March 24, 2026 ❧ "Tax the Rich" gains momentum, UAE keeps sending weapons to Sudan, and ABC staff strikes. 

Plus: Anti-AI MAGA and leftists make "strange bedfellows,"  tax protest gets traction, 41.2 percent of agricultural workers in Wash. have Long COVID, and Big Oil knew it was destroying the Louisiana coast.

Enjoy today’s Letter to the New Briefing, which wonderfully concludes this newsletter? Why not write your own! Send your excellent thoughts, musings, and reactions to what we write about in the Briefing, or to very recent current events, to briefing@currentaffairs.org. We may publish it next week, and know that even if we don’t, we still relished the opportunity to interact with the ideas of our esteemed readership. 

Now, the news.

❧ The News ❧

❧ “TAX THE RICH” GAINS MOMEMENTUM IN DEMOCRATIC MAINSTREAM. Sen. Cory Booker and Sen. Chris Van Hollen have both proposed bills with progressive tax policy — progressive in values, yes, but also progressive in the fact that they tax high earners more while giving lower earners a break. In the Van Hollen bill, the first $46,000 of income would be tax exempt for single filers ($80,500 for married couples), while those numbers are a few thousand dollars lower in Booker’s bill. Van Hollen’s bill takes more direct aim at the mega-rich: he’s proposing a tiered surtax on income over a million, up to 12 percent in addition to existing rates. Booker, meanwhile, wants to raise the marginal tax rate by six percent on any income above $256,000—which would be less of a blow to billionaires. (Although if either pass, they will likely throw a fit). The American Prospect said that the bills are part of a “primary of ideas” in which potential presidential candidates test the political water with policies. In a misguided rebuttal, some Democrats are calling taxes “Republican turf,” to use The Prospect’s phrase, and assert that these kinds of tax changes, what a Biden National Economic Council alum called “redistributive stuff,” would make it harder to fund Democratic priorities. You have to wonder how much the success of Zohran Mamdani has to do both with the introduction of the new bills and their pushback.

Art by Mort Todd from Current Affairs Magazine Vol. 3, Issue 4

❧ STUDY FINDS 41.2 PERCENT OF AGRICULTURAL WORKERS IN WASHINGTON STATE HAVE LONG COVID. The University of Washington Latino Center for Health conducted the study, and researchers attributed the shockingly high levels of long COVID to vaccination barriers. (Globally, about six percent of people infected wind up with a post-COVID 19 condition.) Vaccinations can cost $200 without insurance—up to 39 percent of agricultural workers are uninsured—and as one of the study’s lead researchers told Spokane Public Radio, “There is a certain strain of skepticism that flows through the Latino community.” The result is that some of our economy’s most precariously positioned workers find themselves unwell, fearful of missing work, and possibly in need of extra, costly medical support.

Art pertinent to the animal fact at the end of this Briefing from Current Affairs Magazine Vol. 5, Issue 5

❧ UAE KEEPS SENDING WEAPONS TO SUPPORT SUDAN’S GENOCIDE. Drop Site News reported that the United Arab Emirates is “restructuring its covert arms supply network to Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces,” sending weapons through routes in Chad and Libya, and developing a route through Ethiopia and the Central African Republic. This is despite the fact that last month, the United Nations found the RSF to be committing a genocide—killing hundreds of thousands of people in the Zaghawa and Fur communities and displacing 11 million—and that, last year, the Sudanese government accused the UAE of complicity with genocide in the International Court of Justice. The repression in Sudan is total: Sudanese journalist Dr. Mohamed Suleiman Atim recently spoke with the Sudan Tribune about getting access to his phone’s messages after three years of not being able to get a signal. “The children here do not just suffer from hunger,” Atim told the Tribune. “The disconnection from hope makes a child die twice: once from hunger, and once from the silence.” (Never forget, Dubai chocolate is regime propaganda.)

CURRENT-EST AFFAIRS

What’s new in the magazine this week?

Turn the Lights Back On

Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan Robinson and associate editor Alex Skopic have just returned from Cuba, and they are reporting back what they have seen—or didn’t see. While they were in Cuba, the island entered yet another blackout, a result of the United States’ cruel and reckless blockade on fuel shipments. If you think you know what darkness does, think again.

Remember, it’s not too late to tell the U.S. to stop this injustice. Hell, if Spaniards in Madrid are protesting the U.S. blockade of Cuba, we can, too. And our opposition might be all the more important as the United States turns its eye to Colombia, where left-wing President Gustavo Petro has been named in two U.S. criminal investigations related to drug-smuggling. Petro is not personally the target of the probes, and some experts question if Trump may “use the existence of the investigations to try to influence the outcome of Colombia’s presidential elections in May,” writes The New York Times.

Photo by Gerard Dalbon

❧ Crooks vs. Sickos ❧

Or, what our politicians and oligarchs are up to

❧ MISSION NOT ACCOMPLISHED IN IRAN. Things are going so poorly, in fact, that the U.S. government is censoring the way satellite imaging companies describe the photos they take of American attacks in Iran. So poorly that, in a deeply ironic turn of events, the U.S. has eased oil sanctions on Iran to help mitigate skyrocketing fuel prices, in addition to releasing strategic oil reserves. Now, Iran has accused Trump of attempting to manipulate markets after he claimed talks between the adversaries are going well. Iran said they are not currently engaging in high level negotiations with the U.S. at all.

Art by Chirs Matthews from Current Affairs Magazine Vol. 3, Issue 4

❧ MISSION ALSO NOT ACCOMPLISHED IN AIRPORTS… where ICE agents have been deployed to 14 different locations to help with exorbitant security lines. They’ve done nothing for wait times so far, but they have detained a mother and child in San Francisco. TSA workers have been working without pay for over a month, since Democrats refused to fund the Department of Homeland Security without basic ICE reforms. Their demands include requiring ICE agents to get a judicial warrant before entering a home and not to wear masks. Basic stuff in a democracy. Democrats have, however, offered to fund just TSA, which Republicans refused to do. Hundreds of TSA workers have quit. Elon Musk has offered to pay the airport security agents during the shutdown, but that money might now be tied up elsewhere: Musk was just found guilty of defrauding Twitter investors before he purchased the company, now (regrettably) called X, and may owe up to $2.6 billion.

Art by Nick Sirotich from Current Affairs Magazine Vol. 3, Issue 4

❧ SPEAKING OF CONGRESSIONAL DYSFUNCTION… The SAVE America Act, a massive voter repression bill, has passed the House and moved to the Senate. Trump does not want to re-open DHS until the SAVE America Act passes. Two million people have lost health insurance after Congress failed to extend tax subsidies for the Affordable Care Act last year. Congress did, however, manage to officially replace Kristi Noem as Secretary of Homeland Security with Senator Markwayne Mullin, a man who has a history of attending a bible study that teaches antisemitic classics like “the Jews killed Jesus.” Oh, and Gregg Phillips, another recently appointed top official in the US Federal Emergency Management Agency, says he once teleported to a Waffle House against his will. Maybe he and Secretary Mullin can be friends? I hear a love for conspiracy theories and paranoid delusions makes the heart grow fonder.

“Teleporting is no fun.”

- Gregg Phillips, on a podcast

❧ In More News ❧

❧ ABC EMPLOYEES STRIKE IN AUSTRALIA. If democracy dies in darkness, as Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post likes to say, what happens to it when journalists, producers, and technical staff like cameramen are underpaid? At the very least, there will be disruptions to the news (and perhaps, eventually, democracy!) as there will be tomorrow in Australia when ABC employees walk off the job for the first time in 20 years. The staff are asking for pay raises in line with inflation and less reliance on temporary contracts so that more people can have more stable jobs. ABC is one of the nation’s largest news sources.

Art by C.M. Duffy  from Current Affairs Magazine Vol. 3, Issue 4

❧ CAN MAGA AND THE LEFT UNITE IN OPPOSITION TO AI? The anti-AI group Humans First has some pretty solid MAGA bonafides. One of its lead organizers worked as a correspondent for Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, and the group has worked actively with Florida Republicans—including one who helped organize the January 6 Capital riots—to pass Gov. Ron DeSantis’s AI regulation bill (it failed). Yet, at their Manhattan gathering, journalist Kat Tenbarge reported leftist organizers taking the stage, while some attendees were decked out in Mamdani merch. Though their solutions to the problem differ, figures from both left and right expressed a willingness to make “strange bedfellows” to stop the proliferation of AI. This tentative coalition building comes right as the Trump administration has introduced its preferred suite of AI regulations, which go easy on Big Tech and “preempt” state regulation, and approve a monopolistic merger between local television broadcasters expected to give an even greater boost to conservative TV content.

Art by David Alvarado from Current Affairs Magazine Vol. 3, Issue 4

❧ BIG OIL KNEW WHAT THEY WERE DOING TO THE LOUISIANA COASTLINE. Most everyone in Louisiana knows this statistic: the state’s coastline is losing about a football field’s worth of land every hour. And they know the reason is oil companies, whose dredging up of land has caused the coastline to sink (a process known as subsidence) at the same time as the industry is causing sea levels to rise. The devastation cannot be understated: entire communities and their ways of life are going underwater. Counties, called parishes in Louisiana, are now suing oil companies for damage; one such case has reached the Supreme Court. Documents obtained through these lawsuits show that the oil companies, though they deny blame, knew exactly what they were doing. Did they also know that California would set the record for highest-ever March temperature in the U.S. last week? Squaw Lake, California reached 112 degrees Fahrenheit. Hundreds of other cities set their own daily heat records, too.

❧ The Brightside ❧

❧ Ms. Rachel, the badass teacher and children’s YouTuber who gained national attention for her unabashed pro-Palestine politics, is now using her platform to help free kids from ICE detention.

❧ Arizona has sued Kalshi, accusing it of illegal gambling. On the other side of the country, in D.C., Polymarket tried to open a bar called Situation Room where people could “bet on geopolitical crises in real time with their friends,” according to Wired. Also according to Wired, the bar was a “disaster.” Lol. Ban prediction markets. 

❧ Last week, Rachel Cohen wrote for Current Affairs wrote about her decision not to pay her federal income taxes. A modern wave of tax protests seems to be catching on, so much so that corporate media is taking notice.

❧ Letter to the News Briefing ❧

It’s like a Letter to the Editor, but cooler because it's the News Briefing

Written by a Current Affairs reader in response to a correction this News Briefing issued about Texas’s draconian abortion laws, and who can be sued because of them. Read that issue of the Briefing here and more about Texas’s Heart Beat Act here. 

Dear News Briefing, 

I believe attention should be given to the environment created by the complex landscape that is Texas abortion laws. (i.e., a near total abortion ban and worse health outcomes for patients who need abortions) and considered against the marketability of the law (i.e., the nuance you identified in your correction). 

Said another way, they've created a legal landscape to achieve their aim of banning abortion without triggering as substantial of a backlash as similar efforts due to the nuance and ambiguity they've baked in.

Your correction is accurate in that the law doesn't allow someone to sue the person who gets an abortion, but it does allow for targeting spouses, family, friends, and doctors who support them in doing so. I'd be hard-pressed to imagine someone not feeling like their spouse, family, or friends getting sued for helping them is worse than getting sued themself!

Further, the law has created a perverse incentivization in forcing pregnant people to have a child: "Now that it's known you're pregnant, have the child or pay me $10,000" (legally!). The cases of Collin Davis and Marcus Silva are examples of men using the law in this way against someone they were dating and an ex-wife, respectively.

As was proudly stated by Texas Right To Life President, John Seago, in Texas Scorecard, a right-wing pseudo-news website:

“In Texas we have overlapping civil and criminal laws that fully protect preborn Texans just like born individuals. However, those laws are not currently being fully enforced,” explained Seago. “Since 2021, we have witnessed a blatant escalation of illegal activity by abortion businesses, foreign websites, pro-abortion organizations, and individuals. With this case, and others like it, we are seeing Texans begin to urge the court to examine the proper legal ramifications of those deadly activities. Anyone who advertises for, aides, abets, assists in, or performs an abortion on a Texan should be held accountable. Texans have civil and criminal tools available to protect life and prosecute those breaking our laws. We are just seeing the beginning of these legal tools being used in the judicial system where these cases will set important precedent for the future.”

Sincerely, Joel from the USA

ANIMAL FACT OF THE WEEK

Chicks experience the bouba-kiki effect!

The bouba-kiki effect is a fun party trick for humans. You show your friends two shapes—one sharp and jagged like a cartoon explosion, the other globular—and ask which one is kiki and which one is bouba. Most people instinctively respond that the sharp one is kiki and the round one, bouba. Scientists have thought this near universal human phenomena might be at the foundation of language, but it turns out, chicks experience the bouba-kiki effect, too. Right after chicks hatched, and therefore were a tabula rasa of sorts, researchers presented them with bouba and kiki shapes, then played recordings of people saying bouba or kiki and watched to see which shape the chicks approached. 80 percent of chicks approached and investigated the appropriate shape. Reflecting on the results, the study’s lead researcher, Maria Loconsole, told Scientific American, “Even if language [is] unique to humans,” Loconsole says, “that doesn’t mean that it comes from an ability that is unique to humans.”

Photo by fir0002  flagstaffotos [at] gmail.com, via Wikimedia Commons

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.

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.