Welcome to the 23rd Weekly News Roundup of 2024. The archive for all weekly news roundups is here. If you notice stories or issues you’d like to see mentioned in these roundups, let me know. In 2024, the Border Stalkers Substack is featuring one news update a week, and one book a month, with weekly posts on each book. The book of the month schedule is here.
These weekly dispatches are designed for people who may not have time to do more than glance at the headlines, or who want to stay informed without becoming obsessed by politics and news. These roundups are a targeted way to get a sense of the shape of the past week on the national level. Without such a map, we can be disoriented, not knowing where we have been over the past several days, or where we may be going.
But by spending concentrated, limited time thinking about the big picture, we can devote more of our time to where “agency and justice begin and end,” as Karen Swallow Prior put it: “on the ground, bodily, in community and real relationships, in flesh and blood.”
Quotes of the Week
“Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more unpropitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper that hope is. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”
- Vaclav Havel, quoted by Daniel Stid
"Ye once tweeted, 'We all will live in Turrell spaces.' More accurately: we won’t."
“We would condemn humanity to a future without hope if we took away people’s ability to make decisions about themselves and their lives, by dooming them to depend on the choices of machines. We need to ensure and safeguard a space for proper human control over the choices made by artificial intelligence programs: Human dignity itself depends on it.”
- Pope Francis, to the G7 Summit on June 14, 2024
Big Stories This Week
France's far right wins a big victory in elections to the European Union parliament, prompting French President Emmanuel Macron to call snap elections at the end of June for France's own legislature. It's a bold move by Macron to force the issue and test whether French voters really want to give power to the far right, or whether the EU results were more of a protest vote.
Hunter Biden is convicted on charges of lying about his drug use when buying a firearm in 2019. Just a week after the former president was found guilty of 34 felonies, the son of the current president is convicted in his own criminal trial. He faces up to 25 years in prison.
The Group of 7 Nations — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States — send $50 billion in aid to Ukraine, address refugee migration, and hear from Pope Francis on AI.
Israel rescues four hostages from Gaza, while killing at least 274 Palestinians. The next day, a key member of Israel's emergency government resigns in protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
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Week in Review
Saturday, June 8
Israeli forces rescue four hostages from the Gaza Strip in a heavy military operation that kills at least 274 Palestinians.
The U.S.-built temporary port resumes operation of delivering aid into Gaza, after repairs were made to the pier used to receive the aid.
French President Emmanuel Macron hosts a state dinner in Paris for President Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, who flew from D-Day ceremonies Thursday in France back to D.C. to attend her son Hunter's criminal trial on Friday, and then back to France for the diplomatic events on Saturday.
Sunday, June 9
The far right in France wins big in elections for the European Parliament. "Emmanuel Macron is tonight a weakened president," the National Rally party's lead EU candidate, Jordan Bardella says. In response, Macron dissolves the lower house of France's parliament and calls for new elections to the legislature there. It is a strategy designed to test whether the nation is alarmed by the far right's success in the EU election and to capitalize on that alarm by shoring up his own standing inside the country. Macron's term as president lasts three more years. The French elections will take place June 30 and July 7, weeks before the Summer Olympics take place in Paris and around the country.
A key centrist member of Israel's three-man War Cabinet, Benny Gantz, resigns from the emergency government coalition formed after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. Gantz says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is putting his own "political survival" above the needs of the country and even above the objective of winning the war with Hamas. Gantz calls on Netanyahu to set a date for elections in Israel.
Monday, June 10
The U.N. Security Council approves a ceasefire plan for Gaza, with 14 members voting in favor and none in opposition. Russia abstains from casting a vote. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield says that Israel has backed the plan, just as President Biden said it was an Israeli plan when he announced it on May 31. The Israeli government has not publicly commented on the plan. But Thomas-Greenfield calls on Hamas to "do the same."
Hunter Biden's case goes to the jury, after a one-week trial.
The corruption trial of Sen. Robert Menendez, D-NJ, enters its fifth week as the prosecution continues to call witnesses.
Four instructors from Cornell College in Iowa are stabbed in China. All four were teaching at a Chinese university in Jilin, a city in the northeast of China. The stabbing appears to be an isolated incident, and none of the Americans are in critical condition.
Tuesday, June 11
A federal jury in Delaware finds Hunter Biden guilty on all three felony charges, after just three hours of deliberation. President Biden says in a statement that he "will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter considers an appeal.” Sentencing will come in the next 120 days.
A boat carrying some 260 Somali and Ethiopian migrants sinks off the coast of Yemen, killing at least 49 people. As of Tuesday morning, 71 people had been rescued and 140 were missing.
An investment official at Pimco warns that a "very high" concentration of troubled commercial real estate loans are going to cause a "real wave of distress" among regional banks, in an interview with Bloomberg.
A volunteer task force charged with creating a database inside the Southern Baptist Convention of sexual abusers inside the church says it has been unable to do so. "It was made clear to us there was no future for robust abuse reform inside the SBC,” says the pastor in charge of the committee. The SBC is the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S., with roughly 13 million members.
Wednesday, June 12
Inflation is cooling, the Consumer Price Index shows, giving encouragement to a potential interest rate hike this year, even as expectations for more than one cut have dimmed.
The GOP-controlled House of Representatives narrowly holds Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for refusing to release audio of President Biden's interviews with special counsel Robert Hur. Politically, it is the most House Republicans can do to satisfy partisan demand for attacking Democrats, since they have abandoned any attempt to impeach President Biden. Garland released transcripts of the interviews, but Republicans insisted on obtaining the audio. Garland says that the House GOP "has turned a serious congressional authority into a partisan weapon" and that the vote "disregards the constitutional separation of powers, the Justice Department’s need to protect its investigations, and the substantial amount of information we have provided to the Committees.”
Journalist Howard Fineman, who was a mentor to me at HuffPost, dies after a 2-year battle with pancreatic cancer. Read Sam Stein's tribute here. President Biden calls Fineman "one of the great journalists of our time."
South Florida experiences massive rainfall that leads to flash flooding in some areas.
The Southern Baptist Convention falls just short of a 66% majority needed to approve a ban on churches with women pastors.
Thursday, June 13
The G7 agree to use $50 billion in assets seized from Russian sources held in Western banks to help Ukraine fight off Russia's invasion.
Russian authorities announce that American journalist Evan Gershkovich of the Wall Street Journal will stand trial on espionage charges, but continued to provide no evidence for his supposed crimes. Gershkovich has been detained in Russia since March 2023 and faces up to 20 years in prison.
Former President Trump meets with House Speaker Mike Johnson and other Republican leaders on Capitol Hill. He tells Fox News during an interview that day that wants former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican running for the U.S. Senate, to win the seat in the fall. "I'd like to see him win," Trump says of Hogan, who has been an outspoken critic of the former president.
The U.S. Supreme Court rules unanimously, 9-0, against an effort to restrict access to the abortion drug mifepristone.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul says she is considering a ban on face masks on the New York city subway, apparently reacting to multiple videos on social media showing anti-Semitic statements made by people on the train.
Friday, June 14
The G7 Summit in Italy turned its attention to the problem of refugee migration in Europe and heard an address from Pope Francis on artificial intelligence. Francis called in December for an international treaty to ensure that AI is developed and used safely and ethically.
U.S. consumer sentiment falls lower for the third straight month, as worries about inflation persist.
Donald Trump turns 78 years old. He will be the oldest person to become a major party nominee this summer, a record last set by Joe Biden in 2020 when he was 77. Trump's record will be broken a month later by President Biden, who is 81, when he accepts the Democratic party's nomination for reelection.
Interesting Reads
US Navy faces its most intense combat since World War II against Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels, by Jon Gambrell for The Associated Press
A new chapter for Wake Up To Politics, by @gabefleisher for Wake Up to Politics
Kanye West Bought an Architectural Treasure—Then Gave It a Violent Remix, by Ian Parker for The New Yorker
Here’s what happened in some key countries in the EU Parliament elections, by the Associated Press
Rodeo bull hops fence at Oregon arena, injures 3 before being captured, video by The Associated Press
The Stanford Internet Observatory is being dismantled, by Casey Newton for Platformer
Alex Jones could lose his Infowars platform to pay for Sandy Hook conspiracy lawsuit, by Dave Collins and Juan A. Lozano for The Associated Press
Bad Catholics | Good Trouble, a graphic novel by Matthew J. Cressler
Reality Check Commentary: Tips for Avoiding Pink Slime “News”, by Eric Effron for Newsguard