Weekly Review
A United Nations report revealed that nearly 50 million people are living in modern slavery, a 23 percent increase since 2016.1 The report, which attributed the upsurge to COVID-19, climate change, and armed conflicts, found that more than half of all forced labor occurs in upper-middle-income or richer countries, and that migrants are three times likelier than other workers to be victims.2 Busloads of asylum seekers were sent to Vice President Kamala Harris’s residence by Governor Greg Abbott of Texas, and Florida governor Ron DeSantis, whose state does not border Mexico, lured migrants who had arrived in Texas onto planes with false promises of housing and work and dropped them off without warning in Martha’s Vineyard, the wealthy vacation enclave where former president Barack Obama has a home.3 4 5 6 7 “Republicans are playing politics with human beings, using them as props. What they’re doing is simply wrong,” said President Joe Biden, who maintained the Trump Administration’s most wide-reaching border restriction for over a year into his presidency.8 9 An armed man wearing a rainbow clown wig who was arrested in a Pennsylvania Dairy Queen was reported to have told police that he was “working to restore Trump to president-king of the United States,” and the Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene was accused of kicking a teen gun-control activist.10 11 The Georgia congressman Drew Ferguson sent supporters an email on September 13 that urged them to “never forget” the September 11 attacks.12 A man who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, while wearing a camp auschwitz sweatshirt was sentenced to 75 days’ imprisonment, and a woman accused of stealing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s laptop during the riot was allowed, for the second time in two months, to leave house arrest to attend a Renaissance Faire.13 14
In Great Britain, mourning for Queen Elizabeth II, who was immune from prosecution for pension crimes and wildlife offenses, continued.15 16 17 A resort chain announced and then reversed its decision to kick out all its guests on the day of the queen’s funeral, a supermarket chain confirmed that it had lowered the volume of its checkout beeps, and it was reported that Prince William Living magazine, which covers local events in Prince William County, Virginia, received messages of condolence.18 19 20 Hundreds of thousands of people joined a five-mile queue with waits of up to 24 hours to view the queen’s coffin, and two auxiliary queues formed when the main queue was temporarily closed.21 Placeholder wristbands were sold on eBay for up to $400, and a man was accused of touching two mourners with his penis and trying to escape into the Thames.22 A heckler was arrested for calling Prince Andrew “a sick old man,” an Aberdonian was arrested for bringing eggs to the queen’s cortege route, and a protester was threatened with arrest if he wrote the words not my king on a blank sheet of paper.23 24 25 A psychic who foretold the queen’s death using stalks of asparagus predicted that King Charles would retire next year.26 “This is particularly blasphemous towards Elizabeth II’s memory,” said a Russian government spokeswoman after Vladimir Putin was not invited to the funeral.27 Kremlin sources revealed that Putin is concerned about excessive drinking by his aides since the invasion of Ukraine, and a leaked video showed a Russian mercenary group attempting to recruit prisoners.28 29 “If you serve six months, you are free,” the recruiter said. “If you arrive in Ukraine and decide it’s not for you, we will execute you.”
In Lebanon, where an economic crisis has led to limits on financial transactions, five banks were held up by armed residents seeking to withdraw their own money.30 A Chinese woman was sued by her birth parents, who abandoned her when she was two years old, for over $70,000 after she refused to buy an apartment for her biological brother, and an American teenager who was sexually trafficked and who stabbed one of her abusers was ordered to pay $150,000 to the man’s family.31 32 A rape survivor whose DNA sample was used to convict her of an unrelated crime sued the city of San Francisco, and it was reported that police in Nassau County, Long Island, failed to help non–English speakers who called them nearly half the time.33 34 A self-described incel who killed a female spa worker using a 17-inch sword etched with the phrase thot slayer pleaded guilty to murder, and an itinerant man who attacked a train passenger with a machete was imprisoned for life.35 36 “He was like a machine,” the victim had said. “It was like that movie, Terminator.” Scientists announced the creation of a liquid metal robot that can split into droplets and reform itself.37 German customs officials announced that they had found a stash of smuggled snails after following a trail of slime, and the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham proposed a law barring abortion after 15 weeks’ gestation.38 39 A Pennsylvania politician proposed letting people ban themselves from buying alcohol, a town in Colorado banned book bans, and the United Kingdom’s health ministry banned the Oxford comma.40 41 42 “I cannot bear it and constantly remove it,” the new head of the National Health Service had tweeted about the punctuation mark.43 “Rant over.” —Jon Edelman
