Two reports show the contrasting leadership issues facing the majority and minority parties in the US House of Representatives. POLITICO (“Greene’s rebellion sparks new talk of consequences for House GOP rebels“): After Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s doomed referendum on Speaker Mike Johnson’s leadership, a growing number of her GOP colleagues are pushing bigger consequences for her and other rebels. Those Republicans are proposing to build specific punishments into conference rules that would be triggered if hardliners keep breaking ranks against leadership. Sanctions getting floated include ..read more

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Official White House Photo CNN (“Biden says he will stop sending bombs and artillery shells to Israel if it launches major invasion of Rafah“): President Joe Biden said for the first time Wednesday he would halt some shipments of American weapons to Israel – which he acknowledged have been used to kill civilians in Gaza – if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders a major invasion of the city of Rafah. “Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” Biden told CNN’s Erin Burnett in an exclusive interview on “Erin ..read more

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Randy Travis credit: Marisa Taylor AP (“With help from AI, Randy Travis got his voice back. Here’s how his first song post-stroke came to be“): With some help from artificial intelligence, country music star Randy Travis, celebrated for his timeless hits like “Forever and Ever, Amen” and “I Told You So,” has his voice back. In July 2013, Travis was hospitalized with viral cardiomyopathy, a virus that attacks the heart, and later suffered a stroke. The Country Music Hall of Famer had to relearn how to walk, spell and read in the years that followed. A condition called aphasia limits his abilit ..read more

Flags of Israel and Palestine painted on the concrete wall with soldier shadow. Gaza and Israel conflict Reuters explains in some detail, “What’s in the three-phase ceasefire deal Hamas backs, but Israel does not?” PHASE ONE – 42-day ceasefire period – Hamas freeing 33 Israeli hostages, alive or dead, in return for Israel releasing 30 children and women for each released Israeli hostage, based on lists provided by Hamas according to the earliest date of detention. – Starting from the first day of the ceasefire, the entry of intensive and sufficient quantities of humanitarian aid, relief m ..read more

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Some back-in-forth in the comments section yesterday got me digging a bit more into an area of the laws of armed conflict that we don’t focus on much in our school’s curriculum: hiding behind non-combatants as “human shields” to either dissuade an enemy attack or make it much more costly in the court of public opinion. The only sources I’ve encountered who argue Hamas is not doing this are, frankly, not credible. But, while the Israeli leadership cites this tactic to argue that Hamas is therefore responsible for the civilian death toll, that’s not quite right, either. Claire Finkelstein and J ..read more

WaPo (“Looking Trump in the eye, the N.Y. judge warns he may jail him“): The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal trial found him in contempt of court Monday — the 10th such violation of a gag order — and warned the former president that he was flirting with jail time if he continued to talk or post online statements about witnesses, jurors, or relatives of those involved in the case. “Mr. Trump, it’s important to understand that the last thing I want to do is to put you in jail,” New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan warned from the bench. “You are the former president of the Unit ..read more

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