Israel Made Sure Someone Heard Netanyahu’s U.N. Speech

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took over Gazan residents’ mobile phones to broadcast his speech from the United Nations Friday, so they could listen to him deny that he has committed a genocide against them, live.

The prime minister was set to deliver his remarks to empty seats after dozens of dignitaries walked out ahead of his remarks, but announced that the IDF had taken the “unprecedented action” to take control of the phones of Gazan residents to broadcast his remarks.

A statement from the Prime Minister’s office on X said that Netanyahu had “appealed” directly to the residents of Gaza, urging the return of the hostages, disarming Hamas, and demilitarizing the region. “PM Netanyahu stressed that whoever does so will live while those who do not will be hunted,” the statement said.

Despite his bloodthirsty rhetoric, Netanyahu rejected a U.N. inquiry that concluded Israel is committing genocide and denied that Israel is causing starvation the region.

In fact, Israeli’s deadly siege in Gaza has killed more than 65,000 people—including medics and journalists—as well as displaced nearly two million more, and caused widespread famine. Now, they are being forced to listen to him as well.

The Trump Justice Department’s indictment of former FBI Director James Comey is so flimsy that even Fox Business is second-guessing it.

“Well I don’t think there’s a case.… I’m as big a critic of [the Russiagate stuff] probably as there is, I wrote a book about it, I think it was a disgrace, and history will remember it that way,” conservative lawyer and National Review contributing editor Andrew McCarthy told Mario Bartiromo on Friday. “This indictment is not about that, and it seems to be premised on something that’s not true, which is that [former FBI Deputy Director Andrew] McCabe said that Comey authorized him to leak to The Wall Street Journal. If you look closely at what McCabe said, what McCabe said is he directed a leak to The Wall Street Journal and told Comey about it after the fact.”

Comey has been charged with one count of making a false statement during a Senate hearing and one count of obstructing Congress. If convicted, he could face up to five years in prison.

“What about the leaking in general? What about leaking a story that they may have known was a lie to the media?” Bartiromo asked, still trying to pin Comey for Russiagate. “Because, if you’re the director of the FBI, you need the evidence.… What was the origins of Russia’s collusion with Trump? They never really had any evidence of it, but they leaked it to the press?”

“Yeah but that’s not what this case is about,” McCarthy responded. “What this case is about is, Comey is accused of lying because what Ted Cruz said … was that Comey authorized McCabe to orchestrate the leak. And what the inspector general found … McCabe said that he directed the leak, and he told Comey about it afterwards.… The charge is that Comey authorized the leak, and he didn’t authorize the leak.”

McCarthy isn’t the only one who thinks it’s a weak case. Attorney General Pam Bondi and her Justice Department have reportedly expressed apprehension over the Comey indictment for the exact reasons McCarthy offered above.

Naples, Florida, has discovered one easy trick to bypass the bureaucratic delays Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has created at the Federal Emergency Management Agency: Get a wealthy friend and supporter of Noem to reach out to her.

Until August, the city had been exasperatedly waiting on relief to rebuild the Naples Pier, which was damaged by Hurricane Ian in 2022. According to a new ProPublica report, FEMA only finally responded—providing $11 million for reconstruction—once a deep-pocketed friend and supporter of Noem, named Sinan Gursoy, stepped in.

Prior to Gursoy’s intervention, ProPublica reports, the city was trapped in “bureaucratic purgatory.” It’s a story that’s familiar by now, as local and state officials face interminable delays in disaster relief—made worse thanks to a rule instituted by Noem, in which all DHS expenditures exceeding $100,000 require her approval.

In one communication this summer, a city official informed Florida Senator Rick Scott that they’d been told that “Secretary Noem would have to ‘personally’ approve the Pier project before FEMA funding would be obligated,” ProPublica reports.

Naples Mayor Teresa Heitmann was “feeling increasingly helpless” this summer, after she and city officials had pulled out nearly all the stops, including writing to FEMA, hiring Washington consultants, and seeking the help of Scott.

In early August, the mayor decided to fire off some texts to Gursoy, according to ProPublica. A wealthy Naples cardiologist and associate of Noem’s, Gursoy contributed at least $25,000 to Noem’s 2022 gubernatorial reelection bid in South Dakota, placing him among the campaign’s top disclosed donors.

“FEMA is holding us up,” Heitmann told Gursoy. “Kristi Noem could put some fire under the FEMA employees slacking.”

“Okay. I will get on it,” Gursoy replied.

On August 11, he told Heitmann he’d “just” texted Noem, after holding off while she was out of office. Not a day had passed before he told Heitmann she’d hear from Noem’s “FEMA fixer” soon.

“We are now at warp speed with FEMA,” a Naples official reportedly wrote in an email once things got moving. A FEMA representative told the city: “Per leadership instruction, pushing project immediately.”

On August 29, Noem took a government plane to Naples, where she reportedly walked the pier before dining with Gursoy at Bleu Provence, an expensive French restaurant, and staying at the four-star Naples Bay Resort & Marina.

A DHS spokesperson insisted to ProPublica that the Naples Pier aid “has nothing to do with politics.” Gursoy told the publication to “get lost.”

Notably, Noem’s top henchman at DHS, Corey Lewandowski (who is also rumored to be her paramour, which they both deny), reportedly has a house close to the Naples Pier. Lewandowski told ProPublica he was not involved in the decision, nor was he in Naples at the time of Noem’s trip.

While in Naples, Noem shared a self-congratulatory Instagram post of herself assessing the damage to the pier. “The iconic Naples Pier was destroyed in 2022, and the city is still waiting on answers from FEMA,” she wrote, adding, “Americans deserve better than years of red tape and failed disaster responses.” Apparently, some more than others.

Nearly half of the entire United Nations General Assembly walked out when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the podium Thursday, in protest of his ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. 

Dozens and dozens of delegates exited the hall as soon as Netanyahu appeared. Other attendees cheered them on while the assembly leader banged his gavel and called for “order in the hall.”

Netanyahu was forced to deliver his speech to a room that was damn near empty.

Moments like these indicate that Israel’s indiscriminate and grotesque actions in Gaza—over 65,000 dead men, women, and children—are finally shifting the world’s perceptions. The fact that countries like Canada, France, and the U.K. are (finally) acknowledging a Palestinian state is also indicative of that shift.  

Some leaders were even more outspoken at the General Assembly. 

“We need a powerful army of the countries that do not accept genocide,” Colombian President Gustavo Petro said on Tuesday. “We must liberate Palestine.… I invite the armies of Asia, the great Slavic people who defeated Hitler with great heroism, and the Latin American armies of Bolívar.… We’ve had enough words; it’s time for Bolívar’s sword of liberty or death.”

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, or Lula, made similar comments. 

“No situation is more emblematic of the disproportionate and illegal use of force than the one occurring in Palestine.… The Palestinian people are at risk of disappearing,” he said. “They will only survive with an independent state integrated to the international community.” 

At this point it seems like the United States is the only government that has yet to realize just how atrocious Israel’s actions have been, as our leaders continue to offer financial and rhetorical support. 

Interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan got a grand jury to indict former FBI Director James Comey on two counts. But Halligan showed her inexperience Thursday as the jurors rejected a third charge, and she submitted the wrong documents to the judge.

It was Halligan’s fourth day on the job. She was formerly Trump’s personal lawyer, and recently led the president’s efforts to de-emphasize slavery at the Smithsonian museums.

Having never prosecuted a case before, Halligan scored the position after her predecessor failed to go after Trump’s enemies with sufficient zeal for the president’s liking, seemingly because of, well, sheer lack of evidence against them. Relatedly, in a memo this week, prosecutors advised Halligan not to pursue charges against Comey, citing insufficient evidence.

The newcomer went it alone Thursday, as MSNBC’s Ken Dilanian reports that Halligan “presented the Comey indictment all by herself to the grand jury,” a sign that she “may have a problem finding a prosecutor in office to work on the case.” The indictment was also signed only by Halligan, according to The New York Times, while “typically such filings are also endorsed by career prosecutors who have gathered the evidence in the case.”

The grand jury on Thursday voted to indict Comey on two of three counts sought by Halligan—false statements and obstructing a congressional proceeding.

Halligan failed to convince 12 jurors to vote for another false statements charge, related to Comey’s answers to Senator Lindsey Graham during a September 2020 hearing. (Comey had replied, “That doesn’t ring any bells with me,” when asked by Graham if officials informed the FBI that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign “was going to create a scandal regarding Trump and Russia” to distract from her email scandal.)

After the jury rejected that charge, prosecutors presented U.S. Magistrate Judge Lindsey Vaala with an indictment with just the two others. But, as The Washington Post reports, Halligan accidentally “gave the judge both indictments Thursday evening, prompting confusion.”

“This has never happened before. I’ve been handed two documents ... with a discrepancy,” Vaala said. “I’m a little confused why I was handed two things ... that were inconsistent.”

Halligan, per NBC, insisted she “did not see” the first document with the tossed indictment. Vaala observed, “It has your signature on it.”

The Justice Department is in an uproar against Attorney General Pam Bondi’s indictment of former FBI director James Comey.

Comey, who has drawn the ire of President Trump ever since he led the Russiagate investigation in 2016, has been charged with one count of making a false statement during a Senate hearing and one count of obstructing Congress. Bondi’s office also tried to get Comey on a second charge of making a false statement to Congress, but that was struck down. If convicted, Comey could face up to five years in prison.

But even Bondi’s own staff think this is a weak move designed to make Trump feel better in spite of the fact that the charges will be hard to prove.

“What I am hearing from DoJ sources: The Comey indictment is among the worst abuses in DOJ history,” MSNBC’s Ken Dilanian wrote Thursday on X. “Shocking. It’s hard to overstate how a big a moment this is.”

“Everybody is in shock,” former DOJ Director of Public Affairs Xochitl Hinojosa told CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront. “It doesn’t surprise them, though, because this is the way the Justice Department has been. Career officials have largely been either pushed out or silenced and are not in meetings about major decisions about cases.”

Hinojosa also commented on Bondi’s reasoning that “no one is above the law” in indicting Comey.

“That is what we all believe in, in that building,” Hinojosa added. “But the reality is that the actions over the last nine months are not the case. Donald Trump was charged on 44 counts. He is the sitting president of the United States.... And now Donald Trump is going after his political enemies.”

“I think this is a tragic day for America,” former White House lawyer Ty Cobb told CNN. “What we have here is a clear vindictive prosecution, a clear selective prosecution. We have a president for the first time in history ordering his Attorney General to indict his enemies,” Cobb said. “And the Attorney General, instead of being the independent force that she’s supposed to be saying: ‘Yes, sir. How fast can I get that done for you?”

Even Bondi herself seems to be feeling hesitant about going after Comey. CNN reported on Thursday that Bondi was apprehensive at best about the indictment, and some of her attorneys indicated similar feelings in a written memo. Bondi denies all of this.

Regardless, it’s clear that this indictment is the result of Trump personally calling for it, rather than some stringent, by the book investigation. Only time will tell how it’ll all play out.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has once again been caught on camera violently arresting people in the halls of immigration court. 

Conservative journalist Elaad Eliahu on Thursday filmed a man desperately holding onto his wife and children as about five ICE agents—all but one masked—surrounded them in a New York City immigration court. Two of them wrapped their arms around the man’s neck, putting in him a chokehold as they attempted to drag him away. The agents eventually ripped him away from his distraught, screaming family and detained him. It’s a gut-wrenching scene. 

After he was dragged away, the man’s wife walked up to the only unmasked ICE officer, pleading with him in Spanish. The agent just yelled “Adios! Adios!” in her face. She continued to beg him, until he quickly shoved  her into the wall, and then the ground, standing over her as her children screamed in horror. 

“I was back at 26 Federal Plaza today, where an ICE agent violently threw this bereft woman to the ground in front of her kids,” New York City Comptroller and former mayoral candidate Brad Lander wrote. “She had not touched him. She did not pose any threat. She had to be taken to the hospital.” 

“Seconds earlier, her husband had been abducted by masked ICE agents who did not identify themselves, did not present a warrant, did not give any lawful grounds for his detention,” Lander continued. “Every day, masked ICE agents are acting violently against our neighbors, illegally abducting them, holding them in cruel and inhumane conditions. Treating them as less than human and not deserving due process.”

There have been so many scenes like this since the Trump administration initiated its deportation campaign. Mothers, fathers, laborers, students, and community members have been ripped off the streets by men who often refuse to identify themselves, and sent to God knows where. And as of right now, there is no end in sight. 

Democratic Representative Ro Khanna has collected almost 50 signatures on a petition of lawmakers urging the Trump administration to acknowledge the State of Palestine. 

Since the letter was first reported early last month, dozens of House Democrats have signed on, and it now bears the names of 46 representatives, or more than one-fifth of the party’s House members.

“Just as the lives of Palestinians must be immediately protected, so too must their rights as a people and nation urgently be acknowledged and upheld,” the letter states, according to The Guardian.

Khanna says he hopes to have more than 50 before it is delivered to the White House on Friday. His office says he is accepting signatories until Friday at 4 p.m. 

“This week, the UK, France, Canada, and Australia officially recognized Palestinian statehood,” Khanna said in a statement. “We cannot be isolated from the rest of the free world. We must stand up for the dignity and rights of the Palestinian people. That is why I am pushing for the US to join in recognizing Palestinian statehood.”

The following are the 46 House Democrats who have signed on to the letter as of Thursday at 4 p.m. E.T., per Khanna’s office:

• Becca Balint — VT
• Donald Beyer —  VA
• André Carson — IN
• Greg Casar — TX
• Joaquin Castro — TX
• Judy Chu — CA
• Danny Davis  — IL
• Madeleine Dean — PA
• Diana DeGette — CO
• Christopher Deluzio — PA
• Mark DeSaulnier — CA
• Maxine Dexter — OR
• Lloyd Doggett — TX
• Veronica Escobar — TX
• Dwight Evans — PA
• Bill Foster — IL
• Maxwell Frost — FL
• John Garamendi — CA
• Jesús García — IL
• Sylvia Garcia — TX
• Al Green — TX
• Val Hoyle — OR
• Jared Huffman — CA
• Jonathan Jackson — IL
• Sara Jacobs — CA
• Pramila Jayapal — WA
• Henry Johnson — GA
• Marcy Kaptur — OH
• Ro Khanna — CA
• Zoe Lofgren — CA
• Stephen Lynch — MA
• Betty McCollum — MN
• James McGovern — MA
• Chellie Pingree — ME
• Mark Pocan — WI
• Mike Quigley — IL
• Emily Randall — WA 
• Mary Gay Scanlon — PA
• Janice Schakowsky — IL
• Bennie Thompson — MS
• Mike Thompson — CA
• Jill Tokuda — HI
• Paul Tonko — NY
• Nydia Velázquez — NY
• Maxine Waters — CA
• Bonnie Watson Coleman — NJ

As the destruction and humanitarian crisis wrought on Gaza by Israel draws increased international scrutiny, 10 countries recognized Palestinian statehood in the past week, bringing the total to 157 of 193 U.N. member states. 

“We encourage the governments of other countries that have yet to recognize Palestinian statehood, including the United States, to do so as well,” Khanna’s letter states. An August Reuters/Ipsos poll found that most Americans, 58 percent, agree. Trump, meanwhile, has dismissed recognizing Palestinian statehood, claiming it would be a “reward to Hamas.”

This story has been updated.

A federal court has ordered the University of South Dakota to reinstate an art professor who was removed for calling Charlie Kirk a “hate spreading Nazi.”

U.S. District Court Judge Karen Schreier in South Dakota’s Southern Division granted Professor Phillip Michael Hook’s request Wednesday night to block the school from firing him over the post on his personal Facebook page, ruling that Hook had a fair chance of proving that his First Amendment rights had been violated.

Hours after the right-wing activist was fatally shot in Utah, Hook posted on Facebook calling Kirk a “hate spreading Nazi” and questioned why there had been no equivalent outrage for the shootings that killed Minnesota state Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband in June.

In a subsequent post, Hook said he’d taken down his original post and apologized to “those who were offended.”

Soon after, Hook received a letter from the university placing him on administrative leave and expressing school leadership’s intent to terminate his contract for violating USD’s speech policy requiring employees with “special obligations” to “be accurate, show respect for the opinions of others, and make every effort to indicate when they are not speaking for the institution.”

But Schreier didn’t buy it. “The court concludes that Hook spoke as a citizen and his speech was on a matter of public concern,” she ruled, adding that the university had blatantly punished him because of his speech, and done so without proving his words had an adverse impact on the institution. Therefore, Hook was likely to win First Amendment protections.

Schreier ordered the university to reinstate Hook until the preliminary injunction hearing early next month.

This ruling comes as Vice President JD Vance has come down hard against calling political enemies Nazis (something he once did to the sitting president), and Donald Trump warned that violent rhetoric from the left had sparked a recent spate of violence—and would soon invite “bad things” from the right.

Yet another Trump nominee is facing scrutiny for their history of incendiary and racist social media posts.

Jeremy Carl is a current senior fellow at right-wing Claremont Institute who is up for a position at the State Department in which he would head the Bureau of International Organization Affairs. He has a trove of despicable online statements that he went out of his way to wipe from X, according to CNN’s KFile. He also tried to delete his posts from the archival website The Wayback Machine, though posts from his previous username can still be found.

In one post, Carl called for the execution of American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten. “If the U.S. were a serious nation,” he wrote, “Weingarten would be tried for crimes against America’s children and would get the death penalty.”

“I’m sure George Floyd is looking up from hell right now and he is so proud of America,” Carl wrote in another post, referring to the unarmed Black man who was choked to death by police in 2020. Carl also reposted that “statues in [Floyd’s] honor are a disgrace and an embarrassment to our country.”

“There is no ‘peaceful coexistence’ we are going to have when our opposition is led by people like this,” Carl said in response to former Representative Cori Bush commenting on the mass incarceration of Black folk on Juneteenth in 2021.

“If you’re a white person celebrating Juneteenth, you’ve already surrendered,” he said a day later.

Carl is also an ardent believer in the “great replacement,” the conspiracy theory that immigration is part of a plot to replace white people and destroy the United States.

“The great replacement is real,” he said in 2021. “And they’re going to try to make you pay for it.”

“We must utterly defeat the Great Replacement as a political strategy, and permanently remove from power all who advance it,” he wrote in 2022.

He also lamented what he saw as an insufficient number of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants in government.

“I just can’t understand why the under-representation of white Christians and the total absence of white Protestants in the Biden Administration isn’t a huge story,” he said. “The media loves covering stories of systemic exclusion and lack of representation.”

Carl was of course very pro–January 6. He considered the insurrectionists to be political prisoners and blamed Representative Nancy Pelosi, not Trump, for the events on that day.

“Donald Trump addressed a political rally and said ‘I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard,’” he said. “Pelosi attempted a military coup and must be prosecuted.”

So a man who is racist and thinks “Dems R the real fascists” has an excellent chance to be nominated and begin to impact U.S. policy at the United Nations and elsewhere. Carl would head more than 100 diplomats in over six countries.

This isn’t the first time a Trump nominee’s older tweets have been dug up. Current Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Darren Beattie declared that “competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work,” among other racist statements. “Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.”

There’s also E.J. Antoni, the MAGA rioter Trump tapped to replace Erika McEntarfer as head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, who said that former presidential candidate Kamala Harris couldn’t run for office “on [her] knees.”

It seems that the Trump administration is going out of their way to select the most despicable, incendiary characters to join their team. It might be time to fire up the Wayback Machine if you want a job with them next.