Self-Coups & Old Scores
On our most recent show, we talked about a few of the cases from the last Supreme Court term with constitutional law and political science professor Corey Brettschneider. Maybe not the most hopeful conversation ever, but it was lively and full of some pretty good jokes (we're totally objective here). Give it a listen if you haven't already.
Since news just can't stop news-ing, here are a few other stories we've been tracking....
More Heartbreak in Gaza
In what seems to have become an outright tactic in the larger strategy of destabilizing Palestinian held areas, Israeli troops again opened fire near an aid distribution center, killing at least 85 Gazans. Without offering specifics, Israel claimed that Hamas was creating some sort of chaos that necessitated the violence. IMHO, firing on a crowd of starving people does not seem like the best solution to quelling chaos. Also, Netanyahu has also ordered further evacuations of land previously deemed safe for Palestinians to escape the war, pushing an already squeezed people into even less territory. The hits just keep coming.
Violence in Sweida
Violence in the Sweida region of Syria may finally be ebbing, although I doubt anyone is betting heavily that it will hold forever. The violence, which began more than a week ago, was set off when a Druze man was attacked by an armed Bedouin tribe. The Sweida region, which is predominately Druze, saw a violent back and forth between Druze and Bedouin communities in the days after the attack. That violence was amplified when Israel, who has a large Druze population itself, and Syrian government forces decided to jump in the fray, the conflict seemingly providing a forum for Israel and Syria to try and settle some old beefs. This is a pretty complicated one that we'll look into in a future show.
Japan Goes the Way of the World?
Big shifts are potentially underway in Japan as the long-governing Liberal Democratic Party was defeated in elections over the weekend. Like many countries around the world, Japan's more liberal parties are losing ground to those espousing more nationalist views. If recent history is any indication, when a party's leader is inspired by Trump that's generally a great sign, so no worries at all for one of the world's most stable democracies.
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