Franklin Goes to the Hague
This Week: Pete Hegseth's Legal Troubles | American Boots in Venezuela | One Year of Luigi Mangione | AI Dystopia in Gaza | Community Policing in Baltimore | The EU & Sudan
This article is part of a digest series delivered every Thursday, highlighting what I find to be the most interesting stories covering politics, working class struggles, and international current events of the week, along with my own brief commentary.
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On this day in 1969, Chicago PD, the FBI, and Cook County coordinated to gun down revolutionary activist Fred Hampton, chair of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, in the dead of night. Hampton’s accomplishments include uniting a multi-racial coalition, pacifying gangs, redirecting their energy towards community projects, feeding children via a free breakfast program, and rallying for racial justice, working directly within the NAACP. A prolific young man, his life was cut short by forces who feared his revolutionary potential and liberatory message.
🩺💰 Investors in UnitedHealth are suing the company — for providing too much care.
More Perfect Union
Today marks the one year anniversary of the execution of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson, alleged to have been committed by 27-year-old Luigi Mangione. As it currently stands, Luigi Mangione’s defense team is seeking to suppress certain evidence from appearing in trial on account of several technical errors committed by NYPD; for instance, he allegedly wasn’t read his Miranda rights.
The recent pretrial hearing has reignited buzz around the case, but let us redirect our focus again to the real story buried in the noise. In the aftermath of the killing of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson, the company, apparently compelled by the incident, began approving treatment and coverage at greater rates, much to the chagrin of investors. This older but still relevant More Perfect Union video linked above dives into the lawsuit between investors and UnitedHealth.
Whatever the outcome of the lawsuit, the charade is emblematic of the rot at the core of for-profit healthcare: investors looking to squeeze health insurance beneficiaries for every penny will inevitably induce greater harm to greater numbers of people in the interest of profit seeking. The bullets which ended Brian Thompson’s life may have been direct agents of violence, but health insurance companies and their investors engage in a different, more surreptitious form of abstract violence: that which is perpetrated at scale, upon hundreds of thousands or even millions, via spreadsheet, CRM software, arbitrary benchmarks, and the gatekeeping of lifesaving medical care.
🚁⚖️ Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, an unserious man, is accused of serious war crimes. Or worse.
Mike Littwin/The Colorado Sun
In this piece in The Colorado Sun, Littwin chronicles and lays bare ex-Fox Host Pete Hegseth’s entire ongoing war crime snafu. The TLDR version: it appears that War Secretary Hegseth ordered double-tapping (the illegal practice of issuing carefully timed second strikes designed incapacitate first responders or guarantee the total decimation of targets) in at least one of the eleven or more strikes targeting alleged “narcoterrorists” in the Caribbean. The Trump Regime has been bombarding small boats off the coast of South America for the last several weeks without a formal declaration of war, without due process, and for crimes that they have produced scant evidence for. Human rights group Amnesty International has called it a killing spree. Never mind the mounting evidence that most or all of these targets are most likely not carrying drugs, that near-zero fentanyl comes into the U.S. via Venezuela, or that none of these boats could even make it to American shores given their fuel capacity; even mainstream outlets are now entertaining the notion that Hegseth may be embroiled in war crimes.
But let’s not kid ourselves. With the erosion of the facade of the rules-based international order over the last several decades, the likelihood that Democrats should risk opening up that can of worms by seeking to prosecute Hegseth for war crimes seems slim. Such an act could escalate into a tit-for-tat politicized battle. Democratic leadership has already begun to let their constituents down, as per usual, with Hakeem Jeffries calling the pursuit of Hegseth’s impeachment “unlikely”.
🦅🛑 Trump’s push for health care plan stalls ahead of looming subsidy expiration
Adam Cancryn/CNN
Expiring Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) subsidies, a contentious issue center to the recent government shutdown, will send American healthcare premiums for everybody soaring upon their dissolution. Understanding that this could spell political suicide for Republicans in the upcoming midterms, President Trump was set to announce a plan that would’ve reportedly conditionally restored at least a decent share of the subsidies. Alas, the dyed-in-the-wool budget hawks in his fragile coalition are more interested in scoring deficit brownie points, even at the cost of their own political futures. To paraphrase former Florida representative Alan Grayson, the Republican healthcare plan for Americans continues to be, after all these years: don’t get sick, and if you do, die quickly.
🇸🇩💵 The European Parliament’s resolution addresses the horror of the civil war in Sudan but not those profiting from it
Volt Europa
As is often customary for western liberal powers, the European Parliament passed a resolution which broadly gestures toward the horrors in Sudan without acknowledging the complicity of international arms dealers, many of which network with the West or its allies.
For more on the history of the situation in Sudan and ways to help, check out our extensive piece on the matter:
America's Role in the World's Largest Humanitarian Crisis
Sudan has known nary tranquility since its inception in the 20th century. Like much of the Global South and East, its borders wer…
🇵🇸👁️ AI-powered surveillance firms are gunning for a share of the Gaza spoils
Sophia Goodfriend/+972 Magazine
AI firms Palantir and Dataminr have embedded themselves into a new U.S. military outpost (the Civil Military Coordination Center, or CMCC) located just off the border of Gaza in Southern Israel. Sophia’s reporting at +972 Magazine dives into the AI surveillance regime that Israel and the U.S. are looking to employ against the Palestinians.
🤝🏙️ Baltimore Streets
Channel 5 With Andrew Callaghan
The full mini-documentary linked/embedded above provides a rare glimpse into life in the city of Baltimore directly from the ground. The video sheds light on Baltimore’s Safe Streets program, a community-led movement designed to deescalate civil and domestic confrontations without the use or threat of violence or police. The timestamp linked above will start playback directly during a couple-minute segment in which leaders from the program explain its premise.
The program has been credited with great success, often cited as a main driver for the rate of violent crime and homicide falling precipitously over the years, contrary to the image of Baltimore often conveyed in mainstream narratives.
🇻🇪🛢️ ‘Venezuela for the American oil companies will be a field day’: Rep. Maria Salazar
Fox Business
In the shadow of “No New Wars” Trump’s imminent boots-on-the-ground war with Venezuela, GOP Representative Maria Salazar has been doing a media blitz, in which she has been stating the quiet part out loud: the primary motivation for this war is to open up Venezuela to pillaging by American corporations (a tale as old as time in Latin America).
Unlike the Iraq War, which sought to justify itself as a response to the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, a war with Venezuela is wildly unpopular with the American public, with an estimated 70% of Americans disapproving of such an operation. Still, all signs suggest that another costly, inhumane war is imminent.