Alarming Footage Shows Drone Attack on Gaza Aid Freedom Flotilla

Conscience, a Freedom Flotilla aid ship aiming to break Israel’s two-month siege on Gaza, was struck by drones off the coast of Malta in the early hours of Friday. There were no casualties as a nearby tugboat helped put out the fire.

Footage shows smoke, flames, and massive, gaping holes in the ship’s hull. “Conscience has been bombed two times [just] a few minutes ago in 14 miles to the Maltese port,” one of the flotilla workers said through coughs as smoke filled his lungs.

“Armed drones attacked the front of an unarmed civilian vessel twice, causing a fire and a substantial breach in the hull,” the Freedom Flotilla Coalition said in a statement. And while the coalition stopped short of directly blaming Israel, they demanded that “Israeli ambassadors be summoned and answer to violations of international law, including the ongoing blockade and the bombing of our civilian vessel in international waters.”

“Our Flotilla is challenging not only that blockade that has kept all of the food and water and everything out of Gaza now for almost a month and a half, on the genocide that the U.S. is complicit [in]. The Israeli genocide of at least 55–60,000 Palestinians in Gaza,” said Ann Wright, a former U.S. Army colonel and diplomat who now works for the Freedom Flotilla. “Right here, we are in Malta dealing with a brutal attack on an innocent ship, a ship that was anchored or outside of territorial waters, waiting for us, the activists to come on board so that we could then head toward Gaza to say to the world, ‘Here are some citizens who are willing to take action where our government has failed to act.’ … While we cannot yet identify the source of the drones, there is no doubt in my mind that there’s a history of violence that has been directed toward the flotillas from the state of Israel.”

In 2010, Israel raided six Freedom Flotilla ships in the Mediterranean Sea, killing 10 people and wounding dozens.

Donald Trump, who saw an increase in support from rural voters in the 2024 election, is now seeing huge defections, according to a new PBS/NPR/Marist poll.

The poll taken last week found that only 40 percent of rural voters approve of Trump’s job performance, down from 59 percent in February, according to Newsweek. Forty-five percent of respondents said they disapproved of Trump’s performance in April, which is up from 37 percent who said they disapproved in February.

In the weeks between polls, Trump has unveiled a slate of policy directives that threaten the livelihoods of rural voters, including his sweeping “reciprocal tariff” policy that has undermined essential trade with America’s top trading partners.

Last month, the European Commission agreed to levy tariffs of up to 25 percent on cigarettes from Florida, beef from Kansas and Nebraska, chicken from Louisiana, car parts from Michigan, and most importantly, soybeans—of which the European Union bought $2.43 billion’s worth in 2024. Trump responded with his own insipid optimism, counseling everyone to “BE COOL!”

Farmers were also hurt by Trump’s dismantling of USAID, which lost them $2 billion, and the administration’s upending of programs for farms to provide produce for schools and food banks lost them at least another $1 billion.

Farmers aren’t the only rural residents hurt by Trump—workers and small businesses have also been impacted by shrinking consumer confidence and fears about an impending economic recession caused by roiling markets. Some believe it’s already begun.

But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. The president’s massive cuts to disaster preparedness programs threaten vulnerable rural regions that could be hit by the oncoming hurricane season. After Trump floated eliminating FEMA altogether, the agency stopped paying for temporary housing for more than 1,200 families displaced by Hurricane Helene in North Carolina.

As recently as Friday, Trump’s directive to slash federal funding at NPR and PBS would also disproportionately impact rural areas, which receive the most of the sliver of money granted by the government for educational and cultural programming.

The only group of voters, between those in urban, suburban, and rural areas who reported an increase in support for the president, were small-town voters, with 53 percent approving of his job performance, in an increase from 46 percent in February.

In the 2024 presidential election, a whopping 62 percent of rural voters supported Trump, while only 36 percent backed Kamala Harris, according to AP VoteCast. This demonstrated a 4 percent increase in rural support for Trump compared to 2020.

CBS’s flagship news magazine show 60 Minutes is upping the ante in its fight against Donald Trump. The show’s upcoming Sunday segment will focus on how the Trump administration has targeted law firms in an apparent quest to punish those who dared to challenge him when he was out of office, according to an online listing for the episode.

“On the campaign trail, President Trump vowed to wield the power of the presidency to go after his perceived enemies,” the listing reads. “Now in the White House, Trump is using executive orders to target some of the biggest law firms in the country that he accuses of ‘weaponizing’ the justice system against him.”

The show has had a tumultuous year covering the MAGA leader, who has continued to dedicate significant attention to a sit-down interview that aired on 60 Minutes prior to Election Day with former Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump has repeatedly argued that a version of Harris’s answer regarding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the broadcast had essentially “defrauded” the American public, since two of the network’s shows—60 Minutes and Face the Nation—cut and aired different portions of her 21-second answer on different days.

Trump sued CBS for $20 billion after the interview, claiming that the different clips amounted to “election interference” and that Harris should drop out of the presidential race over the GOP-baked scandal.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg: Trump and his allies have also insisted that CBS should lose its broadcasting license for what they view as selectively editing Harris’s answer. And on Wednesday, the president attempted to rope The New York Times into the affair, protesting online that the newspaper’s decision to quote individuals who described the case as “baseless” is tantamount to “tortious interference.”

An independent review by the Federal Communications Commission showed that the two answers were in fact cut from the same longer response. Editing answers for time is considered general practice in television news and regularly happens.

The mounting pressure from the lawsuit forced out the show’s chief producer, Bill Owens, last week, shocking employees who described the 24-year show runner’s exit as akin to pulling a “pin from his last grenade.” Owens had refused to apologize or admit wrongdoing in handling Harris’s interview. CBS’s parent company, Paramount, is reportedly moving to settle the lawsuit.

“It’s clear now, in a quest to sell the company, Shari Redstone and others will bow to presidential pressure,” one unidentified 60 Minutes employee told CNN, referring to the non-executive chairwoman of CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global. “60 Minutes is one of the crown jewels of American broadcast journalism, and they have no problem crushing it in their race to make a deal and make themselves richer.”

But regardless of Trump or executive perspectives, the media industry has continued to recognize the value of 60 Minutes’ programming. On Thursday, the show’s controversial Harris segment was nominated for an Emmy.

Senator John Fetterman isn’t in good shape—and could be a danger to himself and those around him.

New York magazine reports that Fetterman, who suffered a stroke in 2022 one month before being elected to the Senate, is unrecognizable to his past and present staff, prone to “conspiratorial thinking” and “megalomania.” His former chief of staff, Adam Jentleson, wrote his concerns in a May 2024 letter to Dr. David Williamson, the neuropsychiatrist who oversaw Fetterman’s treatment at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C.

“We do not know if he is taking his meds and his behavior frequently suggests he is not,” Jentleson wrote, adding that Fetterman was avoiding the recommended regular checkups with his doctors. He also wrote that the senator was driving his car recklessly, often speeding while texting, making FaceTime calls, and reading entire news articles behind the wheel.

One month after the letter, Fetterman got into a car accident, driving home from the airport after an early morning flight well over the 70-mph speed limit on I-70. His wife in the back seat suffered a pulmonary contusion and spinal fractures, and Fetterman told one of his staffers that he had fallen asleep while driving.

In an incident earlier this year, Fetterman was filmed on a flight to Pittsburgh arguing with the pilot about wearing his seat belt correctly.

“If you want to go to Pittsburgh, it’s simple,” the pilot told him. “You’re going to have to follow our instructions or be asked to get off the airplane.”

In another instance in 2023, one of his staffers reported hearing from a journalist that Fetterman had walked into the street and was nearly hit by a car. A short time later, a Senate doctor called Fetterman’s office to report that the senator walked into a group of people and nearly knocked them over near the underground trolleys running between the Capitol and congressional office buildings.

Fetterman insists that he is in good health, despite these reports, and chalks up the disturbing reports to disgruntled staffers. But other accounts show increased black-and-white thinking on issues such Israel’s massacre of Gaza, which has alienated many of his staffers, and an inexplicable show of support for certain Trump administration polices, drawing a backlash from liberal supporters. It seems that Fetterman’s health is raising the question of if he’s fit to continue serving in politics.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has had enough of the Trump administration’s unchecked bullying of the nation’s judicial branch.

The Supreme Court’s most junior justice condemned Donald Trump’s attacks on the country’s judges Thursday night, decrying the hostility from the executive branch as a threat to democracy.

“Across the nation, judges are facing increased threats of not only physical violence, but also professional retaliation just for doing our jobs,” Jackson said at a judge’s conference in Puerto Rico, according to Politico. “And the attacks are not random. They seem designed to intimidate those of us who serve in this critical capacity.”

Jackson, who joined the nation’s highest bench in 2022 after she was appointed by former President Joe Biden, did not mention Trump by name but instead referred to the president as the “elephant in the room.”

Jackson further noted that Trump’s attacks are “not isolated incidents,” arguing that they “impact more than just individual judges who are being targeted.”

“The threats and harassment are attacks on our democracy, on our system of government. And they ultimately risk undermining our Constitution and the rule of law,” Jackson said. “I urge you to keep going, keep doing what is right for our country, and I do believe that history will vindicate your service.”

She added that the judiciary had faced similar challenges during the Civil Rights Movement and the Watergate scandal, when the branch of government was again in the public hot seat.

“Other judges have faced challenges like the ones we face today, and have prevailed,” Jackson said.

The sharp rebuke earned her a standing ovation at the conference, reported The Daily Beast. It’s the second such instance in which a Supreme Court justice has critiqued Trump’s attempts to coerce America’s courtrooms. In March, Chief Justice John Roberts pushed back against the president’s demands to impeach a federal judge who dared to rule against his deportation plans.

“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said of Trump’s threats against U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg at the time.

But Baosberg isn’t the only judge Trump has threatened. Dozens of judges have ruled against Trump—and faced the wrath of his allies and his base for doing so.