Holy Crap, What a News Week!
Trump is (finally!) being called out for his fascist statements. Masha Gessen deals with the dogmatism she warns about. The Supreme Court. And the fate of journalists in Gaza.
HAPPY CHRISTMAS!!!
Here are some things I’ve been reading. Beyond the headlines of the Supreme Court deciding to wait for the Appeals Court ruling on Trump’s immunity claims, and the Colorado Supreme Court ruling on the 14th Amendement, below are stories that stayed with me in the last 10 days.
Ken Paxton Challenges States Rights, and the Constitution
The newly non-impeached (but still under federal investigation) Ken Paxton is demanding that a hospital in Seattle give up all records of trans patients who had gender-affirming care, and who are originally from Texas. Paxton argues that this is against Texas law. And he somehow thinks Washington State should be compelled to uphold Texas Law. Which blatantly ignores the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, and also goes against a Washington State law that explicitly prohibits healthcare providers from giving information about any patient.
Ten years ago, this would have been laughable. But we have a Supreme Court that is more interested in politics than jurisprudence. So, while this is still a LITTLE laughable, it’s also a bit scary.
The Atlantic and Other News Outlets Sound the Trump Alarm
Finally. Finally. For god’s sake, the national media is finally reporting on Trump truthfully, writing about his plain promises to impose authoritarianism on the U.S. if he’s reelected. He will - on day one - arrest his “enemies,” weaponize the justice department, sic the military on domestic protestors. This next election is a vote for democracy vs. authoritarianism. And finally, news media are starting not to normalize Trump’s authoritarianism as just a “side.”
Though we did get odd headlines like this:
Because the Constitution and democracy are at odds? Do we get headlines like this whenever there’s a mass shooting?
Anyway, The Atlantic is leading the way, with 24 stories by 24 of its writers on how “both Trump and Trumpism pose an existential threat to America and to the ideas that animate it,” according to publisher Jeffrey Goldberg.
Goldberg finishes his introduction to the “If Trump Wins” issue thusly:
“The Atlantic, as our loyal readers know, is deliberately not a partisan magazine. ‘Of no party or clique’ is our original 1857 motto, and it is true today. Our concern with Trump is not that he is a Republican, or that he embraces—when convenient—certain conservative ideas. We believe that a democracy needs, among other things, a strong liberal party and a strong conservative party in order to flourish. Our concern is that the Republican Party has mortgaged itself to an antidemocratic demagogue, one who is completely devoid of decency.”
Indeed. I am making my way through all 24 essays. You should too.
Proof That Intellectualism is Dead
The New Yorker’s Masha Gessen - a Russian, Jewish, Queer philosopher and writer - was to be given the Hanna Arendt Prize for Political Thought in Bremen, Germany. The prize’s namesake was the 20th century German-Jewish philosopher whose book, Eichmann in Jerusalem - about the 1961 trial of the famous Nazi commander - brought us the phrase “the banality of evil.”
After Gessen was announced as the recipient, she wrote this mesmerizing thought piece on how the dogmatic fanaticism that led Germany to commit the atrocities of the Holocaust has turned into a dogmatic fanaticism that says Jewish people can do no wrong.
The Eichmann trial, Gessen writes, “helped to solidify the narrative that, to prevent annihilation, Jews should be prepared to use force preëmptively. Arendt, reporting on the trial, would have none of this.”
Gessen argues that the phrase “never forget” really means never forget what happened to Jews - and only Jews - during the Holocaust.
Therefore, there was no Jewish diaspora outcry when the Rwandan and Serbian genocides happened in the 1990s. There still is no Jewish diaspora outcry about the current genocide of the Muslim Uyghurs in China.
The lesson I learned growing up in the late 20th century was that when one of us is oppressed, we are all oppressed. As I became an adult, I realized many of my fellow Jews think only we are oppressed.
Gessen’s piece resonated strongly with me.
Which is why I was so outraged to hear that after the New Yorker piece ran, the Heinrich Boll Foundation and the University of Bremen rescinded the Arendt prize from Gessen. And why I was relieved to see that, after much outcry, it was reinstated - though with a smaller celebration.
Gessen wryly noted that in today’s Germany, “Hannah Arendt wouldn’t have gotten the Hannah Arendt prize.” In an interview with the Middle East Eye, she said “antisemitism is a real thing, and it includes violent incidents and truly dangerous incidents, and when those incidents are lumped together with what Germans call anti-Israeli antisemitism - which isn't antisemitism at all - that dilutes the definition of antisemitism.”
Couldn’t agree more.
The New Yorker allows non-subscribers to read six free articles a month. Gessen can be a bit tough to read, and she takes a while to get her point, but oh my, is this piece worth sticking around for. Here’s another link to it.
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SCOTUS vs. the Administrative State
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court said it would review a lower court ruling on the EPA, which created a regulation to curb emissions originating in one state that harms people in neighboring states. You know, wind and the jet stream and all that.
The Court has been hinting for a few years that it thinks the administrative state - that is, all the federal agencies like OSHA or the EPA or the FDA - is unconstitutional, as they give regulation-making power to the executive branch of government. Conservative jurists argue that laws are to be made only by Congress, and regulations are laws, and federal agencies are under the executive branch, so, therefore, individual agencies shouldn’t be able to make regulations. Nevermind that - with non-Trump presidents - the people who make regulations are career employees who are experts in their fields. They are not appointed by the political whims of the president.
Trump would change this, and fire all federal employees who don’t sign a loyalty pledge. But I digress.
The point here is that Heritage Foundation types want to kill the administrative state. The Court ruled in May (unanimously) that the EPA’s view of “waterways” was too expansive. Now they seem poised to insert themselves in whether one state can unleash pollution that harms people in another state.
The thing to keep in mind here is that the Court seems to be accepting EPA cases to make as examples. This may be because of a connection Justice Neil Gorsuch (above) has to that agency. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan chose Gorsuch’s mother, Anne Gorsuch, to run the EPA. She immediately started hiring people from the industries the agency was supposed to regulate, slashed regulations, and neutered career employees. Uproar ensued, and she was canned for politicizing an administrative agency. Now, there is a great deal of speculation that Gorsuch is avenging what he sees as his mother’s dishonor.
The sentiment here seems to be that if you can’t politicize the administrative state, then just kill the whole thing.
Of course, if Trump wins, we might be glad the Court limited the politicizing of the administrative state. But who am I kidding. Our entire system of government will cease to exist as intended if Trump wins again.
Another SCOTUS story that came out this week was the Times’ inside account of how the Dobbs abortion decision happened. Worth a read.
Lawsuit Says CPAC Leaders Knew About Schlapp Sexual Battery
Matt Schlapp, the head of the American Conservative Union, which puts on the annual Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) conference, has been accused by a number of male staffers and convention attendees of sexual harassment. One of the lawsuits - for sexual battery and defamation - reveals that organizers of CPAC were told about the harassment and did nothing.
It’s all about sex and gender, folks. Christian conservatives are obsessed with it. It’s an abomination for drag queens to read books to children, but the head of the largest conservative convention in the country can walk around groping men or rubbing up against them without their consent.
Gaza
IDF Kills Hostages It Was Tasked With Saving
On December 15, three young men who had been taken hostage on October 7 from Kibbutz Nir Am, ran out to greet Israeli soldiers who, they probably assumed, came to liberate them.
Instead, the soldiers shot them. All three men were shirtless - so the IDF would see they weren’t strapped with bombs. They were smiling. And they were carrying a makeshift white flag. One of the soldiers started shooting, and killed two of the hostages.
The Times reports that “the third hostage fled into the building, from which a cry in Hebrew for help could be heard. The battalion commander ordered the forces to hold their fire. But the wounded hostage later re-emerged, after which he was fatally shot.”
This incident has shaken Israelis and diaspora Jews. But I do wonder if it would have registered at all if the three had been Palestinians murdered in cold blood.
Israeli Snipers Kill Two Women Outside a Catholic Church
The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem - which is the highest authority for Catholics in Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and Cyprus - put out a statement on December 16 that “a sniper of the IDF murdered two Christian women inside the Holy Family Parish in Gaza.” Seven more people were shot and wounded.
“No warning was given, no notification was provided. They were shot in cold blood inside the premises of the Parish, where there are no belligerents.”
A couple of days later, Pope Francis confirmed the killings, and weighed in on the war, according to CNN.
“I continue receiving very serious and sad news about Gaza,” Francis said in his weekly Angelus prayer. “Unarmed civilians are targets for bombs and gunfire. And this has happened even within the parish complex of the Holy Family, where there are no terrorists, but families, children, people who are sick and have disabilities, sisters.”
This happened two months after Israeli forces dropped a bomb on St. Porphyrius Orthodox Church in Gaza, killing dozens of families sheltering inside.
IDF Attacks Journalists
I make it a semi-regular habit to check in with the Committee to Protect Journalists, which put out the graphic above. CPJ keeps track of attacks on journalists all over the world.
They reported on the video that has been widely spread of IDF soldiers beating up Turkish photojournalist Mustafa Alkharouf , walking away, walking back when he said something they didn’t like, throwing him to the ground, and kicking him in the head. Then the soldiers tried to go after the guy who was recording it.
This video looks a lot like the video of Memphis police beating Tyre Nichols to death. It looks a lot like a lot of police brutality in the U.S. Because it’s the systems, not the individuals. It’s about wielding power, and employing soldiers to help keep that power.
Remember the story and video in October of the Al Jazeera bureau chief who found out while he was on the air that his family had all been killed in an airstrike in Gaza (pictured above with one of his children)? Well, last weekend, he was targeted by an Israeli drone. His cameraman died. He was wounded.
The cameraman, Samer Abu Daqqa, is on the left. The bureau chief, Wael Al Dahdouh, is on the right.
And this pic of Al Dahdouh is haunting.
This man’s eyes are dead. He will never recover, even if his physical injuries heal.
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Have a great week, folks! Keep paying attention. Keep celebrating everyone’s humanity.
I appreciate you all.
Reading this compilation reminds me of how I used to spend hours every day for the longest time reading nothing but on going current news for a period of several years, until I just could not do it anymore. Still though it is a good thing to be reminded of the many varied news reports that are always taking place.