institute
❧ A stretch of highway near the Canadian border was bee-set by a swarm of 14 million honeybees after a truck carrying 70,000 lbs of active hives crashed on Friday. Passersby were warned to keep far away from the scene, which became engulfed with giant, clouds of wayward insects.
After several sheriff’s deputies were stung, more than two dozen beekeepers were called in to “to save as many bees as possible,” according to the sheriff’s office. Through their efforts, many of the hives were miraculously able to be restored, and the bees were captured and returned, soon to reunite with their queens. (Seattle Times)
The thin yellow line stands for Bees.
CROOKS vs. SICKOS (or, “What’s going on with our politicians and oligarchs?”)
❧ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. released his “Make America Healthy Again Report” last week, and it was full of citations to studies that didn’t actually exist. The report advances many of RFK, Jr.’s most outlandish pet theories about medicine, including that childhood vaccines are the cause of chronic illnesses. As NOTUS found:
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says his… report harnesses “gold-standard” science, citing more than 500 studies and other sources to back up its claims. Those citations, though, are rife with errors, from broken links to misstated conclusions. Seven of the cited sources don’t appear to exist at all.
Kennedy has said that HHS was “very aggressively implementing AI” in its research, and that appears to be what has happened here. And one of the hallmarks of AI is that it is totally obsequious to whoever uses it and will tell them exactly what they want to hear, up to and including concocting totally fake evidence. It’s the perfect tool for somebody like Kennedy, who has made a career out of giving a scientific veneer to theories that are based on wild speculation instead of serious inquiry.
❧ Trump is giving Americans' data over to far-right megadonor Peter Thiel’s tech company Palantir, an effort which the New York Times says “could give him untold surveillance power.” Named after the all-seeing crystal balls used by the wizard Saruman in TheLord of the Rings—for more on that, see Alex Skopic’s brand-new article on “How the Right Abuses Tolkien”—Palantir lives up to its name. Among other sinister projects, the company contracts with the U.S. government to help ICE round up immigrants and works with the Israeli government to arrest Palestinians before they commit crimes.
This latest initiative, spearheaded by a Trump executive order in March, will involve consolidating IRS, Social Security, ICE, and other agency data. And while the initiative is being justified as part of Trump’s continued deportation effort, citizens might be just as vulnerable to this latest effort to consolidate their data. As Cody Venzke, a senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, told Wired last month: “The ultimate concern is a panopticon of a single federal database with everything that the government knows about every single person in this country. What we are seeing is likely the first step in creating that centralized dossier on everyone in this country.”
Art by Tom Humberstone from Current Affairs Magazine, Issue 53, May-June 2025
BEE FACT OF THE WEEK
Honeybees defend themselves from predators by forming a “bee ball.”
That’s right. It’s a double feature of Bee Content in today’s briefing! As we learned from this week’s other bit of bee news, they are fiercely loyal to their colonies. Japanese honeybees are perhaps the pinnacle of this. When their hives come under attack from a much larger predator—like the terrifying Japanese “murder hornet” (remember those?)—they have a way of banding together to stop it.
Hundreds of worker bees surround the invader in a cocoon of their own bodies, vibrating their wings rapidly to generate heat—sometimes as high as 46C (115F). They trap the infiltrator, sometimes for as long as 30 minutes, and roast it alive to keep the rest of the hive safe. Watch this gnarly video of a murder hornet getting swamped by hundreds of worker bees after trying to eat one of their friends:
An injury to one is an injury to all.
It’s often a suicide mission—the bees suffer the effects of this heat too, and, according to one study, it reduces their life expectancies too. Nevertheless, studies have shown that bees who have suffered through one bee ball are often the first to volunteer to defend against the next attack.
Writing and research by Stephen Prager and 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.
Current Affairs is an independent leftist media organization supported entirely by its readers and listeners. We offer a beautiful bimonthly print and digital magazine, a weekly podcast, and a regular news briefing service. We are registered with the Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with EIN 83-1675720. Your gift is tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law. Donations may be made through our website, via wire transfer, or by sending us a check. Email help@currentaffairs.org with any questions.
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