A Bad Day For Prime Ministers & SCOTUS Goes Easy On ICE

Hi readers, happy Tuesday! Today, we’ll be covering the latest controversial SCOTUS ruling, France’s PM problems, a bad sign for Argentina’s president, Japan’s PM problems, real-life Succession, Trump’s letter to Epstein, and an underwater cable crisis.

“I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Playing Nice For ICE

Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that federal immigration agents are legally allowed to stop civilians on the basis of their race, language, job, or location – at least temporarily. In a 6-3 emergency docket decision, Supreme Court justices lifted a restraining order placed by a lower-court judge, which temporarily blocked ICE agents in Los Angeles from stopping people for simply looking Latino, speaking with an accent, or working at tow yards or car washes – all reasons which immigrations agents have apparently used to justify detaining people in L.A.

The lower court’s order was only slated to remain in effect until a lawsuit against the Trump administration led by immigration advocates wrapped up, but apparently the court’s conservative justices didn’t want to wait that long. “The prospect of such after-the-fact judicial second-guessing and contempt proceedings will inevitably chill lawful immigration enforcement efforts,” wrote Trump-appointed Justice Brett Kavanaugh after voting to lift the restraining order. 

“Countless people in the Los Angeles area have been grabbed, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed simply because of their looks, their accents, and the fact they make a living by doing manual labor,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor in her dissent. “Today, the Court needlessly subjects countless more to these exact same indignities.” Recently, ICE agents have taken to hiding in U-Hauls in Home Depot parking lots in order to make their arrest quotas, bursting out of the back like a pack of zombies with a hunger for racial profiling instead of brains.

Bayrou Gets The Boot

France’s centrist government collapsed yesterday after prime minister François Bayrou called for a vote of confidence in the National Assembly (France’s lower house of Parliament). Bayrou had called the vote as a last-ditch attempt to gather support for future austerity measures, but the effort backfired – just 194 lawmakers voted in favor of the current minority government, while 364 voted against it.

If you’ve been following French politics, the result of the confidence vote was no surprise. After centrist president Emmanuel Macron called snap parliamentary elections last year, his centrist allies lost their grip on the legislature, giving seats to the country’s left and right wings. He then lost even more political goodwill installing Bayrou as his PM, as left-wing parties said their candidate should become the head of state given their plurality in the legislature, leading to the current “Everyone Hates Emmanuel” state of affairs. 

The collapse leaves Macron in the unenviable spot of appointing his third prime minister in under a year. Boris Vallaud, the leader of the National Assembly’s Socialist group, called Macron “a defeated president” responsible for “impoverishing the poor, enriching the rich and turning his back on the future” after the vote. The defeated president will now have to appoint a new prime minister in order to push through a budget for 2026, but his refusal to work with France’s left wing means we might end up right back at square one in a month. 

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Buenas Noches In Buenos Aires

• The party of Argentine President Javier Milei suffered a massive electoral defeat in provincial elections held over the weekend, casting doubts about its ability to maintain control over the country as mid-term elections approach next month. Milei’s ruling La Libertad Avanza party lost in a landslide to the center-left Peronist party in a Buenos Aires provincial election held on Sunday, with the opposition Peronists securing 47% of the vote compared to La Libertad’s 33%.

• Why all the panic? Buenos Aires province makes up almost 40% of Argentina’s voting population, and the Peronists’ margin of victory was a surprise to most analysts. “This completely changes expectations for October,” said one. While Milei was praised by Western conservatives for bringing down Argentina’s inflation from triple-digit highs via massive spending cuts, his popularity has taken a dive due to allegations of corruption and the wide-ranging effects of his austerity measures. “To restore balance, Milei must do what he did in his first year: stabilize the economy and rebuild the coalition,” said one analyst. Milei getting a better haircut might also help his electoral chances as well. 

Prime Ministers Are Prime Targets

• The line at the prime minister unemployment office just got one person longer. On Sunday, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba announced that he would be leaving his post after leading the country for less than a year. Ishiba’s resignation comes at a turbulent time for Japan and his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). The country is currently facing unusually high levels of inflation, rare diplomatic tensions with the U.S., and a rise of anti-foreigner sentiments. Over that same period, the LDP – which has ruled the country almost uninterrupted since the end of World War II – suffered a series of losses in parliamentary elections, leaving the party with a minority in both houses of Japan’s legislature.

• In a statement on Sunday, Ishiba announced that he’d made the “painful decision to resign” due to his role in the LDP losing its grip on power, stating that he felt “a great sense of regret” over the recent election losses. Early candidates to take Ishiba’s position include party veterans Sanae Takaichi (a conservative ally of former PM Shinzo Abe) and Shinjiro Koizumi (Ishiba's farm minister). However, given the surge of right-wing sentiment in Japan, the LDP could select a right-wing outsider to take the big job in an attempt to appeal to younger voters.

Additional World News

• Tunisia denies claims Greta Thunberg's Gaza flotilla was hit by drone (BBC)

• Nepal lifts social media ban after 19 killed in protests (BBC)

• Afghanistan quake destroyed 5,230 homes in 49 villages — but the UN hasn’t gotten to 362 others (AP)

• Deportation Fears Are Fueling Money Transfers to Latin America (NYT, $)

• Revealed: how Boris Johnson traded PM contacts for global business deals (Guardian) 

The Murdochs Make It Official

• HBO’s Succession ended a little over two years ago, but the story it’s based on just wrapped up this week. On Monday, the Murdoch family – which owns conservative media mainstays including Fox News, The New York Post, and The Wall Street Journal – announced that its decades-long succession war had finally concluded. According to a source with knowledge of the deal, Rupert Murdoch’s media empire will be handed over to Lachlan Murdoch, his staunchly conservative eldest son, at the price of $3.3 billion.

• Rupert Murdoch, 94 years old, has been trying to keep Lachlan in control of the family business for years now. Up until this weekend, those plans have been blocked by the fact that his shares in the company were set to be split up evenly between his four eldest children (three others plus Lachlan) as part of a family trust. Lachlan’s three siblings are significantly less right-leaning than he is, putting the conservative heritage of the family’s publications in danger. The father-son duo have fixed that problem by buying out the siblings to the tune of $1.1 billion each, and Lachlan will now retain control of the media empire until 2050. 

What’s A Freaky Little Letter Between Friends?

• On Monday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released an (alleged) letter from Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein, the president’s former close friend. The sexually explicit note includes  the drawn outline of a naked woman’s body and a section saying that Trump and Epstein “have certain things in common,” and also sports Trump’s signature. The letter was released as part of a wider tranche of documents (from Epstein’s 50th birthday album) made public by House Democrats, which include letters from former President Bill Clinton and famous attorney Alan Dershowitz.

• Despite his signature clearly adorning the letter and the fact that he was a known Epstein associate, Trump claims that he did not write the note or draw the woman’s body on the page. “As I have said all along, it’s very clear President Trump did not draw this picture, and he did not sign it,” said the White House’s press secretary. “President Trump’s legal team will continue to aggressively pursue litigation.” The president has already filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal for publishing the letter, though it's not clear who his next target will be. 

Additional USA News

• US immigration officers ramp up sweeps in LA after raid restrictions are lifted (Guardian)

• Reading Skills of 12th Graders Hit a New Low (NYT, $)

• Invasive, disease-carrying tick found in Maine, the farthest northeast it has been spotted (AP)

• Top Trump economic officials almost come to blows at exclusive MAGA club, sources say (CNN)

• DHS launches immigration crackdowns in Chicago, Boston (NPR) 

Cutting The Cable, Literally

• Despite being an ethereal web of data that only really exists to transfer intangible information across the world, the internet is also a real-life web of physical connections linking data centers across the globe. That was made clear over the weekend, when Microsoft's Azure cloud services were taken down after its underwater cables beneath the Red  Sea were damaged. 

• On Saturday, the company announced that Azure clients in the Middle East “may experience increased latency due to undersea fibre cuts in the Red Sea,” adding that data “that does not traverse through the Middle East is not impacted.” One organization that monitors internet traffic confirmed that the cuts had taken down multiple underseas cables, adding that the damage had caused outages in India and Pakistan as well.

• Underwater data cables like the ones taken down over the weekend crisscross the oceans, keeping continents online and connected. Despite their critical nature, the cables are easily damaged by things like ships’ anchors, and can also be targeted by bad actors. In January, for example, Swedish authorities seized a ship suspected of purposefully damaging data cables under the Baltic Sea, and Western governments claim that Yemen’s Houthi rebels are also targeting the cables under the Red Sea.

Additional Reads

• Snug with your bugs? How microbes control your sleep (BBC)

• Tanks Were Just Tanks, Until Drones Made Them Change (NYT, $)

• Mosquitos at the US southern border reveal a frightening reality about climate change (Vox)

• I Hate My AI Friend (Wired)  

• Impact of chatbots on mental health is warning over future of AI, expert says (Guardian)

• World Cup ticket sales are about to begin. Scoring them may not be easy — or cheap (NPR)

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Editor & Writer: Marcus Gee-Lim

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