Election Interference, Christmas In October, & A Hidden City Revealed

September 5, 2024

Hello, readers – happy Thursday! Today, we’ll be talking about election interference, the economy, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, Christmas in October, Supreme Court ethics, Phoenix’s bummer record, and a hidden city.

Here’s some good news: An Orange County nonprofit called “Project Playhouse” is auctioning off custom playhouses to raise money to build homeless shelters. Also, profits from the U.K.’s largest community-owned wind farm will go to planting at least a million native trees in the Outer Hebrides.

“It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.” – Walt Disney

Election Interference – Everyone’s Doing It!

(“Vote here” sign by Andy Manis via Getty Images)

On Wednesday, Washington whipped out the sanctions gun once again. This time, it was aimed at two Russian state-owned RT network employees who were allegedly involved in Russian government-sponsored efforts to influence the upcoming U.S. presidential elections.

Attorney General Merrick Garland specified that the two employees had allegedly given almost $10 million to a Tennessee-based company, which then produced pro-Russia content and spread it through a web of right-wing online influencers. The content, according to Garland, was “often consistent with Russia’s interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition to core Russian interests,” and “the company never disclosed to the influencers or to their millions of followers as ties to RT and the Russian government.”

Russia’s not the only country getting its hands dirty in the mud of the presidential election. Iran has been looking to infiltrate and compromise the Trump campaign to prevent the former president’s re-election, and China, according to a report published earlier this week, has been sowing political division by posting rage-bait comments from accounts impersonating U.S. voters.

Holding Out For A Rate Hike

The U.S. economy is looking a bit sickly at the moment. New data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics yesterday showed that the number of open job listings posted in July was lower than expected, dropping for a second month in a row from 7.91 million in June to about 7.67 million in July. That marks the lowest number of job openings since January 2021 and is almost half a million jobs short of the 8.1 million openings predicted by economists.

Wednesday’s data was the first set of numbers published by the Labor Department this week, with a wider labor market report set to be released tomorrow. Experts predict that those numbers will show the U.S. economy adding about 161,000 jobs in August (up from July’s data), but predictions, as we know, are not reality.

The Federal Reserve is expected to cut interest rates in about two weeks, its first rate cut in two years. The move should make borrowing easier for both consumers and businesses after years of anti-inflationary rate hikes from Washington. Unfortunately, though, that’s two weeks away – U.S. stocks continued to spiral on Wednesday after taking a beating the day before, with tech giants like Nvidia, Apple, and Intel dropping by 1.7%, 0.9%, and 3.3%, respectively. Dollar Tree and U.S. Steel were some of the biggest losers, with the former sliding 22.2% and the latter dropping 17.5% after the Biden administration said it might block the company’s acquisition by Nippon Steel.

A Developmental Dialogue

(Summit in China by Greg Baker via Getty Images)

On Wednesday, China kicked off a three-day summit, hosting 50 African leaders in Beijing as part of its Belt and Road development initiative. The Forum on China-Africa Cooperation is held every three years and marks an opportunity for China to foster important relationships with leaders from developing countries.
Beijing’s Belt and Road initiative started as a program to fund large infrastructure projects in developing countries but has since shrunk in scale. Thanks to the pandemic and a debt buildup in African countries, China has decided to refocus its efforts on smaller projects in renewable energy and healthcare. This new direction has built up momentum, with African nations receiving $4.6 billion in loans from China last year.
“The Washington perception that China is trying to be more vocal and have more presence in the world, that’s accurate,” said one professor at Peking University in Beijing. “The more complex the international situation becomes, the more Global South countries must uphold independence,” Chinese President Xi Jinping told South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in a meeting at the summit.

A New Deadline For Santa

What’s better than Christmas? Christmas in October, apparently. In an attempt to curry favor with his constituents, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has decided to move the date of Christmas in his country to October 1 this year. The holiday shuffle comes as Maduro faces backlash over his government’s handling of Venezuela’s presidential election – while the president and the nation’s supreme court claim that Maduro won another term in the August elections, the country’s opposition and Western nations have claimed that Maduro rigged the contest in his own favor.
“It’s September, and it already smells like Christmas,” said Maduro on his TV show (apparently he has a TV show?). “That’s why this year, as a way of paying tribute to you all, and in gratitude to you all, I’m going to decree an early Christmas for October 1.” There’s technically precedent for moving Christmas, at least in Venezuela – last year, the holiday began on November 1, and in 2021 it started as early as October 4.

More Mixed Nuts

Ethics Will (Apparently) Destroy America

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ tendency to forget to disclose massive gifts from billionaires has sparked calls for a code of ethics for the Supreme Court. On the other side of the fight, trying to put a stop to those pesky ethics, is the First Liberty Institute, which describes itself as “the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated exclusively to defending religious liberty for all Americans.” Also on that side – you know, the one that’s against ethics – is Ginni Thomas, the wife of Justice Thomas.
During an online meeting with FLI’s top donors, the group’s leader, Kelly Shackleford, read an email from Ginni that said, “YOU GUYS HAVE FILLED THE SAILS OF MANY JUDGES. CAN I JUST TELL YOU, THANK YOU SO, SO, SO MUCH.” “It’s neat that, you know, those of you on the call are a part of protecting the future of our court, and they really appreciate it,” Shackleford said. He then called Justice Kagan “treasonous” and said an ethics code would “destroy the independence of the judiciary.”

A Hot Streak In Arizona

Phoenix, much like its namesake, is on fire. The city marked a major (and slightly depressing) milestone on Tuesday with its 100th consecutive day of temperatures over 100 degrees. The previous record was 73 consecutive days, set back in 1993.
NWS Phoenix said on Twitter that “the streak is expected to continue, with no end currently in sight.” Ariane Middel, a professor at ASU, called the milestone “a historic and alarming benchmark in our ongoing struggle with extreme heat.”

More Nuts In America

Look What The Drought Dredged Up

Here at the Daily Pnut, we’re not the biggest fans of climate change. Controversial, we know. But when wildfires sparked by an unusually dry summer spread in Greece a few weeks ago, the plumes of smoke came with one silver lining. Central Greece’s shrinking Lake Mornos, which has dried up thanks to months of little rainfall and high temperatures, has reached the lowest water level it’s seen in decades.
The good news? A sunken village hidden beneath the lake’s waters has begun to re-emerge thanks to low water levels, providing former residents with a glimpse of their old homes. The village, named Kallio, was flooded in the 1980s to create Lake Mornos, which is actually an artificial body of water made to hold water used in Athens and much of central Greece.
Kallio’s re-emergence was a nostalgic sight for locals who used to live in the village, but also spells trouble for Greece. The hot, dry year means not enough rain has come to replenish the waters of Lake Mornos, which has shrunk from a total surface area of 6.5 square miles in August 2022 to just 4.5 square miles this year. Local wells have also begun drying up, which is even more concerning because they take water from underground reservoirs and not the lake – if the dry weather continues long enough, both groundwater and the lake will soon fall short of Greece’s needs.

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