- Disgraced former president Donald Trump, flawless cognition-haver

Another deadly incident unfolded in Gaza on Thursday.
 

• Officials in Gaza reported that more than 100 people were killed and over 700 were injured when violence engulfed a crowd of people waiting for a rare humanitarian aid convoy in Gaza City. Palestinian officials attributed the casualties to Israeli forces opening fire on the crowd, and Israeli officials attributed them primarily to a stampede. Israel claimed that an unspecified number of the casualties were caused by people scrambling to reach the aid trucks. Nir Dinar, head of the Israel Defense Forces international press department, said there was “no IDF involvement” whatsoever in what he described as a “mass casualty” event. Dinar acknowledged to The Washington Post that IDF troops did open fire on members of the crowd whom he said approached soldiers in a manner they deemed threatening, but insisted the deaths occurred at the other end of the convoy as a result of a crush of people. Another IDF spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said: “The IDF was there conducting a humanitarian operation to secure the humanitarian corridor and allow the aid convoy to reach its designated distribution point.” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, however, called the incident an “ugly massacre.”
   

• President Biden told reporters on Thursday that the incident would likely complicate negotiations over a possible hostage deal. Medics in Gaza, already stretched to capacity, said they were unable to cope with the flood of injured persons. A video, whose location was verified by Reuters, showed trucks loaded with many dead bodies and the wounded. French foreign ministry spokesperson Christophe Lemoine said Israel is responsible under international law for protecting civilians and ensuring the distribution of aid. The U.N., Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and other humanitarian agencies have repeatedly claimed that Israel has blocked or restricted the flow of aid into Gaza, which Israel also denies. 
   

• The United States is trying to determine the finer details of the incident, according to State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller. The State Department believes that a commercial convoy delivering humanitarian aid, rather than a United Nations delivery,was swarmed by people seeking food. But Miller would not speculate further, saying there are “conflicting reports.” Aerial footage from the scene, Miller said, makes two things clear: The “situation is incredibly desperate, that people are swarming these trucks because they are hungry,” and “too many Palestinians died today, as has been true far too many days since October 7th.” Pentagon spokesperson Air Force Major General Patrick Ryder said in a Thursday news briefing” “These are human beings that are trying to feed themselves…We’re all kind of looking at that and saying, ‘What happened here?’” The death toll in Gaza has now topped 30,000, according to Palestinian health officials.

The continued bloodshed in Gaza and the White House’s staunch support for Israel’s military campaign is causing political trouble for President Biden among a sizable demographic of Democratic voters. 
 

• After the “uncommitted” campaign in Michigan (a silent protest of President Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict) received a whopping 13 percent of the ballots cast on Tuesday, Democratic voters opposed to Israel’s campaign in Gaza are looking for ways to make their voices heard in other states. Washington state’s largest labor union—the state chapter of the United Food and Commercial Workers—endorsed voting “uncommitted” in their March 12 presidential primary contest. In a statement on Wednesday night, the UFCW, which represents over 50,000 workers in The Evergreen State, called Biden “an ally to workers over the last four years,” but suggested that the union is not confident in his ability to defeat Donald Trump in November. The hope, the UFCW statement read, is that the demonstration of displeasure from voters “will strengthen the Democratic party’s ultimate nominee to defeat Trump in the General Election in November.” 
   

• Some have expressed confusion about the purpose or utility of the “uncommitted” campaign, while others have accused the voters of propping up Donald Trump to win in November. But like many “uncommitted” voters, the UFCW made it clear that it will support Democrats in the fall and vowed to send “staff, members, and resources to any swing state across the nation to support the Democratic nominee to win and defeat Trump.” Proponents of the “uncommitted” campaign say they know that Biden will be the nominee in November, but are hoping that this expression of dissent will move him to change course and become a stronger candidate. In a press conference for the “Uncommitted” campaign on Wednesday, Mayor of Dearborn, MI Abdullah Hammoud said that President Biden “has the choice to continue supporting and aligning himself with a war criminal, Benjamin Netanyahu, the most tyrannical government in Israel’s history. Or he has the choice to heed the concerns of residents…not only in the state of Michigan, but across the country, from coast to coast.” 

The voices of “uncommitted” voters may not evaporate after their state’s primary day. Should the campaign cross a certain threshold of votes—as it did in Michigan—it will be able to send delegates to the Democratic National Convention in August.

Mark your calendars! Join Crooked hosts and staff on March 7th for a State of the Union GroupThread. This time around, you can watch along with us on the Pod Save America YouTube channel or our Friends of the Pod Discord where you’ll be able to submit questions for us in the main chat. If that sounds like your kind of watch party, head to crooked.com/friends to learn more and sign up.

The New York Times is conducting a highly-unusual investigation into internal leaks, according to Vanity Fair.  Managers are reportedly trying to find out who spoke to the The Intercept, which reported last month that an episode of the Times podcast “The Daily,” which was focused on allegations of sexual violence by Hamas on October 7, was ultimately pulled. The Intercept reported on January 28 that the Times planned to air the episode of “The Daily” in December, based on a published investigation led by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jeffrey Gettelman and co-authored by freelancers Anat Schwartz and Adam Stella. The episode reportedly aimed to depict how Hamas “weaponized sexual violence” in its terror attack that killed over 1,200 people. 
 

The episode was allegedly shelved “amid a furious internal debate about the strength of the paper’s original reporting on the subject,” the Intercept reported. The original article published by the Times had presented its findings as definitive evidence of the systemic use of sexual violence as a weapon in the conflict. But “The Daily” staff drafted a new script that “offered major caveats, allowed for uncertainty, and asked open-ended questions that were absent from the original article,” according to The Intercept. Times representatives told Vanity Fair and The Intercept that the paper doesn’t comment on internal matters or “ongoing reporting.” A Times spokesperson told The Intercept: “there is only one ‘version’ of any piece of audio journalism: the one that publishes.” Another told Vanity Fair: “I can tell you that the work of our newsroom requires trust and collaboration, and we expect all of our colleagues to adhere to these values.” 

The Times announced this week that it was “reviewing” its relationship with Anat Schwartz—who began reporting for the paper in November—for “liking” several controversial posts on X (Twitter), including one saying that Israel should turn Gaza “into a slaughterhouse.” But Times International editor Phil Pan said in a statement that he stands by Shwartz’s work, and that she was part of a “rigorous reporting and editing process.” He continued that the paper “saw no evidence of bias in her work. We remain confident in the accuracy of our reporting and stand by the team’s investigation. But as we have said, her ‘likes’ of offensive and opinionated social media posts, predating her work with us, are unacceptable.” 

President Biden and former president Trump visited Texas border cities 300 miles apart on Thursday along the Rio Grande river, offering two very different responses to address the surge of migration across the U.S.-Mexico border . 

Judges and prosecutors in cases related to disgraced former president Donald Trump are facing an unprecedented volume of threats of violence. 

President Biden continues to trail Trump in seven key swing states. 

Jack Teixeira, the young military computer technician accused of leaking classified government intelligence over the social app Discord, will enter a guilty plea in federal district court in Boston on Monday. 

FBI Director Christopher Wray told a national security conference on Thursday that the United States should expect to face fast-moving threats to American elections this year as artificial intelligence and other tech advances have made election meddling easier than ever. 

The Republican-controlled Alabama House of Representatives voted on Thursday to give IVF doctors criminal immunity for “death” or damage to frozen embryos. 

State Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R-MO) sued a Planned Parenthood affiliate on Thursday accusing it of “trafficking” minors by helping pregnant teenagers seeking abortions travel to Kansas for the procedure. These fucking guys. 

Studies involving almost 10 million people found a direct association between eating too many ultra-processed foods (industrially-manufactured food-like products riddled with additives to make them highly-palatable) and 32 health conditions, including heart disease, anxiety, and early death. These foods account for up to 58 percent of total daily caloric intake in the United States. No one is doing it quite like us!!!

Russian President Vladimir Putin is threatening nuclear war if NATO troops come to Ukraine’s aid in defending itself against Russia. Another chill, Rational Male™ in our midst!

A controversial (read: not based in science) “fetal development” video created by an anti-abortion group—that they say “proves” fetal personhood—is being pushed into American classrooms, and conservative lawmakers in several states want showing it to students to be mandatory. Maybe make female reproductive anatomy mandatory first before moving on to fiction. 

New York state approved its new bipartisan congressional map on Wednesday night and it’s, uh, basically the same as the old one, with only slight adjustments to districts. Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) signed the new map into law later that night. The Empire State is key to Democratic efforts to take back the House—learn more at votesaveamerica.com!

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The Biden administration is proposing new regulations to make air travel easier for wheelchair users. The rule would make “mishandling” of assistive devices like wheelchairs “an automatic violation of the Air Carrier Access Act,” and would make it easier for the Department of Transportation to hold airlines accountable when mobility aids are damaged. 

A California judge tentatively ruled that nearly 6,000 Black factory workers can sue Tesla as a group for the company’s failure to address rampant racial discrimination and harassment at its Fremont, CA plant. 

A short-term bill to extend government funding deadlines passed through both houses of Congress on Thursday, forestalling a potential shutdown—for now.