Weekly Review

Hurricane Michael, a Category 4 storm, hit the Florida Panhandle and, with 155-mile-per-hour winds, killed at least 18 people in the Southeastern states; washed entire buildings away with a single wave in Mexico Beach, Florida; left more than a million without power in six states; and caused damages estimated at upwards of $4.5 billion in Florida.^{1 2 3 4} “Pretty much just like the apocalypse had happened,” said a Florida resident; “It was like everybody’s been saying, like a bomb went off,” said another; “When is anybody coming to do something?” asked a woman who was giving herself insulin shots in the back of her car.^{5 6 7} “Not today,” said Bill Shine, the White House communications director, in response to reporter’s request for comment from President Donald Trump on a UN report that reiterated that, even under a conservative estimate of warming by 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2040, the Earth will suffer millions of deaths caused by the effects of climate change, “It’s a Kavanaugh night.”^8 9 Hillary Clinton said that her husband’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky, then a White House intern, was not an abuse of power because she “was an adult”; Nikki Haley announced that she will resign as the US ambassador to the United Nations at the end of the year; and it was revealed that Rick Gates, a Trump campaign official, requested proposals from an Israeli company to use social media manipulation to help Trump win the 2016 presidential election.^{10 11 12}

The United Nations released a report stating that 13 million Yemenis will starve unless the Saudi-led coalition halts air strikes on the country.¹³ A senior Turkish official stated that Jamal Khashoggi, a 59-year-old journalist who wrote opinion columns for the Washington Post that were critical of Saudi Arabia and was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, had been killed and dismembered with a bone saw by a 15-man team of Saudi operatives; Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman spoke with the White House innovations director, Jared Kushner, whom the crown prince has reportedly said is “in his pocket,” and denied he ordered Khashoggi killed.^{14 15 16} The New York Times has refunded its 10-day “Journeys” package tours to the kingdom and reported that Kushner likely paid “little or no” federal taxes between 2009, the year he married Ivanka Trump, and 2016.^17 18 The federal debt, which Trump vowed to eliminate in eight years, rose from $666 billion last year to $782 billion this fiscal year with corporate tax receipts declined by a third after the Republican tax cut, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by almost 832 points, the third largest decline in its history.^19 20 “Maybe this may be a positive thing,” said the police chief who hired the former Cleveland police officer who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice; “I think he did the right thing by stepping down, not putting the citizens here in jeopardy,” said the police chief, days later, after the officer withdrew his job application following a public outcry.^21 22 Washington State outlawed the death penalty, citing racial bias.²³ CVS’s $69 billion merger with Aetna was approved; Google shut down Google Plus because of a security breach discovered in March and, until this week, unreported to the public. The Pentagon’s cybersecurity was reported to have “mission critical” vulnerabilities.^{24 25 26}

In Georgia, over 53,000 voter registration applications, 70 percent of whom are from black residents, are being held by the office of the Georgia secretary of state’s office, which has, since 2012, canceled over 1.4 million registrations and is run by Brian Kemp, the Republican nominee for Governor.²⁷ “[I]t has never been easier to vote in our state,” said Kemp’s campaign spokesman. The organizer of the Fyre Festival was sentenced to a six-year prison sentence for fraud; China legalized camps for the “thought transformation” of Muslim Uighurs; and US Marshals lost track of 2.45 million rounds of ammunition.^{28 29 30} In Bristol, Tennessee, a 76-year-old man who police say was run over with a lawn mower while trying to kill his son with a chain saw had his leg amputated, and Nicolas De Meyer, a 41-year-old longtime former assistant to Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, did not appear at Manhattan’s Thurgood Marshall Courthouse to discuss stealing $1.2 million in vintage wine from his former boss, and instead jumped 33 stories to his death.^{30 31} Kanye West visited the White House.³²—Jacob Rosenberg