AZB has a new video. They are my favorite YOUTUBE couple.
His remarks on Thursday – part of a relatively lengthy diatribe condemning not only trans people but marriage equality, abortion rights and surrogacy – drew little attention outside the poorly attended convention hall, but underscored the ubiquity of anti-trans rhetoric that is threading nearly every single event at the conference and throughout Republican politics.
As LGBT+ communities and families across the nation are reeling from the death of a bullied gender-fluid 16-year-old in Oklahoma, CPAC’s attendees – including close allies of Donald Trump and activist influencers dedicated to ending affirming healthcare – repeatedly misgendered and ridiculed trans people, all while invoking Christianity and Biblical passages.
At last year’s CPAC, Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville dismissed trans girls and women as “biological boys”; sports, he said, must be “protected” because “sports have built this country”.
This year, he promoted legislation to “prohibit any governing body recognized by the US Olympic Committee” from allowing trans women to participate “in any athletic event intended for females.”
Lara Trump – former president Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law and potential new Republican National Committee leader – rejected what she called a “fabricated notion that you can change your gender like you change your shoes.”
Benjamin Goggin, NBC News’s deputy tech editor, defended his report on Nazis receiving a “friendly reception” at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference after CPAC publicly called it “false, misleading, and grossly manipulative.”
Goggin noted in his report that CPAC has long had to deal with far-right extremists trying to infiltrate the conference, but in past years would quickly eject those with explicit ties to neo-Nazis, like Nick Fuentes.
“But this year, racist conspiracy theorists didn’t meet any perceptible resistance at the conference where Donald Trump has been the keynote speaker since 2017,” Goggin wrote, adding:
At the Young Republican mixer Friday evening, a group of Nazis who openly identified as national socialists mingled with mainstream conservative personalities, including some from Turning Point USA, and discussed so-called “race science” and antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Goggin also reported on other easily identifiable figures with ties to neo-Nazis he saw at CPAC, including one “with an official badge” from the event.
To find out who’s targeted, all you have to do is refer to a 900-page “Mandate for Leadership” produced for Project 2025, the effort led by the right-wing Heritage Foundation and supported by almost 100 Trump-supporting groups. It’s a blueprint for the authoritarian Republican administration they hope is coming next.
The project, “backed by a multimillion-dollar war chest,” has been described as a plan that “would enable Trump to wield virtually unchecked power over the executive branch of the federal government and allow him to use it as a weapon against personal enemies, political opponents and the media.”
And while it’s starting to get more attention, I’m surprised at how little everyday Americans know about it — even in well-informed circles.
Certainly, Trump’s highest-profile political opponents know. They would be in the crosshairs of a weaponized Department of Justice because the plan’s call for total presidential control of executive departments would end 50 years of an independent Department of Justice.
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Michigan activists want to shock and shame the Biden campaign in the state's Tuesday primary to take seriously the risk of losing the support of Muslim and Arab Americans.
Why it matters: The war in Gaza has hurt President Biden's support among the same voters who were crucial to him flipping the state from Trump in 2020.
Activists want voters to back "uncommitted" instead of Biden.
- Biden has lost the community "at a fundamental level," says Abbas Alawieh, a spokesperson for the Listen to Michigan campaign, during Israel's military strikes — described as the most destructive in recent history.
- "[T]his is a warning to Biden like, get your s--t together or you're going to lose," said Adam Abusalah, a Dearborn native who worked on Biden's 2020 campaign and is also pushing an "uncommitted" vote.
- Local Arab American leaders refused to meet with a top Biden campaign adviser last month.
Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat who is the only Palestinian-American serving in Congress, urged Democrats last week to vote “uncommitted” in Michigan’s 27 February primary.
“We don’t want a country that supports war and bombs and destruction. We want to support life. We want to stand up for every single life killed in Gaza … This is the way you can raise our voices. Don’t make us even more invisible. Right now, we feel completely neglected and just unseen by our government,” she said in a video posted to her Twitter account. “If you want us to be louder, then come here and vote uncommitted.”
Tlaib’s sister, Layla Elabed, is the campaign manager for Listen to Michigan, the group that has been leading the effort to get people to vote uncommitted. The group has the support of 30 elected officials across south-east Michigan, including Abdullah Hammoud, the mayor of Dearborn, which has a large Arab American population.
“Biden must earn our vote through a dramatic change in policy,” the group says on its website. “President Biden has been a successful candidate in the past by representing a broad coalition, but right now he’s not representing the vast majority of Democrats who want a ceasefire and an end to his funding of Israel’s war in Gaza.”
Joe Queally (COMMON DREAMS) reports:
Texas Democrat Beto O'Rourke became the latest high-profile member of the party to back the push for Michigan voters to tick the "uncommitted" box on the primary ballot next week as a way to protest President Joe Biden's unconditional support of Israel's unyielding assault on the people of Gaza.
"I do think it makes sense for those who want to see this administration do more, or do a better job, to exert that political pressure and get the president's attention and the attention of those on his campaign so that the United States does better," said the former congressman who has run for both president and the U.S. Senate.
In an interview with the Michigan Advance on Friday, O'Rourke explained that he was partly influenced by a recent New York Times op-ed by Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud which argued that "no amount of landmark legislation" passed by the Biden administration "can outweigh the more than 100,000 people killed, wounded, or missing in Gaza. The scales of justice will not allow it."
O'Rourke said he agrees "with the aims and the goals" of the grassroots campaign in Michigan that is urging Democrats to use Tuesday's primary contest, in which Biden faces no real opponent, as a way to express the deep frustration many voters in the state are feeling over the carnage in Gaza.
"We should have a ceasefire, there should be a return of each [and] every single one of those hostages [taken by Hamas], there should be an end to this war and there should be a negotiated solution to Palestinian statehood," O’Rourke told the news outlet. "All of that needs to happen, and I share the concern that the United States is not doing close to enough to bring those things to pass."
Polls have shown a strong majority of Democratic voters support an immediate cease-fire in Gaza, something Biden has steadfastly refused. Disagreement with the administration's policy is especially high among younger voters as well as the Arab American and Muslim Americans who represent a sizeable bloc of Michigan voters.
When the terrorist group Hamas unleashed its barbaric attack inside Israel last October, the response by the Israeli government was swift.
Israel launched thousands of troops, tanks and more than 45,000 bombs into Gaza, decimating entire cities.
The Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health says more than 29,000 people have been killed and nearly 2 million displaced - numbers many in the Israeli press and the United Nations are reporting.
Israel has barred journalists from independently accessing the Gaza strip, defying the long-standing precedent of allowing reporters into war zones.
Aid workers say a "catastrophic" humanitarian crisis is unfolding in Gaza, but reporting on it has been challenging.
So we asked aid workers, including two Americans – to share their view from inside Gaza over the last 142 days.
A warning -- it is difficult to watch.
This was the scene at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza in late January.
The Israeli government has failed to comply with at least one measure in the legally binding order from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in South Africa’s genocide case, Human Rights Watch said today. Citing warnings about “catastrophic conditions” in Gaza, the court ordered Israel on January 26, 2024, to “take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian aid,” and to report back on its compliance to the specific measures “within one month.”
One month later, however, Israel continues to obstruct the provision of basic services and the entry and distribution within Gaza of fuel and lifesaving aid, acts of collective punishment that amount to war crimes and include the use of starvation of civilians as a weapon of war. Fewer trucks have entered Gaza and fewer aid missions have been permitted to reach northern Gaza in the several weeks since the ruling than in the weeks preceding it, according to United Nations Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
“The Israeli government is starving Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians, putting them in even more peril than before the World Court’s binding order,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. “The Israeli government has simply ignored the court’s ruling, and in some ways even intensified its repression, including further blocking lifesaving aid.”
Other countries should use all forms of leverage, including sanctions and embargoes, to press the Israeli government to comply with the court’s binding orders in the genocide case, Human Rights Watch said.
Human Rights Watch found in December 2023 that Israeli authorities are using starvation as a weapon of war. Pursuant a policy set out by Israeli officials and carried out by Israeli forces, the Israeli authorities are deliberately blocking the delivery of water, food, and fuel, willfully impeding humanitarian assistance, apparently razing agricultural areas, and depriving the civilian population of objects indispensable to its survival.
Israeli authorities have kept its supply of electricity for Gaza shut off since the October 7 Hamas-led attacks. After initially cutting the entire supply of water that Israel provides to Gaza via three pipelines, Israel resumed piping on two of its three lines. However, due to the cuts and widespread destruction to water infrastructure amid unrelenting Israeli air and ground operations, only one of those lines remained operational at only 47 percent capacity as of February 20. Officials at the Gaza Coastal Municipalities Water Utility told Human Rights Watch on February 20 that Israeli authorities have obstructed efforts to repair the water infrastructure.
According to data published by OCHA and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the daily average number of trucks entering Gaza with food, aid, and medicine dropped by more than a third in the weeks following the ICJ ruling: 93 trucks between January 27 and February 21, 2024, compared to 147 trucks between January 1 and 26, and only 57 between February 9 and 21. A survey of impediments to the entry of aid faced by 24 humanitarian organizations operating in Gaza between January 26 and February 15 pointed to a lack of transparency around how aid trucks can enter Gaza, delays and denials at Israeli crossings and inspection points, and concerns about safety of trucks.
By comparison, an average of 500 trucks of food and goods entered
Gaza each day before the escalation in hostilities in October, during
which time 1.2 million people in Gaza were estimated to be facing acute food insecurity, and 80 percent of Gaza’s population were reliant on humanitarian aid amid Israel's more than 16-year-long unlawful closure.
High-ranking Israeli officials have articulated a policy to deprive civilians of food, water, and fuel, as Human Rights Watch has documented. The Israeli government spokesperson said more recently that there are “no limits” to aid entering Gaza, outside of security. Some Israeli officials blame the UN for distribution delays and accuse Hamas of diverting aid or Gaza police for failing to secure convoys.
The Israeli government cannot shift blame to evade responsibility, Human Rights Watch said. As the occupying power, Israel is obliged to provide for the welfare of the occupied population and ensure that the humanitarian needs of Gaza’s population are met. The Israeli human rights group Gisha challenged the Israeli government’s claims that it is not obstructing entry or distribution of aid and also found that it is not complying with the ICJ order.
Israeli authorities have also obstructed the aid that enters Gaza from reaching areas in the north. The survey of humanitarian organizations found that “almost no aid is distributed beyond Rafah,” Gaza’s southernmost governorate. On February 20, the World Food Programme paused deliveries of lifesaving food to the north, citing lack of safety and security. Israeli forces struck a food convoy on February 5, the UN said and CNN documented.
Between February 1 and 15, Israeli authorities only facilitated 2 of 21 planned missions to deliver fuel to the north of the Wadi Gaza area in central Gaza and none of the 16 planned fuel delivery or assessment missions to water and wastewater pumping stations in the north. Fewer than 20 percent of planned missions to deliver fuel and undertake assessments north of Wadi Gaza have been facilitated between January 1 and February 15, as compared with 86 percent of missions planned between October and December, according to OCHA.
“Israel’s ground forces are able to reach all parts of Gaza, so Israeli authorities clearly have the capacity to ensure that aid reaches all of Gaza,” Shakir said.
Since the ICJ order, Israeli authorities have also apparently destroyed the offices of at least two humanitarian organizations in Gaza and taken steps to undermine the work of UNRWA, the largest provider of humanitarian aid in Gaza, which more than half of other humanitarian organizations rely on to facilitate their operations. The head of UNWRA, Philippe Lazarini, said in a February 22 letter to the UN General Assembly president that the agency has reached a “breaking point” due to multiple government suspensions of funding and Israel’s campaign to shut the agency down.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said on February 13 that he had blocked a US-funded flour shipment to Gaza, because it was going to UNRWA. Israel has alleged that at least 12 of the agency’s 30,000 employees participated in the October 7 attacks, which the UN is investigating.
In late December, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a multi-partner initiative that regularly publishes information on the scale and severity of food insecurity and malnutrition globally, concluded that over 90 percent of Gaza’s population is at crisis level of acute food insecurity or worse. The IPC said that virtually all Palestinians in Gaza are skipping meals every day while many adults go hungry so children can eat, and that the population faced famine if current conditions persisted. “This is the highest share of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity that the IPC initiative has ever classified for any given area or country,” the group said.
On February 19, The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) found that 90 percent of children under age 2 and 95 percent of pregnant and breastfeeding women face “severe food poverty.” On February 22, Save the Children said families in Gaza “are forced to forage for scraps of food left by rats and eating leaves out of desperation to survive,” noting that “all 1.1 million children in Gaza [are] facing starvation.”
In response to a request by South Africa for additional provisional measures following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s order for Israeli authorities to explore a possible plan to evacuate Rafah ahead of a ground incursion, the ICJ said that the “perilous situation demands immediate and effective implementation of the provisional measures” throughout Gaza – but not new measures – and highlighted Israel’s duty to ensure “the safety and security of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”
Beyond enabling the provision of basic services and aid, the measures in the ICJ’s binding order require Israel to prevent genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and prevent and punish incitement to commit genocide. The ICJ issued these measures “to protect the rights claimed by South Africa that the Court has found to be plausible,” including “the right of the Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from acts of genocide.” Although South Africa asked the court in its oral arguments during January hearings on the provisional measures to make any report it ordered public, the court did not indicate that it has done so.
Between January 26 and February 23, more than 3,400 Palestinians were killed in Gaza, according to figures from Gaza’s Health Ministry compiled by OCHA.
South Africa’s case against Israel for genocide is distinct from the proceedings on the legal consequences of Israel’s 57-year-occupation, which began at the ICJ on February 19.
“Israel’s blatant disregard for the World Court’s order poses a direct challenge to the rules-based international order,” Shakir said. “Failure to ensure Israel’s compliance puts the lives of millions of Palestinians at risk and threatens to undermine the institutions charged with ensuring respect for international law and the system that ensures civilian protection worldwide.”
Kat's "Kat's Korner: Melissa Manchester's back" went up today. The following sites updated:
