Israeli airstrikes in Syria and Lebanon have stoked fears of a wider regional war.

Monday, January 8, 2024
BY JULIA CLAIRE & CROOKED MEDIA

- Disgraced former president Donald Trump ([link removed]) giving “convicted insurrectionists” a characteristically unsubtle re-brand.

A spate of Israeli airstrikes outside of Gaza are sowing new fears that the war could expand further throughout the region.

* A commander of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah was killed on Monday in an airstrike on the country’s southern border, Hezbollah said. ([link removed]) It’s just the latest troubling event pointing to the Israel-Hamas war’s widening scope in the Middle East. The commander was identified by the group as Wissam Hassan al-Tawil. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited troops near the Israel-Lebanon border and vowed that his country “will do everything to restore security to the north.” Israel has not taken responsibility for the killing.

* Hezbollah and the Israel Defense Forces have engaged in increasingly-deadly cross-fire since Israel’s war with Hamas began on October 7. Last week, a similar strike in Beirut killed a top Hamas official who was said to be a liaison to Hezbollah and mutual friend of the two groups, Iran. Senior officials from the U.S. and Lebanon ascribed the attack to Israel, according to The New York Times ([link removed]) .

* Israel also launched a deadly wave of strikes in Syria ([link removed]) , another ally of Iran, targeting cargo trucks and infrastructure, Reuters reported, citing six sources with direct knowledge of the matter. Israel has struck targets linked to Iran in Syria for years, but recent air raids are reportedly deadlier and more frequent. Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken continued his grueling multi-stop Middle East trip this week with the aim of keeping the violence from spreading further and reducing civilian casualties.

In Gaza, humanitarian conditions remain disastrous.

* Israel has continued attacking the area surrounding central Gaza’s last remaining hospital ([link removed]) , causing hundreds of displaced Gazans to flee over the weekend and forcing most medical workers to evacuate, according to The Washington Post. The chaos and fighting meant that sick and wounded were left without options to seek care. International humanitarian organization Save the Children issued a report from Ramallah that in Gaza, on average more than ten children per day have lost one or both legs since the conflict erupted three months ago ([link removed]) . The total number currently exceeds one thousand children and many such amputations were performed without anesthetic due to major shortages of critical supplies.

* Israel is beginning to shift from a sweeping large-scale attack campaign in Gaza to a more “targeted phase” in its war against Hamas, U.S. officials briefed on the matter told The New York Times. Chief IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said that this new phase would involve fewer troops and airstrikes ([link removed]) . The transition to the more targeted approach could be completed by the end of January, Israeli officials reportedly told their U.S. counterparts, though the timeline is not definite. U.S. officials reported that they believe the number of IDF troops in northern Gaza has dropped to less than half of the 50,000 that were present last month.

Secretary Blinken will reportedly press Israeli leaders in the coming days to downshift the war, and attempt to lay the groundwork for discussions of how Gaza might function in the months to come.

What happens when one of China’s most prominent human rights activists escapes house arrest in China, lands in America as a hero of freedom and democracy, then somehow re-emerges a few years later as an avid Trump supporter? This is the story of Chen Guangcheng. In Crooked’s newest podcast Dissident At The Doorstep, hosts Alison Klayman, Colin Jones and Yangyang Cheng, tell the story of how a person can become a symbol for American values, and what happens to them next. Listen to new episodes of Dissident At The Doorstep each Saturday beginning January 13th, in the Pod Save The World feed. Available wherever you get your podcasts!
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Disgraced former president Donald Trump was pushed over the top of the crucial electoral number in 2016 with the critical help of White evangelical Christians, who have consistently shown up for Republican candidates for more than forty years. But just as Trump is a different kind of Republican, the last few decades have ushered in a new kind of Evangelical. New data cited by religion scholars from a wide-array of academic studies, research polls, and surveys suggests that the typical self-described evangelical voter no longer correlates with regular church attendance and a focus on personal salvation. Rather, it has become a cultural and political identity ([link removed]) , in which many (White) evangelicals regard Christians as a “persecuted minority” and Donald Trump is, in a non-figurative way, at the center of their faith.


In fact, White Americans became more likely to identify as “evangelical” over the course of the Trump presidency even as overall church attendance rates continued their steady, decades-long decline. The trend was particularly acute among Trump voters. In 2016, many evangelicals made a literal devil’s bargain to elect a morally-odious man they (correctly) thought would stack the Supreme Court bench with anti-choice justices. But evangelicals of 2024 are a demographic increasingly made up of people who came to the label not because of a spiritual conversion towards faith in God, but in Donald Trump. Consider that in Iowa, whose nominating caucuses will take place next Monday, Trump holds a 25-point lead over his next closest GOP rival among evangelical voters. Horrifying stuff!!

Trump’s former campaign staffer and co-defendant Michael Roman is seeking to dismiss the racketeering indictment against him and disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis by alleging that she “engaged in a personal, romantic relationship,” ([link removed]) with one of the top prosecutors working the case.


A false report of a shooting was called to the home of federal judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing Trump’s election interference case ([link removed]) in Washington D.C. The origin of the call is unknown, but appears to be a case of “swatting”: calling in a false report of a crime in order to draw police to a certain location. DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith was targeted in the same way on Christmas Day ([link removed]) . Huh, weird coincidence!


President Biden visited South Carolina on Monday and gave a speech denouncing White supremacy from the pulpit of Mother Emanuel AME Church ([link removed]) , the site of a 2015 mass shooting that claimed the lives of nine Black parishioners. He was briefly interrupted when several people in the audience began chants of “cease-fire now” in reference to the president’s ongoing support for Israel.


Donald Trump, who has repeatedly argued that presidents have “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for anything they did as president, said he will indict President Biden if he is re-elected ([link removed]) .


Since Rep. Kevin McCarthy is a coward who won’t even finish his term, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) has called for a special election to replace him on May 21 ([link removed]) .


Perhaps looking to expand her resume of dirtbag bona fides, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) allegedly punched her ex-husband in the face ([link removed]) .


In slightly terrifying news, the Federal Aviation Administration grounded dozens of flights of Boeing 737 Max 9 planes on Saturday ([link removed]) after a door panel blew out during an Alaska Airlines flight at 16,000 feet last week. United Airlines said on Monday it found loose bolts on door plugs of several of those planes.


Mehdi Hasan announced he is leaving MSNBC ([link removed]) following the network’s decision to cancel his show in November. The cancellation drew criticism from many progressives like Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) who noted the “bad optics” of taking the network’s only Muslim anchor off the air amid rapidly-deteriorating human rights conditions in Gaza.


Christian Ziegler, the chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, was ousted from his position on Monday ([link removed]) amidst an ongoing criminal investigation of sexual assault allegations.


Pope Francis called surrogate motherhood ([link removed]) a “despicable” practice and argued that it should be banned everywhere, claiming that it amounts to the “commercialization” of pregnancy “based on the exploitation of situations of the mother’s material needs,” referring to the cloud of financial exploitation ([link removed].) that has long hung over the commercial surrogacy industry. As a rule, we would urge the World’s Most Famous Virgin to steer clear of this topic.

An explosion in a hotel in Fort Worth, Texas ([link removed]) , injured more than 20 people. Authorities said they believe the blast was caused by natural gas.

A nationwide crisis of absenteeism exploded during the pandemic. In the United States, the rate of chronic absenteeism (technically defined as missing 10 percent of school days in a given year) almost doubled during the pandemic to 28 percent of all students ([link removed]) . Some cities are experiencing rates higher than 40 percent. Two-thirds of students now attend a school with “high or extreme levels of chronic absence,” according to another recent study ([link removed]) . This spike in absenteeism also correlates to a notable drop in test scores ([link removed]) . Meanwhile, enforcement of truancy laws has grown less common, and both the state and federal governments have largely abdicated their role in addressing the problem. Faced with this crisis, some
schools are turning to private companies to conduct home visits to find out why kids are missing class, and then follow up with families and the schools to get the students’ attendance rates back up. ProPublica profiled one such company, Concentric, which now has over 100 employees and recently received a $5 million investment from a social-venture-capital firm to fuel expansion. Whether or not this responsibility should be turned over to private companies, rather than managed by the schools themselves with better funding and support, absenteeism has clearly become a massive—yet under-discussed—problem. It’s critical to the future of millions of students that the truancy crisis be meaningfully addressed.
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Prince’s classic 1984 film “Purple Rain” is in production to become a stage musical. ([link removed]) I don’t know anything about musical theater but it seems like a good thing. Please don’t yell at me.


Lily Gladstone became the first indigenous woman to win the Golden Globe for Best Actress ([link removed]) in “Killers of the Flower Moon.”


Following his fiery speech commemorating the third anniversary of the January 6 insurrection, President Biden raised over $1 million in online donations in 24 hours ([link removed]) .

Disgraced former president Donald Trump made the bizarre implication that magnets cease to function if submerged in water ([link removed]) in a particularly weird (even for him) word-salad campaign speech.
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