Comment on The Year in Fear: From Ebola to street violence to Comrade Kim

“A state grand jury in Arizona on Wednesday indicted so-called ‘fake electors’ who backed then-President Donald Trump in 2020, following a sprawling investigation into the alleged efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s win in the presidential election in the state,” NBC News reports. “One month after the 2020 election, 11 Trump supporters convened at the Arizona GOP’s headquarters in Phoenix to sign a certificate claiming to be Arizona’s 11 electors to the Electoral College, though Biden won the state by 10,457 votes and his electors were certified by state officials.” “The state Republican Party documented the signing of the certificate in a social media post and sent it to Congress and the National Archives.” Donald Trump is referred to in indictment as “Unindicted Co-Conspirator 1.”

“Two Arizona state House lawmakers were removed from key committees Monday following the chamber’s vote to repeal the state’s 1864 abortion ban, with one Republican who voted with Democrats among them,” The Hill reports. “Arizona state House Rep. Matt Gress (R) was removed from the Appropriations Committee, while Rep. Oscar De Los Santos (D) was removed from both the Appropriations Committee and Rules Committee.”

“A political arm of Planned Parenthood is launching a $10 million voter engagement campaign in North Carolina to elect candidates in favor of abortion rights this year as reproductive rights surge further into the 2024 spotlight,” The Hill reports.

“Speaker Mike Johnson was drowned out by booing crowds during a speech at Columbia University where he condemned the ongoing student protests against the Gaza war,” CNBC reports. “Johnson called on Columbia University President Minouche Shafik to resign if she could not restore order to the campus and said he would urge President Biden to take executive action against the protesters.”

John Cage, the influential composer and artist, is dead. So it’s technically impossible to know with absolute certainty how he would feel about the pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia University. But the question emerges after New York Times columnist John McWhorter, a music humanities and linguistics professor at Columbia, wrote that he was forced to stop students from playing Cage’s 4’33”—a seminal work that’s effectively four minutes and 33 seconds of silence (though Cage-heads might disagree with that description)—because of the demonstrations.

These demonstrators have a seemingly endless supply of a commodity that no one who takes college seriously should ever have.