Crooked Media - What A Day: A-drone again (naturally)

Early Friday morning, Israel struck back at Iran in a continuation of tit-for-tat escalation that has the whole world on edge. 

• Explosions were seen and heard over the Iranian city of Isfahan on Friday morning, which Iran’s foreign minister said came from “mini drones” likely fired from inside Iranian territory. The drones were intercepted by Iran’s air defense system. The scale of the attack was limited, and Iran’s response sidestepped belligerence, signaling the success of diplomatic efforts to avert a full-scale war between the two countries—at least for now. A senior Iranian official told Reuters that the country has no plans to retaliate against Israel for the incident, because “the foreign source of the incident has not been confirmed.” Israel gave no public acknowledgement of the incident. Syrian authorities said that Israel had struck a site in Syria for the second time this month on Friday, around the same time as the attack on Iran. 

• Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he would not comment on the strike apart from saying that the United States is committed to Israel’s security, but was not involved in any offensive operations. The White House also said it had no comment, breaking from a habit of routinely weighing in on the latest developments in the regional conflict. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke with his Israeli counterpart on Friday, and a Pentagon readout said that the two discussed issues including “efforts to maintain regional stability,” though it made no specific mention of Iran.

• The Biden administration is considering sending more than $1 billion worth of new weapons deals to Israel including military vehicles and mortar rounds, as well as tank ammunition, according to U.S. government officials who spoke to the Wall Street Journal on the condition of anonymity. The deals under consideration would need signoff from congressional leaders and could take months or years to be delivered. But a growing number of U.S. lawmakers oppose giving Israel more American weapons with no strings attached, as the death toll in Gaza has blown past 33,000 according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The State Department and the Pentagon declined to comment on the rumored deal, as did the Israeli Ministry of Defense. Senior adviser at International Crisis Group and former State Department attorney Brian Finucane noted that the United States still “has yet to use the leverage it has with arms transfers to shape Israeli behavior.”

In states with highly-restrictive abortion laws, emergency rooms have been turning women with serious pregnancy complications or fetal abnormalities away rather than face potential legal liability in post-Roe America, according to a shocking new investigation by the Associated Press. One woman miscarried in the lobby restroom of a Texas emergency room after staff at the front desk refused to admit her. Another woman learned at a Florida hospital that her fetus had no heartbeat the day after she had been turned away by a security guard there. In North Carolina, a woman gave birth in a car and the baby later died after an emergency room said it couldn’t offer an ultrasound. Complaints that pregnant women were turned away from emergency rooms spiked after the 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned the federal right to an abortion. Federal law requires emergency rooms and hospitals that receive Medicare funding to treat or stabilize patients in active labor or transfer them to a different facility if their own staff is insufficient or incapable of treating them under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. 

The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Wednesday in a lawsuit that could weaken these protections even further. The Biden Administration brought the lawsuit against the state of Idaho, which passed a strict abortion ban with no exceptions to save the life of the pregnant patient. Idaho state Attorney General Raúl Labrador said earlier this year that the state’s abortion ban is “consistent” with EMTLA, which calls for an emergency room to protect an unborn child in medical emergencies, and that the Biden administration is trying to “force doctors to perform abortions.” Obviously, this is bullshit, because the majority of pregnancies that require emergency termination are already not viable. The treatment for severe gestational complications like ectopic pregnancy, a septic uterus, or a miscarriage that won’t release naturally from a patient’s body is all the same: abortion. Failure to terminate a pregnancy when such complications arise is often fatal. These draconian restrictions are not and have never been about “protecting the unborn”—they’re about forcing women to suffer. If the Court weakens EMTLA, even more emergency rooms will turn women away without fear of penalty from the government.

Doctors in Arizona are unlikely to perform abortions due to the reinstatement of the 1864 near-total ban on the procedure, despite the fact that the state Attorney General said she would not prosecute doctors. 

The jury in the Donald Trump hush money trial in Manhattan is now complete, with 12 jurors and 6 alternates. Opening arguments should kick off Monday.

A man set himself on fire in front of the Manhattan courthouse where Trump’s trial is being held on Friday. The NYPD said that the man, who was rushed to the hospital and remains in critical condition, did not appear to be targeting Trump or others involved in the trial. Just your run-of-the-mill conspiracy theorist, then! Unclear if that’s supposed to make us feel better. 

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) told alt-right nutjob Steve Bannon on his podcast that she doesn’t care “if the Speaker’s office becomes a revolving door,” referencing her efforts to oust current GOP Speaker Mike Johnson. Yeah, girl, we know you don’t care! We can totally tell!

Speaking of which, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) became the third member of the House GOP to sign on to a motion to vacate against Johnson. 

Tesla has recalled almost 4,000 of its aesthetically-heinous Cybertrucks because the accelerator pedals are in some cases getting stuck when pressed. It looks terrible! It might accelerate forever! Nothing but upside and innovation from Elon!!!

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Over 50 of RFK Jr.’s former colleagues at the National Resources Defense Council have called on him to drop out of the presidential race, and a dozen other national environmental organizations published an open letter calling him a “dangerous conspiracy theorist and a science denier,” who promotes “toxic beliefs” on vaccines and climate change. 

A blood test that rapidly detects concussions has received FDA approval and could be used on the sidelines of football games in the future.