Gaza Hospital Bombing Deeply Complicates Biden Visit to Israel

On Tuesday, a strike on a hospital in Gaza killed and wounded hundreds of Palestinian doctors, patients, and people seeking shelter. Joe Biden is expected to visit Israel in a show of his support tomorrow.

Palestinian officials say hundreds have been injured due to a suspected Israeli airstrike on the Al Ahli Hospital in the middle of Gaza City Wednesday evening. A Gaza civil defense chief said that more than 300 people were killed, while a Gaza Health Ministry official estimated that at least 500 people were killed and wounded. Many victims are still trapped under rubble.

Hospitals in Gaza have become places of refuge for those seeking shelter amid massive displacement and continued airstrikes on the occupied territory. According to the Associated Press, if this report is confirmed, this attack would be the deadliest Israeli airstrike in the five wars fought since 2008.

The Israeli military has denied involvement and says the attack was due to a misfired rocket from Hamas.

Earlier on Tuesday, Israeli airstrikes hit two refugee camps and a U.N. school in Gaza housing displaced people. At least 18 people were killed and more injured, Palestinian officials said.

The bombing comes a day before Biden was set to arrive in Israel to show solidarity with the country. This complicates that mission enormously, and people will be paying close attention to what Biden has to say.

This article has been updated.

The House of Representatives’ first floor vote to plant Representative Jim Jordan as speaker has, unsurprisingly, failed.

Jordan received only 200 votes, with double-digit “no” votes from his own party. Meanwhile, all 212 Democrats voted for their nominee, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

The next House speaker needs a majority of the chamber, or 217 votes, to win the coveted position. That requires a herculean effort to rally the divided Republican caucus, which holds a slim majority with just 221 seats in the House.

The 20 Republican representatives who voted against Jordan are Don Bacon, Ken Buck, Lori Chavez-DeRember, Anthony D’Esposito, Mario Diaz Balart, Jake Ellzey, Andrew Garbarino, Kay Granger, Carlos Giminez, Vicente Gonzales, John James, Doug LaMalfa, Mike Lawler, Mike Kelly, Jen Kiggans, Nick Lalota, John Rutherford, Mike Simpson, Victoria Spartz, and Steve Womack. The margin is far worse than initially expected.

The Freedom Caucus founder was a peculiar choice for unifying the party, given his controversial past and inability to inspire a strong backing after two rounds of closed-door GOP nominations. Jordan, perhaps most notably, hasn’t been able to turn a bill into law since he was first elected in 2006. He also drew ire for refusing to recognize the 2020 presidential election results, for his role in the January 6 insurrection, and long ago, for allegedly turning a blind eye to a sex abuse scandal at Ohio State University.

Since former Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted from the seat two weeks ago by a far-right faction led by Representative Matt Gaetz, House Republicans have sought to avoid the 15-ballot spectacle that gave him the gavel. Though if Jordan’s first vote serves as any indication, the House may be in for another wild ride.

Republicans are using the war between Israel and Palestine as fodder to push for a new wave of deportations at home.

On a campaign stop in Iowa on Monday, Donald Trump announced that if reelected, he would reinstate and expand his “Muslim ban,” a series of executive orders issued in 2017 that prohibited travel from several predominantly Muslim countries, calling for a “strong ideological screening of all immigrants to the United States.”

Trump also criticized pro-Palestine protests on U.S. college campuses, conflating the support for Palestinian freedom from Israeli apartheid with support for Hamas, the militant group behind more than 1,400 Israeli deaths.

The former president said he would also take the opportunity to revoke student visas from “radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigners” at universities and would “proactively” send ICE officers to what he described as “pro-jihadist demonstrations.”

“If you want to abolish the state of Israel, you’re disqualified; if you support Hamas or the ideology behind Hamas, you’re disqualified; and if you’re a Communist, Marxist, or fascist, you are disqualified,” he said.

Senator Marsha Blackburn joined the deportation chorus on Tuesday, announcing her co-sponsorship of a bill by Senator Marco Rubio that calls for a vote on the expulsion of “individuals who stand with and back Hamas.”

Over the weekend, Rubio called on the Biden administration to cancel the visas of foreign nationals supporting Hamas and announced that he would pursue legislation to restrict federal funding to college campuses that host protests supporting Palestinian liberation.

Senator Tim Scott and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis also took to the airwaves to vocalize their support for the growing GOP initiative.

“Anyone who stands up and says they want to kill Jews, they support terrorism, they should have that visa revoked,” Scott said on a podcast episode of The Sean Hannity Show.

DeSantis backed the Rubio proposal, noting on an airing of The Guy Benson Show that if someone supports Hamas, they “don’t have a right to be studying in the United States.”

On its face, proposing to deport or limit Hamas supporters’ entry into the country is not outrageous. After all, the State Department deemed Hamas a terrorist organization in 1997. But support for foreign terrorist organizations is already screened for in people seeking entrance into the U.S., so the new language utilized by Rubio and his compatriots achieves no policy gains but instead provokes fear and whips people into a frenzy at a time of historic tension and divisions. And at a time when lawmakers and the media alike keep confusing being pro-Palestinian with being pro-Hamas, it’s all but guaranteed such a proposal would be used in a very dangerous way.

Donald Trump is trashing military officials as “some of the dumbest people” he’s ever met—and his supporters are lapping it all up.

At a campaign event in Iowa on Monday, Trump mocked General Mark Milley, recounting a story about disagreeing with the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“I don’t wanna tell you what I had to go through with these people—some of the dumbest I’ve ever met in my life,” Trump said, and was met with a huge applause from the audience.

Trump’s trashing of Milley has been a recurring point since The Atlantic published a profile where Milley described how he “protected the Constitution from Donald Trump.”

In September, Trump posted on Truth Social accusing Milley of treason for speaking with Chinese officials about the U.S. election process, and implied he should be executed. “This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH,” Trump wrote.

Trump’s deranged post about Milley was cited as part of the reasoning for the second gag order placed on Trump by Judge Tanya Chutkan on Monday.

This isn’t the first time that Trump has made comments disparaging members of the military. Former White House staffer John Kelly confirmed that Donald Trump has called disabled veterans “suckers” and “losers.”

Donald Trump can’t seem to help himself from trash talking the judges of his trials, even with a second gag order in place.

On Monday, Judge Tanya Chutkan imposed a gag order on the former president’s D.C. trial, which hinges on four felony charges related to his effort to subvert the 2020 election. In a statement issued alongside the order, Chutkan said that Trump’s First Amendment protections “yield to the administration of justice” and that his presidential candidacy does not give him “carte blanche” to vilify public servants “who are simply doing their job.”

Within hours, however, Trump was onstage in Iowa, complaining about the decision.

“A judge gave a gag order today,” Trump said. “The judge doesn’t like me too much. Her whole life is not liking me.”

“You know what a gag order is? ‘You can’t speak badly about your opponent,’” Trump added in a mocking tone.

“I’ll be the politician in history that runs with a gag order where I’m not allowed to criticize people. Can you imagine this?” he continued. “It’s so unconstitutional.”

Previously, Trump used his speaking arrangements and social media presence to lambaste prosecutors and office clerks associated with the case, snubbing the Justice Department’s special counsel Jack Smith as “deranged” and his underlings as “thugs.”

Chutkan said she would consider “sanctions” against Trump if she witnessed any violations.

It’s the second such gag order issued so far in his legal proceedings, after Judge Arthur Engoron came down on the former president earlier this month in his business fraud case for attacking one of the judge’s staffers.