Unimaginable violence continues in Gaza as the Israel Defense Forces stand prepared for the ground invasion that Israeli leaders had promised to launch.
 

• On Wednesday, Israel agreed—at least temporarily—to a request from the United States that it delay its looming ground invasion so that the U.S. has time to get its air defenses in place. Those defenses are intended to protect American troops in the region. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is in a harried state trying to deploy almost a dozen such air defense systems to cover U.S. troops based in Iraq, Syria, Kuwait, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, should any of them come under fire from missiles and rockets. American bases in Iraq and Syria have already come under drone fire. U.S. officials also want more time to negotiate the release of hostages held in Gaza, and want to facilitate the flow of more aid into the enclave. The invasion has already been delayed several times previously.
   

• But also on Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a national address in which he vowed to “exact the full price from the murders” on October 7, a series of attacks in which Hamas killed 1,400 Israeli civilians and kidnapped some 200 hostages. Over 6,500 Palestinians have been killed since the war began on October 7, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, over 2,700 of them children. In an address on Wednesday, President Joe Biden said, “I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using,” and “no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed” in Gaza, and added, “I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war.” 
   

• The United Nations, experts in the conflict, and international humanitarian organizations have long treated Gaza Health Ministry casualty numbers as credible, a Washington Post story points out. The Gaza Health Ministry, which is separate from the Palestinian Health Ministry in the West Bank, is, like everything else in Gaza, controlled by Hamas. However, the health sector in Gaza remains dependent on donor support from groups like the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Gaza Health Ministry numbers are also consistent with the enormous scale of the siege, and as Israel and Palestine director of Human Rights Watch Omar Shakir added, “In times in which we have done our own verification of [Gaza Health Ministry] numbers for particular strikes, I’m not aware of any time in which there’s been some major discrepancy.”

International and domestic calls for a ceasefire have not abated. 
 

• The World Health Organization said on Wednesday that 12 of Gaza’s 35 hospitals were not functioning—primarily due to fuel shortages—and that seven major hospitals were considerably over capacity, compromising patient safety. European Union leaders are expected to ask for a “humanitarian pause” in the bombing when they meet in Brussels on Thursday to discuss facilitating aid deliveries, as the twenty or so trucks per day crossing into Gaza through Rafah are far fewer than the average of 500 trucks of aid per day being administered to Gaza before the war broke out. The WHO also stated that thousands of cases of acute respiratory infections and hundreds of cases of scabies and lice have been reported at U.N. shelters for Palestinian refugees. Palestinians in Gaza have taken to burying unidentified bodies in mass graves, and now some families there are using homemade identification bracelets in the hope of being buried with their loved ones should they die in the siege. The family of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh—his wife, son, daughter, and grandson—were killed in their home in an Israeli air strike on Wednesday in Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp. The Committee to Protect Journalists reported that at least 24 journalists have been killed in the fighting since October 7. 
   

• A coalition of nongovernmental organizations and donor countries including the European Union, known as the West Bank Protection Consortium, has reported that hundreds of Palestinians have been forcibly displaced in the West Bank due to settler violence since the October 7 Hamas attacks. That number adds to the more than 1,100 Palestinians displaced by settler violence since 2022, according to a U.N. report. In his Wednesday speech, President Biden again forcefully condemned Hamas and offered his full-throated support to Israel, but also added a rebuke of settler violence, saying, “I continue to be alarmed about extremist settlers attacking Palestinians in the West Bank that — pouring gasoline on fire is what it’s like…The deal was made, and they’re attacking Palestinians in places that they’re entitled to be, and it has to stop.  They have to be held accountable. And it has to stop now.”

President Biden said he has not directly asked for assurances from Netanyahu that Israel will hold off on the ground invasion in Gaza or made any such demands, because “It’s their decision.” He offered that working towards a two-state solution has to be the next objective, as, “Israelis and Palestinians deserve to live side by side in safety, dignity, and peace.” 

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After three humiliating weeks in which the House GOP was repeatedly unable to coalesce around a nominee for speaker, they finally unanimously settled on Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA). Who, you may ask? An architect of the House GOP’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, for starters. He also voted against the Violence Against Women Act, voted against bipartisan legislation to codify same-sex marriage, and once said that women should be forced to give birth against their will to create “more able-bodied workers.” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) who serves alongside Johnson on the Judiciary Committee did not mince words in his assessment of the new speaker saying he has “much better manners” than some of the more unhinged members of the Freedom Caucus, but “is a MAGA extremist in substance.”

Johnson gave his first remarks as speaker and immediately invoked his evangelical Christianity, saying, “I believe that scripture and the Bible is very clear that God is the one that raised up each of you and God has allowed us to be brought here to this specific moment and time.” Those statements made from the speaker’s desk prompted Raskin to go even further, saying that such words demonstrate “that there are no public policy values that unify the Republican caucus anymore. They don’t have a secular program. And so they have fallen back on theocracy as the final binding mechanism of their cause.” He’s not wrong!! Johnson is vehemently opposed to abortion and supports a national ban. He’s also committed years of his professional life to fighting against basic LGBT rights in his work with the Alliance Defense Fund, a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated anti-gay hate group.

President Biden is planning a proposal for $50 billion in urgent domestic needs like child care, high-speed internet access, natural disaster relief, and fighting wildfires, among other priorities. 

Oil giant Shell cut at least 15 percent of its workforce in the company’s low-carbon solutions division, and scaled back its hydrogen business as part of CEO Wael Sawan’s strategy to boost profits by doubling down on high-margin fossil fuel products. 

U.S. mortgage rates reached their highest point in 23 years. It’s a terrible time to buy a home, so good thing it’s also never been more expensive to rent a home!

Hurricane Otis made landfall near Acapulco, Mexico as a Category 5 hurricane, but the storm has weakened to a tropical storm as of the latest advisory. 

GOP 2024 presidential candidate and general most-annoying-guy-we’ve-ever-seen Vivek Ramaswamy thinks the United States should pull out of NATO and “reevaluate” its membership in the United Nations. 

Microsoft is pulling ahead of Google parent company Alphabet in the generative artificial intelligence technology race.

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The United Auto Workers union is expected to announce a tentative labor agreement with Ford Motor Company on Wednesday night after six weeks of strikes at the Detroit Three automakers that sent more than 16,000 Ford workers to the picket lines.

Scholastic Book Publishers reversed their decision to separate books about race, gender, and sexuality at school book fairs, after the new policy was widely criticized for accommodating censorship.