SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.
A sign that reads “Stop State Killing” is seen during a vigil against the death penalty in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on June 29, 2021 in Washington, D.C.
Opponents of capital punishment blasted the Biden administration on Friday after the U.S. Department of Justice revealed it will seek the death penalty for Payton Gendron, a 20-year-old mass shooter already serving life in prison without the possibility of parole for New York state charges.
Motivated by white supremacist ideology, Gendron killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo grocery store in May 2022. Last February, he was sentenced in New York, where capital punishment has been banned for two decades. In June, he was charged with federal hate crimes and weapons violations. Prosecutors for that case argued in a Friday filing to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York that “in the event of a conviction, a sentence of death is justified” under federal law.
“This will not bring back the precious lives stolen, nor will it provide healing for the community.”
“The government’s decision to pursue a death sentence will do nothing to address the racism and hatred that fueled the mass murder,” Equal Justice USA’s Jamila Hodge said in response to the filing. “Ultimately, this pursuit will inflict more pain and renewed trauma on the victims’ families and the larger Black community already shattered by loss and desperately in need of healing and solutions that truly build community safety. Imagine if we invested in that instead of more state violence.”
U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) highlighted on social media Friday that President Joe Biden, a Democrat seeking reelection this year, campaigned on eliminating the death penalty in the 2020 cycle.
“The death penalty is an immoral, racist, inhumane form of punishment that has no place in any society,” said Pressley, a congressional leader in the fight to outlaw capital punishment. “And given that [Biden] ran on a promise to end the death penalty, this is a step in the wrong direction.”
“State-sanctioned murder is not justice, no matter how heinous the crime,” said Pressley. “Congress must pass our Federal Death Penalty Prohibition Act, H.R. 4633.” And in the meantime, DOJ should change course and [Biden] must keep his promise to end this barbaric, deeply flawed practice.”
“I pray for the loved ones and community of those who were viciously stolen from us in that brutal, racist attack in Buffalo,” she added. “We must advance true accountability and healing, and continue to fight against the shameful rise of white supremacy in our country.”
In a statement Friday, Legal Defense Fund president and director-counsel Janai Nelson called the shooting “a sordid example of the rise of anti-Black racism and hate-motivated violent incidents infecting this country, and the urgent need to root out white supremacy in all its forms.”
Nelson explained:
We have strongly condemned the actions of the Buffalo shooter previously, and today, we remain steadfast in the condemnation of this deeply violent and racist act. We stand with the Buffalo community as it continues to reel from this painful event and continues to work to heal. We also demand that the federal government pursue an all-of-government approach to hate-motivated incidents that leads with prevention of and protection from white supremacist violence.
We do not, however, believe that the death penalty is a part of this equation. In times rife with extreme violence, we cannot resort to capital punishment as a solution. We are dismayed at the DOJ’s pursuit of the death penalty, as these difficult circumstances are a critical opportunity for the department to instead show courage, leadership, and a commitment to rooting out white supremacy through means that are not merely punitive but that are effective. Justice for the many Black people that were killed in this horrendous attack does not begin with pursuit of the death penalty, which is the very practice that has been used, and continues to be used, in a racially discriminatory fashion to execute Black people and harm Black communities.
“We roundly condemn the pursuit of the death penalty in all circumstances,” she stressed. “There is no evidence that the death penalty will deter violence generally or hate-motivated violence specifically. To protect Black communities from white supremacist violence, the federal government must address the root causes of white supremacy and prioritize investing in the health and continued recovery of communities impacted by hate-driven violence.”
Friday’s decision is the first time the Justice Department, under Biden-appointed U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, has sought a new death sentence, though the DOJ has previously continued to pursue it in a couple of cases that began under the Trump administration.
As The Associated Press detailed Friday:
Garland instituted a moratorium on federal executions in 2021 pending a review of procedures. Although the moratorium does not prevent prosecutors from seeking death sentences, the Justice Department has done so sparingly.
It successfully sought the death penalty for an antisemitic gunman who murdered 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue, though that attack was authorized as a death penalty case before Garland took office. It also went ahead last year with an effort to get the death sentence against an Islamic extremist who killed eight people on a New York City bike path, though a lack of a unanimous jury meant that prosecution resulted in a life sentence.
The Justice Department has declined to pursue the death penalty in other mass killings, including against the gunman who killed 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas.
White House spokesperson Jeremy Edwards told Politico on Friday that the grocery store shooting was an “an absolute tragedy, and the president continues to pray for the victims of this unspeakable act of violence.” He also said that “the president has long talked about his views on this issue broadly, but we would leave it to the appropriate authorities to speak to individual cases and sentencing decisions,” and directed journalists to the Justice Department.
Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul told reporters that “I support the Department of Justice” in this decision, while victims and their families had mixed reactions. Attorneys for some of them said that the death penalty decision “provides a pathway to both relief and a measure of closure.”
However, Michelle Fryson, whose cousin Margus Morrison and aunt Pearl Young were among those killed, suggested that the move means the case could drag out indefinitely due to appeals, according to The Buffalo News.
“It could go on forever. He’s a young man. For my family’s sake, I wanted them to have closure,” said Fryson. “To never have closure, to always be in this circus is exhausting and exasperating.”
Sonya Zoghlin, an assistant federal public defender representing Gendron, said in a statement, “Rather than a prolonged and traumatic capital prosecution, the efforts of the federal government would be better spent on combating the forces that facilitated this terrible crime, including easy access to deadly weapons and the failure of social media companies to moderate the hateful rhetoric and images that circulate online.”
While Biden has faced criticism for not delivering on his 2020 campaign promise, Republican presidential candidates have made their support for capital punishment clear. The federal government executed 13 people under former President Donald Trump and when the GOP front-runner announced his 2024 campaign, “he called for the use of the death penalty against alleged drug dealers,” Politico noted Friday. “Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has also increased the availability of the death penalty.”
Last summer, HuffPost‘s Jessica Schulberg reported on the Democratic president’s lack of action and the looming GOP threat:
The threat of a capital punishment enthusiast returning to the White House has the abolitionist community hoping Biden will grant clemency to those on federal death row before leaving office—or that the Justice Department will at least stop seeking and defending death sentences.
“If you don’t execute anyone, but you usher them all into a President Trump or a President DeSantis, what have you done?” Ruth Friedman, the Federal Capital Habeas Project director, said in an interview with HuffPost. “That’s far from clean hands. Quite the opposite.”
Noting that reporting on social media on Friday, Schulberg called the Biden administration’s decision in Gendron’s case a “truly stunning reversal of an explicit campaign promise to abolish the death penalty.”
Dear Common Dreams reader, The U.S. is on a fast track to authoritarianism like nothing I’ve ever seen. Meanwhile, corporate news outlets are utterly capitulating to Trump, twisting their coverage to avoid drawing his ire while lining up to stuff cash in his pockets. That’s why I believe that Common Dreams is doing the best and most consequential reporting that we’ve ever done. Our small but mighty team is a progressive reporting powerhouse, covering the news every day that the corporate media never will. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. And to ignite change for the common good. Now here’s the key piece that I want all our readers to understand: None of this would be possible without your financial support. That’s not just some fundraising cliche. It’s the absolute and literal truth. We don’t accept corporate advertising and never will. We don’t have a paywall because we don’t think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. Will you donate now to help power the nonprofit, independent reporting of Common Dreams? Thank you for being a vital member of our community. Together, we can keep independent journalism alive when it’s needed most. - Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Opponents of capital punishment blasted the Biden administration on Friday after the U.S. Department of Justice revealed it will seek the death penalty for Payton Gendron, a 20-year-old mass shooter already serving life in prison without the possibility of parole for New York state charges.
Motivated by white supremacist ideology, Gendron killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo grocery store in May 2022. Last February, he was sentenced in New York, where capital punishment has been banned for two decades. In June, he was charged with federal hate crimes and weapons violations. Prosecutors for that case argued in a Friday filing to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York that “in the event of a conviction, a sentence of death is justified” under federal law.
“This will not bring back the precious lives stolen, nor will it provide healing for the community.”
“The government’s decision to pursue a death sentence will do nothing to address the racism and hatred that fueled the mass murder,” Equal Justice USA’s Jamila Hodge said in response to the filing. “Ultimately, this pursuit will inflict more pain and renewed trauma on the victims’ families and the larger Black community already shattered by loss and desperately in need of healing and solutions that truly build community safety. Imagine if we invested in that instead of more state violence.”
U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) highlighted on social media Friday that President Joe Biden, a Democrat seeking reelection this year, campaigned on eliminating the death penalty in the 2020 cycle.
“The death penalty is an immoral, racist, inhumane form of punishment that has no place in any society,” said Pressley, a congressional leader in the fight to outlaw capital punishment. “And given that [Biden] ran on a promise to end the death penalty, this is a step in the wrong direction.”
“State-sanctioned murder is not justice, no matter how heinous the crime,” said Pressley. “Congress must pass our Federal Death Penalty Prohibition Act, H.R. 4633.” And in the meantime, DOJ should change course and [Biden] must keep his promise to end this barbaric, deeply flawed practice.”
“I pray for the loved ones and community of those who were viciously stolen from us in that brutal, racist attack in Buffalo,” she added. “We must advance true accountability and healing, and continue to fight against the shameful rise of white supremacy in our country.”
In a statement Friday, Legal Defense Fund president and director-counsel Janai Nelson called the shooting “a sordid example of the rise of anti-Black racism and hate-motivated violent incidents infecting this country, and the urgent need to root out white supremacy in all its forms.”
Nelson explained:
We have strongly condemned the actions of the Buffalo shooter previously, and today, we remain steadfast in the condemnation of this deeply violent and racist act. We stand with the Buffalo community as it continues to reel from this painful event and continues to work to heal. We also demand that the federal government pursue an all-of-government approach to hate-motivated incidents that leads with prevention of and protection from white supremacist violence.
We do not, however, believe that the death penalty is a part of this equation. In times rife with extreme violence, we cannot resort to capital punishment as a solution. We are dismayed at the DOJ’s pursuit of the death penalty, as these difficult circumstances are a critical opportunity for the department to instead show courage, leadership, and a commitment to rooting out white supremacy through means that are not merely punitive but that are effective. Justice for the many Black people that were killed in this horrendous attack does not begin with pursuit of the death penalty, which is the very practice that has been used, and continues to be used, in a racially discriminatory fashion to execute Black people and harm Black communities.
“We roundly condemn the pursuit of the death penalty in all circumstances,” she stressed. “There is no evidence that the death penalty will deter violence generally or hate-motivated violence specifically. To protect Black communities from white supremacist violence, the federal government must address the root causes of white supremacy and prioritize investing in the health and continued recovery of communities impacted by hate-driven violence.”
Friday’s decision is the first time the Justice Department, under Biden-appointed U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, has sought a new death sentence, though the DOJ has previously continued to pursue it in a couple of cases that began under the Trump administration.
As The Associated Press detailed Friday:
Garland instituted a moratorium on federal executions in 2021 pending a review of procedures. Although the moratorium does not prevent prosecutors from seeking death sentences, the Justice Department has done so sparingly.
It successfully sought the death penalty for an antisemitic gunman who murdered 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue, though that attack was authorized as a death penalty case before Garland took office. It also went ahead last year with an effort to get the death sentence against an Islamic extremist who killed eight people on a New York City bike path, though a lack of a unanimous jury meant that prosecution resulted in a life sentence.
The Justice Department has declined to pursue the death penalty in other mass killings, including against the gunman who killed 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas.
White House spokesperson Jeremy Edwards told Politico on Friday that the grocery store shooting was an “an absolute tragedy, and the president continues to pray for the victims of this unspeakable act of violence.” He also said that “the president has long talked about his views on this issue broadly, but we would leave it to the appropriate authorities to speak to individual cases and sentencing decisions,” and directed journalists to the Justice Department.
Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul told reporters that “I support the Department of Justice” in this decision, while victims and their families had mixed reactions. Attorneys for some of them said that the death penalty decision “provides a pathway to both relief and a measure of closure.”
However, Michelle Fryson, whose cousin Margus Morrison and aunt Pearl Young were among those killed, suggested that the move means the case could drag out indefinitely due to appeals, according to The Buffalo News.
“It could go on forever. He’s a young man. For my family’s sake, I wanted them to have closure,” said Fryson. “To never have closure, to always be in this circus is exhausting and exasperating.”
Sonya Zoghlin, an assistant federal public defender representing Gendron, said in a statement, “Rather than a prolonged and traumatic capital prosecution, the efforts of the federal government would be better spent on combating the forces that facilitated this terrible crime, including easy access to deadly weapons and the failure of social media companies to moderate the hateful rhetoric and images that circulate online.”
While Biden has faced criticism for not delivering on his 2020 campaign promise, Republican presidential candidates have made their support for capital punishment clear. The federal government executed 13 people under former President Donald Trump and when the GOP front-runner announced his 2024 campaign, “he called for the use of the death penalty against alleged drug dealers,” Politico noted Friday. “Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has also increased the availability of the death penalty.”
Last summer, HuffPost‘s Jessica Schulberg reported on the Democratic president’s lack of action and the looming GOP threat:
The threat of a capital punishment enthusiast returning to the White House has the abolitionist community hoping Biden will grant clemency to those on federal death row before leaving office—or that the Justice Department will at least stop seeking and defending death sentences.
“If you don’t execute anyone, but you usher them all into a President Trump or a President DeSantis, what have you done?” Ruth Friedman, the Federal Capital Habeas Project director, said in an interview with HuffPost. “That’s far from clean hands. Quite the opposite.”
Noting that reporting on social media on Friday, Schulberg called the Biden administration’s decision in Gendron’s case a “truly stunning reversal of an explicit campaign promise to abolish the death penalty.”
Opponents of capital punishment blasted the Biden administration on Friday after the U.S. Department of Justice revealed it will seek the death penalty for Payton Gendron, a 20-year-old mass shooter already serving life in prison without the possibility of parole for New York state charges.
Motivated by white supremacist ideology, Gendron killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo grocery store in May 2022. Last February, he was sentenced in New York, where capital punishment has been banned for two decades. In June, he was charged with federal hate crimes and weapons violations. Prosecutors for that case argued in a Friday filing to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York that “in the event of a conviction, a sentence of death is justified” under federal law.
“This will not bring back the precious lives stolen, nor will it provide healing for the community.”
“The government’s decision to pursue a death sentence will do nothing to address the racism and hatred that fueled the mass murder,” Equal Justice USA’s Jamila Hodge said in response to the filing. “Ultimately, this pursuit will inflict more pain and renewed trauma on the victims’ families and the larger Black community already shattered by loss and desperately in need of healing and solutions that truly build community safety. Imagine if we invested in that instead of more state violence.”
U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) highlighted on social media Friday that President Joe Biden, a Democrat seeking reelection this year, campaigned on eliminating the death penalty in the 2020 cycle.
“The death penalty is an immoral, racist, inhumane form of punishment that has no place in any society,” said Pressley, a congressional leader in the fight to outlaw capital punishment. “And given that [Biden] ran on a promise to end the death penalty, this is a step in the wrong direction.”
“State-sanctioned murder is not justice, no matter how heinous the crime,” said Pressley. “Congress must pass our Federal Death Penalty Prohibition Act, H.R. 4633.” And in the meantime, DOJ should change course and [Biden] must keep his promise to end this barbaric, deeply flawed practice.”
“I pray for the loved ones and community of those who were viciously stolen from us in that brutal, racist attack in Buffalo,” she added. “We must advance true accountability and healing, and continue to fight against the shameful rise of white supremacy in our country.”
In a statement Friday, Legal Defense Fund president and director-counsel Janai Nelson called the shooting “a sordid example of the rise of anti-Black racism and hate-motivated violent incidents infecting this country, and the urgent need to root out white supremacy in all its forms.”
Nelson explained:
We have strongly condemned the actions of the Buffalo shooter previously, and today, we remain steadfast in the condemnation of this deeply violent and racist act. We stand with the Buffalo community as it continues to reel from this painful event and continues to work to heal. We also demand that the federal government pursue an all-of-government approach to hate-motivated incidents that leads with prevention of and protection from white supremacist violence.
We do not, however, believe that the death penalty is a part of this equation. In times rife with extreme violence, we cannot resort to capital punishment as a solution. We are dismayed at the DOJ’s pursuit of the death penalty, as these difficult circumstances are a critical opportunity for the department to instead show courage, leadership, and a commitment to rooting out white supremacy through means that are not merely punitive but that are effective. Justice for the many Black people that were killed in this horrendous attack does not begin with pursuit of the death penalty, which is the very practice that has been used, and continues to be used, in a racially discriminatory fashion to execute Black people and harm Black communities.
“We roundly condemn the pursuit of the death penalty in all circumstances,” she stressed. “There is no evidence that the death penalty will deter violence generally or hate-motivated violence specifically. To protect Black communities from white supremacist violence, the federal government must address the root causes of white supremacy and prioritize investing in the health and continued recovery of communities impacted by hate-driven violence.”
Friday’s decision is the first time the Justice Department, under Biden-appointed U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, has sought a new death sentence, though the DOJ has previously continued to pursue it in a couple of cases that began under the Trump administration.
As The Associated Press detailed Friday:
Garland instituted a moratorium on federal executions in 2021 pending a review of procedures. Although the moratorium does not prevent prosecutors from seeking death sentences, the Justice Department has done so sparingly.
It successfully sought the death penalty for an antisemitic gunman who murdered 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue, though that attack was authorized as a death penalty case before Garland took office. It also went ahead last year with an effort to get the death sentence against an Islamic extremist who killed eight people on a New York City bike path, though a lack of a unanimous jury meant that prosecution resulted in a life sentence.
The Justice Department has declined to pursue the death penalty in other mass killings, including against the gunman who killed 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas.
White House spokesperson Jeremy Edwards told Politico on Friday that the grocery store shooting was an “an absolute tragedy, and the president continues to pray for the victims of this unspeakable act of violence.” He also said that “the president has long talked about his views on this issue broadly, but we would leave it to the appropriate authorities to speak to individual cases and sentencing decisions,” and directed journalists to the Justice Department.
Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul told reporters that “I support the Department of Justice” in this decision, while victims and their families had mixed reactions. Attorneys for some of them said that the death penalty decision “provides a pathway to both relief and a measure of closure.”
However, Michelle Fryson, whose cousin Margus Morrison and aunt Pearl Young were among those killed, suggested that the move means the case could drag out indefinitely due to appeals, according to The Buffalo News.
“It could go on forever. He’s a young man. For my family’s sake, I wanted them to have closure,” said Fryson. “To never have closure, to always be in this circus is exhausting and exasperating.”
Sonya Zoghlin, an assistant federal public defender representing Gendron, said in a statement, “Rather than a prolonged and traumatic capital prosecution, the efforts of the federal government would be better spent on combating the forces that facilitated this terrible crime, including easy access to deadly weapons and the failure of social media companies to moderate the hateful rhetoric and images that circulate online.”
While Biden has faced criticism for not delivering on his 2020 campaign promise, Republican presidential candidates have made their support for capital punishment clear. The federal government executed 13 people under former President Donald Trump and when the GOP front-runner announced his 2024 campaign, “he called for the use of the death penalty against alleged drug dealers,” Politico noted Friday. “Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has also increased the availability of the death penalty.”
Last summer, HuffPost‘s Jessica Schulberg reported on the Democratic president’s lack of action and the looming GOP threat:
The threat of a capital punishment enthusiast returning to the White House has the abolitionist community hoping Biden will grant clemency to those on federal death row before leaving office—or that the Justice Department will at least stop seeking and defending death sentences.
“If you don’t execute anyone, but you usher them all into a President Trump or a President DeSantis, what have you done?” Ruth Friedman, the Federal Capital Habeas Project director, said in an interview with HuffPost. “That’s far from clean hands. Quite the opposite.”
Noting that reporting on social media on Friday, Schulberg called the Biden administration’s decision in Gendron’s case a “truly stunning reversal of an explicit campaign promise to abolish the death penalty.”
Against a backdrop of Israel's genocidal obliteration of Gaza City and a worsening man-made famine throughout the embattled Palestinian exclave, the United States on Thursday cast its sixth United Nations Security Council veto of a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire and the release of all hostages held by Hamas.
At its 10,000th meeting, the UN Security Council voted 14-1 with no abstentions in favor of a resolution proposed by the 10 nonpermanent UNSC members demanding "an immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire" in Gaza, the "release of all hostages" held by Hamas, and for Israel to "immediately and unconditionally lift all restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid" into the besieged strip.
Morgan Ortagus, President Donald Trump's deputy special envoy to the Middle East, vetoed the proposal, saying that the move "will come as no surprise," as the US has killed five previous UNSC Gaza ceasefire resolutions under both the Biden and Trump administrations, most recently in June.
Ortagus said the resolution failed to condemn Hamas or affirm Israel's right to self-defense and “wrongly legitimizes the false narratives benefiting Hamas, which have sadly found currency in this council."
The US has unconditionally provided Israel with billions of dollars worth of armed aid and diplomatic cover since October 2023 as the key Mideast ally wages a war increasingly viewed as genocidal, including by a commission of independent UN experts this week.
Palestinian Ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour said the torpedoed resolution represented the "bare minimum" that must be accomplished, adding that “it is deeply regrettable and painful that it has been blocked.”
“Babies dying of starvation, snipers shooting people in the head, civilians killed en masse, families displaced again and again... humanitarians and journalists targeted... while Israeli officials are openly mocking all of this," Mansour added.
Following the UNSC's latest failure to pass a ceasefire resolution, Algerian Ambassador to the UN Amar Bendjama asked Gazans to "forgive" the body for not only its inability to approve such measures, but also for failing to stop the Gaza famine, in which at least hundreds of Palestinians have died and hundreds of thousands more are starving. Every UNSC members but the US concurred last month that the Gaza famine is a man-made catastrophe.
“Israel kills every day and nothing happens," Bendjama said. "Israel starves a people and nothing happens. Israel bombs hospitals, schools, shelters, and nothing happens. Israel attacks a mediator and steps on diplomacy, and nothing happens. And with every act, every act unpunished, humanity itself is diminished.”
Benjama also asked Gazans to "forgive us" for failing to protect children in the strip, more than 20,000 of whom have been killed by Israeli bombs, bullets, and blockade over the past 713 days. He also noted that upward of 12,000 women, 4,000 elderly, 1,400 doctors and nurses, 500 aid workers, and 250 journalists “have been killed by Israel."
Condemning Thursday's veto, Hamas accused the US of “blatant complicity in the crime of genocide," which Israel is accused of committing in an ongoing International Court of Justice (ICJ) case filed in December 2023 by South Africa and backed by around two dozen nations.
Hamas—which led the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel and is believed to be holding 20 hostages left alive out of 251 people kidnapped that day—implored the countries that sponsored the ceasefire resolution to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who along with former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, to accept an agreement to halt hostilities.
Overall, at least 65,141 Palestinians have been killed and over 165,900 others wounded by Israeli forces since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry—whose figures have not only been confirmed by former IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, but deemed a significant undercount by independent researchers. Thousands more Gazans are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the ruins of the flattened strip.
UK Ambassador to the UN Barbara Woodward stessed after Thursday's failed UNSC resolution that "we need a ceasefire more than ever."
“Israel’s reckless expansion of its military operation takes us further away from a deal which could bring the hostages home and end the suffering in Gaza," Woodward said.
Thursday's developments came as Israeli forces continued to lay waste to Gaza City as they push deeper into the city as part of Operation Gideon's Chariots 2, a campaign to conquer, occupy, and ethnically cleanse around 1 million Palestinians from the strip's capital. Israeli leaders have said they are carrying out the operation in accordance with Trump's proposal to empty Gaza of Palestinians and transform it into the "Riviera of the Middle East."
In what some observers said was a bid to prevent the world from witnessing fresh Israeli war crimes in Gaza City, internet and phone lines were cut off in the strip Thursday, although officials said service has since been mostly restored.
Gaza officials said Thursday that at least 50 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces since dawn, including 40 in Gaza City, which Al Jazeera reporter Tareq Abu Azzoum said is being pummeled into "a lifeless wasteland."
Azzoum reported that tens of thousands of Palestinians "are moving to the south on foot or in carts, looking for any place that is relatively safe—but with no guarantee of safety—or at least for shelter."
Israel has repeatedly bombed areas it advised Palestinians were "safe zones," including a September 2 airstrike that massacred 11 people—nine of them children—queued up to collect water in al-Mawasi.
"Most families who have arrived in the south have not found space," Azzoum added. "That’s why we’ve seen people setting up makeshift tents close to the water while others are left stranded in the street, living under the open sky."
President Donald Trump doubled down on his threats to silence his critics Thursday, telling reporters aboard Air Force One that outlets that give him "bad press" may have their broadcast licenses taken away.
The threat came just one day after his Federal Communications Commission (FCC) director, Brendan Carr, successfully pressured ABC into pulling Jimmy Kimmel's show from the air by threatening the broadcast licenses of its affiliates over a comment the comedian made about the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
"I read someplace that the networks were 97% against me," Trump told the press gaggle. "I get 97% negative, and yet I won it easily. I won all seven swing states, popular vote, I won everything. And they're 97% against, they give me wholly bad publicity... I mean, they're getting a license, I would think maybe their license should be taken away."
"When you have a network and you have evening shows and all they do is hit Trump, that’s all they do," the president continued. "If you go back, I guess they haven’t had a conservative on in years or something, somebody said, but when you go back and take a look, all they do is hit Trump. They’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that.”
He said that the decision would be left up to Carr, who has threatened to take away licenses from networks that air what he called "distorted" content.
It is unclear where Trump's statistic that networks have been "97% against" him originates, nor the claim that mainstream news networks "haven't had a conservative on in years."
But even if it were true, FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez says "the FCC doesn't have the authority, the ability, or the constitutional right to revoke a license because of content."
In comments made to Axios Thursday, Gomez—the lone Democrat on the five-member panel—said that the Trump administration was "weaponizing its licensing authority in order to bring broadcasters to heel," as part of a "campaign of censorship and control."
National news networks like ABC, CBS, and NBC do not have broadcasting licenses approved by the FCC, nor do cable networks like CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News. The licenses threatened by Carr are for local affiliates, which—despite having the branding of the big networks—are owned by less well-known companies like Nexstar Media Group and the Sinclair Broadcasting Group, both of which pushed in favor of ABC's decision to ax Kimmel.
Gomez said that with Trump's intimidation of broadcasters, the "threat is the point."
"It is a very hard standard to meet to revoke a license, which is why it's so rarely done, but broadcast license to the broadcasters are extremely valuable," she said. "And so they don't want to be dragged before the FCC either in order to answer to an enforcement complaint of some kind or under the threat of possible revocation."
Democratic lawmakers are vowing to investigate the Trump administration's pressure campaign that may have led to ABC deciding to indefinitely suspend late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) announced on Thursday that he filed a motion to subpoena Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr one day after he publicly warned ABC of negative consequences if the network kept Kimmel on the air.
"Enough of Congress sleepwalking while [President Donald] Trump and [Vice President JD] Vance shred the First Amendment and Constitution," Khanna declared. "It is time for Congress to stand up for Article I."
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, also said on Thursday that he was opening an investigation into the potential financial aspects of Carr's pressure campaign on ABC, including the involvement of Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which is the network's largest affiliate and is currently involved in merger talks that will need FCC approval.
"The Oversight Committee is launching an investigation into ABC, Sinclair, and the FCC," he said. "We will not be intimidated and we will defend the First Amendment."
Progressive politicians weren't the only ones launching an investigation into the Kimmel controversy, as legal organization Democracy Forward announced that it's filed a a Freedom of Information Act request for records after January 20, 2025 related to any FCC efforts “to use the agency’s licensing and enforcement powers to police and limit speech and influence what the public can watch and hear.”