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A correction: Last week, this briefing stated that people who get abortions in Texas can be sued as well as people who “aid and abet abortions.” According to the Texas States Law Library, “The patient who obtains an abortion is rarely at risk of fines or lawsuits under Texas's statutes. More often, the person performing the abortion is who will be fined or sued.” Mea culpa.
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Current Affairs has unionized!
The staff of Current Affairs are pleased to announce that we have unionized with the Chicago News Guild (Local 34071), an affiliate of the Communications Workers of America and the AFL-CIO. We received immediate voluntary recognition from our editor-in-chief, Nathan J. Robinson, and the Current Affairs board of directors, and are grateful for their support and cooperation as we take this step forward. Read more here.
❧ A preview of GOP voter suppression in Dallas ❧
The headline coming out of Texas last Tuesday was that populist James Talarico won the Democratic U.S. senatorial primary, beating Rep. Jasmine Crockett with his anti-billionaire, bible-quoting campaign. Observers saw his victory as yet another signal pointing towards class consciousness as a winning strategy for Democrats. That wasn’t all there was to see in Texas.
In Dallas, Republicans gave us a preview of what state-level voter suppression might look like in the coming years, and it looks like maneuvers that put speed bumps in voters' paths. During the first week of January, Republicans in Dallas and Williamson counties ended the common use of centralized county polling sites, in which voters from different neighborhoods can conveniently cast their ballots in a single location. Republicans gave the usual baloney justifications: fear of people voting in a county where they do not reside, fear of people voting multiple times, all fueled not by evidence but suspicion. Democrats had to scramble to set up, staff, and pay for new polling locations in each neighborhood, up to twice as many as they had anticipated running, and then communicate the massive logistical change.
Art by Ellen Burch from Current Affairs Magazine Vol. 7, Issue 1
Come election day, last Tuesday, hundreds of voters were understandably confused when they were turned away from their usual polls. One local woman who wanted to vote “so, so bad” had walked 2.5 miles to the wrong polling station only to be told she had to walk somewhere else, Votebeat reported. Judges in both counties extended voting hours, a move Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton swiftly tried to undo, claiming the judges didn’t give the proper notifications to his office. (Paxton has been waging his own primary challenge to Republican Sen. John Cornyn. As you can imagine, it has been a race to the bottom of the ultra-conservative barrel.) The Texas supreme court ruled that 2,000 votes cast during extended hours be separated, and we are still waiting to see if they will count. Despite concerns of voter disenfranchisement, Crockett conceded the race to Talarico.
“The messy primary day was a reminder that the GOP’s proposals to suddenly and dramatically overhaul voting this November carry real risks of harm to voters, election officials, and anyone affected by the results,” Nathaniel Rakich wrote in Votebeat.
❧ In Other News ❧
❧ PLANNED PARENTHOOD OFFERING BOTOX TO CLOSE FUNDING GAP.To ease the $100 million funding gap left by Trump’s Medicaid cuts, Planned Parenthood’s largest national affiliate, Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, will now offer cosmetic procedures like laser hair removal, IV drips, and yes, Botox. Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, which operates in California and Nevada, can provide these services at a lower price than the medspa around the corner—25 percent lower or more. “On Saturdays, a Sacramento clinic repurposes the reclining chairs reserved for patients recovering from abortion procedures for the people coming in for the IVs,” wrote The Wall Street Journal. It’s an unnerving image, and even more so when you consider that, as Jessica Defino reports in her substack FLESHWORLD, “the makers of Botox have donated over $135,000 to Republican politicians.”
Art from Current Affairs Magazine Vol. 7, Issue 1
❧ MAMDANI ADVISOR EXPORTING THE MAYOR’S POLITICS TO THE U.K. Top Mamdani advisor Morris Katz journeyed across the pond at the invitation of members of the U.K.’s Labour and Green parties. They asked the 26-year-old, who recently got a profile in The New York Times, to teach them the ways of the New York mayor’s winning, democratic socialist messaging. Britain has seen its own far right insurgency, and Katz told Politico that he sees his work as part of a global fight against oligarchy. Katz and the Brits are still in contact. Katz’s political strategizing is certainly an export, but maybe not the kind Trump was hoping to increase.
Speaking of Mamdani, check out, but for the love of God do not buy, Tucker Carlson’s new merch:
❧ WORKERS AT MAJOR MEAT PACKING PLANT TO STRIKE. After eight months of negotiations, 99 percent of union members at JBS Greely, one of the bigger processing plants in the country, have voted to initiate an Unfair Labor Practices strike starting March 16. United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 at the Colorado factory allege their bosses have engaged in illegal conduct, including “threats to withhold a proposed bonus and lump sum pension payment if workers exercise their democratic right to strike,” said Kim Cordova, President of UFCW Local 7 in a press release. “They continue to increase chain speeds and create dangerous working conditions all while reducing hours for workers. At the same time, the company is insisting on being able to steal workers’ pay through improper wage deductions.” In addition to reimbursement for protective gear, workers are asking for a pay raise of just 60 cents per hour the first year, and 30 cents the next two years, in part to better afford rising healthcare premiums. JBS is one of the four meat packing companies that own 85 percent of the market. In 2024, JBS settled a lawsuit over employee wage fixing, and in 2022 the U.S. Department of Labor accused the company of illegally hiring minors.
❧ In a brilliant rebuttal to accusations that Israel goaded Trump into bombing Iran, Trump said he will decide when the war ends—with Netanyahu. Iran doesn’t need a democracy to stop the bombs, however: Trump said he doesn’t care about democracy in the country, just that a leader is “going [to] be fair and just. Do a great job. Treat the United States and Israel well …”
❧Iran selected a new leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the recently killed Ayatollah who is expected to continue many of his father’s policies. Not who Trump had in mind, apparently, as he told Axiosthat “Khamenei's son is a lightweight” and Fox Newsthat he’s "not happy" with the choice.
❧700,000 people have been displaced in Lebanon as Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich threatens to turn suburbs surrounding the country’s capital into a second Gaza.
❧ Don’t forget about South America! U.S. troops assistedthe right-wing Ecuadorian government in a joint land operation to target “narco-terrorists.” Trump said Cuba, which is experiencing a massive blackout, is in “the last moments of its life,” and reiterated that the U.S. may soon take it over.
The United States is getting cringier by the day. We’re waging baseless wars. We’re still funding a genocide in Gaza. We’re enacting fascist violence at home. We’re so embarrassing that people in other countries are starting to boycott U.S. goods, especially as we tariff them out the wazoo. Pretty lame! “However you slice it, the United States’ de facto role as the global hegemon is waning,” writes George Francis Lee in his piece “Young Americans Aren’t Buying Old Narratives on China.” Consequently, people are “Chinamaxxing” online, “indulging in commonplace Chinese habits like drinking Tsingtao beer, squatting, and doing qigong.” Chinamaxxing “may seem purely ironic—arguably even offensive and reductive—but look closer and you’ll see young people, repulsed at the sight of America, turning away and looking East.” Read Lee’s sharp analysis of American youth’s wandering eye here.
❧ Crooks vs. Sickos ❧
Or, what our politicians are up to.
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem was fired after an ICE occupation of Minneapolis left two American protesters dead. She is now transitioning to a new, made-up position as the “Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas — Western Hemisphere.” Ostensibly, the change in title was due to Noem’s disastrous congressional testimony: she said Trump approved a $220 million ICE-aggrandizing ad campaign, then was hammered about its suspicious contracts. (Noem was also grilled about her long-rumored affair with adviser Corey Lewandowski, which included questions “about their use of a $70 million plane with a bedroom in the back,” writes the Daily Beast.) When it comes to the exorbitant ads, Trump denies approving them, though it would not be surprising he did give his ok and now thinks it's embarrassing. However, the ad campaign is only the fall guy. As Ken Klippenstein points out, it was actually Minneapolis and the mass protests in response to DHS’s violence that got Noem fired. The power is with the people, even if D.C. doesn’t want to admit it.
Art by Ellen Burch from Current Affairs Magazine Vol. 7, Issue 1
❧ In More News ❧
❧ “AI MAN CAMPS” TO HOUSE DATA CENTER CONSTRUCTION WORKERS. Across the country, data center construction brings a big flurry of temporary jobs. To accommodate the influx of hundreds, if not thousands, of workers, the companies building these facilities have started housing the laborers in temporary villages called “man camps,” according to Bloomberg. The camps are a frat boy’s conceptualization of adulthood: gray housing that looks like military barracks, golf simulators, and free steaks. One of the biggest builders of these camps, Target Hospitality, also owns Texas’s Dilley Immigration Processing Center, an ICE detention center.
Art by C.M. Duffy from Current Affairs Magazine Vol. 7, Issue 1
❧ BIPARTISAN BILL RISKS DEANONYMIZING THE INTERNET. THAT’S BAD. A package of bills moving forward in the House of Representatives would force social media sites to verify users’ age, which necessarily means they’d have to verify users’ identities with invasive measures like submission of government documents. The move would kick off unprecedented data collection at a time when the government and its favorite tech oligarchs are already ramping up surveillance of American citizens. “Whistleblowers exposing corporate wrongdoing could be tracked and fired, government employees speaking out about illegal behavior or bad policies could face prosecution, and activists organizing protests could be identified and surveilled before ever setting foot on the street,” Taylor Lorenz wrote in The Intercept. Lawmakers are using parental anxiety over online safety as a trojan horse, claiming that ID laws will help better regulate big tech, social media, and how they interact with children.
Art by Kasia Kozakiewicz from Current Affairs Magazine Vol. 7, Issue 1
❧ CLIMATE CHANGE- RELATED MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES MIGHT COST THE U.S. BILLIONS IN ECONOMIC DAMAGE. A new study in The Lancet found that climate change may significantly exacerbate mental health issues, costing the United States billions in associated economic damages. “Central estimates showed that, on average, each additional degree of warming could result in approximately one additional anxiety (depression) symptom-day per person-year in the general population,” the study authors write, with more extreme effects predicted in lower income populations, particularly in Appalachia. Each degree of warming reflects an ever greater risk of encountering climate change-related catastrophes, such as storms, droughts or wildfires, which can be devastating to recover from and nerve-wracking to anticipate. Now is probably not the best time to mention that scientists recently discovered they’ve been underestimating the amount the sea level rise globally, and millions more people are at risk than previously thought.
ANIMAL FACT OF THE WEEK
Chimps love crystals, too!
Crystal girls get a bad rap, but their love for shiny stones is as natural as falling in love. Scientists recently discovered that chimps have an obvious and extreme preference for the lustrous stones, picking them out of ordinary rocks and keeping them in their homes. In fact, to get the crystals back, scientists had to trade an excess of bananas and yogurt. Thus, crystal girls are a product of natural selection and should not be shamed. You can see a video of their modern ancestors playing with beautiful rock here.
Writing and research by Emily Carmichael. Editing and additional material by Alex Skopic, Emily Topping and Nathan J. Robinson. 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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