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important news items that happened while you were stuffing your face with turkey

HAYLEY COHEN
Nov 26, 2017
5 min read

*YAWNS* Well, hello there reader. It’s me, Hayley, and I’ve just awoken from my 48-hour post-Thanksgiving food coma. For most people, post-Thanksgiving food comas are from eating too much turkey but let’s be honest -- I ate a LOT of pie. Like...a lot of it.

Even if you haven’t been in a pie-induced coma since Thursday, I’m sure you, reader, have been very busy: spending time with family; emotionally avoiding family by scrolling mindlessly on yo

ur phone while trying hard not to participate in a conversation about “‘if’ certain sexual assault allegations are true” or “how millennials are lazy and uncommitted”; physically avoiding family by holing up in the only empty room in your house (it may be a closet); fighting with your siblings about who already washed their fair share of dishes (in the 5,786,497th iteration of this exact same fight); laughing with your siblings when your parents ask what a Snapchat streak is; lavishing in the comforts of home where people cook for you and make sure that there is toilet paper in the house (the nice, greater than 2- ply, kind) ; ducking your parents’ not so veiled comments that they regret all your life choices for you; trying to keep yourself from reverting to your high school self; wearing a baseball hat and sweatshirt out in public in case you run into someone from your childhood and you have to make a quick getaway; and having about 30 identical conversations with relatives who really want to know “how the job is going” (newsflash, Aunt Susan, making powerpoint slides isn’t my dream job).

All in all, it’s a crazy time! And we know that staying up to date with the news in the last year has been about as emotionally exhausting as Thanksgiving with the fam (that is literally why AFKM exists). Don’t worry -- we’re here to help.

Below is a list of all the news items you missed while you were doing all that fun Thanksgiving stuff. This is hardly an exhaustive list, but we think we only included the important ones, along with our snarky comments. It’s like the New York Times’ Weekend Briefing! But funnier! And less renowned!

The Republican tax plan (the one that fucks graduate students, may questionably help the upper-upper middle class but definitely not lower income families and will cut corporate tax rates permanently) is trudging along through the legislative process. The House has passed a version of it and now Senate Republicans are trying to come up with their own version. They want to get it passed before 2018 but think about how long Schoolhouse Rock’s “I’m Just a Bill” was! And that was a heavily simplified version! Sidenote: did anyone ever notice that this song ONLY refers to elected officials as men? Ugh. Another piece of my childhood, ruined by the patriarchy.
Michael Flynn (Trump’s former national security advisor and a main focus of the independent investigation into Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election) may have flipped on Trump and made a deal with Robert Mueller. His lawyers told Trump’s lawyers that they can no longer talk to them about the investigation, a possible sign that Flynn is cooperating with Mueller because defense lawyers usually share information when their interests are aligned. If he does flip, Flynn could give first hand accounts of Trump’s campaign and first days in the White House. It’ll be like if Access Hollywood just kept recording Trump for a whole year! What a gold mine of our very worst nightmares!
Before leaving for his Thanksgiving getaway to Mar-a-lago, Trump defended Alabaman Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore against heavily substantiated and numerous reports of sexual assault and sexual abuse of children. This seems to be surprising to some, but I really don’t know why given that 1) men accused of sexual assault usually stick together in their attempts discredit their victims and 2) the moral core of the Republican party has been misplaced since the 2016 primary election. What’s that saying? Bros before validating the claims of victimized, brave, believable hoes.
Al Franken, a Democratic Senator from Minnesota and former comedian, has had a rough two weeks, being accused of sexual harassment and assault by multiple women. Many in the party have called for his resignation, but many have defended him or stayed quiet. He was interviewed today and said he’ll be back at work on Monday. Democratic Representative from Michigan John Conyers has also been accused of sexual harassment by former Capitol Hill staffers and is stepping aside as Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee. Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi defended him on TV this morning. On an unrelated note, just because you’re liberal doesn’t mean you’re not complicit in the patriarchy. This may be a surprise to Democratic Party Leadership, but it’s definitely not a surprise to any woman who went to college with the econ-majoring frat brother who was all for funding Planned Parenthood but dared two girls to kiss at a party “for fun.”
Everyone has been hacked, basically. The day before Thanksgiving, Uber (everyone’s FAVORITE brand…) quietly announced that 57 million of its users had been hacked and their personal information stolen. Oh, and this happened LAST YEAR and Uber DIDN’T TELL ANYONE. Instead, there are reports that Uber paid the hackers to delete the stolen information and keep quiet about the whole thing. Also, the hackers may have been Russian. So, everything is connected and we thought The Da Vinci Code was just a fun movie with Tom Hanks looking really dramatic for an hour and a half but it’s actually REAL LIFE.
Egypt experienced a horrible terrorist attack on Friday when dozens of armed men stormed a Sufi mosque in the North Sinai province. The assailants bombed the mosque and then opened fired on worshippers as they tried to flee. Currently the death toll is at 305 people, and 128 more were wounded. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack but ISIS militants are prominent in that region of the country. I don’t have anything snarky to say here, I just am trying to live up to the promise that we treat news in the non-Western world as prominently as we treat news in the Western world. Oh, and Trump used the event to further his xenophobic agenda, tweeting out that we “need the WALL, need the BAN.” It’s hard to determine whether his comments were more insensitive, bigoted, or straight up idiotic. One Texas congressman decided the latter.
Rwanda stepped up on Thursday when it offered to host and even repatriate some of the thousands of African migrants who, in trying to make it to Europe, are being held in Libya. The migrants are reportedly being treated really badly (there’s reports of some being auctioned in to slavery) and Rwanda couldn’t stand for the injustice. How is it that Rwanda is WAY better at celebrating the spirit of Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving than the US is?
Black Friday in other parts of the world is not NEARLY as dramatic as it is in the US. Maybe it’s because they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in other countries so it doesn’t quite make sense to camp outside a store overnight when you have to go to work on Friday, or maybe it’s because the US is just a uniquely capitalist, hyper-materialistic cesspool. You choose! Either way, the videos are REALLY funny.