After more than two and a half years of denial, Israel’s military has finally admitted to unleashing a volley of 335 bullets at 6-year-old Hind Rajab in Gaza as she remained trapped inside a car carrying relatives who had already been killed.

Previously, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) refused to take any responsibility for the killings, pointing to a sham preliminary investigation into the January 2024 incident that allegedly found its forces were “not present near the vehicle or within firing range” of the car.

But all credible evidence pointed to the opposite conclusion.

Now, the IDF is attempting to shroud its actions in a veneer of phony accountability. The Israeli army is finally acknowledging that its forces killed Hind, along with her relatives and two emergency workers who arrived at the scene to save her. But it is also attempting to justify the barbarism of what happened that day.

In a statement, the IDF claims that:

“The findings of the examination indicate that IDF troops fired at a vehicle that was approaching them. Following review of the findings and due to apparent failures in the coordination of the movement of the Palestine Red Crescent ambulance, it has been decided to initiate a criminal investigation of the incident by Military Police Criminal Investigation Division.”

In other words, the Israelis are not interested in accountability. They’re simply changing their story while continuing to absolve themselves of responsibility for the horrific war crimes they’re accused of committing.

On the day Hind was killed, she and her relatives were fleeing Gaza City when an Israeli tank opened fire on their black Kia, killing Hind’s aunt, uncle, and three cousins. The little girl and her 15-year-old cousin, Layan Hamadeh, survived the initial attack.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) later called Layan in an effort to send help. In the recorded call, Hind’s cousin can be heard telling the dispatcher, “They are shooting at us” and “The tank is next to us.”

Those were Layan’s last words.

The recording captured Israeli gunfire, along with Layan’s terrified screams, before the call abruptly went dead.

That moment can be heard in the video below, courtesy of Al Jazeera’s documentary “The Night Won’t End.”

When Red Crescent dispatchers called the same number back, Hind answered.

For the next 3½ hours, the terrified little girl repeatedly begged them to come save her as the Palestinian Red Crescent Society coordinated with the Israeli military and Gaza Health Ministry to secure safe passage for an ambulance crew to reach her.

After nearly three hours of negotiations, Israeli authorities finally gave the ambulance the green light and provided a map outlining the route it was authorized to take.

But the ambulance never made it to Hind.

Despite traveling along the Israeli-approved route, the ambulance came under fire just meters from Hind’s car, killing paramedics Yusuf al-Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoun before they could reach her.

For the next 12 days, Hind’s fate remained unknown.

It was only after Israeli forces withdrew from the area that a Palestinian civil defense crew was finally able to reach the scene. There, they found Hind’s tiny body inside the black Kia, surrounded by her dead relatives and hundreds of bullet holes.

Just meters away lay the charred remains of the ambulance that had been sent to save her. Inside were the bodies of al-Zeino and al-Madhoun. According to the Washington Post’s investigation:

“ The ambulance lay charred roughly 50 meters (about 164 feet) away from the car, its destruction consistent with the use of a round fired by Israeli tanks, according to six munitions experts.”

And while the latest statement from the IDF lays blame on “apparent failures in the coordination of the movement of the Palestine Red Crescent ambulance,” it is crystal clear that none of that failure can be blamed on the PRCS:

The Post’s review also found that the ambulance was discovered along a route provided by COGAT, an arm of the Israeli Defense Ministry that generally coordinates safe passage for medical vehicles with the IDF.

In mid-March, Elad Goren, head of Coordination and Liaison Administration at COGAT, told The Post that the agency “coordinated everything … including the ambulance that wanted to go and find Hind,” but said he was “not aware” of the specifics. COGAT did not respond to repeated requests to clarify.

The IDF’s crimes against humanity did not end with the slaughter of Hind, her relatives, and the two rescue workers who tried to save her.

In March 2025, Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza, preventing food, medicine, and other humanitarian supplies from entering the besieged enclave for nearly three months. As Palestinians starved, publications like The Free Press shamefully dismissed the mounting evidence of mass starvation and cast doubt on reports that Palestinian children were dying from hunger.

The United Nations would later report that Israeli forces killed 1,373 Palestinians as they desperately sought food between May 27 and July 31, 2025. Hundreds were killed near militarized food-distribution sites, while hundreds more were killed along humanitarian aid convoy routes.

Israel’s destruction did not stop at Gaza’s borders.

Israeli forces devastated villages and civilian infrastructure across southern Lebanon. In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces and settlers killed and maimed Palestinians as Israel accelerated settlement expansion, demolished homes, seized land, and drove Palestinian communities from places where they had lived for generations.

Then came Iran.

After years of Israeli leaders pushing Washington toward confrontation with Tehran, the United States was ultimately pulled into a disastrous war that has killed thousands, destabilized the region, and inflicted enormous costs far beyond Israel’s borders.

Through all of it, Washington has continued to provide Israel with extraordinary military, financial, and diplomatic support.

That support has not restrained Israel. It has shielded it.

Decades of virtually unconditional American backing have helped insulate the Israeli government from meaningful consequences as it has killed civilians, displaced entire communities, destroyed homes and civilian infrastructure, and expanded its reach across the region.

There is nothing moral or defensible about continuing to bankroll this carnage.

U.S. support for it needs to end.

And it needs to end now.

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When Hezbollah fighters killed five members of Israel’s occupation forces in southern Lebanon a few weeks ago, Israelis and their Western defenders wasted no time portraying themselves as victims.

In reality, the IDF has deployed what Israeli defense minister Israel Katz calls the “Gaza model” in Lebanon. Every major human rights group, including the Israeli organization B’Tselem, has concluded that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. So, by Israel’s own admission, the IDF is carrying out crimes against humanity in Lebanon and the international community is somehow obligated to mourn the death of the aggressors?

Among those killed on June 19 was 52nd Battalion, 401st Brigade Lieutenant-Colonel Dor Gedalia Ben Simhon, whose unit was responsible for the notorious killing of six-year-old Hind Rajab and six of her family members in Gaza. The same IDF unit also killed two emergency workers after their ambulance had been given safe passage to approach the car carrying Hind and her family.

Similar atrocities are being committed in Lebanon, where Israeli forces have displaced 1.5 million people, slaughtered 4,246 and injured 12,190 since March 2. The IDF soldiers who were killed by Hezbollah’s cheaply-made drones as they sat in their $6 million Merkava tanks were the aggressors, not victims.

The IDF’s crimes against humanity in Gaza should serve as a case study for how the Israelis operate in the region overall. While Israeli officials openly and repeatedly expressed their genocidal intentions in Gaza, Americans are fed lies about their “right to self defense.”

We were told the IDF were carrying out precise and targeted strikes against Hamas.

We were supposed to shrug at the tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians who were slaughtered, including women, children, journalists, emergency workers and doctors.

We were urged to ignore what was plainly visible as the IDF flattened vast swaths of the Gaza Strip in a relentless bombing campaign, which continues to target displaced civilians living in tents today.

Despicable media figures who parade around as “journalists” have either been complicit in Israel’s genocidal acts, too cowardly to report the truth or naive enough to believe the obvious lies. Now that Netanyahu himself has made clear that Israel will take over Gaza and pressure Palestinians to leave, his loathsome American defenders have shifted to gaslighting the public on Israel’s treachery in Lebanon.

For those interested in living in a fact-based reality, Israel’s true intentions have been clearly laid out by their National Security Minister Ben-Gvir, who recently said that “Lebanon— all of Lebanon—should become [Israel’s] playground. All of Lebanon should be our target.”

Ben-Gvir made sure to clarify that the IDF isn’t simply targeting Hezbollah. “They tell me, ‘Wait a second, there is Lebanon and there is Hezbollah.’ I do not accept this artificial approach,” he said.

Israel’s claims of “self-defense” were obvious from the start. They were obvious when:

• roughly one million residents in southern Lebanon were displaced due to the IDF’s forced evacuation orders.

• UN peacekeepers (UNIFIL) documented the IDF’s 10,000+ ceasefire violations following Israel’s signing of a November 2024 ceasefire deal with Hezbollah.

• the IDF targeted and killed several UNIFIL peacekeepers.

• the Israeli military seized 4.6% of Lebanese territory a day after signing the ceasefire and announced that residents would be permanently barred from returning to their homes.

• Israel expanded the occupied zone in April, which now covers 6% of Lebanon.

• the IDF proudly announced they had carpet bombed Lebanon in April to squash a ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran. The IDF dropped 100 bombs across the Lebanon in 10 minutes.

• 135 health sector workers were targeted and killed by the IDF. According to the Lebanon National News Agency, which tracks official public health reports, “76 attacks [have been] carried out by the Israeli army against ambulance teams and medical personnel.”

• the IDF razed dozens of Lebanese villages since March, leading an Amnesty International investigator to declare that “this is basically the same pattern that we documented back in Gaza.”

• Israel confirmed that it is applying the Gaza model in Lebanon.

On Friday, Lebanon signed yet another U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal with Israel, sparking protests in Beirut over what many see as the formal legitimization of Israel’s occupation. Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem accused the Lebanese government of making concessions that are “humiliating, shameful and a surrender of sovereignty.”

The Lebanese government is operating under the laughable illusion that Israel will eventually end its occupation once Hezbollah is disarmed, a task neither the Lebanese army nor the IDF have the capacity to accomplish.

Just one day after signing the deal, Israel launched additional strikes in the southern town of Nabatieh and Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz declared that the IDF had been ordered to “prepare for an extended stay” six miles inside Lebanese territory.

A total of 36 IDF soldiers have been killed in during their occupation of southern Lebanon since March 2. They are not victims, and they are fortunate the death toll remains this low. Rather than solicit sympathy, the Israelis should learn to honor borders, respect the self-determination of the Palestinian people and get the fuck out of Lebanon.

Instead, Israeli officials are already plotting their next war against Turkey.

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The Zionist activists moonlighting as “journalists” over at The Free Press erroneously claim the State Department is looking to deport Quincy Institute co-founder Trita Parsi, whose calls for restraint in U.S. foreign policy run counter to Israel’s endless thirst for bloodshed and border expansion.

Citing anonymous White House sources in a post titled “Will the U.S. Deport Trita Parsi?” disgraced contributing writer Jay Solomon claims that the State Department launched an investigation into Parsi for supposedly amplifying propaganda from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Solomon writes:

“The State Department has launched an investigation of Parsi and could try to deport him, according to U.S. officials and documents reviewed by The Free Press. Parsi was born in Iran, grew up in Sweden, has lived in the U.S. for over 25 years, and holds a green card.

“The secretary has been very clear,” said a Trump administration official about Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s efforts to combat Iranian influence inside the U.S. “Anyone who seeks to undermine the U.S., we’re taking a hard look at.” That includes “people who support adversaries of ours and whose work furthers their agenda and undermines our security.”

The Quincy Institute took Solomon’s reporting seriously and lawyered up. However, the latest update from Parsi himself, along with a statement from the State Department, uncovers just how far some are willing to go to punish and silence anyone who poses a challenge to the Zionist project.

Parsi writes:

“…the State Department issued a statement to reporters clarifying that ‘the State Department has no plans to revoke the green card of Mr. Parsi at this time.’ Nor did it provide any confirmation for the central premise of the Free Press story—that an investigation of me existed in the first place.

I don’t believe there was any investigation against me. Rather, some elements within the State Department wanted to start one and thought external pressure could help move things forward. I say “additional” because for weeks, pro-Israel social media influencers had been urging the U.S. government to deport me, while some activists—or intelligence operators—even produced an AI-generated video of me being arrested by ICE.

At the Quincy Institute, we heard from sources inside the administration that there never was an investigation, that none of the principals were aware of the issue, and that the alleged source for the Free Press story may have been a “rogue actor.” That, presumably, is why the State Department took the highly unusual step of publicly refuting Solomon’s report.”

It’s unsurprising that “elements within the State Department” would lean on The Free Press and Jay Solomon as tools to carry out their censorious thuggery in lieu of healthy debate.

Solomon is no journalist.

He was fired as chief foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in 2017 after an Associated Press investigation uncovered his financial dealings with one of his key sources: an Iranian-born gunrunner named Farhad Azima.

Emails and business documents obtained by the AP revealed that Azima, a CIA asset involved in the Iran-Contra scandal, discussed with Solomon a $725 billion contract with the UAE to surveil Iran. One of the documents, dated March 2015, showed that Solomon was a partner in one of Azima’s companies. NPR also reported at the time that Azima had offered Solomon a 10 percent stake in Denx LLC, a private intelligence firm.

“That Jay Solomon and The Free Press would play [a role in triggering an investigation], wittingly or unwittingly, should surprise no one,” Parsi said.

The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft happens to be one of the few think tanks in Washington that pursues diplomacy over bloodshed. The organization’s website clearly explains that its mission is to “…connect and mobilize a network of policy experts and academics who are dedicated to a vision of American foreign policy based on military restraint rather than domination.”

I’ve had several interviews with Parsi, and the idea that he would pose a threat to anyone in the U.S. is absurd.

One of the most admirable elements of Parsi’s project is that he uniquely seeks to enhance cooperation among the anti-war left and right. As a result, he has offered his expertise and perspectives on political shows that span the ideological spectrum, from Steve Bannon’s War Room to Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman.

So, why would someone like Parsi draw the ire of adherents to the Zionist cause? It should be obvious at this point. Nonetheless, political scientist John Mearsheimer laid out the reason perfectly in a recent conversation with Tucker Carlson:

“In large part, Israel and the [Israel] lobby have a deep-seated interest in making sure that the United States is militarily involved all over the world because they want an American military that’s at the ready if Israel gets into trouble. So, whenever you talk about restraint, like the Quincy Institute in Washington talks about restraint, this raises the hackles of the lobby.”

In targeting Parsi, Solomon now joins the ranks of literal mental patients like Laura Loomer and a particularly violent faction of the Iranian diaspora that revels in the bombing of their homeland, which has already killed thousands of Iranian civilians.

Congrats, I guess?

The whole debacle involving Parsi touches on a broader issue facing the U.S. and its media landscape. Zionists are under the impression that the winning strategy is to get Israel’s critics fired or deported rather than engage in debate.

Unable to defend Israel’s indefensible slaughter campaigns in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon, self-important “intellectuals” like Sam Harris shamelessly declare they “Won’t Debate Critics of Israel” because they’re “not interested in all the ways Israel has missed the mark.” Intellectualism in America has devolved into willful ignorance.

Zionists whine that it’s “antisemitic” to call out their increasing control of the media as they shell out billions to control as much media as possible. Just a few examples:

• Oracle CEO and IDF donor Larry Ellison purchased TikTok to censor content critical of Israel and the Zionist movement. Currently, U.S.-born Erica Mindel, who proudly served the IDF instead of the U.S. military, censors videos deemed unfriendly toward Israel on the platform.

• David Ellison, Larry Ellison’s son, merges Skydance Media with Paramount and promptly installs Bari Weiss, who founded The Free Press, as the editor-in-chief of CBS News.

• David also spent $150 million to acquire Weiss’s The Free Press and fold it into CBS News. In July 2025, the Financial Times explained that “Weiss won over Ellison partly by taking a pro-Israel stance…”

• More recently, the younger Ellison launched a successful hostile takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, promising to make sweeping changes to CNN as soon as the deal is finalized. One of those changes would involve installing Weiss to wreck the cable news channel, much like she has done at CBS.

The same forces have also attempted to banish me from public discourse. They’ve had some success in getting me fired from RealClearInvestigations, where I reported on California politics and not foreign policy. Good job! You’ve accomplished nothing. CNN has also stopped booking me for debates on Abby Phillip’s program. But most of my views on Israel are shared on The Young Turks, where the demands Zionists carry no weight.

So, they decided to target and harass my non-political family members as punishment for my own political views. As a result, family members who typically pay no attention to Israel or U.S. foreign policy are suddenly curious. They’re reading up about the genocide in Gaza and the destruction of entire villages in Lebanon.

Zionists have accomplished the exact opposite of what they were hoping for with their pricey censorship campaigns. Getting critics fired or harassing their family members isn’t conducive to winning people over, which is why Israel’s reputation among Americans is at an all-time low. The latest Pew Research poll reveals that a whopping 60 percent of Americans now have an unfavorable view of our special ally.

It would have been cheaper, and far more effective, to simply end Israel’s slaughter campaigns. Instead, Zionists insist on digging themselves into a deeper hole with most counterproductive strategy imaginable. Some will be scared into silence. Others refuse to.

So, we persist.

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Major escalations between the United States and Iran over the weekend have clarified President Donald Trump’s trajectory as a two-week ceasefire nears expiration and prospects for a negotiated settlement with Tehran fade.

On Sunday, a U.S. Navy destroyer attacked and seized an Iranian cargo ship that had attempted to evade the U.S. blockade on vessels traveling to and from Iranian ports. The strike came a day after Iran targeted two Indian-flagged ships in the region.

According to the New York Times:

When the crew of the Touska, the Iranian ship, ignored the American warnings, a destroyer fired its MK 45 gun into the cargo ship’s engine room, Central Command said. On Sunday, Marines from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit were conducting a search of the vessel, which is now in American custody.

In a Sunday morning phone call with Fox News reporter Trey Yingst, Trump again threatened to target Iran’s civilian infrastructure if Tehran refuses to accept his demands. His remarks represented a complete reversal from the start of the ceasefire, when he described Iran’s ten-point plan a “workable basis” for ending the war.

That shift came after Israel launched an intense carpet-bombing campaign in Lebanon, dropping more than 100 munitions in roughly 10 minutes and killing an estimated 300 people. The escalation was accompanied by pressure from pro-Israel advocacy groups in Washington urging the administration to maintain a hard line against Tehran and avoid concessions that could weaken Israel’s strategic position.

Those demands include:

• Iran relinquishing control of the Strait of Hormuz

• A complete halt to uranium enrichment, including for civilian use

• The surrender of Iran’s existing enriched uranium stockpile

• An end to financial and military support for regional proxy groups, including Hezbollah

• Limits on Iran’s long-range missile program

“[Trump] told me if Iran does not sign this deal, the whole country is getting blown up,” Yingst said. “He went on to say that bridges and power plants will be targeted.”

Trump echoed the threat in a Truth Social post, warning that the United States would “knock out every single power plant and every single bridge in Iran” if Tehran refuses what he called a “very fair and reasonable deal.”

Iranian officials, however, remain unmoved. It’s unclear how Trump could be under the impression that the Iranians will cave to his ultimatums. There is no indication Tehran is willing to accept the terms, and leaders have signaled a willingness to endure sustained military pressure rather than concede sovereignty.

IRGC spokesman Ibrahim al-Fiqar described uranium enrichment for non-military purposes as a “sacred right.”

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Trump’s latest statements also contradict his claims just days earlier. On Friday, he asserted that Iran had already agreed to his demands, including a permanent end to enrichment. Iranian officials have made no such commitments.

While Tehran had agreed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz for the duration of the ceasefire and allow the free flow of oil and cargo, U.S. refusal to lift its own blockade of ships traveling to and from Iranian ports prompted Iran to again restrict passage, which triggered Saturday’s attacks on Indian-flagged vessels.

So, why did Trump lie? Why would he claim that Iran agreed to all of his demands when nothing could be further from the truth?

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“Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell” an increasingly desperate Trump declared on Truth Social. If Iran fails to abide by his ultimatum to open the critical global oil route by Monday, Trump warns that “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day.”

Trump’s post came on the heels of his widely criticized national address in which he vowed to bomb Iran “back to the stone ages,” escalating already volatile rhetoric around the conflict. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth echoed the threat on X, posting “Back to the Stone Age,” to amplify the administration’s hardline stance.

Not only is Trump’s vile rhetoric counterproductive, as it merely serves to fuel Iran’s resolve to continue fighting, but the way the war is being prosecuted also demonstrates that the “liberation” of the Iranian people was never the motivation behind his decision to start the war.

The U.S. military’s opening salvo involved Tomahawk missile strikes on an elementary school in Minab, slaughtering 175 people, the vast majority of whom were children. Is that what liberation looks like?

As of April 3, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said that at least 1,900 people had already been killed in Iran since the start of the war. Another 20,000 people have been injured from U.S.-Israeli strikes.

In late March, the Iranian Red Crescent Society reported that more than 82,000 civilian structures have been damaged by U.S.-Israeli bombardments, including 62,000 homes, 498 schools, and 281 medical centers, hospitals, and pharmacies. Additionally, 17 Red Crescent bases and 94 ambulances and rescue vehicles have also been damaged.

Sharif University in Tehran, one of the world’s leading institutions in civil engineering at the center of student opposition toward the Iranian regime, was severely damaged in the latest U.S.-Israeli bombardment.

CNN confirmed the targeting of vital civilian infrastructure through its own forensic analysis using videos and satellite imagery. One example cited in CNN’s reporting was the use of a 2,000-pound bomb to target Iran’s IRIB TV station, which is only 100 feet away from the Gandhi Hospital.

“These bombs, used by both the U.S. and Israel, are capable of killing or wounding people more than 1,000 feet away,” according to CNN’s Katie Polglase.

After a reporter asked Trump how it would not be a war crime to strike Iran’s bridges and power plants, the president responded to say that he IRGC “killed 45 thousand people last month… could be as much as 60 thousand,” and called the Iranians “animals.”

Proponents of regime change tend to point to the IRGC’s violent response to protesters last January, often citing dubious death toll numbers to exaggerate the regime’s brutality.

The most substantial documentation is from the U.S.-based Iranian human rights organization known as HRANA, which reported in February that it had recorded the names of 6,425 protesters who were killed. “In addition, 214 individuals affiliated with the government and 57 ‘civilian, non-protesters’ have been reported,” according to HRANA.

Over the weekend, Trump proudly took ownership of his role in agitating the situation on the ground as part of a ploy to spark a violent uprising that, in his mind, would topple the regime.

According to Trey Yingst from Fox News:

“President Trump told me the United States sent guns to the Iranian protestors. He tells me we sent them a lot of guns. We sent them through the Kurds and the president said he thinks the Kurds kept them”.

Additionally, the New York Times reported that Mossad was behind the plan to spark a popular uprising at the start of the Iran war. When the protests began, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo openly made note of Mossad’s operation, posting on X “Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them.”

Much like the Trump administration, claims of Iranian liberation as Israel’s objective should be mocked and disregarded.

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An Armenian bakery owner in Los Angeles says business is down 30 percent after former reality TV physician Dr. Mehmet Oz, who now serves as Trump’s Medicare administrator, falsely accused his shop of being part of a Russian-Armenian gang engaging in hospice and home care fraud.

“I’m really disappointed,” bakery owner Moses Bislamyan told a local ABC News affiliate. “Recording my signs, my location, and talking about some kind of fraud going on here. We have nothing to do with it.” he said.

After traveling to Minnesota and Florida as part of his anti-Medicare fraud tour, Oz made his way to Los Angeles, where he filmed himself pointing to a sign that reads “Tigranakert” in English lettering. That’s the the name of Bislamyan’s bakery. The sign also includes Armenian lettering that reads “Tarm Lavash,” which translates to Fresh Lavash, a traditional Armenian flat bread used to wrap kebabs and deli meats.

“What we have learned is that there is roughly $3.5 Billion of fraud taking place here in Los Angeles in hospice and home care,” Oz says in a pre-produced X video while standing in front of Bislamyan’s business.

Oz seemed to think the use of Armenian lettering, which he inaccurately referred to as “Cyrillic,” was suspicious enough to lob serious allegations without a proper investigation.

“It’s run…by the Russian, Armenian mafia,” Oz claims. “The lettering and language behind me is of that dialect and it also highlights that fact that this is an organized crime mafia deal.”

If an Armenian bakery has somehow succeeded in fraudulently billing Medicare for nonexistent hospice services to the tune of billions of dollars, the federal government’s lax oversight of Medicare authorizations would be the true root of the problem. In reality, there is no indication that Bislamyan is guilty of wrongdoing.

“There is no Armenian mafia going on here. We’re just hard-working businessmen,” Bislamyan to local reporters. “I don’t understand why he’s mentioning just Armenians... especially Russian Armenians.”

Perhaps Dr. Oz was attempting to reproduce the virality of Nick Shirley’s controversial video, which highlighted what the YouTuber alleged were fraudulent Somali daycares in Minnesota. Shirley’s content, much like Oz’s, targeted a single ethnic group and had serious credibility issues of its own.

But unlike Oz, Shirley at least gave the impression that he was investigating the businesses he featured in his video. Oz, on the other hand, is supposed to be a high-level government official with the resources necessary to conduct legitimate investigations when credible fraud allegations emerge. Instead, he lazily pointed to signage he can’t read, misidentified its lettering as Cyrillic and proceeded to make unfounded criminal claims against a bakery without citing any evidence.

Oz’s stunt is pretty disastrous for the Trump administration, although it pales in comparison to the Epstein files debacle. Here’s why:

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Even as pro-Israel billionaires buy up American media with an expressed interest in silencing pro-Palestinian voices, conservative commentator Ben Shapiro has declared that right-wingers who acknowledge Israel’s outsized influence in the US are “extraordinarily conspiratorial.” Several recent developments prove otherwise.

Prominent Israeli political figures, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself, have openly mused about taking control of TikTok and X in order to convince Americans that leveling Gaza and slaughtering tens of thousands of children (at a minimum) with US-funded bombs is a noble cause. According to Shapiro, simply acknowledging Israel’s influence makes one a wild-eyed conspiracy nut who just resents “the Jews” for their work ethic and success.

“There are a lot of very wealthy, powerful, rich people in American society who are Jewish,” Shapiro said in a recent interview with the Jerusalem Post. “Therefore they’re in control of all the things [right-wing conspiracy theorists] don’t like,” he continued. “That’s being promoted unfortunately day and night by a certain contingent inside the right.”

Shapiro engages in a common and repulsive trick where he intentionally conflates the secular nation state of Israel, which is currently engaging in unspeakable atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank, with the entire Jewish population in order to smear Israel’s critics as antisemites.

In reality, he’s wrongly grouping in the entire Jewish population, many of whom are also critical of Israel, with the war criminals in Israel’s current government, in addition to the Evangelical Christians who vociferously cheer on their atrocities. No one should fall for it. This isn’t about Jewish people. It’s about a foreign government’s crimes and its unacceptable stranglehold on US foreign policy and media.

While there certainly are deplorable antisemites across the political spectrum, those aren’t the people Shapiro is talking about. He’s more interested in addressing member of his own party who take issue with Zionist billionaires swaying US foreign policy to the detriment of the American people.

Some also have problems with the people buying up legacy and social media to impose censorship on behalf of a foreign country. I share those concerns because they are valid. Anyone attempting to smear Americans who voice similar objections should be ignored.

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FBI Director Kash Patel has been in the hot seat for the the Trump Administration’s refusal to release the Epstein Files, which Patel previously promised to do but is now implicated in what many Americans perceieve as a cover-up.

But Patel might have more explaining to do after a joint investigation by the FBI and Las Vegas, Nevada police led to the arrest of eight suspected pedophiles, including an employee of Israel’s National Cyber Directorate named Tom Artiom Alexandrovich.

All suspects were charged with attempting to entice minors online to commit sexual acts. But rather than jail and prosecute Alexandrovich, FBI officials allowed him to travel back to Israel where he is unlikely to face prosecution.

According to The Jerusalem Post:

A senior official at the Cyber Directorate in the Prime Minister’s Office was arrested on suspicion of links to pedophilia. A joint operation by Las Vegas police and the FBI over the past two weeks led to the arrest of eight suspects, including Alexandrovich, 38, from Israel. After questioning, Alexandrovich returned to Israel and was placed on leave from the directorate.

Alexandrovich’s role in Israel’s Cyber Directorate includes cyber intelligence and the cyber-threat mitigation. His position also shapes cyber policy in Israel and in international forums, according to reporting in The Jerusalem Post. Ironically, as someone who got caught allegedly attempting to lure children for sex online, Alexandrovich also advises various government bodies on cybersecurity and was a recipient of the Israel Defense Prize for his achievements.

For those wondering why Israel simply placed a suspected pedophile on leave instead of prosecuting him, the Cyber Directorate released a statement claiming that they have “not received additional details through authorized channels to date. Should such details be received, the directorate will act accordingly. At this stage, by joint decision, the employee has gone on leave to deal with the matter until things become clear.”

However, there is a mountain of evidence revealing the difficulty of bringing pedophiles to justice in Israel. According to a bombshell CBS report in 2020, Israel often provides a safe haven for criminals who sexually abuse children. The perpetrators also tend to offend again while in Israel.

Jewish Community Watch (JCW), an American organization that tracks accused pedophiles, found that between 2014 and early 2020 “more than 60 have fled from the U.S. to Israel. Given its limited resources to identify these individuals, JCW says the actual number is likely much larger.”

This is all possible thanks to Israel’s Law of Return, which allows any Jewish person to move to Israel and be granted citizenship automatically. Extraditing the offenders back to America to face charges is extremely time consuming and difficult.

Consider the story of Malka Leifer, who was accused of sexually abusing children while she was the principal of the ultra-Orthodox Adass Israel School in Melbourne, Australia between 2003 to 2008. Leifer fled to Israel after allegations came to light, avoiding deportation back to Australia for six years. In May 2020, Jerusalem District Court Judge Chana Miriam Lomp finally ruled that Leifer was fit to stand trial on 74 counts of sexual abuse and rape of minors.

Other offenders enjoy more protection by Israeli officials and have managed to skirt extradition. For example, Tomas Zeron, who was the former director of Mexico’s Criminal Investigations agency, was accused of compromising an investigation into the disappearance of 43 students in 2014. According to The Times of Israel:

Zeron fled Mexico after an investigation into the mass disappearance was reopened following the election of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in 2019. He has been in Israel since and has applied for asylum. Separately, Zeron is accused by Mexico of embezzling over $50 million and torturing suspects.

In the wake of the 2014 disappearance of the students, an investigative team headed by Zeron concluded, just weeks after the fact, that police had handed the group of students, who were en route to a demonstration, to a local drug cartel. The criminals then killed the group, and burned and disposed of their bodies in a river.

But an investigation later refuted his account and discovered that the government had both tampered with existing evidence and extracted new evidence through torture. In fact, Zeron resigned from his post in 2016 after a video revealed his handling of evidence that was never officially recorded.

Since Israel has decided to protect Zeron from extradition, they are harboring a Mexican fugitive wanted in Mexico.

The issue of pedophiles being met with impunity continues to be a problem in Israel, which does not have a sex offender registry. The Matzof Association, which monitors pedophilia in the country, estimates that tens of thousands of offenders operate in the country unimpeded each year. They also report that 22 cases of pedophilia were reported to the Israeli media in July 2020 alone. The vast majority of cases go unreported.

"They are not deterred by the police and certainly not deterred by the contemptuous rulings that come from the hands of judges in the various courts," said Eliran Malki, who heads the organization. Malki also cited a case in which one particular pedophile was let off without punishment by the courts, even though authorities found “thousands of pedophilic items found on his computer.” Malki purports that the court was more concerned about how a prison sentence would "harm his career."

In May 2023, the Jerusalem Post’s staff published a piece titled “Israel is trying to legalize pedophilia.” In it, far-right Israeli lawmaker Avi Moaz decried the Justice Ministry’s attempt to widen the age gap for what would be considered legal sexual relations between an adult and a minor:

Currently, the age of consent in Israel is 16 for all genders. However, that age of consent can go as low as 14, provided the other sexual partner was no more than three years older and both parties consented. But according to Maoz, the Justice Ministry is trying to change this to an age gap of five years.

"A 19-year-old man can have consensual sexual relations with a 14-year-old girl and won't face criminal charges," Maoz said.

Luckily, there is no reporting to show that the depraved proposal was approved. But the fact that Israeli politicians would even feel comfortable mulling such a proposal is pretty disgusting.

Given the context of how Israel treats those who victimize children in their own country, it’s hard to believe that Alexandrovich will ever be brought to justice for his allege attempts to engage in sexual acts with children in the United States. So, Patel should answer the most important question: why did the FBI allow that scumbag to return to Israel?

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I was drawn to Ahmed for a few reasons. Not only did he confidently and clearly state his arguments, he struck me as someone who’s interested in listening to the views of others and reconsidering his own stance. These are the voices in media who are far more interested in truth as opposed to being proven right. There is a difference between the partisan hacks who will stop at nothing to push an agenda for their side and those who allow truth to guide their arguments and worldview.

Ahmed is the founder of the bestselling Substack newsletter AhmedBaba.News and a columnist at The Independent. He documented every day of Trump’s first term and was among the first to cover Project 2025. He makes frequent appearances on MSNBC and CNN, and his work has been cited in The New York Times, The Washington Post, CBS News, Rolling Stone, and more.

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I hope you enjoy our discussion as much as I did. And thank you to all the Unaligned subscribers who continue to support my work with a curious mind, open heart and generous spirit. Love you all.

With donuts now over $20 a dozen and a cup of coffee topping $3, working a shift for the Los Angeles Police Department isn’t what it once was.

But with overtime pay at 1.5 times the regular hourly rate, LAPD officers aren’t having trouble footing the bill at Randy’s or Starbucks. Indeed, overtime pay has now grown so much that some detectives earn more money than the city’s mayor and the state’s governor.

In 2023, the last year for which figures are available, Detective Robert Rand more than doubled his salary through overtime, earning $324,875, according to OpenGovPay.com. That easily topped the $224,020 salary of Gov. Gavin Newsom and the $301,000 paid to Mayor Karen Bass, records show.

Rand’s case isn’t unique. In 2024, the department spent an all-time high of $265.5 million on overtime alone, an increase of $100 million for that line item in the city’s budget since 2019.

Before last year, no LAPD officer had ever earned more than $235,000 in yearly overtime pay. In 2024, seven officers did, including Detective Nathan Kouri, whose combined compensation of $603,887 made him the highest-paid cop in the City of Angels, according to a report by OpentheBooks.com. All told, nearly three dozen LAPD officers made at least $400,000 in overall pay for the year.

These whopping paychecks don’t appear to be a good deal for taxpayers or crime-fighting in the city. The spike in overtime stems from three main sources: a shortage of cops, the City Council’s continued embrace of the movement to defund the police, and general fiscal pressures. However, cutting the force is costing the city more, not less, while also hindering the LAPD’s ability to respond to calls for help.

In 2020, a total of 14,902 LAPD employees (both sworn officers and civilian staff) made a total of $1.71 billion. Four years later, the department shrank to 12,617 employees but cost the city $1.73 billion – an increase due at least in part to the boost in costly overtime pay to cover for the shortage of sworn officers.

But despite the thinner ranks and thicker payroll, local policymakers have opted for further cuts to the department’s manpower, which could drive up overtime pay even more.

A recent report by OpentheBooks.com found that it is not just police officers who are being asked to do more. “The top-paid lifeguard in LA county was compensated more than $500,000 in 2024; and over the past 5 years, a single lifeguard was able to pull down $702,000 – in overtime alone!” the report said.

Los Angeles spent $1.1 billion on overtime pay for public workers across all city departments in 2024, a figure higher than the city’s nearly billion-dollar budget deficit.

Los Angeles is just one of many major cities struggling to provide basic services in the face of declining revenue stemming from shuttered downtown businesses, loss of federal funds, and sharply rising pension payments, among other reasons.

The recent riots in Los Angeles – and President Trump’s decision to send 4,800 U.S. Marines and members of California’s National Guard to the city – have focused attention on its shrinking law enforcement capabilities. The LAPD, which was staffed with around 10,000 sworn officers at the start of 2020, argues that this is the minimum number of cops it needs to respond to 911 calls and address public safety concerns. But LAPD brass anticipates they will lose more than 150 additional officers over the next year, shrinking the force to around 8,620 by June 30, 2026.

Making matters worse for the department, the City Council’s May 2025 vote in favor of additional LAPD cuts will leave the agency with just 8,400 cops, the lowest number since 1995. That would continue a long-term trend. In fiscal year 2020-2021, a total of 631 police officers from all ranks left the department or the profession, with many taking early retirement, according to a report by the Los Angeles Police Commission.

The grim arithmetic means Los Angeles has far fewer police officers relative to its population than many other big U.S. cities. In 2022, for example, Washington, D.C., employed 543 officers per 100,000 residents while Los Angeles had just 237. Other cities that beat Los Angeles on this metric include Chicago, New York, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Miami.

“At the start of this budget process, we made a promise to maintain core services and minimize impacts to Angelenos,” City Councilmember Traci Park said during a budget meeting in late May. “But this budget doesn’t reflect those promises. We’re shrinking LAPD in favor of expanding other programs that haven’t been effective.”

While Park didn’t single out programs she finds ineffective or undeserving of additional funding, the new budget adds $14 million in funding for a favored program of defund the police efforts: having unarmed teams, rather than cops, respond to non-violent calls. The teams are made up of mental health professionals who “respond to…individuals experiencing mental health crisis, substance abuse crisis, and homelessness,” according to the news site LAist.

A social worker who spoke to RealClearInvestigations on the condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation says the city’s unarmed response teams usually end up calling for LAPD backup anyway.

“Oftentimes we encounter people who are having mental health emergencies and we can help by trying to deescalate the situation,” she said. “But to say that we only respond to nonviolent calls isn’t true,” she continued. “A lot of times, the person suffering from an episode is physically threatening us, or they have weapons and we don’t feel safe.” She says a better system is having mental health professionals accompany sworn officers rather than cut police out of the equation entirely.

Less than two months after the City Council passed a new budget with cuts to the LAPD, aggressive immigration raids carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sparked massive demonstrations and unrest in downtown Los Angeles. In response, officers clocked in so many overtime hours that the city has had to borrow $17.3 million in loans to cover police compensation in 2025.

More overtime is likely on the horizon as Los Angeles gears up for high-profile global events, including the 2026 World Cup and the 2028 Summer Olympics.

BLM and Defunding the Police

More than a decade ago, in 2013, then-Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced that the LAPD would receive the necessary funds to exceed 10,000 sworn officers, marking the highest number in the department’s history. The local government viewed the promise as fulfilling a longtime goal for the city.

But seven years later, public perception swung wildly in the other direction. In the wake of 2020’s nationwide protests against police violence, spurred by the killing of George Floyd while being arrested by Minneapolis police, local policymakers heeded calls to “defund the police” and moved to slash the LAPD’s 2021 budget by $150 million. Anti-police activists hailed the move as a first step toward “reimagining” public safety; others warned it could leave the city vulnerable to crime and disorder.

Nearly five years later, the city’s actual spending on the LAPD has surged due to ballooning overtime costs. In fact, taxpayers are shelling out tens of millions more in overtime pay than they would have if the police force were fully staffed.

LAPD officers have seen a substantial year-over-year increase in overtime. By 2022, when the department had 9,496 sworn officers, nearly $214 million of the LAPD’s payroll was spent on overtime. By fiscal year 2024, overtime pay ballooned to $265.5 million as the force shrank to 8,688 officers.

The exploding overtime costs have outrun any savings the city aimed to achieve through trimming the police budget, and fiscal year 2025 is on track to exceed last year’s record total. As of April 17, months before the anti-ICE demonstrations broke out, overtime pay already accounted for 17% of the department’s payroll. As anti-ICE demonstrations continue, that number is expected to grow exponentially.

Mayor Bass, who was a vocal supporter of “defund the police” initiatives in 2020, has since reversed course, and her recent budget proposals recommend more funds be devoted to the LAPD. “Public safety and public trust are not mutually exclusive,” she said. “We cannot afford to leave our communities under-protected while we figure it out.”

The City Council’s majority disagreed and voted 12-3 to slash funding for LAPD recruitment. The new budget also rejected Bass’ proposal for 480 new police hires, cutting that down to just 240. “That reduction would leave the LAPD with about 8,400 officers in June 2026, down from about 8,700 this year,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

Councilmember Park was one of the three “no” votes. “All of our residents and taxpayers, all they want is a fully funded police and fire department,” she said in a fiery speech prior to the body’s vote. “We are down rabbit holes of spending on things that no one cares about.”

Park finds herself in an increasingly dwindling minority of council members who see the value in a well-staffed police department. In Los Angeles, her approach has been drowned out by radical newcomers like Democratic freshman councilwoman Ysabel Jurado, who responded to a campaign question about public safety by saying, “f*** the police”.

Jurado’s campaign was backed by council members Nithya Raman, Eunisses Hernandez, and Hugo Soto-Martinez, all of whom also won seats with their calls to defund the police. Even though the City Council had already trimmed the police budget by some $150 million a year prior to Soto-Martinez and Hernandez’s decision to run, Soto-Martinez still promised constituents that “we’re not going to stop until we defund the police.” Hernandez went further, promising to abolish the police altogether.

Neither Soto-Martinez nor Hernandez responded to a request for comment.

On many occasions, their anti-police sentiment has been expressed by Councilwoman Raman, including in 2023 when the city had experienced three consecutive years of rising catalytic converter thefts. LAPD data showed that while there were only 1,200 such thefts in 2019, the number rose to 8,322 by 2022. The car part, which contains precious metals, can cost up to $2,000 to replace, a steep sum for working-class families in expensive Los Angeles.

Nevertheless, Councilwoman Raman minimized the rash of thefts and instead blamed auto manufacturers for making the car part easy to steal. Raman also voted against a measure that would have targeted thieves in possession of catalytic converters.

Despite Raman’s objection, the 2023 motion passed 8-4. The new law seems to have had an impact. Last year, LAPD Interim Chief Dominic Choi said that there were 2,313 catalytic converter thefts citywide from Jan. 1 to June 4, 2024, down from the 3,857 thefts over the same time frame a year earlier. The decline represented a roughly 45% decrease year over year.

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Burnout, Diminished Morale, Longer Response Times

The heavy reliance on overtime doesn’t just hurt LA’s budget – it also affects officer morale and performance. Extended shifts lead to fatigue, stress, and diminished effectiveness, all of which can contribute to mistakes, misconduct, or slow response times.

Critics argue that overworked officers are more likely to engage in negative interactions with the public, undermining the very goal of police reform. “You can’t reform a system by overburdening it to the point of dysfunction,” said Rev. James Hartley, a community organizer in South Los Angeles. “What we have now is the worst of both worlds: overworked police and underserved neighborhoods.”

Add civil unrest to the mix, and the scene looks much like June 2025, when daytime anti-ICE demonstrations devolved into riots at night. LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell conceded that his understaffed department was “overwhelmed [with the] number of people” engaged in looting and disorder.

“They’ll take backpacks filled with cinder blocks and hammers, break the blocks, and pass the pieces around to throw at officers and cars, and even at other people,” McDonnell said. “We’ve had unknown liquids – who knows what – thrown at officers. There’s no limit to what they’re doing to our officers.”

But even when there are no riots or mass protests, former Interim LAPD Chief Dominic Choi argued during an interview with local radio station KNX last year that understaffing was impacting “our ability to prevent crimes from happening. There’s less time to do community engagement, there’s less time to build resiliency in communities and establish those relationships. So ultimately, if that diminishes, I can promise you crime will go up.”

Staff shortages have contributed to longer police response times, with non-emergency callers now waiting anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour for police to arrive, according to Choi.

“We absolutely need more officers so we can continue to respond to emergency calls in under seven minutes, and our non-emergency calls need to get back to roughly 15-20 minutes,” he said.

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Al-Shifa hospital was overwhelmed with a new round of dead bodies and injured civilians following an Israeli airstrike on a nearby school sheltering displaced Palestinians last Thursday. Apparently, there’s nothing spookier than a tent encampment sheltering displaced civilians, because they Israelis sure do bomb them often.

I know, something, something, Hamas, human shields, command center, tunnels, Hamas…etc. No one believes this any of this nonsense. Gaza is leveled. Most of the deceased are women and children. Get a grip.

Then there’s the Israeli-approved/U.S.-sponsored Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which was supposed to distribute food to starving Palestinians who had just suffered Israel’s three-month blockade of aid into the territory. The IDF has continued shooting at or bombing civilians as they wait in line for food.

According to NPR:

At least 138 Palestinians have been killed and more than 400 injured on Thursday and Friday, according to Gaza health officials. More than 60 of those killed and hundreds of the injured were waiting for aid.

Roughly 600 Palestinians have been killed while waiting for food. Killing Palestinians at aid centers is not a bug, but a feature of the of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, according to an explosive Haartez report, which stated that “IDF officers and soldiers [said] they were ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near food distribution sites in Gaza, even when no threat was present.”

The piece shared horrific testimony from IDF soldiers:

"It's a killing field," one soldier said. "Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They're treated like a hostile force – no crowd-control measures, no tear gas – just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they know they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire."

The soldier added, "We open fire early in the morning if someone tries to get in line from a few hundred meters away, and sometimes we just charge at them from close range. But there's no danger to the forces." According to him, "I'm not aware of a single instance of return fire. There's no enemy, no weapons." He also said the activity in his area of service is referred to as Operation Salted Fish – the name of the Israeli version of the children's game "Red light, green light".

If you have enough of a conscience to wonder when all this depravity will finally end, Trump alleges that Israel has accepted the framework of a ceasefire deal and the ball is now in Hamas’ court. We’ve been here before and Trump’s claims aren’t exactly true.

Israel has agreed to the requirements of a 60-day pause in fighting so they can get their hostages back. But they refuse to accept a permanent end to the war, something Hamas insists on. Hamas has even agreed to relinquish power in Gaza in return for a permanent ceasefire. They will agree give up their arms upon the formation of a Palestinian state. But we Israel will never tolerate Palestinians having a shot at self-determination.

For those who sympathize with the the Israeli government and feel I’m being too harsh, I commend you for getting this far in reading what I have to say. But I’m just getting started.

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Polarization is at an all-time high while trust in institutions is at an all-time low. Take the Supreme Court as an example. According to Gallup, about half of Americans expressed either a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the nation’s highest court in 2001. You might feel that number is already pretty abysmal and I would agree. But by 2024, only 30 expressed confidence in SCOTUS, representing a whopping 20 point drop from 2001.

In fact, Gallup’s respondents expressed a lack of confidence in all institutions, including public schools (29 percent), newspapers (18 percent), television news (12 percent), the presidency (26 percent) and Congress (9 percent). Oof!

Reforming these institutions would require majority support, which is hard to achieve when the nation’s voters appear to be deeply divided. However, Professor James Fishkin argues that dialogue and deliberation among the electorate could remedy what ails the country and democracy itself. Perhaps through openness and conversation, Americans will find they share more in common than they realize.

In his new book "Can Deliberation Cure the Ills of Democracy?” Fishkin explores how getting ordinary citizens to engage in informed and thoughtful deliberations can meaningfully improve modern democratic systems. This isn’t a new project either. Fishkin has been dedicated to this project since the 1980s and with incredible results.

We discuss his book, findings and more on this week’s episode of Unaligned. I hope you enjoy the discussion as much as I did!

The National Guard arrived in Los Angeles this morning after the Trump administration announced their intention to deploy 2,000 troops in response to violent clashes between protesters and federal immigration agents. The situation on the ground could escalate further, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth threatening to sic active-duty Marines in response to the skirmishes.

While most protesters gathered peacefully to demonstrate against ICE’s raids of local businesses, others took to the streets to riot and cause mayhem. However, the group’s size and scope hardly justifies the deployment of 2,000 troops.

The only other instances in which the National Guard was deployed in L.A. was in response to natural disasters or during widespread civil unrest. Nearly 14,000 National Guard troops joined local law enforcement during the Watts Riots in 1965. Similarly, the Feds intervened to mitigate disorder and provide backup to local police following the Rodney King verdict in 1992. The most recent instance was in the Summer of 2020, when former Mayor Eric Garcetti requested 1,000 troops as riots and looting spread across the city in response to George Floyd’s murder.

But in each of those cases, state and local leadership requested help from the federal government. The opposite occurred this weekend, as the White House made clear that the National Guard would be deployed to L.A. despite state and local leadership rejecting the idea. California Gov. Gavin Newsom criticized the move, declaring that local law enforcement had the situation under control. “There is currently no unmet need,” Newsom said. “This is the wrong mission and will erode public trust.”

Additionally, the Trump administration’s deployment of such a high volume of troops in response to small-scale skirmishes between immigration agents and rioters is clearly meant to evoke widespread fear. Garcetti had only asked for 1,000 troops in 2020 when the scale of unrest and destruction was far greater than what transpired this weekend. Nearly every part of L.A. County was impacted by the 2020 riots. On the contrary, police standoffs with rioters this weekend involved hundreds of people as opposed tens of thousands and the chaos was isolated to specific areas like downtown, Compton and Paramount.

That’s not to say acts of violence weren’t carried out. As always, assholes with no objective other than sowing chaos and destruction took advantage of the situation to set vehicles on fire, throw bricks and hurl fireworks at law enforcement and destroy public property. I’ve grown tired of this crowd of wreckers who never miss an opportunity to destroy the city. They should be arrested immediately.

The following videos capture some of it:

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But our conversation went much deeper than partisan politics. Manny opened up about how he hit rock-bottom while in the throes of alcoholism. Although he had already lost everything, including close relationships, it wasn’t until he nearly died that he felt compelled to pursue recovery. He’s been sober for years and, as New York Weekly describes, Manny’s story is “a powerful testament to human resilience.”

The challenges Manny overcame helped give birth to his alternative rock band Birth of Happiness, which is “a compelling narrative of struggle, healing, and renewal,” as New York Weekly put it. “Each track delves into the raw emotions of addiction and redemption, creating a deeply moving experience for listeners.”

Manny is just an incredible guy who really shatters the notion that Trump voters are a monolith. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

The charred bodies of seven children arrived at the Nasser Medical Complex in southern Gaza as Dr. Alaa al-Najjar tried to save the lives of others in the emergency room. It didn’t take long for the pediatric doctor to realize that the young victims were her own kids, who were with their father in Khan Younis when the Israeli defense forces bombed their family home.

Dr. al-Najjar’s husband Hamdi, who’s also a doctor, survived the bombing. But the IDF’s attack killed nine of their ten children. The remains of their 7-month-old and 12-year-old are still missing. Although Israel has made its objective of ethnically cleansing Palestinians from Gaza through displacement, indiscriminate bombings and intentional starvation clear, the IDF is still regurgitating the same eye-roll-inducing excuse that they had no choice but to slaughter nine kids in their quest to “defeat Hamas.”

I personally don’t believe them and I have trouble accepting that anyone with a functioning brain does. In fact, I would ask Israel’s defenders to consider the moral take they’ve subscribed to in the name of Israeli victims, which argues that Israel’s decades-long occupation and brutalization of the Palestinian people does not justify Hamas’ atrocities on October 7th. How do they reconcile holding that view on one hand, while simultaneously justifying the mass slaughter and collective punishment of Gazans in response to Hamas’ actions on the other?

Many in the U.S. and around the world are unwilling to give the IDF’s barbarism a pass. But as the chorus of critical voices grows louder, efforts to silence Israel’s critics have intensified. Recently, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attempted to censor the free expression of Americans by exploiting the tragic killings of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C.. Before the victims could be buried, Bibi used the horrific crime as an opportunity to shut down any calls for Palestinian liberation.

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Joe Biden’s office announced on Sunday that the former President has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones.

The statement made clear that Biden intends to receive treatment, and that the cancer appears to be sensitive to hormone therapy, “which allows for effective management.” It added, “The President and his family are reviewing treatment options with his physicians.”

Some are skeptical that Biden’s condition is news to him and his family. Urologist Dr. David Shusterman told News Nation that the type of metastasizing cancer the former president has takes years to develop. Shusterman says that “this is what I typically would see in a VA hospital, where a patient hasn’t had medical attention in 10 years, presents to an emergency room with bone pain, and then they find that it’s metastatic prostate cancer.”

Additionally, Biden caused confusion when he seemed to announce that he had cancer during a July 2022 press conference at a coal-fired power plant in Massachusetts. According to the Associated Press:

At one point during his speech, he discussed the impact of environmental pollution from oil refineries near his hometown, sharing an anecdote about his childhood.

“And guess what? The first frost, you knew what was happening. You had to put on your windshield wipers to get, literally, the oil slick off the window,” Biden said, according to a White House transcript of his remarks. “That’s why I and so damn many other people I grew up (with) have cancer and why can — for the longest time, Delaware had the highest cancer rate in the nation.”

At the time, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said that Biden was referring to the skin cancer he had removed before he became president. Biden also had a lesion removed from his chest that was found to be a basal cell carcinoma. Studies suggesting that coal tars and coal-tar pitches increase the risk of various forms of cancer, including kidney, skin, bladder and lung cancer. Other studies specifically cite coal-burning power plants as a potential risk factor for non-melanoma skin carcinoma.

President Trump reacted to the news on Truth Social, writing that “Melania and I are saddened to hear about Joe Biden’s recent medical diagnosis. We extend our warmest and best wishes to Jill and the family, and we wish Joe a fast and successful recovery.”

Iran Questions Trump’s Commitment to Diplomacy

After months of threatening to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites, Trump has softened his rhetoric on Iran. Much to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s chagrin, the President is now pursuing diplomatic means to secure a new nuclear deal, and a fourth round of Iran-U.S. negotiations ended in Oman last Sunday.

Just last week, the President claimed that the United States was getting very close to securing a deal, and that Tehran “sort of” agreed to the terms. "We're getting close to maybe doing a deal without having to do this... there [are] two steps to doing this, there is a very, very nice step and there is the violent step, but I don't want to do it the second way," Trump said, implying that war is the second option.

“They have to move quickly,” Trump warned Iran “or something bad’s going to happen.”

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wasn’t amused by Trump’s threats and accused the President of lying. Khamenei said the his remarks "aren't even worth responding to" and that they are an "embarrassment to the speaker and the American people.”

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian called out Trump for claiming to want peace while making violent threats: "Which should we believe?" Pezeshkian said at a naval event in Tehran. "On the one hand, he speaks of peace and on the other, he threatens with the most advanced tools of mass killing."

Former President Barack Obama had secured a nuclear deal with Iran, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which ended Tehran’s uranium enrichment program. But Trump reneged on the deal in his first term in 2018, assassinated Iran’s top officer Qasem Soleimani and and took a more hawkish approach to Israel’s foe.

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Now Trump wants to avoid war and accomplish his own nuclear deal. But he’s running into a brick wall in regard to Iran’s uranium enrichment program. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff told ABC’s This week that the Trump Administration “have one very, very clear red line — and that is enrichment. We cannot allow even 1% of an enrichment capability. We've delivered a proposal to the Iranians that we think addresses some of this...”

That appears to be a non-starter for Iran. While Khamenei’s adviser Ali Shamkhani said Iran would dispose of its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium and commit to never building nuclear weapons, Tehran will not sing onto a deal that requires them to reduce their highly enriched uranium stockpile to a level below what was agreed under Iran's 2015 nuclear pact.

More talks are expected to come soon.

House Committee Advances Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill”

The House Budget Committee passed a huge tax cut and immigration spending bill that’s represents the core of President Trump’s agenda.

The bill includes:

• work requirements for Medicaid recipients

• an extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which are set to expire in December

• an end to taxes for tips and overtime wages

• tax deductions for auto-loan interest payments

• hundreds of billions of dollars in spending for immigration enforcement

The tax cuts, coupled with new spending, would increase nation’s debt, which currently amounts to $36.2 trillion, by a minimum of $2.5 trillion over the next decade. Other analysis puts the figure at $5 trillion.

Previously, Republican Congressmen Chip Roy, Ralph Norman, Josh Brecheen and Andrew Clyde, who are all in the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, had blocked the bill for adding to the deficit. Trump had urged lawmakers to “STOP TALKING, AND GET IT DONE!”

The four self-described fiscal conservatives voted to “present,” instead of yes or no on Sunday night, which advanced the legislative package 17-16. But their hesitance to vote yes foreshadows the fight ahead as the legislation gets closer to a floor vote in the House. GOP leaders can only lose two votes on the House floor if all lawmakers are present and voting.

Roy and Norman, who both voted “present” on Sunday night, also sit on the Rules Committee. If they vote against the bill, it would prevent it from consideration on the House floor. However, that seems unlikely as both jovially announced that House Speaker Mike Johnson had agreed to accelerate the timeline for Medicaid work requirements.

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There’s a lot of terrible shit going down in Los Angeles right now.

City leaders are staring down a $1 billion budget deficit, an infuriating development considering the astronomical sums of money taxpayers fork over to the city and state. As Mayor Karen Bass proposes cutting services and laying off 1,600 city workers to balance a budget, Angelenos continue to face a housing crisis, homeless crisis and insurance crisis. The endless piles of literal trash on city streets is just the cherry on top ahead of L.A.’s plan to spend big on hosting the World Cup and Olympics soon. Things are going great!

You’d think all the audits showing that the city mismanaged billions in taxpayer resources would light a fire under some asses. One would expect that the diminished quality of life that has resulted from the utter incompetence of local leadership would encourage Angelenos to spring into action and demand change. But much of their ire has solely been directed toward Donald Trump and the chaos be brings to the federal government. After all, liberal L.A. is governed by Democrats and Trump plays on the opposite team.

Look, I get it. There are many downsides to the chaos and cruelty of the Trump White House. The man is unapologetic about his disposal of due process or his administration’s admitted “administrative mistake” in deporting migrants with protected status. The president evokes fear as he threatens to take things a step further by similarly deporting American citizens. Again, I get it. I have to spend much of my day studying his every move before producing and hosting a two-and-a-half-hour show about his depravity.

But local political dysfunction has a more devastating impact on our lives than Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Signal debacle does. That’s not to minimize the stupidity and possible consequences of Hegseth’s actions. But I’m more worried about California’s Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara signing off on State Farm’s demand to raise premiums on homeowners by as much as 22 percent a mere year after its customers got hit with a 20 percent premium hike. This news is going to crush Californians who are already struggling to make ends meet.

While the media would surely obsess over any inkling that Trump might be misusing campaign money, there no local media uproar over Lara allegedly raising funds through a phony lieutenant governor campaign only to use the cash to stuff his face at high end eateries. According to the San Francisco Standard:

"Lara, with less than two years left in his final term, has been using what appears to be a shell campaign committee to pay for nearly $30,000 in meals and drinks at some of the country’s fanciest restaurants and bars. Almost a third of these charges were listed as campaign meetings, and it’s unclear who Lara has been wining and dining during meals costing hundreds or, in at least one case, more than $1,000.”

I wish that were the worst of California’s problems. But that’s not all.

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Speaking of which, I’m having Jason on again this week to answer your questions and explore some of the themes he writes about in his piece. So, if you’re a paid subscriber, please comment and THANK YOU for your support. I’m going through some family/health stuff and I know I haven’t been as engaged as I should be. That won’t be a permanent issue.

Jason is the host of the This is Revolution podcast. You can support his work here.

I’d tell you to follow him on Twitter, but he doesn’t do social media.

Fame is an intoxicant, and Hollywood is the land of celebrity inebriation. Seeing those bold letters atop that mountain, you can’t help being either awed or repulsed by what it stands for.

There was a time before moving pictures when one had to be a great adventurer and discover new lands, create fascinating works of literature or possess an operatic voice that could captivate crowds to be revered. Stars were born with the advent of film. They’d captivate the heart of the nation by merely winning the genetic lottery.

Much like the iconic sign that sits atop Mount Lee in the Santa Monica mountains, celebrities sequester themselves in the hills and in gated communities, building a chasm between themselves and the public that adores them. Or at least that’s how it used to work. Social media has changed all that, creating a new kind of celebrity who never turns the camera off. Their fans can ignore the divide and enjoy viewing their favorite person performing mundane tasks, or participating in viral “challenges” to make them seem more relatable. Other YouTube figures become celebrities by critiquing celebrating culture.

My friend Bertrand Cooper writes for the Atlantic and the New York Times. Despite his lofty career achievements, he grew up in similar circumstances as myself, if not worse. There was drug addiction in his family, and he did time in foster care. We were recently having a discussion about ideas around toughness as a character building mechanism and the folly of the attention given to celebrity culture. The consensus is that celebrity life translates to the ultimate privilege, and the children of celebrities often reap the benefits of said privilege. From legacy admission to elite universities, to massive advantages in the entertainment industry, they can have it all.

North West embodies the new-media version of this. She’s an 11-year-old TikTok influencer who has “18.8 million followers” and “could earn up to $30,134.75 per video,” according to Viralyft.

For those unfamiliar, North West, is the tween daughter of Kanye West, one of the most talked about rappers in history. Her mother is professional influencer Kim Kardashian, a woman who was able to convert her sex tape scandal into a decades-long career. West is the spawn of parents who might be the most recognizable, famous, beloved and despised in the world.

Celebrity culture is nothing new and fawning over the offspring of such figures is equally familiar. But this time around, there is also a culture of celebrity contempt that can be amplified by social media pile-ons. Its infectious nature has a captivating grasp that tends to devolve in a callous binary understanding of people as either “good and bad.” Some mistake this behavior as class conscientiousness. But it’s a problem when communities are formed through collective contempt, especially when it’s misunderstood as moral.

This is the downside of engaging in celebrity culture. It can warp one’s worldview into the simplistic binary of “right-and-wrong” thinking that can make people justify behavior that goes beyond merely critiquing public figures. But in reality, larger and truly systemic issues in society can’t fit into that same binary.

The police murder of George Floyd led to a rallying cry for the imprisonment of the cops that took a man’s life so brazenly that it was carried out on a live stream. While there were some calls for abolition or defunding law enforcement, most people just viewed the incident as bad people behaving badly. They didn’t necessarily consider the broader issue of how law enforcement functions or who it works for.

That same simplistic binary is playing out now with the roles reversed. The media’s critical coverage has shifted away from cops behaving badly to ordinary people behaving badly. As videos of individuals stealing from large chain stores go viral online, some of the same people who protested for the incarnation of rogue law enforcement are calling for the incarceration of the thieves seen on camera as they run out of stores with their arms filled with merchandise.

If there was any good will that was manufactured during the protests of the “George Floyd Summer” of 2020, the simplistic binary belief of good and bad people undid it. Now we’re seeing a return to late 80s and 1990s style tough-on-crime prison policy. This mob mentality of callousness has degraded long fought efforts to reverse the harm of brutal carceral policy. The punitive milieu that gave us bipartisan support of tough-on-crime legislation ignores complexity and takes everything at face value. For them, bad people need to be punished and cast away regardless of the devastation it causes to the lives of many poor and working class people. It’s just their pathology, right? This thinking doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a learned pattern of acceptable behavior. We pick up on who it’s okay to hate, and who it's okay to revere.

Now, I understand how some can have contempt for a child of privilege like North West. A few posts on TikTok net her more dough than what an average American working a full-time job earns in an entire year. That’s $61k-$183k a year for a middle class income in Los Angeles. Or, at least it was in 2022.

Just by pumping out a few TikToks a month, North effortlessly adds to her already massive family fortune. The fortune on both sides of her family. Her parents are divorced billionaires! North doesn’t have to concern herself with talent if she wishes to achieve the very heights of stardom. All she’ll need to do is turn on a camera phone and invite people into her privileged life. If she manages to be slightly less peculiar than Jaden Smith she’ll build her legion of fans, in additions to the detractors she inherited from her parents’ star-studded lives. And unlike the celebrity children before her, West’s family has made a fortune letting people peek into the mendacity of their daily lives. While social media may seem like a ubiquitous activity all young people passively participate in, the West/Kardashian fortune is built on it.

There is a certain amount of humility that must be publicly exhibited for common people and celebrity tastemakers to validate that a particular celebrity is indeed one of the good ones. But considering North West’s pedigree, why would she have to pay fealty to any of the old societal norms? Wasn’t Paris Hilton a rebellious brat too?

The line separating “infamous” and “famous” is anorexic and over the last 20 years obnoxious celebrities have been happily operating on both sides to the chagrin and praise of their fandoms and detractors. Miley Cyrus comes to mind as one who has fallen in and out of favor with the public, having been involved in both scandal and subsequent comebacks. So have Nicole Richie, Tori Spelling and…well, the list is too long to name them all. We celebrate their success and relish in their failures.

One thing North West has grown up seeing in real time is how any pain suffered by her family, regardless of the tragedy, is still just fodder for content creators to mock and cash in on. I’m sure that can create a social disconnect from the world at large when your everyday life is a spectacle. It’s probably even worse when the people in charge of your upbringing are the ringleaders of the circus.

Once again, the performative self abnegation the celebrity must exhibit in public settings will never be enough to obfuscate the long shadow of public contempt North’s family has cast upon her. When I was talking to Bertrand about her, another mutual friend told him that they hoped the young West got bullied in school. He didn’t responded with a hateful jab, and instead reminded us of the burden that type of vitriol and callousness carries. “I hope she meets someone that is genuinely kind to her,” he said, adding “so she understands that not all people are horrible human beings”.

The absence of class awareness just translates into hating the haves. For some, hating the haves is misunderstood as engagement in class war. But is it? Are these conversations really about the redistribution of wealth and power, or are we upset at people that didn’t climb to the top the “right way”?

The “nepo baby” has a definite advantage. But doesn’t the son of the union shop steward have some level of advantage? Are we actually upset at the obscene amounts of wealth these people hoard as our lives become more precarious and resources become more scarce? Or are we trying to deem ourselves worthy to be a guest at this table of abundance? Does the proletariat strike a blow to the rich and powerful by posting hate-filled react videos? Or is it a feeble gasp that seeks to protect one's own piece of the pie as the fear of scarcity brought about by the failures of neoliberal capitalism sink in?

This impulse to seek out and vilify those deemed unworthy of success doesn’t stop with celebrity children, either. It becomes normalized and filters down to impact how society at large treats the poor, or the working class, and anyone who make mistakes. The same binary that deems North a privileged “nepo baby” fuels the contempt for the poor and the criminalized. It’s the same callousness that led to bipartisan support for tough-on-crime policies that devastate marginalized communities. When society cultivates a culture of callousness, devoid of class analysis–it creates a framework where empathy erodes. So, punitive measures feel justified.

We’d be better off cultivating a more humane attitude toward human failings. That’s the only way to build a more equal world where there’s more tolerance for everyone to mess up. In this binary world of hero or villain, the real casualties are those who lack the privilege to be seen as anything but disposable. We should demand to live in a world where “every bastard deserves better”, as Amber A’Lee Frost said.

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