Iran issued 36 arrest warrants related to Qassem Soleimani’s assassination in January, including one for Donald Trump, whose administration had justified the drone strike as a matter of “national self-defense.”1 2 “This has nothing to do with national security, international peace, or promoting stability, so we see it for what it is—it’s a propaganda stunt that no one takes seriously and makes the Iranians look foolish,” a U.S. special representative to Iran said of the warrants. Members of Congress requested intelligence reports about alleged Russian bounties on U.S. troops in Afghanistan; the scheme was included in an intelligence brief Trump received this spring.3 4 The president tweeted and deleted a video of his supporters shouting “white power” in The Villages, a Florida retirement community, and the attorney general, William Barr, announced a new Justice Department task force that would monitor anti-government groups “who may be fortified by foreign entities,” such as Antifa, which is short for “antifascist,” and the “Boogaloo bois,” a group of far-right, Hawaiian-shirt-wearing extremists who are seeking to start a second civil war and who have staged armed attacks at recent Black Lives Matter protests.5 6 7 The House passed a bill that would make the District of Columbia—whose population is 64.8 percent people of color and which has a larger annual budget than 12 states—the 51st state.8 9 Senator Tom Cotton, who advocated for “no quarter” against “insurrectionists, anarchists, rioters, and looters” during the protests sparked by George Floyd’s murder, opposed the statehood legislation and said in regard to the protests’ impact on the district, “Would you trust Mayor Bowser to keep Washington safe if she were given the powers of a governor? Would you trust Marion Barry?”10 11
Following an incident in which a San Antonio police officer was fired for saying the N-word multiple times during an arrest but was reinstated by an arbitrator who had been selected by the police department, the president of the city’s police union asserted that the racial slur was equivalent to the use of “goddamn.”12 13 “Why don’t you go ask one of our pastors or anybody that that’s their faith?” asked the union president. The commissioner of the New York Police Department said that officers who had driven into a crowd of anti-police-brutality protesters had not violated the city’s use-of-force policy; the video game Fortnite removed police cars from its new season; and it was revealed that Van Jones, a former green-energy adviser in the Obama Administration and current CNN anchor, had helped craft Trump’s executive order on police brutality and praised it on air several times without acknowledging his involvement.14 15 16 Amazon, which paid 1.2 percent in taxes on its $13 billion in revenue last year, bought naming rights to a Seattle arena and renamed it Climate Pledge Arena, and a new study revealed that Antarctica has been warming at three times the global average over the past 30 years.17 18 19 The spokesman for the UN secretary general said that the organization was “shocked and deeply disturbed” by an 18-second video of two people having sex in the back of a UN jeep while the driver was slumped over; it is believed that some of the people in the video are part of a UN peacekeeping organization in Israel.20 Former employees of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights have accused the museum’s human-resources department of not taking their sexual harassment claims seriously.21 A new investigation showed that the Chinese government has systematically sterilized Uighurs; forced Uighurs to take birth control; and fined or detained Uighur families with more than two children.22 The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana law that had required doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.23 An off-duty police officer in Los Angeles claimed that a tampon had been inserted into his Starbucks Frappuccino; the object has not yet been confirmed as a disposable menstrual product.24
“The tradition in Mexico is that daughters are the ones who care the most for parents. We men are more detached,” said President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.25 It was revealed that nearly a third of all commercial pilots in Pakistan had fraudulent licenses.26 Egyptian hackers who referred to themselves as the “Cyber_Horus Group” threatened war and a “pharaonic curse” against Ethiopians over the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile.27 Unilever announced that it will change the name of its Fair & Lovely face and body creams but not the products’ skin-lightening formula, and a Miami waiter quit his job after his boss changed an order of 10 blackened chicken wings to “10 I can’t breathes” on a kitchen ticket.28 29 The Biden Digital Coalition recruited a grandmother who had made a TikTok video urging others to reserve tickets for Donald Trump’s rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma.30 “She had a ghostwriter,” Barack Obama said of his wife’s memoir, Becoming. “I am writing every word myself, and that’s why [my book is] taking longer.”31—Violet Lucca
