Crooked Media - What A Day: Qualm before the storm

- New Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley, off to a great start

Israel signaled on Friday that it is moving ahead with a potentially devastating ground invasion of Rafah. 
 

• Israel approved a plan for a potential assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, a city widely seen as the last bastion of safety where over one million Gazans—half the enclave’s remaining population—are sheltering. At the same time, Israel also announced plans to send another delegation to Qatar for negotiations with the delegation representing Hamas, to be mediated by Qatari and American intermediaries. White House National Security spokesperson John Kirby said that the United States has not seen Israel’s military plan for Rafah, but would like to. Speaking to reporters in Austria, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the United States needs to see a clear and implementable strategy from Israel, including concrete ideas for moving civilians out of harm’s way.
   

• A ship organized by chef José Andrés’s nonprofit World Central Kitchen carrying almost 200 tons of food for Palestinians began offloading its cargo into Gaza on Friday, according to a spokesperson for the organization. World Central Kitchen partnered with the Spanish search-and-rescue group Open Arms to get the boat from Cyprus to the new maritime corridor, which the United States and its allies created. The corridor was established to deliver aid into Gaza after Israel’s bombardments and border controls dramatically restricted the flow of food, water, and other aid through land crossings over the five months of the conflict. Israel has repeatedly denied restricting aid, but those repudiations are contradicted by multiple reports from humanitarian groups on the ground in Gaza like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and even firsthand accounts of American lawmakers who have visited the region in recent weeks. 
   

• The boat arrived under a cloud of dire warnings from United Nations officials about mass starvation tipping into full-fledged famine in Gaza, particularly in the northern part of the enclave where Israeli bombardment has leveled entire neighborhoods to ash and rubble. The Gaza Health Ministry reported that at least 27 children have died of malnutrition and dehydration, and the United Nations reported that more than one-quarter of the enclave’s residents are facing “catastrophic levels of deprivation and starvation.” 

Negotiations for a possible ceasefire continue to pose an immense challenge.  
 

• Hamas presented a ceasefire proposal in Gaza to mediators in the United States, which includes the release of Israeli hostages in exchange for freedom for Palestinian prisoners being held in Israel, 100 of whom are serving life sentences, according to Reuters, which reviewed the proposal. Negotiators failed to reach a ceasefire agreement in time for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which began this week. Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “isn’t interested in reaching an agreement.” The Israeli government’s perceived unwillingness to negotiate or provide adequate protections for civilians in Gaza as the death toll continues to mount has caused increased friction with the United States and other western allies. 
   

• Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer touched on this tension in a 45-minute speech on the Senate floor on Thursday. He criticized Netanyahu’s intransigent opposition to a two-state solution, and called for new elections to be held in Israel, causing uproar among many Republican lawmakers and right-wing Israeli officials. President Biden cautiously defended Schumer on Friday, saying in the Oval Office: “He made a good speech. He expressed a serious concern, shared not only by him but by many Americans.” 
   

Biden was careful, however, not to comment on the content or merit of Schumer’s arguments. 

Pod Save America: The Democracy or Else Tour is going on the road, election-year-style: They’re heading all over the country, including to key battleground states, and leaving a trail of rigged voting machines in their wake. Lovett or Leave It will also be on tour! (To pre-load a few ballot drop boxes, of course.) Tickets for 2024 live shows are on sale now, head to crooked.com/events to grab yours today!

The National Association of Realtors on Friday agreed to resolve antitrust litigation accusing brokerages of inflating sales commissions, in a move that appears likely to to lower costs when Americans buy and sell homes. The resolution calls for NAR to eliminate a decades-old set of rules on commissions, and facilitates a buyer’s ability to negotiate fees with their own agents, or decide not to use agents at all. If a federal court approves the settlement, the new rules will take effect in July, according to a source who spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity. Sellers’ and buyers’ agents typically split an amount between 5 and 6 percent of a home sale price, and that’s how it’s worked for a century. But home-sellers in Illinois and Missouri alleged in a pair of class-action lawsuits that NAR’s rules artificially inflate commissions by requiring sellers’ agents to make a nonnegotiable compensation offer to list on the homeselling database the Multiple Listing Service. It’s important to note that housing has not become so wildly unaffordable solely because of the commission structure outlined by the NAR. (Looking at you, exclusionary zoning.) But it sure hasn’t helped!

Judge Scott McAfee, the guy overseeing disgraced former president Donald Trump’s trial on charges of trying to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, ruled on Friday that lead prosecutor and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis can remain on the case, so long as she removes deputy prosecutor Nathan Wade, with whom she had a personal relationship.

The White House sent a letter to GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday urging the House to end its impeachment inquiry into President Biden after months of investigation found no evidence (like, zero), that the president had done anything wrong. “But we love to waste time and taxpayer-funded resources!!!,” the House GOP cried in unison.

Uber and Lyft announced they will cease operations in Minneapolis, MN after the city council voted Thursday to require ride-hailing services to increase driver wages to the local minimum wage of $15.57 per hour. When companies are willing to make no money rather than share more of their profits with their workers…that’s business genius! That’s “hacking the industry”! 

Rep. Mary Peltola (D-AK) has the highest approval rating of any of Alaska’s top elected officials. Even so, her reelection in November is far from assured. 

The Supreme Court ruled on Friday in a 6-3 decision (not along partisan lines) that low-level nonviolent drug deals are ineligible for shortened prison terms and cannot be spared from mandatory minimum sentences. In a truly bizarre upside-down world, liberal Justice Elena Kagan authored the majority opinion, and conservative justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the dissenting opinion.

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The Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Friday that public officials can sometimes be sued for blocking their critics on social media, an issue that first emerged during the term of then-president Donald Trump. 

Disgraced former Vice President Mike Pence announced that he will not endorse disgraced former president Donald Trump. Voters these days are so fickle; they abandon you at the first sign of you personally trying to get them killed!