Big Mouth, Empty Suits
News Roundup
Big Mouth, Empty Suits
Once. Twice. Thrice. Former U.S. President Donald Trump was indicted for a third time.
The only erstwhile president to come this close to jail time, Trump now faces 78 criminal charges. Those are spread across two federal indictments — for derailing the election and mishandling classified documents — and one in New York, for misclassifying hush payments. But perhaps the most serious indictment — the laggard “fourth indictment” from Georgia for election interference — is yet to come.
The ex-president has called it “bullshit” and vows to run from prison if necessary. It really seems like his strategy for avoiding jail is to win office and claim imperium. But legal troubles haven’t hurt him in the polls.
Unluckily for Trump, in criminal cases, it’s one strike and you go in.
POLITICS and WORLD
‘ONE COUP TOO MANY’: A coup d'état in Niger has led to the brink of combustion. The country’s president was captured by a military junta. The coup was denounced by the largest regional power bloc, which gave an ultimatum to restore the country’s president to power (the deadline lapsed more than a week ago). Meanwhile, Burkina Faso and Mali, both countries where military dictatorships have overthrown elected officials, sided with the junta. Perhaps more surprisingly, western countries have decided to push back. The country has become an important base for American anti-terrorist operations. It’s also thought that the country, under the junta’s control, could provide a foothold for Russian “Wagner” mercenaries. The dominos haven’t fallen, but they’re teetering.
KEEPING COUNT: Millions have poured out of Sudan, fleeing escalating ethnic violence. There are mass graves and displacement, and there are concerns that, in the Darfur region, it could be worse than the infamous genocide from two decades ago. A Masalit leader in Darfur, Muhammad Abu Bakr, has estimated that the violence in the Darfur region has killed at least 10,000 people in the last couple of months.
SUMMER VACATION: Iran ordered a two-day “heat holiday” — bureaucratese for national shutdown — due to “unprecedented” temperatures during the peak of the heat this summer. It’s the first in what could very well become a trend. Plus, it gives fresh life to the phrase “hot as hell.”
IN THE JAILHOUSE NOW: Tou Thao, the last Minneapolis police officer to be convicted for George Floyd’s 2020 murder, was sentenced to almost five years in prison. He was, in the word recycled by nearly every headline, “unrepentant.”
GERONTOCRACY: During a press conference last month, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s brain went on strike mid-sentence, leaving him to stare blankly into the cameras for about 30 seconds before staffers and colleagues gingerly led him by the arm to his office. If McConnell’s cerebrum is actively rotting on Capitol Hill, it’s not the only one. Dianne Feinstein, the 90-year-old queen of Congressional sundowning, had to be told to “just say ‘aye’,” in a Senate Appropriations Committee vote on the Defense Appropriations Act. Can you be too old for office? Who are you, where are we and why are you asking me questions?
BUSINESS and ECONOMY
FOR RICHER OR — MORE LIKELY — POORER: Trade between East African countries fell by $1.8 billion in 2022. It won’t help that mineral exports are plummeting since the European Union, the world’s biggest market, has tightened restrictions to become less dependent on foreign minerals.
SECOND-HAND ESG: An update we missed… Marlboro’s CEO Jacek Olczak told reporters that the stock is “on path” to being listed as environmental, social, governance (ESG), presumably to juice the company’s status with investors. It seems unlikely, and someone may want to let Olczak know what “on path” means. Then again, Marlboro is the original cowboy killer, which could make a perverse argument for an environmentally friendly label of a sort. Weapons manufacturers have previously pulled a similar move.
PAR FOR THE COURSE: Following up on a previous story… The new Saudi-backed golf tour, which raised issues around foreign influence and “sports washing” — the notion that Saudi Arabia was using golf to distract from its human rights abuses — is supposed to merge with its PGA Tour rival. If you can’t beat them, buy them. Antitrust expert Matt Stoller has called the deal “comically illegal,” in that it sets up an obvious monopoly. Key provisions of the deal have already been dropped.
EDUCATION and RE-EDUCATION
VAST AND TRUNKLESS LEGS OF STONE: There have been several high-profile academic fraud cases lately. Stanford’s president, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, resigned after a student reporter noted that biotechnology labs he’d run were prone to fixing studies (though Tessier-Lavigne had not been accused of personally altering data). Francesca Gino, a Harvard Business School professor and behavioral scientist, has also tumbled from her paper throne thanks to evidence of fake data. She’s lodged a defamation suit. Still, her empire has crumbled, remarked Insider, leaving scholars asking: Who’s next?
LEAVING A LEGACY: Since our last edition, the U.S. Supreme Court tossed out race-based admissions for colleges. A surprising consequence: A civil rights investigation into how Harvard, the oldest university in the country, treats “legacy admissions.” Why are those a thing, anyway? It turns out, National Geographic reports, legacy admissions — somewhat analogously to grandfather clauses in voting tests — were started to exclude. In this case, to keep Jews out of university.
DEVOLUTION: An update we missed… Schools in India are removing the periodic table and evolution from K-12 education. It appears that motivating the decision is a desire to stress “pride” in precolonial Indian “ways of knowing” — as a consequence, deemphasizing the contributions of Charles Darwin and Michael Faraday. It also stems from antiscience sentiment in powerful groups, like Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which has an in with the Bharatiya Janata Party. And you thought studies of human evolution were universal.
DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH: Texas landed a blow in the war against literacy, turning Houston Public Schools libraries into “discipline centers.” The decision — enabled by an earlier one to replace elected school board officials with state-appointed cronies — kindled protests. It’s another way that library time may be disappearing for kids around the country. But plummeting test scores show they can barely read, anyway.
BEFORE YOU GO (HOUSEKEEPING NOTE): We’ve been out for a bit, but we’re back. Since we’ve been gone, a lot has happened: I turned 30 (*gasp), and you’ll also never again see my byline without the phrase “award-winning” lurking nearby. For marketing, of course. Keep your eyes peeled for future editions.