The News
“I cannot tell you how much I start the day with telling my team we've got to follow the law.” Our 9.27.24 roundup.
Our weekly roundup of the news, some trends, and our thoughts — plus a reading list for the weekend.
Update from last week’s newsletter: Nebraska will not call a special session of the state’s legislature. Republican Sen. Mike McDonnell – wouldn’t budge from his opposition to the shift, which killed the push to move the state to a winner-take-all election system.
Lebanon: Israel has intensified its attacks over the last week, with one of the biggest bombing campaigns in recent military history, and preparing for a possible ground operation. On Friday, they bombed Hezbollah’s headquarters in Beirut, the Lebanese capital. The United States has been working to broker a short-term ceasefire, but conflicts this week further dimish hopes for that. The head of UN Peacekeeping Jean-Pierre Lacroix said: “I am deeply concerned by the sharp escalation along the blue line. Only hours earlier, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned the Security Council that “hell is breaking loose in Lebanon.” Prem Thakker, a reporter from Zeteo News tweeted: The DNC quietly added language to their 2024 platform hinting at support for escalation against Hezbollah in Lebanon. The move came right before Israel proceeded to escalate in Lebanon, including the mass pager & walkie-talkie attacks.
According to Lebanese authorities 90,000 people have been displaced since September 23rd. One man, Mr. Issa, spoke to the New York Times and said, “People think we in the south just love death and war and blood. That’s wrong. We love life,” he said. “But at the end of the day, this is the reality forced on all of us.”
Marcellus Williams: On Tuesday, Marcellus Williams was executed. The Mississippi Supreme Court rejected his appeals on Monday, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene hours before he was put to death. It was the third time Williams faced execution. Death penalty abolitionist Sister Helen Prejean said, “What does it say about our legal system when the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to stop an execution even when the county prosecuting agency that handled the original trial files a brief in support of a stay and supports vacating the entire conviction?” Williams was convicted in the 1998 killing of Lisha Gayle, though authorities did not find physical evidence at the crime scene linking Williams to Gayle's death, and Gayle’s family asked for him to be spared from the death sentence. Kate Scanlon reported for the Catholic Standard that the 2024 Democratic Party platform approved by delegates to the Democratic National Convention in August omits previous platforms’ calls to abolish the federal death penalty.
New York City: Mayor Eric Adams has now been indicted on five federal charges related to bribery, wire fraud, conspiracy, and soliciting campaign contributions from foreign nationals. You can read the entire indictment here. The federal investigations into the Adams administration first emerged publicly in November 2023. At that time he said, “I cannot tell you how much I start the day with telling my team we've got to follow the law.” Adams continues to deny any wrongdoing.
Reading List:
Richard Linklater reflected on Dazed and Confused: “These were not great memories, all of them. Aimless youth riding around, wasting your time, the meanness of the initiation rituals, the alienation. But maybe I’m a clown. I knew it was funny too. So I’m kind of laughing at it, but it’s hitting old wounds in my own psyche. I had a lot of dark thinking and existential thinking in the script, but those scenes just didn’t really come alive the same way. I mean, there’s hints of it, but it just wanted to be a party movie. It’s just, Hey, we’re rock and rolling. Let’s have a beer, let’s have fun. What can I say? Looking back, you remember the good times and you neutralize the bad.”
Jia Tolentino’s review of Tony Tulathimutte’s book ‘Rejection’: “The characters have lost their grasp on what’s arguably the fundamental project of being alive, the same project on display on every page of this collection—they’ve forgotten how gratifying, horrifying, and amazing it can be to try to understand someone else.”
And The Nation’s review of John Washington’s new book on borders: “The more undemocratic that society becomes under the aegis of a global capitalism that always seems to pick the same winners and losers, the more the neuroses spurred by this loss of control are projected onto the border, the international symbol of control—and the more this fear is projected, the more the border becomes psychically necessary. It is a feedback loop with deadly consequences.”
The Gaurdian’s interview with Isabella Hammad: “I feel the effect of that in American identity politics, particularly; sometimes it’s a way of obfuscating things, I fear.”