McDonald’s has partnered with the U.S. government to change its packaging to help promote the Covid vaccine. The marketing will appear on McCafe cups with the motto "We Can Do This". The Today Show meanwhile created a new fry holder to show off this story and I think the graphic designer needs a talking-to. This image very much says to me: Do not reach in there!
⛪️ Russia has requested a ceasefire starting today until Orthodox Christmas ends on Saturday. Ukraine has rejected the request. In early December Ukrainian President Zelensky moved to ban a form of Orthodox Christianity from practicing in the country. Historical Note: In 1914, during WW1, German and British forces called a Christmas truce and came together to play soccer and sing carols.
🇲🇽 Gang violence has surged after Mexican authorities arrested Ovidio Guzmán, the son of the drug kingpin “El Chapo” Guzmán.
💻 The Biden administration has until February to decide if they will evoke executive privilege to keep at least 400 pages of documents regarding Hunter Biden’s business dealings sealed until 2029.
👩🏻🌾 A new study shows that gardeners have a lower risk of mental illness.
😷 Another study shows that people who think they are attractive are less likely to wear a mask than people who think they are not.
There is still no Speaker of the House of Representatives after Representative Kevin McCarthy lost his 11th bid for the job. You'd have to go back befor The Civil War to find similar House drama. Voting will start back up today.
All of this infighting has been a boon for C-SPAN with people tuning in to Congress like they’d tune into WrestleMania. If only they’d start wrestling to settle this!
Actually, wrestling is not off the table. As New York Magazine puts it, “The United States House of Representatives is currently not governed by anybody or by any set of rules. No one has been sworn in because there is no Speaker, and therefore everyone on the floor is still a member-elect. There is technically still no Congress at all and therefore no rules for it to obey. In the interim, members can do what they want. They can commit minor acts of rebellion like wearing hats on the floor or even accusing their colleagues of drinking inside the legislative chamber, like Florida Republican representative Kat Cammack did when giving yet another nominating speech for McCarthy on Wednesday.”
The Biden administration is expanding Title 42 in order to curb immigration from South America and the Caribbean, even though the President campaigned on ending Title 42.
Title 42 was put in place at the start of the pandemic to keep the flood of immigrants from coming through the southern border, citing public health as the reason. It was set to end just weeks ago but the Supreme Court kept it in place while it hears oral arguments from the Biden administration arguing to end it. So the Biden administration is arguing to end Title 42 in the Supreme Court but expanding it in the real world.
That seems to be the short-term strategy. The Biden administration’s long-term strategy is to adopt the transit ban, a policy from the Trump administration, which prevents migrants from seeking asylum in the U.S. if they had not sought asylum from the countries they passed through on their way to the U.S. Will that curb the constant stream of migrants?
President Biden will visit the southern border for the first time this weekend on his way to meet with the presidents of Canada and Mexico in Mexico City for the North American Leaders’ Summit.
Meanwhile, the makeshift border wall of freight trains in Arizona has begun to be dismantled by new Governor Katie Hobbs.
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Who is Andrew Tate? The kickboxer-turned-reality-TV-star was arrested in Romania in late December on suspicion of human trafficking, rape and forming an organized crime group and is being held at least until the end of the month.
Since his arrest, more women have come out with stories of their abuse by Tate. Now Vice News reports that he was arrested in 2015 on suspicion of sexual assault and abuse but TV networks kept him on the air despite knowing this. It wasn’t until a leaked video showed him beating his ex-girlfriend with a belt that he was removed from Big Brother (UK). Police in the UK are under fire for not pressing charges from that investigation.
Vice has an upcoming documentary about Tate’s secret society. The Daily Mail is now reporting that Tate branded his victims with tattoos reading “owned by Tate” and kept them under house arrest like prisoners at his compound, forcing them to create pornographic content against their will.
Tate’s lawyer says that he is innocent and the alleged victims are lying because they “wanted money.”
Dave Bautista Drax is trending because the actor confirmed that the third Guardians of the Galaxy movie will be his last time playing that character and he is mainly relieved.
Simon Pegg is trending because of this video where he calls Prime Minister Rishi Sunak a “prick” and a “tosser” for a plan that would make it compulsory for children to learn maths (which is the British way of saying math) until the age of 18.
Noah Schnapp is trending because the Stranger Things star came out as gay on TikTok, pointing out that this was pretty obvious to his friends and others.
25. That is how many human beings Prince Harry killed when he was in the U.K. military. He admits as such in his upcoming book in a surprisingly de-humanistic way. While we’re on the subject, I appreciate this take on the upcoming book. Dirty laundry.
643. That is how many civilians were killed in Yemen in 2022, according to a new report, despite a six-month ceasefire.
$97 million. That is the net worth of Taylor Swift’s cat, according to allaboutcats.com. She’s an influencer of course.
16 hours. That is how long it will take to get from London to Berlin on the new European Sleeper train launching in May.
Should the police be tracking your jokes and prejudices? The Times of London reports that police in Scotland are doing just that.
In 2021, Police Scotland reportedly logged 928 incidents of “malice and ill will” where no criminal offense had been committed. That is more than double the number logged in 2017. They also logged 625 non-crime hate incidents for the first half of 2022.
Why would the police track malicious statements? Like jokes or wrong-think opinions or is this something else? Doesn’t this sound like a threat to free speech? Police Scotland refutes this, telling The Times of London that it has not “introduced a culture whereby ‘jokes’ or freedom of speech were curtailed.”
But that is exactly what former policeman Harry Miller says is happening. He was investigated for “hate incidents'' for speaking about trans issues on Twitter. He took the issue to The High Court which ruled that the police unlawfully investigated Miller and compared their pursuit of him to the Gestapo, Cheka and Stasi.
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This newsletter is written and researched by Natali Morris. Please feel free to reach Natali at [email protected] for any editorial feedback.
