While Democrats and independents make up the bulk of support for Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., his campaign is attracting new Republican donors as he has hardened his stance in support of Israel since the Hamas attacks on October 7.

At least 14 registered Republicans have contributed to Fetterman’s campaign since October, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. A 15th Fetterman donor listed as a registered Republican told The Intercept he recently switched his party registration to Democrat to vote for George Latimer in the Democratic primary against Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y. Three of the donors gave to Fetterman’s last campaign for Senate.

While the donations haven’t been big enough to change Fetterman’s overall numbers, they point to both a shift in the public perception of Fetterman, who once identified as a progressive, and the shifting politics on Israel in the U.S.

“It’s shameful that Sen. Fetterman is choosing to align himself with the GOP and its enthusiasm for the mass death of Palestinians in Gaza.”

Where support for Israel was once subject to bipartisan consensus , Israel’s rightward lurch in recent decades has been mirrored in U.S. politics, where its staunchest supporters are increasingly aligned with the Republican Party. Among Democrats, progressives have been generally more critical of human rights abuses in Israel while centrists and mainstream liberals, especially in party leadership, show more robust unconditional support for Israel.

“It’s shameful that Sen. Fetterman is choosing to align himself with the GOP and its enthusiasm for the mass death of Palestinians in Gaza over the majority of Americans who want to see a ceasefire and equality and Justice for Palestinians and Israelis,” said Eva Borgwardt, national spokesperson for IfNotNow, a Jewish American group that opposes support for Israeli apartheid. (Fetterman’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)

As his roster of GOP supporters slowly grew, Fetterman has, in recent weeks, stridently criticized President Joe Biden from the right on Israel policy. He bashed Biden for not vetoing a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and spoke out against the administration for discouraging an Israeli offensive in Rafah, a beleaguered corner of the Gaza Strip clogged with refugees in dire conditions .

While the Pennsylvania senator was explicit about his unconditional support for Israel during his 2022 Senate campaign , some of his supporters have expressed frustration as his rhetoric has veered to the right of other pro-Israel Democrats, all as the death toll among Palestinians in Gaza climbed to more than 30,000.

Fetterman has also faced progressive disapproval for taunting pro-Palestine veterans demonstrating at the U.S. Capitol and doubling down on his position that there should be no conditions on aid to Israel. Three of Fetterman’s top communications staffers have left the office since October, when more than a dozen of his former campaign staffers wrote an open letter calling on him to support a ceasefire.

In addition to the 14 Republicans and one recent conversion, some of Fetterman’s non-GOP campaign contributors have themselves increased donations to Republicans since October. More than a dozen other Democratic and independent Fetterman donors who’ve given to Fetterman’s campaign in the last six months have also given to Republican candidates and causes.

Several Fetterman donors have also contributed to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which is targeting Democratic members of Congress who’ve called for a ceasefire in Gaza and to end U.S. military support for Israel. Other Fetterman donors have given to candidates backed by AIPAC to challenge members of the progressive Squad in Democratic primaries, including Latimer in New York, Bhavini Patel in Pennsylvania , and Don Samuels in Minnesota.

Fetterman has raised $4.7 million this cycle, including at least $1.6 million since October, and 83 percent of those recent contributions came from outside Pennsylvania, a figure similar to the proportion of out-of-state contributions that fueled his 2022 campaign.

Far-Right and Centrist Donors

While Fetterman has raised the bulk of his contributions from Democrats, registered Republicans have given at least $18,900 to Fetterman’s campaign since October. Several were first-time donors to a federal campaign.

New York Republican Joshua Landes said he supported Fetterman because of his stance on Israel. “Yes I’m a Republican and I exclusively supported John through the Jewish community for his principled actions supporting Israel now during this Israel Gaza war,” Landes said in an email to The Intercept.

Edward Neiger, a Fetterman donor and attorney in New York, said he recently switched parties from Republican to Democrat to vote in the Democratic primary against Bowman . Neiger said he’s a libertarian at heart and that Fetterman’s “moral clarity” on Israel has been a breath of fresh air. He’s given $2,000 to Fetterman’s campaign since November.

Former Meridian Capital CEO Ralph Herzka, a registered Republican in New York, gave $2,500 to Fetterman’s campaign in November. Herzka, like several other Republican Fetterman donors, declined to comment.

Several of the donors who are registered Democrats or haven’t declared a party affiliation have also given heavily to Republicans. The recipients included former President Donald Trump; former Republican presidential primary candidates Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis; Republican House Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y.; Republican Pennsylvania Senate candidate Dave McCormick; and the Lincoln Project, a group of anti-Trump Republicans.

Eliezer Scheiner, whose voter registration does not list a party affiliation, has given a total of $5,000 to Fetterman. A nursing home operator who gave more than $750,000 to Trump’s failed 2020 reelection campaign , Scheiner also contributed this cycle to campaigns for Democrats including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries; Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y.; and New Jersey Senate candidate Tammy Murphy.(Scheiner did not respond to a request for comment.)

Scott Barshay, partner at the law firm Paul Weiss, gave $3,300 to Fetterman’s campaign in January. Barshay has given to both Democrats and Republicans, and has contributed this cycle to Haley; Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Thom Tillis, R-N.C.; as well as Rep. Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y. Barshay also gave $5,000 in March to No Labels, the centrist group that recently suspended its bid to field a primary candidate to run against Biden after raising tens of millions of dollars.

At least three Republican donors also gave to Fetterman’s 2022 campaign. Retiree Clyde Robbins has given mostly to Democrats as well as to the leadership PAC for former Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney. Robbins gave Fetterman’s campaign $1,000 in March, and $1,200 to his 2022 campaign.

Another Republican donor. Kathleen Forest, an 82-year-old vineyard owner in Pennsylvania, gave $500 to Fetterman’s campaign in March. Her contribution to his 2022 campaign was her first listed federal contribution since 1994. (Barshay, Robbins, and Forest did not respond to requests for comment.)

While Republican donors gave Fetterman contributions between $500 and $3,300, Fetterman has continued to pull in donations from small-dollar donors. More than 40 percent of Fetterman’s contributions last quarter came from donations under $200.

The Pennsylvania senator has also received support from Palantir CEO Alexander Karp , who gave the maximum contribution of $3,300 to Fetterman’s campaign in January. Karp has given to several Republicans this cycle. (Karp did not respond to a request for comment.)

No Labels co-founder John Avlon , who is currently running in the Democratic primary in New York’s 1st Congressional District, gave Fetterman $1,000 in February. (Avlon did not respond to a request for comment.) Avlon denounced No Labels’s effort to recruit a candidate to challenge Biden and said he hasn’t been involved with the group since 2013.

The post Since October, Sen. John Fetterman Has Been Building a Roster of Republican Donors appeared first on The Intercept .

In the early 1980s, doctors at Chicago’s Cook County Hospital faced an alarming trend: Thousands of patients from across the city were being transferred to the county facility, including patients whose conditions were unstable, making the transfers medically risky. Many patients ended up in the intensive care unit; others died.

Several years later, the New England Journal of Medicine published a study confirming that transfers had skyrocketed from roughly 1,300 in 1980 to nearly 7,000 in 1983. The study supported what doctors had observed, according to the Chicago Tribune: “that private hospitals in the area are shirking their duty to provide care to the needy.” Reviewing some 500 transfers from private medical facilities to the Cook County hospital over a one-month period, the study found that the vast majority of patients were unemployed, and many had been transferred because they lacked the means to pay for health care. Eighty-nine percent were Black or Hispanic, 24 percent were medically unstable, and just 6 percent had consented to transport.

The Chicago doctors weren’t alone. Across the country, the transfer practice, known as “patient dumping,” had become a serious problem, especially for those in labor. “This was a full-term baby who would have been alive right now if the system hadn’t shuffled the mother around,” one doctor told the San Francisco Examiner in 1985 about a patient in labor who arrived at an Oakland hospital after being turned away from two other facilities. The baby was stillborn. “When she walked in here, I knew immediately something was really wrong,” the obstetrician said. “She was doubled over, holding her belly.”

The problem became so grave that Congress stepped in, passing the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, known as EMTALA. Still in effect today, the law is straightforward : It requires all hospitals that receive certain federal funds to conduct a medical assessment of every patient who shows up at the ER and, in a medical emergency, provide necessary stabilizing treatment. The law defers to medical professionals to determine when a medical emergency exists and what stabilizing treatments are needed.

EMTALA operates as a “point of rescue,” said Nicole Huberfeld, a professor at Boston University’s schools of law and public health. “It is the one law that we have that makes it so that anyone can get access to care when they’re having a medical emergency.”

For nearly 40 years, necessary stabilizing treatment under EMTALA has included abortion care. In July 2022, weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the right to abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Department of Health and Human Services posted a memo reiterating hospitals’ obligations under EMTALA. When a state had banned abortion but abortion was the stabilizing treatment a patient needed, the memo stated, EMTALA preempted the state law.

In a letter accompanying the guidance, Health Secretary Xavier Becerra assured providers that EMTALA “protects your clinical judgment and the action that you take to provide stabilizing medical treatment to your pregnant patients, regardless of the restrictions in the state where you practice.”

“That’s the exact evil that Congress was trying to stop.”

But in a case pending before the Supreme Court, scheduled for oral arguments on April 24, Idaho claims that abortion is not protected under EMTALA, and that the federal government is interfering with state’s ability to ban the procedure. “The whole point of Dobbs was to restore to the states their authority to regulate abortion,” lawyers with the far-right Alliance Defending Freedom , who are representing Idaho, wrote in their brief . “Yet the administration seeks to thwart Idaho’s exercise of self-government on this important topic.” The claim that EMTALA covers abortion, they wrote, “is imaginary.”

If the court were to accept Idaho’s recasting of EMTALA, the safety-net law meant to eliminate discrimination in emergency medical care would be nullified, experts say, singling out pregnant people as a separate and unequal class of patients. Such a ruling would hobble the ability of medical professionals to respond appropriately to emergencies and encourage a new generation of patient dumping.

“Idaho’s arguments would make pregnant people second-class citizens in emergency rooms,” said Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, deputy director of the reproductive freedom project at the American Civil Liberties Union. “That’s the exact evil that Congress was trying to stop.”

Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta looks on as Attorney General Merrick Garland announces the Justice Department’s lawsuit seeking to block Idaho’s abortion ban on Aug. 2, 2022. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, near-total abortion bans quickly took effect in several states, including Idaho, where the so-called Defense of Life Act bans all abortions save for those necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant person. During a legislative hearing on the measure in 2020, the law’s sponsor, state Sen. Todd Lakey, said the law included no exception for the broader health of the pregnant person because that was not as important as the life of the fetus. “I would say it weighs less, yes, then the life of the child,” he said.

“If we’re talking health of the mother, that’s a nuanced decision that could be something much less than life,” Lakey said. “If the decision was based solely on a question of some type of health, then you’re talking about taking the life of the unborn child, so that weighs more heavily than simply ‘health.’”

Idaho’s ban has placed health care providers in a precarious position. Violations of EMTALA’s mandate can result in hefty fines for doctors and hospitals and the loss of federal funding that facilities use to treat elderly patients and people with disabilities. Doctors who violate Idaho’s abortion ban, meanwhile, face criminal prosecution, two to five years in prison for each offense, and loss of their medical license.

The narrowness of the exception to Idaho’s ban prompted the federal government to sue the state in August 2022, arguing that the law impermissibly conflicts with EMTALA’s requirement that providers treat “emergency medical conditions,” not only those that pose “risks to life,” but also conditions that place a person’s health in “serious jeopardy.” The text of EMTALA clearly states that where conflicts with state law exist, the federal law takes precedence.

The government asked a federal district court to immediately block Idaho’s law from taking effect while the lawsuit was ongoing. The court agreed , enjoining the Idaho ban “to the extent that statute conflicts with EMTALA-mandated care.”

Idaho appealed the ruling and lost, prompting the state to ask the Supreme Court to intervene, which it did in January, lifting the district court injunction and scheduling the case for oral arguments.

In legal filings, Idaho points out that the word “abortion” is not included in the EMTALA statute, claiming there was no understanding that Congress meant to include abortion care among potential stabilizing treatments required under the law. In contrast, the statute does include the phrase “unborn child,” which according to the state, means that the well-being of the fetus must be weighed in addressing medical emergencies.

Idaho law doesn’t conflict with EMTALA at all, the lawyers argue, because Idaho regulates the practice of medicine in the state. EMTALA only requires doctors to provide stabilizing treatments that are “available” at a given hospital, and since abortion is illegal, it is thus unavailable. And because abortion is unavailable in Idaho, a hospital could legally transfer a patient somewhere else for care, presumably without being accused of dumping. Practically speaking, that would mean coordinating a transfer to a facility out of state and hours away.

Idaho claims the Department of Health and Human Services’ 2022 guidance was merely an attempt to legalize all abortion in the state. “A patient who wanted, but was denied, an abortion cannot wield EMTALA to force an emergency room to perform one,” reads the lawyers’ Supreme Court brief.

Huberfeld, the health law expert, who along with several other legal scholars filed an amicus brief supporting the federal government’s position, says Idaho is misinterpreting the law. EMTALA doesn’t contain the word “abortion” because, at the urging of medical professionals, Congress left the menu of stabilizing treatments to their discretion. At the time of EMTALA’s passage, abortion was protected care, and even states that had banned the procedure later in pregnancy included exceptions for the life and health of the pregnant person. Physicians have long “acknowledged their statutory obligation to provide abortion care in those rare emergencies in which terminating a pregnancy is the necessary ‘stabilizing’ treatment,” Huberfeld and her colleagues wrote .

The reference to an “unborn child,” meanwhile, is defined in the EMTALA statute — just not in the way that Idaho claims. “Three of the four mentions are specifically about taking into account the risks to the unborn child during labor when transferring a patient to another hospital,” said Kolbi-Molinas of the ACLU, which also filed an amicus brief in support of the federal government. The fourth mention is meant to ensure that a pregnant person in the ER will receive care for a pregnancy-related problem that is not currently placing their own life at risk. “So the hospital couldn’t say, ‘Well, you’re fine, so we’re just going to let your baby die,’” Kolbi-Molinas explained.

Those references are important, according to Huberfeld, because before EMTALA, hospitals were abandoning pregnant people in alarming numbers. “There were so many instances of people in labor being turned away from emergency departments and they and/or their newborns dying,” she said. “It was specifically addressed because the circumstances of patient dumping for people in labor were so egregious.”

For Idaho to suggest that Congress actually meant to shield hospitals from having to address the medical needs of pregnant people in favor of protecting the fetus “is like gaslighting,” Kolbi-Molinas said.

And the argument that state hospitals don’t have to provide emergency abortion care because Idaho regulates the practice of medicine turns EMTALA on its head. Huberfeld thinks the argument is bait meant to attract justices inclined to embrace the notion of state sovereignty. But EMTALA is tied to Medicare funding, she said, which hospitals do not have to accept. If they do, the funds come with strings — including EMTALA’s nondiscrimination guarantee. The law was designed to create “a national standard” because states were routinely discriminating against patients, leaving a patchwork of unequal care, Huberfeld said. “It’s the state variability that predictably leads to worse health outcomes for certain populations.”

From left to right: Anna Zargarian, Lauren Miller, Lauren Hall, and Amanda Zurawski at the Texas Capitol on March 7, 2023, after filing a lawsuit on behalf of Texans harmed by the state’s abortion ban. Photo: Rick Kern/Getty Images

Since the fall of Roe, stories of women being denied abortions during medical emergencies have become distressingly common, making clear that the scant exceptions in state bans are not enough to keep pregnant patients safe.

Such cruelty has been on regular display in Texas, including in the case of Amanda Zurawski , who nearly died twice and whose future fertility has been imperiled because of the state’s abortion ban. Zurawski’s water broke early, and the demise of her fetus was inevitable, but because Texas’s ban contained only vague language regarding medical emergencies, doctors said they had to wait until she was on death’s door to provide the abortion she needed.

Zurawski is one of several women who have sued Texas seeking to clarify the ban’s exceptions. The state has resisted, claiming the language is clear and that it’s doctors who are confused. Zurawski and 16 other women also signed on to an amicus brief in the EMTALA case as “living proof of the inadequacy of state law, which endangered rather than protected their lives.”

ERs are “discharging pregnant patients in medical emergencies, telling them to wait elsewhere until their health deteriorates.”

Meanwhile, Texas has also been fighting the federal government to limit EMTALA’s protections. But instead of being sued by the government, as Idaho was, Texas sued first.

Just three days after HHS posted its 2022 guidance, the state filed suit in the Texas Panhandle, where the case was certain to wind up before a Trump-appointed judge thanks to the quirks of the federal court system. Texas argued that the guidance was a blatant effort to create new law out of whole cloth that would “transform every emergency room in the country into a walk-in abortion clinic.”

The EMTALA guidance was hardly new , the government responded , and did nothing more than reinforce provider obligations under the law as written. Arguing that the case should be thrown out, the government noted that the state’s post-Roe abortion ban had yet to take effect — meaning Texas had no grounds to sue. The state’s wild claims that the government was somehow trying to mandate elective abortions was “a patent misreading of the guidance that bears no resemblance to reality.”

Nonetheless, the federal district court sided with Texas, and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, effectively blocking the full protection of EMTALA in the state. How the Supreme Court rules in the Idaho case could also determine the outcome in Texas.

Texas was joined in the lawsuit by two groups of anti-abortion doctors who previously filed a federal suit in the Panhandle challenging the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion drug mifepristone. As in that case, the doctors in the EMTALA lawsuit alleged that the federal government’s guidance might at some point conscript them into participating in an abortion in violation of their conscience. The Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments in the mifepristone case last month, seemed to doubt that the doctors’ dubious claims offered them legal standing to sue.

In the meantime, as Zurawski and others argue in their Idaho case brief, by denying pregnant people EMTALA protections, states with abortion bans are creating the very kind of discriminatory care that the law was meant to eradicate: “Emergency rooms are discharging pregnant patients in medical emergencies, telling them to wait elsewhere until their health deteriorates.”

While the Idaho Supreme Court has blessed the state’s abortion ban, claiming that it provides wide latitude for doctors to exercise their judgment, the broader political climate in the state is sending a more menacing message, according to the Idaho Coalition for Safe Healthcare.

Lawmakers have tried to insert fetal personhood language into state law and threatened to withhold funding from Boise after city officials said they would not prioritize enforcement of the abortion ban. The state’s attorney general said medical professionals who “assist” in abortion — even by referring someone to out-of-state care — could be prosecuted under the ban. As the number of preventable maternal deaths rose, the state disbanded its Maternal Mortality Review Committee. A group of so-called Freedom Caucus lawmakers penned a threatening letter to hospitals demanding to see abortion records.

A “culture of fear” has settled over the state’s medical professionals, said Dr. Caitlin Gustafson , a family medicine doctor trained in obstetrics and a member of the Idaho coalition. “We have targets on our backs for providing care in the moment that somebody is going to second guess,” she said. “It’s just untenable.”

“We have targets on our backs for providing care.”

Idaho is losing doctors at an alarming rate . Nearly 60 obstetricians stopped providing care in the 15 months following the ban’s imposition, and five of the state’s nine maternal fetal medicine doctors have left the state. Two hospital obstetrics programs have closed, and another is on the brink of closure, because hospitals could not recruit enough doctors to staff them.

Practicing in a rural community, Gustafson feels the weight of the state’s abortion ban, not only as a conflict with her duty to care for pregnant patients, but also for its impact on patients in need of other services. She said she’d just gotten word that another OB-GYN who provided consultation for rural patients was leaving the state, meaning that patients in need of routine services — hysterectomies, for example, or consultation for a “cancer scare” — will be forced to travel hundreds of miles for care. “We’re losing everything,” she said.

Gustafson has always recommended that her pregnant patients in rural areas carry “life flight” insurance in case they need emergency transportation to Boise. Now, she said, doctors across the state are recommending that all pregnant patients carry such insurance in case an emergency arises and they need to be transported out of state. “‘You mean if X, Y, or Z happens, I would have to go to Utah?’” she said patients have asked her. “‘I have two children at home. I have no family there, and I’m going to fly to a city I don’t know, and to doctors I don’t know, and that’s what you’re telling me is my only option?’”

“The level of financial, personal strain and distress this is creating and the inequality by default is tremendous,” Gustafson said. “It feels very unfair.”

Health care providers are trained to intervene in emergencies “to head off the risk of injury, illness, and death,” Huberfeld said, not to “wait until some is on death’s door to help them.” Idaho’s interpretation of EMTALA “is the exact opposite of what the law is supposed to do.”

The post Idaho Goes to the Supreme Court to Argue That Pregnant People Are Second-Class Citizens appeared first on The Intercept .

The Biden Administration is “actively suppressing intelligence reports” about the state of U.S. military relations with Niger, according to a new report issued by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. U.S. military service members told Gaetz’s office that they can’t get medicine, mail, or other support from the Pentagon.

“The Biden Administration and the State Department are engaged in a massive cover-up,” Gaetz told The Intercept. “They are hiding the true conditions on the ground of U.S. diplomatic relations in Niger and are effectively abandoning our troops in that country with no help in sight.”

Last month, Col. Maj. Amadou Abdramane, a spokesperson for Niger’s ruling junta, took to the national television network to denounce the United States and end the long-standing counterterrorism partnership between the two countries. Abdramane revoked his country’s agreement allowing U.S. troops and civilian Defense Department employees to operate in Niger, declaring that the security pact, in effect since 2012 , violated Niger’s constitution.

The Pentagon has maintained in the month since that it is seeking clarification.

“The Biden Administration and the State Department are engaged in a massive cover-up.”

“The U.S. government continues to work to obtain clarification,” Gen. Michael Langley, the chief of U.S. Africa Command, or AFRICOM, told The Intercept on Thursday.

Gaetz’s report contends that the U.S. Embassy in Niger, under Ambassador Kathleen FitzGibbon, is “covering up the failure of their U.S. diplomatic efforts in Niger.” The report says the embassy is “dismissing or suppressing” intelligence from the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations, or OSI, as well as Special Operations Command Africa.

“When our AFRICOM leaders look to us to provide atmospherics on the ground, they go to the Embassy first and hear a watered down or false story than what is being reported,” according to one service member quoted in the report. “I know of at least 3 reports from OSI about Nigerien sentiment that have been discredited by the Embassy and turned out to be 100% true.” (The State Department denied the allegations but did not provide a statement on the record.)

Gaetz said, “They are suppressing intelligence because they don’t want to acknowledge that their multibillion-dollar flop for Niger to be centerpiece of their Africa Strategy has been a complete and total failure.”

In interviews conducted by Gaetz’s office, U.S. service members currently serving in Niger said they are, as the report put it, “functionally stranded” in the increasingly hostile country. The military officials said they are prohibited from conducting missions or from returning home at the scheduled end of their deployments.

“No flights are authorized by Niger to enter or exit the country in support of DoD efforts or requirements,” reads the report which notes that mail, food, equipment, and medical supplies “are being prevented from reaching” Air Base 201, the large U.S. drone base in the town of Agadez , on the southern fringe of the Sahara Desert.

“Some diplomatic clearances for military flights have recently been denied or not responded to, which has forced extended deployments in some cases,” Langley said, in a statement to The Intercept.

Pentagon spokesperson Pete Nguyen told The Intercept that “sustainment” of U.S. personnel has continued through commercial means, and the Pentagon is in “discussions” with the junta “to approve clearances on our upcoming regularly scheduled flights.”

Military personnel said the blood bank at Air Base 201 is not being replenished, possibly jeopardizing troops in the event of a mass casualty situation.

Next month, critical medications will also run out for individual service members. U.S. personnel “have repeatedly reached out for assistance but their strategic higher headquarters such as AFRICOM routinely overlook their concerns and those of AB101’s higher chain of command, or simply do not provide relief or guidance,” reads the report, referring to Air Base 101, located at the main commercial airport in Niger’s capital, Niamey.

“The Biden administration needs to acknowledge that their plan in Niger has failed and they need to bring these troops home immediately,” Gaetz told The Intercept. “If there is no remedy between Niger and the United States before the end of the month, our troops will be in immediate danger.”

The post U.S. Troops in Niger Say They’re “Stranded” and Can’t Get Mail, Medicine appeared first on The Intercept .

One day after Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., questioned Columbia University administrators about the mistreatment of students protesting Israel’s war on Gaza, the school suspended Omar’s daughter and two other students for participating in a campus protest.

Omar’s questions to the administrators during a Wednesday congressional hearing on antisemitism at Columbia touched on the school’s response to students being sprayed with a chemical at a campus rally for Gaza and its policy surrounding professors harassing students online.

University President Nemat Shafik announced that two students were suspended in relation to the January protest and that a professor was under investigation for complaints over his social media posts about students.

During a hearing premised on the idea that there is rampant antisemitism on Columbia’s campus, Omar also got Shafik to say that there had been no protests targeting specific ethnic or religious groups — Muslims, Arabs, Palestinians, or Jews.

“I think that the line of questioning which my mother asked was definitely a pressure for Columbia University,” said Omar’s daughter, Isra Hirsi, who is a junior at Barnard College, Columbia’s women’s school.

Hirsi, who has been an active participant in campus protests over the war and said she hadn’t received any prior disciplinary warning, noted that other factors may have been at play too. “And then added pressure from me also giving interviews and people knowing that I am the daughter of her at the same time,” she told The Intercept.

Scare Tactics

On Thursday morning, Barnard sent interim suspension notices to Hirsi, Maryam Iqbal, and Soph Dinu for participating in an on-campus encampment that has rallied hundreds of students for over 24 hours. The demonstration began in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, ahead of the House Committee on Education and Workforce’s hearing on antisemitism at the school.

According to the notice, the trio had received “repeated requests from Barnard and Columbia” to leave the encampment on Wednesday.

“Barnard College,” the notice read, “has determined that your continued unauthorized encampment on the Columbia campus poses an ongoing threat of disruption to, or interference with, the normal operations of the College and the University.” Because of the suspension, the students are barred from residence halls, dining facilities, and classrooms while the full disciplinary process plays out.

The students told The Intercept that they had not received any warning other than the code of conduct warning flyers school officials distributed to the masses. (Asked about the suspensions, Barnard pointed to a public statement that said that senior staff members issued written warnings to protest participants at around 7 p.m. on Wednesday, warning them of interim suspension if they did not leave by 9 p.m.)

Iqbal noted that she, Hirsi, and Dinu have been visible participants in the protests and have made themselves available to media using their full names. She added that the school had previously identified her as an organizer with Students for Justice in Palestine, which the school suspended last year, and had asked her about SJP activities in recent months.

Both Iqbal and Dinu have been involved in disciplinary discussions about their participation in protests, they said.

“I see the hearings as one of the many scare tactics the administration uses to try to divide and conquer us,” Dinu told The Intercept. “They’re trying to call in as many students as possible to try to get whatever information they can. They’re trying to get students to become scared and to share a bunch of information to try and target the movement. They’re trying to get students too afraid to show up to protests. But as we have seen, that does not work. It only serves to galvanize the student body more.”

The trio were at the January rally where a noxious chemical was sprayed, and Iqbal said she was among those who went to the hospital for treatment afterward. (In a pseudonymous lawsuit filed this week, a Columbia student said that he had sprayed a non-toxic gag spray “in the air — not directly at any individual.”)

During the Wednesday congressional hearing, Shafik publicly revealed for the first time that two students were suspended in relation to the incident. Hirsi noted that the university has been relatively quiet about that investigation, while it has quickly published information about unauthorized events held by students protesting the Gaza war.

“We had no idea. I mean, we heard through the grapevine about their suspension, but no public correspondence about what had happened,” she said. “And I think that that is very scary and concerning about how the university plays out who deserves due process, who deserves to be publicly shamed, and who doesn’t.”

This week’s encampment was organized to “protest Columbia University’s continued financial investment in corporations that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide, and occupation in Palestine,” organizers said. The demonstrators are calling for transparency for all of Columbia’s financial investments and amnesty for students involved “in the encampment or the movement for Palestinian liberation.”

Students, citing faculty senators, said the school has agreed to some form of greater investment transparency.

“We welcome an opportunity to discuss the topic of transparency with our community, and to hear where additional information would be impactful,” a Columbia spokesperson told The Intercept. “Students can follow an established process to request information about university investments.”

On Thursday afternoon, Shafik, “with great regret,” authorized the New York Police Department to clear out the protest site.

One adjunct faculty member found the decision troubling, given that the school has its own department of public safety ostensibly trained to help manage student and campus affairs.

“I was there yesterday and these students were literally just singing and chanting and handing out flyers,” said the professor, who requested anonymity out of concern for workplace reprisal. “Shouldn’t the cops have been required to disarm before entering campus to avoid possibility of accidental discharge or some other horrible thing?”

The post Columbia Suspends Ilhan Omar’s Daughter One Day After Omar Grilled School Administrators appeared first on The Intercept .

Though Iraq, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia directly participated in the defense of Israel, intercepting Iranian missiles and drones and supporting the operation, none of the Arab countries involved are willing to publicly admit their participation, and Washington is going along with the deception. The full extent of “partner” air operations responding to Iran has now been added to the web of secret bases, hidden military alliances, and undisclosed weapons pockmarking the region. Now, as the region finds itself perched on the possibility of a wider war, the public has once again been left in the dark.

As Iranian-made missiles and drones headed toward Israel in the 12-hour operation last Saturday, U.S. military officers were stationed throughout the region to coordinate the unified response and coach the secret partners, according to military sources. Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Bahrain were also tied into the American-led air and missile defense network, but these countries also have stayed quiet.

Now, the secret partners are even going out of their way to deny their roles, while at the same time delivering a subtle message to Israel (and the United States) that they are not going to be so cooperative should Israel further escalate.

Take Jordan, a long-standing U.S. ally and one of America’s staunchest military partners in the fight against ISIS. While acknowledging that the kingdom’s American-made F-16 fighter jets joined those from the U.S., Britain, France, and Israel in shooting down Iranian drones and missiles, Amman has not revealed any specific details about whose jets were where, above whose airspace, or when they engaged targets. (As The Intercept previously reported , U.S. F-15E strike aircraft primarily operated from Jordan’s Muwaffaq Salti Air Base. And Israeli fighters shot down drones and missiles over Jordanian territory.)

Despite its involvement as the central hub, Jordan’s foreign minister offered a stark if vague warning, hinting that the patience it has shown toward Israel and America may be waning. On April 14, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Ayman Safadi said that Jordan’s participation “is a firm policy that anything that poses a threat to Jordan will be confronted, because our priority is to protect Jordan, protect the lives of Jordanians, protect the capabilities of.”

King Abdullah II said on Tuesday that Jordan’s “security and sovereignty are above all considerations.”

Safadi added that similar action would be taken to respond to any attacks emanating from Israel toward Iran. “We will intercept every drone or missile that violates Jordan’s airspace to avert any danger,” he told Al-Mamlaka state-run news channel.

In his own effort to distance his country from the spiraling conflict, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani denied that any Iranian-made weapons had been launched from within his country’s borders. The prime minister’s remarks came after both the Israel Defense Forces and Iranian media identified Iran, Yemen, Iraq, and Lebanon as countries from which drones and missiles originated. On Tuesday, the Pentagon said that Iranian weapons originated from Iran, Syria, and Yemen.

“We … condemn the fact that the weapons launched at Israel violated the airspace of several regional states, putting at risk the lives of innocent people in those countries,” the U.S. said at the United Nations on Wednesday. (Iraq also secretly hosts U.S. Army Patriot surface-to-air missile batteries, which shot down some Iranian missiles, as The Intercept previously reported . The presence of U.S. Patriots on Iraq soil had not been publicly known before Saturday.)

Like Jordan’s foreign minister, al-Sudani added , “Iraq rejects the use of its airspace from any country. We don’t want Iraq to be engaged in the area of conflict.” What steps Baghdad might take to protect its airspace remain unclear.

Saudi Arabia is a stranger case still. The Israeli press reported that “Saudi Arabia acknowledged that it had helped the newly forged regional military coalition,” according to a story on KAN News, Israel’s public radio English language news. But the Saudi monarchy pushed back. “Saudi Arabia was not involved in intercepting recent Iranian attacks on Israel, according to informed sources speaking to Al Arabiya TV channel,” the Saudi Gazette reported . “The sources stressed that there have been no official statements issued regarding Saudi involvement in countering these attacks. This clarification follows reports by some Israeli news sites that attributed statements to an official Saudi source, claiming the Kingdom’s participation in the defensive alliance that responded to the Iranian attacks.”

Some reports say that American KC-135 aerial refueling tanker jets circled in the air over Saudi airspace at the time of the Iranian strike. The U.S. is known to station these flying gas stations on Saudi soil at King Abdulaziz Air Base in Dhahran. Other reports say that Saudi Arabia closed its airspace to U.S. aircraft during the operation, demanding that the U.S. refrain from launching any counterattack on Iran from its territory.

The United States has sold Patriot missile batteries and the longer range Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-ballistic missile systems to Saudi Arabia, and stationed Patriot missiles on Saudi soil. Patriot has also been sold to Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and the UAE; THAAD is also operational or in development in the UAE, Oman, and Qatar. The U.S. Army deploys its own Patriot batteries in Bahrain, Iraq, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.

“Secretary [of Defense Lloyd] Austin continues to communicate with leaders throughout the Middle East region and beyond to emphasize that while the United States does not seek escalation, we will continue to defend Israel and U.S. personnel,” Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said on Tuesday, declining to name what leaders and only referring to the Arab states as “partners through the region.”

There has hardly been any American media coverage of the role of these various Arab countries in the defense of Israel, further adding to the state-imposed secrecy. But what these “partner” nations choose to do, should Israel decide to attack Iran, in protecting their airspace and sovereignty is an important factor in any Israeli decision,

“You got a win,” President Joe Biden reportedly told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday. “Take the win,” urging that Israel restrain from further action.

Biden also said that the U.S. would not help Israel in any effort to retaliate on Iran. But as with the current war in Gaza , and reports about Israel’s unwillingness to share plans about the strike on Iran’s embassy in Syria until just moments before it was executed, Israel has often found that America’s red lines don’t count for much. Soon, the U.S. may have to decide on which side to take in the event that Arab states engage with Israeli aircraft, drones, or missiles.

The post The Secret U.S. Alliance That Defended Israel From Iran Attack appeared first on The Intercept .

In 2022, the Silicon Valley trade group NetChoice cut a $450,000 check to TechFreedom, a nonprofit tech think tank. Over the next year, TechFreedom filed multiple friend-of-the-court briefs — called “amicus” briefs, from the Latin for “friend” — supporting NetChoice’s federal lawsuits against social media laws in two states.

Those cases, which have been consolidated before the U.S. Supreme Court, challenge laws that Texas and Florida passed in 2021 aimed at limiting social media platforms’ ability to moderate user-posted content, which Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton equates to “censorship.” At oral argument in February, the Supreme Court justices seemed highly skeptical that either state’s law could be squared with the Constitution.

The brief TechFreedom submitted to the high court does not list its financial relationship to NetChoice, nor does it have to — illustrating the narrowness of current disclosure rules at the Supreme Court and the gaps watchdogs seek to fill by scouring donation records.

After the Supreme Court wraps up arguments for the current term next week, it will turn to finalizing decisions in dozens of pending matters, including these social media cases plus high-stakes cases about abortion, guns, the limits of presidential immunity, and how the federal regulatory apparatus itself functions. In doing so, the justices will have a chance to review hundreds of amicus briefs.

Like the money spent on elections, the money spent on the deluge of amicus briefs each term is incredibly difficult to track. The Supreme Court’s disclosure rule for amicus briefs is quite narrow, requiring only a footnote that indicates whether there were any outside monetary contributions “intended to fund the preparation or submission” of that specific brief.

Critics question whether that provision serves much purpose, since it does not capture even significant cash flows between case parties like NetChoice and their amicus supporters, except for contributions explicitly earmarked for a particular amicus brief.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., has proposed a much broader disclosure rule as part of a pending Supreme Court reform bill . Whitehouse proposes requiring amicus filers to identify all contributions from the past year that were either above $100,000 or more than 3 percent of the organization’s annual revenue.

The bill was passed out of the Judiciary Committee in September, but it is unclear if the full Senate will take it up this term. “Neither parties to a case nor outside billionaire special interests should be able to secretly engage in judicial lobbying by funding and coordinating flotillas of amicus briefs,” Whitehouse told The Intercept.

Skip, Skim, or Read

NetChoice, whose members include Meta, X, Google, and TikTok, quickly sued to block the Texas and Florida laws after they were passed in 2021. As the cases made their way to the Supreme Court, the group contributed more than $800,000 to organizations that supported its legal arguments in multiple briefs.

According to its 2022 tax filing, the most recent year for which its tax records are public, NetChoice’s $450,000 contribution to TechFreedom was for “general operations.” Last December, TechFreedom filed a brief supporting NetChoice’s argument against the social media laws. That filing contained a footnote that indicated it had not received any contributions directly supporting its work on the brief.

“We always have, and always will, comply fully with the Court’s rules,” Ari Cohn, free speech counsel at TechFreedom, told The Intercept. “Consistent with our overarching principle that nobody may purchase our opinions or legal positions, very nearly all of our support is general support—given with the understanding that we will use it to conduct our activities as we see fit without direction or control by donors.”

Also in 2022, NetChoice made a “general operations” contribution of $150,000 to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which submitted a joint brief to the Supreme Court with three other groups. NetChoice also made smaller contributions that year — ranging between $15,000 to $85,000 — to other groups that filed amicus briefs, including the Pelican Institute for Public Policy , the Goldwater Institute , and the National Taxpayers Union . Like TechFreedom’s, these briefs do not mention these contributions, nor were they likely required to do so under the current disclosure provision.

“No, we did not give any of these groups any funding for amicus briefs,” said Krista Chavez, a NetChoice spokesperson. “We only give groups general support with no strings attached.”

It is often difficult to gauge the actual impact of amicus briefs in any given decision. In opinions so far this year, the justices have cited briefs from the American Civil Liberties Union , the U.S. Chamber of Commerce , and the National Association of Federal Defenders , without mentioning the vast majority of others.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg once said her clerks divided these briefs into three piles — skip, skim, or read — based largely on the identity of the filer, which can vary widely. In the NetChoice cases, heavy hitters like the Chamber of Commerce also submitted briefs, but so did playwright David Mamet . (The Intercept has signed onto amicus briefs to the Supreme Court and other courts.)

The amicus mechanism at the Supreme Court level is thus both a free-for-all and highly orchestrated , with parties often relying on skilled amicus “wranglers” to recruit potential friends and amicus “whisperers” to keep their briefs on message. It can also cost a considerable amount of cash. In one case, a firm billed more than $500,000 for “time spent soliciting and coordinating amici support from sympathetic business groups.”

Connecting the Dots

A newly launched project is filling some of the gaps in the current disclosure requirements. Supreme Transparency , which focuses on amicus briefs filed in the current term by right-leaning organizations, is a joint project of Take Back the Court, Revolving Door Project, and True North Research.

“It’s no secret that the many of the rich benefactors cozying up to the conservative justices are the same people who fund right-wing organizations with business before the court,” said Sarah Lipton-Lubet, president of Take Back the Court, in a press release announcing the project launch. “But too often, stories about the Supreme Court don’t connect these dots — and as a result, they leave us with an incomplete picture.”

The project seeks to capture the money flowing from right-wing foundations and funders to conservative legal groups that file amicus briefs to the Supreme Court, as well as broader connections between these organizations and conservative powerbrokers.

The Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, for example, filed a number of amicus briefs this term. Headed by former Clarence Thomas clerk John Eastman, who is facing disbarment proceedings over his efforts to help overturn the 2020 election, the center argues that Texas and Florida’s social media laws should be upheld ; that the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau’s funding structure is unconstitutional ; that a landmark standard for regulatory oversight should be gutted ; and that the Securities and Exchange Commission’s authority should be weakened .

In 2022, the Claremont Institute received $100,000 from the Constitutional Defense Fund, a conservative litigation funder, plus another $100,000 via Donors Trust , a donor-advised fund often called the “dark-money ATM of the right.”

Another frequent friend of the court, the Ohio-based Buckeye Institute, received more than $200,000 in 2022 from the State Policy Network, a network of right-wing think tanks. Among its many briefs this term, the Buckeye Institute argued the federal ban on semi-automatic “bump stocks” is unconstitutional.

The Manhattan Institute, which also filed a brief against the bump stock ban and in numerous other cases, received more than $1.6 million in 2022 from its billionaire chair, Paul Singer, who is also one of Justice Samuel Alito’s fishing buddies . The Manhattan Institute also pulled in $450,000 in 2022 from the 85 Fund, which was founded by Leonard Leo, one of the leaders and top fundraisers for the conservative legal movement.

For now, and unless the court’s disclosure rules change, donation records like these are the only insight the public has into how millions of dollars flow into organizations that frequently give the Supreme Court their two cents.

The post The Gaping Hole in Supreme Court Rules for Tracking Links Between Litigants and Influence Groups appeared first on The Intercept .

Since Israel began its war on the Gaza Strip after the October 7 attacks, internal strife has wracked the New York Times. The intensity of the debate reached its zenith in late December and January, amid a sustained fight over the paper’s claim that Hamas had systematically weaponized sexual violence on October 7.

Published on December 28, the story, headlined “ Screams Without Words ,” instantly served as a powerful reference in a mounting campaign waged by Israel and its supporters to convince the world that Hamas had implemented a systematic rape campaign against Jewish women on October 7. The article by Jeffrey Gettleman, Anat Schwartz, and Adam Sella also was met with skepticism by independent journalists and other analysts who combed through each line of the story highlighting inconsistencies and credibility issues with people presented as witnesses and experts.

Since the story’s publication, the internal dispute led to the shelving of an episode of “The Daily,” the paper’s flagship podcast, that was to be based on “Screams Without Words.” The fight over the podcast episode spilled into the pages of The Intercept, prompting a far-reaching leak investigation that the New York Times’s union alleged was carried out in a manner that singled out and discriminated against reporters of Middle Eastern and North African extraction. A Times spokesperson denied that it engaged in racial targeting.

On Monday, executive editor Joe Kahn told staff the leak probe was ending. “We did not reach a definitive conclusion about how this significant breach occurred. We did identify gaps in the way proprietary journalistic material is handled, and we have taken steps to address these issues,” Kahn wrote on a Times Slack channel message seen by The Intercept. “The breach that occurred should upset anyone who wants to have transparency in our editorial processes and to encourage candid exchanges. We work together with trust and collegiality everyday on everything we produce, and I have every expectation that this incident will prove to be a singular exception to an important rule.”

In weeks leading up to the announcement that the probe was over, however, top officials in the Times newsroom justified the investigation and its conduct, according to newsroom sources and remarks at an April 4 meeting reviewed by The Intercept.

Internal concerns about the “Screams Without Words” article have been borne out by subsequent reporting from several media outlets, including The Intercept and the New York Times itself. The Times has not appended any major corrections to the December 28 story. Instead, the paper took the unusual step of inserting a bracketed “update” within the body of the story, with a link to a recent Times news article that undermines the original reporting.

Defending Leak Investigation

Roughly 20 Times staffers were interviewed in the probe , which was led by Charlotte Behrendt, the chief of the paper’s internal investigations unit. Initially, Times leadership said, “The inquiry is focused narrowly on how internal materials were shared with outsiders.” In a March 5 statement , however, the New York Times Guild said this was not true and filed a grievance with the newspaper for discrimination against employees of Middle Eastern or North African background.

“Members faced extensive questions about their involvement in MENA ERG” — employee resource group — “events and discussions, and about their views of the Times’s Middle East coverage,” the union said. “Group leaders were asked to turn over the group’s membership list, as well as the names of all New York Times colleagues who had ‘raised concerns’ — in private discussions — about a published New York Times article.”

Times spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander said, “The claim that anyone was singled out based on ethnicity or associations is completely untrue.” (The New York Times Guild did not respond to a request for comment about whether the grievance process was ongoing.)

In the weeks leading up to the closing of the probe, the intensity of the internal debate over Gaza coverage in the newsroom calmed, several Times staffers have told The Intercept, and interviews that were supposed to take place as part of the leak investigation never did. This led some employees to speculate that the investigation was winding down.

In an April 4 meeting, however, staffers were left with the impression the leak probe was continuing, according to three newsroom sources. During the all-staff meeting, Kahn, the executive editor, was asked for an update on the investigation and whether any staffers had been disciplined.

“There is nothing really concrete that we can say about it right now beyond the fact just to re-emphasize that this inquiry was very narrowly focused just on one issue which was making sure that we can protect the confidentiality of the journalistic process,” Kahn said. “It’s just very important that we be able to have that process unfold with the full confidence that that will remain internal to our staff and not be revealed or leaked externally. So that’s really the focus of it.”

Times managing editor Carolyn Ryan told staffers at the meeting that the internal probe was more than a simple leak investigation.

“It doesn’t really capture the gravity of what occurred here and the kind of extraordinary nature of it,” she said. “You’re talking about sharing pre-publication, pre-broadcast materials that were clearly internal, confidential, and sensitive.”

Times editorial leaders alluded to new internal policy initiatives aimed at staunching leaks and external criticism of the paper by staffers. They also emphasized that criticism and attacks on colleagues or the journalism of the Times was prohibited “outside of the proper channels.”

The day Kahn announced the probe was over, The Intercept published a story on a leaked Times style guidance that instructed its journalists covering Israel’s war on Gaza to restrict the use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and to “avoid” using the phrase “occupied territory” when describing Palestinian land.

New York Times executive editor Joseph Kahn speaks during a panel hosted by the Wall Street Journal in New York City on May 3, 2023. Photo: Mary Altaffer/AP

Cutting Ties

At the same April 4 meeting, Times international editor Philip Pan told the staff that the paper had cut ties with Schwartz, an Israeli filmmaker who freelanced with the paper. Hired by the Times to work with Gettleman, one of its marquee reporters, Schwartz did much of the on-the-ground reporting and interviews for “Screams Without Words,” which purported to show a systematic pattern of rape and other sexual violence by Hamas on October 7.

“Anat was a freelancer that we worked with in Israel,” Pan said. “She made valuable contributions to our report. We didn’t see anything amiss with her work for us, but we learned about social media activity that predated her time working with us that was unacceptable and she’s not working with us right now.” (Neither Pan nor Schwartz responded to requests for comment.)

Schwartz’s social media history intensified the controversy around the “Screams” story. Following October 7, Schwartz liked a post on the platform X , saying that Israel needed to “turn the Strip into a slaughterhouse.” Another post on X liked by Schwartz repeated a since-debunked viral claim about beheaded babies in the October 7 attack and she also liked a post called for creating a narrative that would support Israel’s war aims.

After the posts were brought to light, the Times announced it was reviewing Schwartz’s social media activity. “Those ‘likes’ are unacceptable violations of our company policy,” said a Times spokesperson in February.

The Times had previously stood by Schwartz’s reporting publicly. “Ms. Schwartz was part of a rigorous reporting and editing process,” Pan said in a statement provided to The Intercept for a late-February story about the controversy . “She made valuable contributions and we saw no evidence of bias in her work. We remain confident in the accuracy of our reporting and stand by the team’s investigation. But as we have said, her ‘likes’ of offensive and opinionated social media posts, predating her work with us, are unacceptable.”

On March 5, according to chat records reviewed by The Intercept, Times Jerusalem bureau chief Patrick Kingsley removed Schwartz from the WhatsApp group used by the paper’s journalists for communicating about Gaza coverage. (Kingsley directed questions to the Times communications team.)

The day before Schwartz was removed from the group, The Intercept published a story challenging one of the central allegations of sexual assault featured in “Screams Without Words.” In its article, the Times had cited an anonymous Israeli special forces paramedic who claimed that two teenage girls were sexually assaulted in Kibbutz Be’eri, offering a graphic description of the scene.

A spokesperson for the kibbutz, however, told The Intercept that, based on the information they had been provided, the story was flatly false. Family members of the two girls also disputed they were sexually assaulted. A spokesperson for the Times told The Intercept the paper continued to stand by its reporting.

Schwartz would only author one more story for the paper after “Screams”: a co-byline with the “Screams” team on a January 29 story about the arrival of a United Nations team in Israel to draft a report about sexual violence on October 7.

“Screams” Falls Apart

When the U.N. report finally arrived on March 4, the Times story about it wasn’t written by any of the “Screams” reporters. What the U.N. had found seemed to undermine the December story: Two high-profile cases sexual assault alleged to have happened at Kibbutz Be’eri were “unfounded.”

Yet the Times stuck by its reporting. The paper’s story on the U.N. report said the special forces paramedic’s account in “Screams” was not in question: “First responders told The New York Times they had found bodies of women with signs of sexual assault at those two kibbutzim, but The Times, in its investigation, did not refer to the specific allegations that the U.N. said were unfounded.”

The newspaper never explained the basis for its assertion that the U.N. had not actually debunked the paper’s reporting on the incident, but evidence soon came to light indicating that the reporting was false: There was video. On March 25, the Times itself reported that it had reviewed video taken by an Israeli soldier of the scene’s aftermath, showing three fully clothed bodies with no signs of sexual violence — making clear the paramedic’s description offered in “Screams Without Words” was false.

The Times’s new article on the video did not feature Gettleman’s byline. “New video has surfaced that undercuts the account of an Israeli military paramedic who said two teenagers killed in the Hamas-led terrorist attack on Oct. 7 were sexually assaulted,” the paper reported. “The unnamed paramedic, from an Israeli commando unit, was among dozens of people interviewed for a Dec. 28 article by The New York Times that examined sexual violence on Oct. 7.”

The Times, after submitting its article for a prestigious George Polk Award — and winning — suddenly began looking to share credit for its erroneous reporting. “The Associated Press, CNN, and the Washington Post reported similar accounts from a military paramedic who spoke on condition of anonymity,” reported the Times. (Eylon Levy, who at the time was an Israeli government spokesperson, had publicly offered to connect the paramedic with Western media outlets.)

The Times also walked back its claim that the previous U.N. report had not referred to its reporting. The Times article on the video said: “The report said the U.N. team was unable to establish whether sexual violence occurred in Be’eri and that at least two Be’eri cases reported in the news media were determined to be ‘unfounded,’ but it did not explicitly specify a military paramedic’s account.” It was a departure from its previous claim of certainty that the U.N. wasn’t referencing the account reported in the paper.

Instead of issuing a correction, the Times simply updated its “Screams Without Words” with the bracketed revelation that an entire section of its article was incorrect.

An official with the George Polk Awards confirmed to The Intercept that “Screams Without Words” was part of the Times package that won in the category for best foreign reporting. Gettleman, however, did not attend the Times’s private reception celebrating the award last week, nor did he appear at the awards luncheon on Friday.

“A number of our team members, including Jeffrey, were invited to attend but could not due to other commitments,” said a Times spokesperson. “The Times stands behind the reporting he and our entire team have done and is supportive of their earned accolades.”

The Polk committee said it stands by its citation and the award.

The post New York Times Brass Moves to Staunch Leaks Over Gaza Coverage appeared first on The Intercept .

Columbia University administrators made significant revelations during a Wednesday congressional hearing about their response to incidents that have rocked the campus since October 7.

The school suspended two students who allegedly sprayed a chemical on their peers at a rally for Gaza in January, is investigating a professor for harassing students online over their pro-Palestine activism, and has moved to punish two professors for making comments that have been condemned as antisemitic.

The Columbia leaders also took great pains to assure the House Committee on Education and Workforce that they have not done enough to tackle campus antisemitism, the subject of the hearing. The congressional committee heard testimony from Columbia University President Nemat Minouche Shafik, former Law School dean and Task Force on Antisemitism co-chair David Schizer, and Board of Trustees co-chairs Claire Shipman and David Greenwald.

“I feel this current climate on our campus viscerally. It’s unacceptable. I can tell you plainly that I am not satisfied with where Columbia is at this moment,” Shipman said. “As co-chair of the board, I bear responsibility for that.”

“I am a Columbia student, I came from New York,” a voice rang from the hallways outside the hearing room on Wednesday morning, where one person carried a Palestinian flag and others sported pro-Palestine messages on their clothing. “I came to see my president speak.”

“Let the students in,” chants began to ring.

Such was the beginning of the committee’s follow-up act to its viral December hearing on the campus antisemitism, which led to the ouster of Harvard University President Claudine Gay and University of Pennsylvania President Liz McGill.

Despite the commotion outside the room, the committee — led by Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C. — trudged along in interrogating the administrators in front of a crowded room which few, if any, of the Palestine advocates were able to enter.

As proof of the seriousness with which the school takes antisemitism, the panel pointed to decisions like suspending the campus chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine. The school suspended the groups for hosting a demonstration for Gaza without permission from the university, a decision the groups have contested in a lawsuit .

While Republican lawmakers lobbed questions and thoughts on why, for example, Columbia should institute a course on the Bible and bemoaned a social work class that criticizes capitalism, committee members also asked questions that led to substantive revelations into the university’s approach over recent months.

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., asked Shafik what the school’s policies are surrounding professors who harass students or attack the president online, naming Columbia professor Shai Davidai. The business school professor has for months derided pro-Palestine students on Twitter as being “pro-Hamas” or in support of terrorism, while he has repeatedly gone after the school for not more severely pursuing those students.

Shafik said that as president she was no stranger to being attacked, but that there have been more than 50 complaints about Davidai, who is currently under investigation for harassment.

Republicans pressed the panelists on the status of two other professors: Joseph Massad, a professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history, and Mohamed Abdou, a visiting professor in modern Arab studies.

Massad penned an article on October 8 that critics say is antisemitic and glorified Hamas’s attack on Israel.

“No less awesome were the scenes witnessed by millions of jubilant Arabs who spent the day watching the news, of Palestinian fighters from Gaza breaking through Israel’s prison fence or gliding over it by air,” Massad wrote , describing the attack as a “remarkable takeover of Israeli military bases and checkpoints.”

He went on to describe the Palestinians killed in Israel’s retaliatory bombing of Gaza, as well as the Israelis killed by Hamas. It was, he wrote, “all in all a horrifying human toll on all sides.”

Michigan Republican Rep. Tim Walberg, who recently suggested nuking Gaza as a way to solve the war, pressed the panel to answer how Massad could say such things in support of violence. Shafik condemned the comments and said the professor was removed from his role as chair. Walberg also asked the trustees whether they would have approved Massad for tenure given his comments. “No,” Shipman and Greenwald said.

Later, Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., once again raised the professor’s status, noting that Massad was still listed as chair of the academic committee on a Columbia website. Shafik responded saying she would need to confirm. Stefanik pressed on, asking if, regardless, Shafik would commit to removing him from the chairmanship.

“I think I would, yes. Let me come back with, yes. But I think I just want to confirm his current status before I reply,” Shafik said.

Columbia subsequently changed its website to list Massad as “ outgoing chair ,” according to web archives .

Stefanik also asked about Abdou, who the Republican said had expressed support for Hamas online following the October 7 attack. Shafik said Abdou had been terminated and will “never teach at Columbia again.” (Stefanik, for her part, has helped lead the battle against universities’ alleged antisemitism problem while standing loyally beside Donald Trump, who has dined with antisemite Nick Fuentes and recently said Jewish people who do not support him “should be spoken to.”)

Both Stefanik and Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., invoked the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” as definitionally antisemitic, pressing the Columbia panel to agree with the assumption. The panelists did not push back on the interpretation of the phrase, which many Palestinians and their allies view as an aspirational call for equality .

Stefanik and Rep. Burgess Owens, R-Utah, also cited allegations of Hamas beheading babies — a claim that has repeatedly been shown to be unverified , and that even the Israeli military said it couldn’t confirm .

Asked about the reporting that encourages caution before taking the claim as fact, Owens dug his heels in. “You’re going to have to do your homework,” he told The Intercept. “You can debate that with anybody you want to, but it’s true. It’s very obvious. The videos are out there.”

The hearing also prompted new disclosures about the university’s response to a chemical being sprayed during a January campus rally for Gaza, an issue first raised by Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y.

Shafik said the two alleged perpetrators were suspended, the university’s first public admission of this fact, while Foxx said in her closing remarks that documents provided to her by Columbia show that the substance sprayed was a “non-toxic gag spray.”

On Tuesday, one of the students filed a pseudonymous lawsuit against the school, alleging an “egregious miscarriage of justice” because of the school’s rush to “silence Plaintiff and brand him as a criminal for harmlessly exercising his freedom of expression in opposition to a pro-Hamas pro Palestine rally.”

The plaintiff, who is identified in the lawsuit only as John Doe, said that he, “as a harmless expression of his speech, sprayed into the air a novelty, non-toxic ‘fart’ spray named ‘Liquid Ass’ and ‘Wet Farts’ which he purchased on Amazon for $26.11.”

Just days ago, The Intercept asked Columbia about its investigation into the incident. The school deferred to the New York Police Department, which said that the investigation remains “ongoing,” and that the suspects’ identities were “unknown.” According to the lawsuit, however, the school placed the plaintiff on interim suspension “almost instantly,” and on March 13 finalized the decision to suspend him through May 2025.

The post Columbia Suspended Two Students for Assault on Gaza Rally, School Says in Antisemitism Hearing appeared first on The Intercept .

Ahead of the United Nations Security Council action to consider the Palestinian Authority’s application to become a full member of the international body, the United States is lobbying nations to reject such membership, hoping to avoid an overt “veto” by Washington. The lobbying effort, revealed in copies of unclassified State Department cables obtained by The Intercept, is at odds with the Biden administration’s pledge to fully support a two-state solution.

In 2012, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution granting Palestine the status of a non-member observer state.

The diplomatic cables detail pressure being applied to members of the Security Council, including Malta, the rotating president of the council this month. Ecuador in particular is being asked to lobby Malta and other nations, including France, to oppose U.N. recognition. The State Department’s justification is that normalizing relations between Israel and Arab states is the fastest and most effective way to achieve an enduring and productive statehood.

While clarifying that President Joe Biden has worked vigorously to support “Palestinian aspirations for statehood” within the context “of a comprehensive peace that would resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” a diplomatic cable dated April 12 details U.S. talking points against a U.N. vote for Palestinian statehood. The cable says that Security Council members must be persuaded to reject any proposal for Palestinian statehood — and thereby its recognition as a sovereign nation — before the council’s open debate on the Middle East, scheduled for April 18.

“It remains the U.S. view that the most expeditious path toward a political horizon for the Palestinian people is in the context of a normalization agreement between Israel and its neighbors,” the cable reads. “We believe this approach can tangibly advance Palestinian goals in a meaningful and enduring way.”

“We therefore urge you not to support any potential Security Council resolution recommending the admission of ‘Palestine’ as a U.N. member state, should such a resolution be presented to the Security Council for a decision in the coming days and weeks.”

Experts say that without a unanimous Security Council vote, any vote from the U.N. General Assembly is largely symbolic.

“Like it or not, a General Assembly vote on this issue is of political rather than legal weight,” Richard Gowan, the International Crisis Group’s U.N. director, told The Intercept. “The Assembly can only accept a new state ‘on the recommendation’ of the Security Council.”

The diplomatic cable includes a rationale for the administration’s opposition to the vote, citing the risk of inflaming tensions, political backlash, and potentially leading to the U.S. Congress cutting U.N. funding.

“Premature actions at the UNSC, even with the best intentions, will achieve neither statehood nor self-determination for the Palestinian people. Such initiatives will instead endanger normalization efforts and drive the parties further apart, heighten the risk of violence on the ground that could claim innocent lives on both sides, and risk support for the new, reform government announced by President Abbas,” the cable says.

Asked about the cable and whether its opposition to U.N. recognition of Palestinian statehood contradicts the Biden administration’s position in support of a two-state solution, the State Department did not respond at the time of publication.

“The U.S. position is that the Palestinian state should be based on bilateral agreements between the Israelis and Palestinians,” Gowan said. “It does not believe that the UN can create the state by fiat.”

A second cable dated April 13 sent from the U.S. Embassy in Quito, Ecuador, relays Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Gabriela Sommerfeld’s agreement with the United States that Palestine should not be recognized for statehood. In cooperation with the United States, according to the cable, Sommerfeld instructed Ecuador’s permanent representative to the United Nations José De La Gasca to lobby Japan, Korea, and Malta (all rotating members of the Security Council) to reject the proposal. Lobbying of permanent member France is also mentioned.

Sommerfeld agreed, according to the cable, that “It was important any proposed resolution fail to achieve the necessary votes without a U.S. veto.” The cable says, “Ecuador would not want to appear isolated (alone with the United States) in its rejection of a ‘Palestine’ resolution (particularly at a time when the most UN member states are criticizing Ecuador over its April 5 incursion into Mexico’s embassy in Quito).” Ecuador finds itself in an escalating conflict with Mexico over its decision to arrest the former Ecuadorian vice president inside the Mexican Embassy.

Asked about the second cable, the State Department and the Ecuadorian Embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.

With its yearlong seat on the powerful 15-member Security Council, Ecuador holds outsized influence to vote against the Palestinian proposal for recognition.

“This really shows the extent to which the [Ecuadorian President Daniel] Noboa administration is beholden to the United States,” Guillaume Long, senior fellow at the D.C.-based Center for Economic and Policy Research and former foreign minister of Ecuador, told The Intercept when shown the cable. “On top of this, it is quite shocking to see the United States, which condemned Ecuador’s April 5 storming of the Mexican embassy and its violation of international law … making the most of Ecuador’s isolation in the hemisphere to get it to do its bidding. Ecuador is just buying its way out of its crimes by committing more crimes. Truly shocking,” said Long, referring to Ecuador’s rejection of Palestinian membership in the U.N.

Since 2011, the U.N. Security Council has rejected the Palestinian Authority’s request for full member status. On April 2, the Palestinian Observer Mission to the U.N. requested that the council once again take up consideration of its membership application. According to the first State Department cable, U.N. meetings since the beginning of April suggest that Algeria, China, Guyana, Mozambique, Russia, Slovenia, Sierra Leone, and Malta support granting Palestine full membership to the U.N. It also says that France, Japan, and Korea are undecided, while the United Kingdom will likely abstain from a vote.

“It is important that all Security Council members hear at this stage of the process that a number of members have questions that require further study about the Palestinian Authority’s formal request for UN membership through the Council, and that if a vote is forced on the issue, you will join the United States and not support approval of the application,” the cable reads.

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