🌊 Campbell's Soup in Hot Water

Thanks, Sean Duffy.

Last night I heeded transportation secretary Sean Duffy’s “dress nice to the airport, you disgusting slob” sermon and pulled up to the airport looking nicer than usual. And I must thank Secretary Duffy for teaching me a valuable lesson: Eating a $17.50 chicken caesar wrap with rotting lettuce as your flight delay hits two hours is no more enjoyable in a blazer and slacks than in joggers and a Waffle House hoodie.

–Max and Max

KEY STORY

Campbell’s: Soup for the Poor?

Campbell’s fired an executive after he allegedly said the company’s soup is “highly processed food” for “poor people”

• The new comments emerged during a wrongful termination lawsuit filed by an IT staffer who sued after being let go for reporting allegedly racist statements made by the company’s Vice President of IT, Martin Bally

• Amid the lawsuit, Garza revealed that he secretly recorded Bally as calling Campbell’s soup “highly processed food” for “poor people.” Bally was also reportedly recorded calling Indians “idiots” and saying that he didn’t like working with them

• The situation has triggered a PR crisis for Campbell’s, with the company saying, “Campbell’s soups are made with real chicken. Period”

Dig Deeper 

• The company put Bally on leave and then fired him. It also called the comments “unacceptable,” yet said, “Keep in mind, the alleged comments heard on the audio were made by a person in IT, who has nothing to do with how we make our food”

• Campbell’s also released a “fact sheet” that it says proves its chicken isn’t 3D-printed, lab-grown, or bioengineered

KEY STORY

Shooting + Immigration Crackdown

President Trump launched an immigration crackdown after a 29-year-old Afghan national – Rahmanullah Lakanwal – allegedly shot two National Guard members in Washington, DC, on Wednesday. One died; one remains in critical condition

• Lakanwal came to the US in 2021 as part of a program that resettled Afghans who aided the US war effort in Afghanistan

• The Trump Administration immediately responded to the shooting by suspending all immigration processing for Afghan nationals, announcing plans to review green cards for individuals from 19 countries deemed “high risk” by the administration, and freezing all asylum decisions

• In an extended post, Trump also called for “REVERSE MIGRATION” from “third world” countries

Dig Deeper 

• Trump wrote on Truth Social, “The official United States Foreign population stands at 53 million people (Census), most of which are on welfare, from failed nations, or from prisons, mental institutions, gangs, or drug cartels. They and their children are supported through massive payments from Patriotic American Citizens who, because of their beautiful hearts, do not want to openly complain or cause trouble in any way, shape, or form”

• Trump concluded his post by writing, “Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation. Other than that, HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL, except those that hate, steal, murder, and destroy everything that America stands for – You won’t be here for long!”

• Hours later, the Department of Homeland Security posted on social media, “The stakes have never been higher, and the goal has never been more clear: Remigration now”

KEY STORY

Drug-Dealing President Pardoned

Amid an election in Honduras, President Trump pardoned the country’s former president, who was serving a 45-year sentence for drug trafficking

• Last year, a US court convicted the former president, Juan Orlando Hernández, of taking bribes from and aiding cocaine traffickers, resulting in a 45-year prison sentence. On Friday, Trump unexpectedly pardoned him

• The pardon comes amid closely-fought elections in Honduras, with Trump warning that if the left-wing party wins, Venezuela and “narcoterrorists” would “take over” the country

• Hernández was a member of the right-wing National Party, and in pardoning him, Trump wrote, “MAKE HONDURAS GREAT AGAIN!”

Dig Deeper 

• Hernández’s prosecution had started in Trump’s first term and concluded under President Biden, with the judge who sentenced him calling him “a two-faced politician hungry for power” who pretended to aid anti-drug efforts while partnering with drug traffickers, including Mexico’s El Chapo, to extend his own profit and power

• While Trump may perceive pardoning Hernández as boosting the right wing’s chances in the Honduras election, it also follows a months-long effort by Hernández’s family to persuade Trump that Hernández was unfairly targeted by the Biden Administration

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

KEY STORY

Corruption Scandal Rocks Ukraine

President Zelensky's chief of staff resigned amid a major corruption scandal

• Andriy Yermak has served as Zelensky's chief of staff since 2020 and has been his closest advisor throughout the war with Russia. For weeks, a $100M embezzlement and corruption scandal has been unfolding in Ukraine that involves alleged kickbacks from state companies to government insiders

• Yermak stepped down on Friday after authorities searched his home in Kyiv as part of a wider corruption investigation, though he has not been officially accused of any wrongdoing

• Yermak had led Ukraine in peace negotiations. Zelensky replaced him with Rustem Umerov, who heads Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council

Dig Deeper 

• Recent polling showed 70% of the public wanted Yermak to resign

• The scandal comes amid Ukraine/US/Russia peace talks and has dented Zelensky’s popularity, perhaps making a deal a tougher sell to the public. Zelensky has not been implicated in the scandal yet

WE THE 66

Interviewing bin Laden’s Neighbors

Roca co-founder Max Frost recently traveled to Pakistan, where he visited the site of Osama Bin Laden’s compound and spoke to a dozen of Bin Laden’s former neighbors

• In today’s WeThe66, Frost writes about what the neighbors said; why they voiced support for bin Laden; and how the way of thinking he encountered there is increasingly prevalent in the US

• You can read the story – and take advantage of today’s 50% off Cyber Monday sale – at this link!

RUNDOWN
Some Quick Stories for the Office

🇮🇱 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu requested a pardon from Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog, to end his corruption trial, claiming it would help unify the country during a time of regional change.

💰 Northwestern University agreed to pay the federal government $75M over three years to settle discrimination complaints and restore approximately $790M in frozen research funding.

✈️ President Trump said that Venezuelan airspace should be considered closed, deterring flights and potentially presaging US strikes on the country.

🔥 A fire that tore through high-rise buildings at Hong Kong's Wang Fuk Court housing complex has killed at least 146 people, with 150 still missing and 79 injured.

🎂 At least four people were killed and 10 others wounded in a shooting at a child's birthday party inside a banquet hall in Stockton, California, on Saturday.

What does Roca Nation think?

🦃 Today’s Question: What was the highlight of your Thanksgiving?

Reply to this email with your response!

POPCORN
Some Quick Stories for Happy Hour

🧑🏻‍🏫 Civic Lessons: A Virginia high school senior defeated his civics teacher in a race for county supervisor, winning by just 10 votes

🐈‍⬛ Purr-fect Record: Woman's Weekly magazine readers broke a Guinness World Record by knitting and crocheting 46,506 woolen mice for rescue cats across the UK.

👮🏻 Kidney Regards: A former UK police officer donated his kidney to a woman he first met 21 years ago when he knocked on her door to inform her that her son had died in a car crash.

📽️ Traffic Jamming: A Los Angeles man was charged on Wednesday with shutting down a downtown freeway in 2023 to film a music video while drivers performed spinning doughnut maneuvers around him.

🧑🏻‍🎓 Fantasy Foul Play: A UC Berkeley student who appeared to be kidnapped and thrown into a van on campus was actually the victim of a fantasy football league prank.

ROCA WRAP
The Teenage Guide

Sacagawea

A teenage captive became the only woman to accompany the Lewis and Clark Expedition across 8,000 miles of uncharted wilderness.

Around 1788, Sacagawea was born into the Lemhi Shoshone tribe near present-day Salmon, close to the continental divide where Idaho meets Montana. At age 12, Hidatsa raiders attacked her village, killing eight people and capturing several children. She was taken hundreds of miles east to a Hidatsa settlement in present-day North Dakota, where she was sold into marriage to French-Canadian trapper Toussaint Charbonneau when she was approximately 13 years old.

In winter 1804, explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark arrived at a Mandan village to wait out the cold season. They needed someone who could communicate with the Shoshone tribes living at the headwaters of the Missouri River. They hired Charbonneau, who claimed to speak multiple Native languages, on the condition that he bring along Sacagawea for her Shoshone fluency. She was pregnant at the time and gave birth to her son, Jean Baptiste, in February 1805, just weeks before the expedition departed.

Sacagawea carried her infant son on her back in a cradleboard as the expedition pushed upward against the Missouri's current. In May 1805, when a boat capsized, she rescued journals and critical records from the water, earning the captain’s praise and a river named in her honor. That August, when the corps located a Shoshone tribe to trade for horses needed to cross the Rockies, Sacagawea discovered the chief was her brother, Cameahwait. The reunion secured the expedition's survival. Her presence served a purpose beyond interpretation. Clark noted that "a woman with a party of men is a token of peace" among the tribes they encountered. 

Historical records suggest Sacagawea died in 1812 at age 25 at Fort Lisa in present-day South Dakota. However, both Hidatsa and Shoshone oral traditions claim she lived into old age, with some accounts placing her death in 1884 in Wyoming. The debate over her final years has never been fully resolved.

For a captive who became a translator, a teenage mother became an essential architect of westward exploration.

EDITOR’S NOTE
Final Thoughts

For our latest video, we met one of the most interesting, warm, and well-meaning characters we’ve come across in the US: Dellie, a true Appalachian mountain man. We met Dellie by chance and ended up exploring his holler with him, shedding light on a disappearing lifestyle in one of America’s most remote counties.

–Max and Max