Politics:
It feels like the Republican Primary at this stage is a foregone conclusion. After the Iowa caucus, in which Donald Trump managed to get ahead of Ron DeSantis by 30%, DeSantis (who has been creating a nightmare dystopia for trans people in Florida) suspended his campaign and endorsed the former President. Trump then went on to win the New Hampshire Primary, in spite of the fact that the electoral make-up of the state (independents being allowed to vote in Republican primaries, the educational make-up of the electorate) probably created more difficult conditions for him than most of the next contests will hold. Nikki Haley, the only remaining contender other than Trump, is projected to lose her home state of South Carolina, where she was governor for five years, a loss that will be the coffin nail in her campaign. It doesn't matter that Trump has just been ordered to pay $83.3 million to E. Jean Carroll in a civil trial that found him liable for sexual abuse, or that so many more law suits are pending, or that Trump has been stripped from the Maine and Colorado primary ballot for his role in the January 6, 2021 insurrection. The 2024 Presidential election will be a repeat of the 2020 one, and it will be an uphill battle for the Democrats, who are now also struggling with flagging support from Muslim Americans.
The findings of a recent study into abortion bans in the US are horrifying.
Fourteen states have banned abortions at any gestational age since the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade in 2022. Since the enactment of those abortion bans, an estimated 64,565 people became pregnant as a result of rape in those states.
ArsTechnica: Tens of thousands of pregnancies from rape occurring in abortion-ban states, January 27, 2024
South Africa has brought a case against Israel to the International Court of Justice. The actual ruling on the charges of genocide will take years, but the court has made an interim judgment.
"In a historic interim judgment, the UN court in The Hague told Israel it must “take all measures within its power” to desist from killing Palestinians in contravention of the genocide convention, and to prevent and punish the incitement of genocide and facilitate the provision of “urgent basic services”. But the ruling stopped short of ordering a ceasefire to the war in Gaza."
The Guardian: ICJ ruling increases pressure on Israel to prevent civilian deaths in Gaza, January 27, 2024
Meanwhile, nine countries including Australia have suspended funds to the UNRWA, the primary humanitarian agency working in Gaza, due to charges against a small group of staff regarding the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, just as millions of Gazans are facing a famine.
Pop Culture:
I've been watching the fourth season of True Detective (I skipped the two previous seasons), which feels right in my wheelhouse: it is set in a remote Alaskan town during the polar night and follows the investigation of mysterious deaths in an Arctic research station. Jodie Foster and Kali Reis are starring as the investigating police officers in a show that feels deeply indebted to The Thing. I've been finding it especially enjoyable to watch the series unfold week-by-week instead of as a full-season drop (a trend I notice in general - I feel fatigued by the Netflix model of releasing whole seasons and would rather watch things more slowly, to have more time to think about what is happening and really dig into the narrative).
Vulture has a detailed interview with Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein about all the songs on the new Sleater-Kinney album Little Rope.
There's a bit of controversy surrounding the Academy Awards nominations (specifically for Barbie - the in-world irony of nominating Ryan Gosling, but not Margot Robbie or Greta Gerwig), but I'm happy that Sandra Hüller has gotten a nod for Anatomy of a Fall, with both Justine Triet's film and Jonathan Glazer's The Zone of Interest being nominated for Best Film.
And in sports, yesterday brought two very surprising upsets to the dominant Australian cricket squads: the South African women's team under Adelaide Strikers premiership winning opener Laura Woolvardt managed to defeat Australia for the first time ever in a Canberra T20 match, and the young West Indies test squad beat the Australian men's cricket team in a day-night game with only eight runs to spare in a stunning performance by quick Shamar Joseph, who managed to get seven wickets with an injured toe.