Argentina's Revolt, DOGE Cuts Continue, & Duterte Arrested
Plus, if you haven't seen it yet, check out my short piece on the abduction of Mahmoud Khalil.
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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I was unable to publish last week due to work-related obligations. However, I plan to get back on top of it, starting with this week’s roundup of stories!
You may notice that the name of the digest has changed, and I’ve decided to move the cadence from twice a week to once a week. The latter change will hopefully allow to me give more focus to the most important current events of a given week by way of their own articles.
With that out of the way, take a few minutes to check these stories out:
🪖🏥 Trump plans to cut 80,000 jobs from Veterans Affairs
🇵🇭⛓️ Rodrigo Roa Duterte, the despotic former president of the Phillipines, has been arrested by the ICC
Duterte was perhaps best known for his violent war on drugs, in which he executed the extrajudicial killing of thousands of mostly poor people in urban centers. He was also condemned for his crackdown on the press, notably targeting Nobel Prize winning journalist Maria Ressa and employees of her news organization, Rappler, for being critical of his administration.
🇦🇷🔥 Argentina revolts against Javier Milei’s austerity measures
Pensioners and others have taken to the streets in response to Argentine President Javier Milei’s recent pension cuts, as well as his failed austerity policies more broadly. Under Milei’s purview, Argentina’s poverty rate has soared to over 50%.
Recently, he has also sought to secure a new loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This process normally requires congressional approval in Argentina, which he has sought to circumvent by emergency decree. The country’s already deep debt trap with the IMF will be exacerbated further by these new loans.
📚📉 Department of Education staff cut in half as Trump seeks to dismantle it
Layoffs hit the Department of Education earlier this week, relieving about 2,000 workers, or half of the agency, of their duties. Trump has long promised to dismantle the department entirely, and these layoffs represent a major step in that direction. Eliminating the department would likely eliminate 180,000 teaching jobs, jeopardize special education programs serving 7.5 million students, weaken the government’s ability to combat discrimination in schools, and put Pell Grants and federal student loans at risk. Many in Trump’s orbit have long sought to fully privatize the student loan program, putting higher education even further out of reach for more people across the country.