The U.S. Ignored Early Warnings About Israel’s Assault on Gaza

Days after Hamas’s October 7 attacks, U.S. government officials were warning about the potentially dire humanitarian cost of Israel’s reprisal in Gaza—warnings that were ignored and that have sadly since come true.

Reuters reports that only a few days after Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7 last year, a senior Department of Defense official warned that the early Israeli bombing of the area could lead to war crimes, in an email to senior White House officials.

Dana Stroul, then the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, relayed concerns from the International Committee of the Red Cross that Israel’s order of mass evacuations of more than one million Palestinians from Gaza would be a humanitarian disaster, which left her “chilled to the bone.”

“ICRC is not ready to say this in public, but is raising private alarm that Israel is close to committing war crimes,” Stroul said in her October 13 email, describing a conversation with the ICRC Middle East director. “Their main line is that it is impossible for one million civilians to move this fast.”

Reuters gained access to three sets of email exchanges between U.S. government officials from October 11 to October 14, showing that both State Department and DOD staffers had early concerns about the civilian death toll in Gaza, violations of international law, and increasing the flow of humanitarian aid. There were also internal warnings that a perceived lack of sympathy with the Palestinians could hurt ties with Arab countries.

After Israel bombed hospitals, schools, and mosques in Gaza, the top public diplomacy official at the State Department, Bill Russo, told his superiors that the U.S. was “losing credibility among Arab-speaking audiences,” according to an October 11 email.

Later, Russo wrote that Arab media reports being monitored by U.S. diplomats in the Middle East were accusing Israel of genocide and the U.S. of being complicit in war crimes.

“The U.S.’s lack of response on the humanitarian conditions for Palestinians is not only ineffective and counterproductive, but we are also being accused of being complicit to potential war crimes by remaining silent on Israel’s actions against civilians,” emailed Russo.

In another email, he said that if the Biden administration didn’t change its policy of unconditional support for Israel and its war in Gaza, “it risks damaging our stance in the region for years to come,” he wrote. Russo would later resign in March for personal reasons.

While White House officials say that their pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu early on prevented a worse disaster in Gaza, the death toll today exceeds more than 42,000 Palestinians, including 16,500 children. The Biden administration continues to reject calls to use its billions of dollars in aid to Israel as leverage to push for a humanitarian cease-fire, even though an arms embargo could end a conflict which has since expanded to southern Lebanon.

Donald Trump’s Bible grift is about to pull in some stateside cash.

Oklahoma’s Department of Education on Monday opened bids to fill a 55,000 unit order of Bibles for classrooms across the state, but Superintendent Ryan Walters’s parameters for the allowed Bibles has become eyebrow-raisingly specific.

Bid documents indicate that the Bible must meet strict expectations, including that the text itself be the King James version, that it includes both the Old and New Testaments, and that the copies include core, historical elements of the U.S. educational system, including the Pledge of Allegiance, the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Oklahoma is also stipulating that the text be bound in leather or a leather-like material.

Curiously, that narrows the pool of applicants down to just one apparent choice: Trump’s God Bless the USA Bible.

“The RFP on its face seems fair, but with additional scrutiny, we can see there are very few Bibles on the market that would meet these criteria, and all of them have been endorsed by former President Donald Trump,” Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice Executive Director Colleen McCarty told The Oklahoma Watch.*

Trump made some quick cash on the rollout of the limited-edition, $60 Bible earlier this year when he co-promoted it alongside “God Bless the USA” singer Lee Greenwood. Another version, signed by the Republican presidential nominee, retailed for $1,000 a pop. The selling point for the print boiled down to a callback to Trump’s campaign: “We must make America pray again.” Prior to the Oklahoma bid, the far-flung grift raked in $300,000 in royalties, according to financial disclosures released by the former president.

In July, Walters unveiled new guidelines for teaching Bibles in classrooms—and consequences for districts that refused to participate.

“Every teacher, every classroom in the state, will have a Bible in the classroom and will be teaching from the Bible in the classroom,” Walters said at the time.

* This post originally misidentified the outlet that obtained the quote.

Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, has reportedly chatted with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman several times since leaving the Trump White House.

A source familiar with the discussions told Reuters that Kushner had discussed normalizing relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, but would not specify whether the conversations were before or after the start of Israel’s deadly military campaign in Gaza.

Last month, Saudi Arabia said that it would not recognize Israel until the creation of a Palestinian state, which if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to be believed, is a long way off. This is in sharp contrast to Kushner’s pitch to move Palestinians to the Negev Desert and transform Gaza’s “very valuable” “waterfront property.”

Kushner served as a top Middle East adviser during Trump’s time in office, and was instrumental in installing the Abraham Accords, which saw Israel normalize ties with two other Gulf countries.

Kushner’s cozy relationship with MBS highlights how Donald Trump might choose to work with Saudi Arabia should he be reelected in November. Three sources close to Kushner said that they expect Trump’s son-in-law to be involved in any Saudi talks in an unofficial capacity. A spokesperson for Kushner denied that he was seeking any such role.

It’s not clear, however, that Kushner has any leverage in his relationship with MBS.

Last month, the Senate Finance Committee found that Kushner’s firm, Affinity Partners, had yet to return any profit to its foreign investors after receiving billions from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and other foreign governments.

In his report, Senator Ron Wyden wrote that “sovereign wealth fund investments and prospective real estate deals give foreign governments leverage over the Trump family.”

Wyden explained that “a potential future Trump administration will have financial motives to make foreign policy decisions that may be counter to the national interest in order to ensure Kushner and Ivanka Trump continue to collect millions of dollars in fees from foreign governments through Affinity.”

When asked for more details about Kushner’s friendship with MBS, the source with knowledge of their conversations declined, saying, “It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to share that.”

In Idaho, a Republican state senator shouted, “Go back to where you came from” at a Native American candidate at a political forum Tuesday. 

Senator Dan Foreman was asked by an audience member at a bipartisan “Meet Your Candidates” event in Kendrick, Idaho, if discrimination existed in the state. He replied that it did not, Boise State Public Radio reported.

Trish Carter-Goodheart, who is running for a state House seat and is a member of the Nez Perce tribe, took issue with Foreman’s contention, and spoke up.

“When it was my turn to speak, I calmly pointed out that just because someone hasn’t personally experienced discrimination doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Racism and discrimination are real issues here in Idaho, as anyone familiar with our state’s history knows,” Carter-Goodheart said in a statement issued after the forum. 

“I highlighted our weak hate crime laws and mentioned the presence of the Aryan Nations in northern Idaho as undeniable evidence of this reality,” said Carter-Goodheart, whose words were corroborated by others in attendance at the event.  

Foreman then became agitated and shouted, “I’m so sick and tired of this liberal bullshit! Why don’t you go back to where you came from?” He reportedly then stormed out of the event.

The Nez Perce tribe, along with other Native tribes, have lived in the Pacific Northwest for thousands of years, while Foreman was born in Illinois. The senator has a reputation for publicly shouting and using profanity, having yelled at students lobbying for birth control in Boise in 2018. 

Native American voters were pivotal in 2020’s election, proving to be a decisive factor in battleground states such as Wisconsin and Arizona. Racist outbursts won’t help Republicans win key votes even in small-town Idaho.

Melania Trump has come out as staunchly pro-choice—and her MAGA husband is pretending he agrees with her.

Ahead of the release of her upcoming memoir, Melania, the former first lady posted a video to her X account defending the “individual freedoms” of women to do what they wish with their bodies.

“Individual freedom is a fundamental principle that I safeguard,” Melania said in a clip released Thursday. “Without a doubt, there is no room for compromise when it comes to this essential right that all women possess from birth: individual freedom. What does ‘my body, my choice’ really mean?”

That stance was, apparently, totally fine with the aggressively anti-choice Republican presidential nominee. During an interview with Fox News on Thursday, Trump casually confessed that he had encouraged his wife to “write what you believe” with regard to the new book.

“I said, ‘You have to stick with your heart,’” Trump told the conservative network. “I’ve said that to everybody, ‘You have to go with your heart.’ There are some people that are very, very far right on the issue, meaning without exceptions, and then there are other people who view it a little bit differently than that.”

“I’m not going to tell you what to do,” Trump said he told Melania.

But that simple line caught significant backlash from his critics, who argued that his campaign, Project 2025, and the Republican Party have worked overtime to tell every other woman in America exactly what they should do with their bodies—whether that’s fighting for a national abortion ban or celebrating the encroaching stateside restrictions on other, adjacent reproductive procedures, such as IVF.

“Oh, so Melanie gets to choose but not millions of other women. Got it,” posted The Atlantic writer Jemele Hill.

“He has no problem with states telling your daughters what to do with their body, though,” posted national security attorney Bradley Moss.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene pushed a preposterous conspiracy theory Thursday that someone at the very top created Hurricane Helene.

While many Republicans, like Donald Trump, have been quick to criticize the federal response to Hurricane Helene, Greene has started pointing fingers as to who could possibly be behind the weather event, which most normal people would understand to be caused by hot air and cold air.

“Yes they can control the weather,” Greene wrote in a post on X. “It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”

Many online were disturbed by Greene’s vague use of “they,” because outlandish accusations about controlling the climate are typically antisemitic conspiracy theories—to which Greene is no stranger.

Earlier that evening, Greene posted a photograph in an attempt to further push conspiracy theories about the area impacted by the deadly Category 4 storm. 

 “This is a map of hurricane affected areas with an overlay of electoral map by political party shows how hurricane devastation could affect the election,” she wrote.

It seems that Greene believes that Democrats somehow created the storm to try and harm Republican voters. This is a significant, and grotesque escalation from Trump’s already wild theory that the Biden administration purposefully neglected Republican areas in its federal response to the storm.

Of course, the only person who had ever done something like that is Trump himself, who reportedly withheld aid to California after the deadly wildfires in 2018, until his team could provide polling that people there had in fact voted for him.

A former Colorado county clerk was sentenced to prison Thursday for tampering with voting machines in the 2020 election and was thoroughly dressed down by the judge in her case.

Former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters was sentenced to nine years for allowing a man to use a security card to access her county’s election system, and deceiving investigators about who the person was. He was later determined to be working with MAGA gadfly and pillow magnate Mike Lindell, a prominent election denialist and supporter of Donald Trump.

“I am convinced you would do it all over again if you could. You’re as defiant as any defendant this court has ever seen,” District Judge Matthew Barrett told Peters in announcing the sentence. “You are no hero. You abused your position and you’re a charlatan.”

Barrett said that Peters, a Republican, didn’t take her job seriously, espousing claims about rigged voting machines even after they were disproven. During the trial, prosecutors said that Peters was seeking attention after associating with election denialists, and Peters remained unrepentant about her crimes.

“I’ve never done anything with malice to break the law. I’ve only wanted to serve the people of Mesa County,” Peters told the court before she was sentenced. She tried to repeat her claims about “wireless devices” and software that altered ballot images, only to be rebuked by Barrett, who said that no discrepancies were found in ballot recounts.

“I’ve let you go on enough about this. The votes are the votes,” Barrett said. He added that Peters made multiple appearances broadcasted to fellow election deniers for her own gain.

“It’s just more lies. No objective person believes them. No, at the end of the day, you cared about the jets, the podcasts and people flying with you,” said Barrett. “You cannot help but lie as easy as you breathe.”

While Peters will be going to prison, at least 70 other pro-Trump election denialists today are working in election offices in battleground states across the country, according to a July report. In Georgia, the state election board has been upended by pro-Trump appointees trying to give him every advantage in November to prevent Kamala Harris from winning, as Biden did in 2020. Hopefully, Thursday’s sentence discourages other attempts at election interference, otherwise November will be chaotic.

New York Representative Mike Lawler gave the strangest defense for once wearing blackface as part of a Michael Jackson Halloween costume.

A photograph of Lawler from 2006, showing him posed like the iconic singer with brown makeup applied to his face, was obtained by The New York Times and published Thursday. Lawler, who is 38, would have been 20 years old when the photo was taken.

In a statement, Lawler did not deny the photo’s authenticity. “The ugly practice of blackface was the furthest thing from my mind,” he said. “Let me be clear, this is not that.”

“I am a student of history and for anyone who takes offense to the photo, I am sorry,” Lawler said. “All you can do is live and learn.”

It’s unclear why Lawler referred to himself as a “student of history” in his apology. Was it to signal that no one needed to chastise him for doing something so obviously and historically wrong? If Lawler knows that to be the case, it’s even stranger that he did it in the first place.

This latest scandal has the potential to affect Lawler’s reelection, as he is currently running in a toss-up race against former Democratic Representative Mondaire Jones for New York’s 17th congressional district seat.

Lawler has attempted to paint himself as a moderate, and was even lauded by President Joe Biden, who called him “the kind of guy that when I was in the Congress, the kind of Republican I used to deal with.” However, a ProPublica study found that Lawler voted in line with MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Green 81 percent of the time.

Last month, Rockland Republican Party Chairman Lawrence Garvey accused Lawler, among several other lawmakers, of retaliating against him for attempting to block an illegal $60,000 corporate donation through the state Republican Party.

Donald Trump’s campaign handed out signs with a slogan used by white supremacists at his Saginaw, Michigan, rally Thursday.

The signs read “Reclaim America,” a phrase the white nationalist group Patriot Front uses regularly. The group, which splintered from the neo-Nazi Vanguard America, has long used the slogan in an effort to make white supremacist ideology palatable to a wider audience. The slogan has been used in Patriot Front banners in marches and flyers across the country. On Thursday, the preprinted signs with the same slogan were handed out before Trump spoke.

While they were being distributed, the chair of the Michigan Republican Party, former Representative Pete Hoekstra, told Trump’s fans that they were appreciated.

“You’ve got to put on a great show today, and the president will recognize your efforts,” said Hoekstra, who served as U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands during Trump’s presidency.

Who was behind the decision to use the slogan is unknown, although one wonders if they have ties to Patriot Front. At a Patriot Front rally in Nashville in July, the racist group’s members chanted “Sieg Heil” and “Deportation saves the nation,” while proudly displaying the “Reclaim America” slogan on a large banner. Trump supporters would likely agree with the latter chant at least, considering the former president’s plan for mass deportations.

Trump has flirted with white nationalism in the past, including during his 2024 campaign. He has complained about “anti-white racism,” and some of Trump’s confidants plan to use civil rights laws to combat the made-up problem if he returns to the White House. Trump infamously told the fascist Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” at a 2020 presidential debate.

Over the summer, though, Trump drew the ire of prominent neo-Nazi Richard Spencer, who thought some of the racist attacks on Kamala Harris went too far. Perhaps this is a “sign” that Trump still has white nationalist support and thinks it can help him win in November.  

Donald Trump was an hour and a half late to his rally in Saginaw, Michigan, on Thursday, but even the extra time couldn’t muster more people to line the stadium.

“Who else fills big places like this at three in the afternoon?” Trump asked the roaring crowd.

But from another perspective, it was evident that the Republican presidential nominee had only filled a fraction of the event space.

Another clip of the space showed the empty, fluorescent backdrop to his speech.

The low turnout is significant for a candidate who has frequently attacked his political opponents for their inability to draw as many people as he’s historically attracted to his boisterous, sprawling campaign stops.

In 2016 and 2020, Trump relied on the visual logic of his loaded rallies—and, by extension, the lackluster crowds attending his opponents’—as evidence of his titanic popularity among everyday Americans. But Kamala Harris’s ability to meet and even exceed Trump’s numbers has really rattled him, along with the conservative establishment. Just weeks after the announcement of her campaign, news of Harris’s massive crowds reached the top of the Drudge Report, the most heavily trafficked conservative news aggregator, paired with the headline: “HARRIS CROWDS ROIL MAGA.”