Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, right, and second gentleman Doug Emhoff stand after planting a memorial tree on the grounds of the Vice President's residence in Washington on Monday, Oct. 7, 2024, to honor the victims and mark one year since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)
THE STRUGGLE ISRAEL
A year after Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 attack, Israel’s devastating war only seems to be expanding — with no end in sight.
- Israel’s assault on Gaza has now killed more than 41,000 people, according to local heath authorities, in the year since Hamas’ surprise assault killed 1,200 and took 250 hostages. Meanwhile, the fighting continues to defy frantic diplomatic efforts to restore peace. Instead, the circle of conflict has widened. Israeli strikes in Lebanon have displaced almost a fourth of the neighboring country’s population. Iran launched nearly 200 rockets at Israel last week. The war is shaping up to be Israel’s longest since the country’s creation in 1948, and Israel is “preparing to be at war for years,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
- The Biden administration has pushed for a ceasefire while also providing nearly $18 billion to Israel since the war began. President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken rejected two internal U.S. assessments that found Israel was deliberately blocking food and medicine from entering Gaza which, had they been accepted, would have required the U.S. to cut off weapons shipments to Israel.
- Those rejections dealt a blow to internal morale among many U.S. staffers involved in the search for a solution, according to one administration official who spoke with What A Day. “It felt for a lot of people who are working these jobs, like, ‘Why am I pursuing this? Why am I even becoming an expert in this field, if someone at the top can’t agree with me and they’ll just reject my proposal anyway?’” said the official, who is in touch with State Department staff.
Yet activists still hold out hope for peace, even as cease-fire negotiations seem to be at a standstill.
- Our friends at the What A Day podcast spoke with one Israeli and one Palestinian activist today on keeping hope alive. “When I keep myself busy in this line of work, I create hope within myself and hope within my surroundings, and I partner … with other Palestinians and other Israelis, and when we talk together, it seems realistic,” said Israeli activist Yonatan Zeigen, whose mother was killed during the October 7 attack.
- “It gives me hope when I look at my colleagues, who are both Palestinians and Israelis, and to know that they are working day and night to achieve that vision of bringing people together, of bridging the gaps, humanizing one another,” said Palestinian activist Nivine Sandouka, regional director of the Alliance for Middle East Peace. “It gives me hope to know that the issue of the conflict is finally on the international agenda.”
Whoever wins the November election will inherit arguably the United States’s thorniest foreign policy issue since the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. No one knows how long this one will last, either.
SUPREME THWART
The Supreme Court is back in session, and it’s wasting no time restricting women’s reproductive rights.
The court began by handing a victory to anti-abortion advocates in Texas, where it effectively barred the Biden administration from enforcing its policy of requiring hospitals to perform emergency abortion or lose federal funding. The justices declined to hear a Biden administration appeal, leaving in place a lower court’s ruling that hospitals can’t be forced to terminate pregnancies if doing so violates state law.
SCOTUS is slated to hear some other hot-button topics this year, too, including a Tennessee law banning hormone treatments for transgender minors and the Biden administration’s attempt to ban “ghost guns.”
There’s also a chance the November election also gets penciled in, since the court could be called on to resolve emergency disputes. MAGAworld is already laying the groundwork for trouble: In Georgia, the Trump-friendly State Election Board decided that each county will have to painstakingly hand count ballots. Critics say the measure is unfeasible, since it could take months and there’s not enough staffing.
A decision about the election could fall into the hands of SCOTUS, which has a 6-3 conservative majority thanks to former President Donald Trump. If he wins, Republicans believe they could appoint even more conservative justices. Gee, I wonder why Americans don’t trust the Supreme Court anymore!
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-Elon Musk, embracing an online aesthetic that is basically MAGA, but even scarier.
NEWS NEWS NEWS
Georgia’s Supreme Court today reinstated the state’s near-total ban on abortions, which prohibits the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy, after a State Superior Court judge had struck down the ban last week. The abortion ban will remain in effect while the state Supreme Court considers the Republican state attorney general’s appeal to the lower court’s ruling.
Hurricane Milton became a Category 5 storm today as it intensifies over the Gulf of Mexico. It’s expected to make landfall in Florida on Wednesday or Thursday, only a week after Hurricane Helene ravaged the region.
Donald Trump’s economic plans could cause U.S. debt to increase while also raising costs for the majority of Americans, according to analyses from two economic organizations. Trump could add $15 trillion to the national debt while raising taxes on everyone — except the top 5 percent of earners. Damn, that’s crazy. And here we thought Trump was a champion of the working man.
VP candidate Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) confirmed that a second Trump administration would end funding to Planned Parenthood.
Billionaire conspiracist Elon Musk said that his pro-Trump political action committee would give registered swing-state voters $47 if they fill out an online petition with their contact information. “Easy money,” he called it. “Another example of desperate MAGA grifting,” we call it.
Speaking of Elon, Tesla Cybertrucks are not only the dumbest looking cars on the road, they’re also too dangerous to insure, according to insurance giant Geico. The monstrous vehicular eyesores have already been recalled five times since they debuted last year, which seems bad!
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