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HERE & ABROAD
❧ DEEP DIVE: Fear of ICE spurs reverse migration ❧
After years of sensationalism around “caravans” of Latin Americans heading north to the United States, thousands of Latin American immigrants are leaving the United States and heading back south in what has been dubbed “reverse migration,” running back the same cross-continent journey they undertook, sometimes not long ago.
People are leaving because they are, rightfully, afraid. Readers of this News Briefing know that Trump's militarized mass deportation campaign is disappearing people off the streets, sending them to detention centers, deporting them to a country they have never even visited, and separating parents from their children. The Human Rights Watch, in partnership with Cristosal, just released a report that found inmates in El Salvador’s CECOT prison, which holds migrants taken by the U.S. government, suffer “constant beatings and other forms of ill-treatment, including some cases of sexual violence.” The conditions, the report said, are comparable to Bahghdad’s Abu Ghraib during the War on Terror.
Many reverse migrants are Venezuelan, and they might not escape American aggression once they return home. To date, the U.S. military has killed at least 83 people in attacks on 21 boats in the Caribbean Sea, and last week, the United States has brought its largest aircraft carrier to Venezuela’s neck of the water. Trump is considering a direct strike in the country, and in a sign of what’s to come, the New York Times is once again publishing propaganda drumming up support for a needless war. As associate editor Alex Skopic wrote in his piece “No War with Venezuela!,” it’s a classic case of the U.S. seeking regime change in an oil-rich country that, if enacted, will end with “countless innocent people killed for corporate profit margins.”
Stateside, ICE has moved onto North Carolina, where they have already arrested over 130 people. After news of the raids broke, 15 percent of students, about 21,000 children, did not show up to school in and around Charlotte, N.C. on Monday. If that’s not evidence of terror, then what is?
❧ In Other News ❧
❧ TRUMP WANTS FAT PEOPLE OUT OF THE U.S. Trump’s idea of a healthy society seems to be narrowly focused on whether or not he sees fat people. Two weeks ago, instead of agreeing to extend Obamacare subsidies that would lower all kinds of healthcare costs, Trump announced he had lowered the price of just one class of drugs for qualified Medicare and Medicaid recipients: GLP-1s, which Trump calls the “fat drug,” through a deal he arranged with Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk. (Though you might have missed the news conference after an attendee passed out and inspired a barrage of overshadowing online discourse.) Then, last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio directed embassies and consulates to deny visas to applicants with pre-existing health conditions, mentioning obesity and diabetes by name. The government is worried such applicants could “require hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of care,” and, like with American citizens, they don’t want to have to pay for it. Also on the no-no list: having special needs, a mental health condition, a neurological condition, or simply being of retirement age.
Art by Ellen Burch from Current Affairs Magazine Vol. 5, Issue 3
❧ IRANIAN WATER CRISIS MAY FORCE EVACUATION OF TEHRAN. Tehran has recorded as little as 1 millimeter of rain this year, and across the country, snow, which typically comes toward the end of the year, has barely shown up, too. Without precipitation, many Iranian aquifers have dwindled to just 5 percent of their capacity, forcing the government to ration water. Now, Iran is attempting to seed clouds, sending sprays of rain-inducing particles like silver iodide into the air to try and coax water from the sky. If rain still doesn’t fall, officials are considering evacuating parts of Tehran, a city of 14 million, as soon as next month. A few Iranians are blaming social sin, like lack of hijab wearing, for the unprecedented drought, but a more likely culprit is climate change combined with years of water mismanagement. As this crisis continues, the Global Carbon Project has announced carbon emissions will reach another historic high this year, increasing the risk of future drought. (And, of course, the United States’ strict financial sanctions against Iran will make it harder to help anyone affected by such a drought.)
After a party loses a major election, they like to conduct an autopsy, disinterring the carcass of their political platform from beneath the ballot boxes and inspecting it to figure out what went so wrong. Kamala Harris’s new memoir is one such autopsy, and it’s an excellent one, but not for the reason Kamala Harris thinks it is. Harris writes that she lost because she did not have enough time to campaign, but Yasmin Nair has found in her book the real answer the politician seeks. And yes, it does have something to do with the fact that Harris admitted, without shame, that she passed over Pete Buttigieg for vice president because he is gay.
❧ In More News ❧
❧ IS THE CABAL RED, BLUE, OR BUBBA? Trump, the fake king of class struggle, rose to power on the lie that he was an outsider who would dismantle a possibly pedophilic, super-rich elite (shoutout QAnon and Pizzagate). However, the most recently released Epstein emails add further evidence to the allegations that, in fact, Trump was a part of that elite. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 2,324 email threads mention the President 1,670 times. Garbage Day called the emails “a who’s who of far-right personalities,” with Steve Bannon as the star. It turns out that the Trump ally spoke at length with Epstein as he helped build MAGA. Trump himself, too, was apparently still in contact with the wealthy sex offender long after his 2008 conviction in a Florida court, contrary to his claims that he cut ties with Epstein in either 2004 or 2007.
Some corners of the internet have convinced themselves, taking huge leaps from the emails’ text, that Trump was in so deep he was fellating Bill Clinton (the only evidence for this is a message from Epstein’s brother, asking if “Putin has the photos of Trump blowing Bubba?” ). Trump is desperately trying to reassert his mendacious narrative by saying every name in the emails that isn’t his own. He has directed the Department of Justice to investigate banks and Democrats who corresponded with Epstein, including Larry Summers, Bill Clinton, JP Morgan Chase, and Reid Hoffman. Yet the real story, as Matt Stoller writes, is not that the latest Epstein emails damn one party over the other, but paint a bipartisan picture of American power, illustrated through the communiques of a notorious sex trafficker who clearly had the ear of many powerful people.
Art by Ellen Burch from Current Affairs Magazine Vol. 5, Issue 3
❧ STARBUCKS WORKERS WALK OUT. Over 1,000 Starbucks workers in 65 stores across 40 cities walked out last Thursday on the company’s very busy Red Cup Day (no relation to communism, clearly) after they failed to reach a contract agreement. Starbucks has, as Current Affairs Editor-in-Chief Nathan Robison succinctly put it, “bad coffee, bad food, bad vibes,” and, more importantly, “indefensible” labor practices, ranging from under-payment and under-staffing to forcing employees in Texas to work in excessive heat during the summer. Starbucks Workers United has filed over 1,000 charges with the National Labor Relations Board, and Starbucks, in turn, has spent at least $240 million trying to bust the union. According to Reuters, the union said it is ready to make this strike the biggest in Starbucks history. They’re also asking people around the U.S. to boycott the chain in solidarity—a call that’s been taken up by socialist mayors-elect Zohran Mamdani in NYC and Katie Wilson in Seattle. Remember: until there’s a fair contract, don’t cross that line!
Baristas are just waking up to the many things that not just Starbucks, but almost every corporation, is doing that are anti-worker and anti-labor. They make all of this money—they make so much money, and yet they refuse to pay us what we’re worth. And ultimately, that’s what it is. We’re just trying to be recognized for the worth that we have.
Art by Ellen Burch from Current Affairs Magazine Vol. 5, Issue 3
❧ REST IN PEACE, ALICE WONG. Disability rights activist and writer AliceWong died on Nov. 14 of an infection at age 51. Wong, who had muscular dystrophy, founded the Disability Visibility Project, working with Story Corp to collect and amplify stories of disabled people. Back when Twitter could sometimes be a force for good, she organized online communities under hashtags #criplit and #cripthevote. Her best known writing is her memoir, Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life, but she also edited four anthologies. In an essay that Wong selected for Disability Intimacy, Nicole Lee Schroeder writes, “Disabled love is spun from respect and mutuality, not reciprocity … because disabled love is spun from honesty.” It’s this kind of unconditional care for, and acceptance of, all kinds of people that Wong gave a bullhorn.
Art by Ellen Burch from Current Affairs Magazine Vol. 5, Issue 3
❧ GEN Z PROTESTS IN MEXICO CITY. Like other Gen Zers reshaping political landscapes across the world, Mexico’s youth took to the streets by the thousands last Saturday to protest corruption and crime. The protests were sparked by the assassination of Carlos Manzo, the outspoken mayor of Uruapan who pressured the government to reign in cartels, at a Dia de los Muertos event. Though the protests werelargely non-violent, tensions escalated when “a small group of hooded protesters tore down fences around the National Palace where President Claudia Sheinbaum lives” and riot police responded with tear gas, Reuters reported. One hundred police officers and 20 civilians were injured. Some of the protesters left obscene graffiti reading “Puta Judea” on the Supreme Court’s doors, suggesting some far-right antisemitic elements were involved, too. (Sheinbaum is Mexico's first Jewish president.) Last week, Sheinbaum alleged that, in contrast to other grassroots Gen Z movements, millions of foreign bots on social media were promoting the protests, and that the protest were financially supported by far right billionaires connected to opposition parties.
ANIMAL FACT OF THE WEEK
Are raccoons coming to a pet store near you?
It may yet be too soon to write to Santa (a confirmed democratic socialist) and ask him to leave you a raccoon under the tree on Christmas morning. But the dumpster diver extraordinaires are showing early signs of domestication according to a study in Frontiers of Zoology reported by Scientific American. City raccoons have snouts that are 3.5 percent shorter than their country counterparts, which the researchers said is a clear symptom of domestication syndrome, the early biological changes animals undergo as they become tamer. These adaptations, which also include floppy ears, white patches, and a smaller skull, arise from proximity to urban human life; animals change as they figure out how to most effectively scrounge for the wealth of food in our trash without freaking us out. Part of the winning strategy, it appears, is to get cuter. Watch this space.
Writing and research by Emily Carmichael. Editing and additional material by Alex Skopic 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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