You Thought a Heart Attack Might Make Tommy Tuberville Drop Holds? Think Again.

The Marine Corps’s chief officer has been hospitalized after suffering a heart attack, leaving the military branch scrambling to fill gaps in leadership caused by Senator Tommy Tuberville’s block on military promotions. And no, the Republican senator won’t let up.

General Eric Smith collapsed while jogging Sunday and has been hospitalized, The New York Times reported. The Marines announced the following day that Lieutenant General Karsten Heckl would serve as acting commandant while Smith is out of commission.

The Marines then corrected their own announcement, saying that Heckl would only be “performing the duties” of commandant.

Part of the reason for the confusion is that Tuberville’s blockade on military promotions has prevented the Marines—and all branches of the military—from filling many leadership positions. Smith is one of just three generals who has been confirmed to a new position since February. He has been working as both commandant and his own assistant commandant since mid-September because the Senate has been unable to confirm an official deputy for him. There is no indication that his workload contributed to his heart attack, but working two jobs likely didn’t help.

Heckl has also been working multiple jobs due to Tuberville’s blockade. This is likely why he is only performing the commandant’s duties instead of completely taking over the role until Smith returns: He already has several balls he needs to keep in the air.

Tuberville has blocked more than 300 promotions since March in protest over the Defense Department’s policy of reimbursing travel costs for service members who have to go out of state for an abortion. The department has repeatedly warned that the blockade, which at one point left three branches of the military without official leaders, harms U.S. national security.

Smith’s health crisis is the clearest sign yet of how much damage Tuberville is causing. The Marines are technically without an official leader for the foreseeable future. This will make it that much more complicated for the military branch to do anything.

If there was any hope that Smith’s heart attack would force Tuberville to admit he is wrong, there is no such luck. Tuberville told reporters Tuesday that he is considering calling for a floor vote on Lt. Gen. Christopher Mahoney’s nomination for Marine Corps assistant commandant.

But he still refuses to budge on any of the other hundreds of nominations that he is holding up. “If they move the policy back, then we’ll drop ’em all,” he said, referring to the abortion policy.

The Pentagon, however, says the policy isn’t going anywhere. “That just would be an egregious violation of the covenant that we make, the military makes, with the people that sign up and volunteer,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said earlier this month when asked why the department doesn’t drop the policy.

“When they volunteer for that duty, they have every right to expect that they’re going to get the health care they need.”

A director of the United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights has resigned, issuing a lengthy letter condemning the organization, the U.S., and Western media companies for their positions on the war between Israel and Hamas, which he described as a “text-book case of genocide.”

“Once again, we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes, and the Organization that we serve appears powerless to stop it,” wrote Craig Mokhiber, the group’s New York office director, who had worked with the U.N. for more than three decades.

“The current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist colonial settler ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status as Arabs, and coupled with explicit statements of intent by leaders in the Israeli government and military, leaves no room for doubt.”

In the four-page letter announcing his departure, Mokhiber also called for the U.N. to adopt a 10-point plan focusing on things like: the abandonment of the two-state solution; acknowledgment of Israel’s effort to colonize and dispossess “an indigenous population on the basis of their ethnicity”; fighting apartheid; the return and compensation of displaced Palestinians; a full-scale U.N. investigation; the issuance of a “protection force” for Palestinians; the disarmament of Israel, including its nuclear capabilities; and an end to the “flow of Israel lobbyists to the offices of UN leaders.”

In place of the two-state solution, Mokhiber called for the support of a single, secular democratic state for all the people of historic Palestine.

“What’s more, the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, and much of Europe, are wholly complicit in the horrific assault,” Mokhiber wrote, lambasting the countries for “refusing” to meet their treaty obligations with respect to the Geneva Conventions, and instead “arming the assault” while providing economic and intelligence support to Israel and providing it cover for its atrocities against thousands of innocent civilians and refugees.

CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer was left stunned on Tuesday as an Israel Defence Forces spokesman confirmed that Israel was responsible for the bombing of a refugee camp in Gaza.

Blitzer was doing an interview with IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht on the bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp earlier in the day. The IDF said the airstrike on the refugee camp killed Hamas’s central Jabalya battalion, Ibrahim Biari, as well as a few other Hamas militants. The director of a nearby hospital estimated that at least 50 people were killed.

Blitzer pressed Hecht on the logic involved in Israel’s decision to target the refugee camp.

“But even if that Hamas commander was there amidst all those Palestinian refugees who are in that Jabalya refugee camp, Israel still went ahead and dropped a bomb there attempting to kill this Hamas commander knowing that a lot of innocent civilians—men, women, and children—presumably would be killed?” Blitzer asked. “Is that what I’m hearing?”

“That’s not what you’re hearing,” Hect replied. “This is a very complicated battlespace. There could be infrastructure there, there could be tunnels there. We’re still looking into it.”

“But you know that there are a lot of refugees, a lot of innocent civilians—men, women, and children—in that refugee camp as well, right?” Blitzer asked again.

“This is the tragedy of war, Wolf. We as you know, we’ve been saying for days, move south. Civilians who are not involved with Hamas, please move south.”

“Yeah I’m just trying to get a bit more information. You knew there were civilians there, you knew there were refugees, all sorts of refugees, but you decided to still drop a bomb on that refugee camp attempting to kill this Hamas commander.”

A hedge fund billionaire and GOP megadonor has a message for voters: Stay clear of Trump.

Leon Cooperman, chairman and CEO of Omega Advisors, blasted the former president in a call with CNN last week, insisting that Trump cannot return to the Oval Office.

“It would be terrible for the country if Donald Trump were reelected,” Cooperman told CNN in a phone interview late last week. “He’s a divisive human being who belongs in jail.”

Trump is currently staring down 91 felony charges across four criminal cases, including 44 federal charges and 47 state charges. Trump has denied wrongdoing in all of them.

It’s not the first time that Cooperman has gone on the attack with Trump. Last year, the CEO told the PBD Podcast that he would rather take a chance with progressives than put a “would-be dictator into a second term where he has no allegiance to anybody but himself.”

Cooperman admitted he “reluctantly” voted for President Joe Biden in the 2020 election, but he has a long history of supporting the political ambitions of right-wing candidates, including the late Senator John McCain, Senator Marco Rubio, former President George W. Bush, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, according to OpenSecrets.

Cooperman also said that both Biden and Trump are “bad choices,” making a long-shot prediction that neither of them will be their party’s nominee this time next year. If they reach the ballot, however, he told CNN he won’t vote.

Instead, the executive is hunting for a more centrist option. According to Federal Election Commission records, in August Cooperman donated $1,000 to the 2024 presidential campaign of former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who himself has come out in full force against Trump’s candidacy.

President Joe Biden’s stance on Israel has caused his support levels among Arab Americans to plummet, a result that could cost him a key swing state (or several) in the 2024 presidential election.

Since fighting broke out between Israel and Palestine, Biden has pledged total support to Tel Aviv. He only recently changed his stance to call for a humanitarian pause—instead of a complete cease-fire—so that aid can enter Gaza and foreigners can evacuate.

His position could cost him dearly. A poll conducted by the Arab American Institute following the outbreak of violence in Palestine and Israel found that support for Biden among Arab Americans has more than halved since 2020.

Just 17 percent of Arab American voters support the president, down from 59 percent during the previous election cycle—a 42 percent drop. Two-thirds of Arab Americans disagree with Biden’s response to the violence in Israel and Palestine.

“This is the most dramatic shift over the shortest period of time that I’ve ever seen,” James Zogby, the founder and president of the Arab American Institute, told Time.

This shift could cost not just Biden but the entire Democratic Party the election in 2024. The largest Arab American community lives in Dearborn, Michigan, a crucial battleground state. There are smaller populations in Pennsylvania and Georgia, both of which are still larger than Biden’s 2020 margin of victory in those states.

More than half of Arab Americans voted for Biden in 2020, but now, community leaders are turning on him. “Just changing his tone—that’s not enough,” Sami Khaldi, the president of the Dearborn Democratic Club and a former 2020 Biden delegate, said to Time about Biden’s new call for a humanitarian pause.

“Every president comes here and says the best solution for the Middle East crisis is to have a two-state solution, but you don’t see anyone have the courage to do it. We need him to do that.”