UN chief: Gaza death toll suggests Israel’s tactics are ‘clearly wrong’

Secretary-General António Guterres jabs Israel again.

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‘I want to get this over with,’ Tuberville says of resolving military blockade

Sen. Tommy Tuberville acknowledged on Tuesday that there's urgency to resolving his blockade that's left more than 400 military promotions in limbo in protest of the Pentagon's abortion travel policy.

In contrast to previous hardline statements, the Alabama Republican signaled a rare openness to ending the impasse ahead of a closed-door meeting with fellow GOP senators later on Tuesday. But Tuberville, who has long said the Pentagon must undo its policy before he drops his hold, indicated that he'd need a concession of some kind as part of an off-ramp.

"We've got several things that we can do," Tuberville told reporters. "I understand the urgency. I'm not just being hard-headed about this. I understand we've gotten into some unique problems the last few weeks."

Tuberville has so far rejected the off-ramps offered to him — such as votes that would undo the Pentagon policy of reimbursing troops who travel to seek an abortion.

But Tuberville is now facing a fight from some GOP defense hawks, who confronted him on the floor last week and forced him to block votes on 61 nominees. Concern is mounting that Republicans could soon join with Democrats on legislation to bundle most of the promotions he's blocking, effectively circumventing his hold.

"I want to get this over with," Tuberville acknowledged, before adding the caveat, "but do it the right way."

"It's pretty important to my people back in the state that there's got to be a way around this that … it's not going to satisfy everybody, but I do want to move forward with this," he added.

Several alternatives to the current holdup of uniform officers have been floated. Many Republicans want to see Tuberville shift his obstruction to civilian nominees — such as President Joe Biden’s pick for Pentagon policy chief, Derek Chollet — who make policy, unlike military members. But Tuberville has already placed holds on civilian picks, though with less public attention than military nominees, and would lose leverage by focusing on nominees who already need to jump through procedural hoops to be confirmed.

Tuberville said he planned to circulate a memo at the closed-door GOP meeting outlining several potential paths, which he declined to immediately detail.

“I’m not lifting my holds. There are some ways around this, and we’re going to explain them to you a little bit later,” he told reporters.

Other Republicans, seemingly anticipating backlash from anti-abortion groups that support the blockade, want to see the policy challenged in federal court with the help of those groups.

But Tuberville rejected using a lawsuit to address his concerns, saying it could take years. “Some of us don’t have that long,” he said.

For some Republicans, Tuesday’s special conference meeting could very well be a last straw after nine months of inaction.

No Republicans have publicly endorsed the Democratic-led carveout to get around Tuberville’s hold, offered by Senate Armed Services Chair Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.). But senators on the fence could use his intransigence to justify supporting it.

Ursula Perano and Burgess Everett contributed to this report.

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Senate confirms Monica Bertagnolli as NIH director

The Senate confirmed Dr. Monica Bertagnolli to lead the National Institutes of Health in a 62-36 vote Tuesday.

Nearly every Democrat joined 13 Republicans in filling the post responsible for overseeing billions in federal research grants, but vacant since Dr. Francis Collins left nearly two years ago.

“Dr. Bertagnolli is the right person to ensure the NIH stays on the cutting edge of innovation and research and fulfills its critical mission to promote health, improve equity, keep our nation competitive and give patients across the world real hope for the future,” said Senate Appropriations Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) in a speech just before the vote.

While Bertagnolli won confirmation with ease, her road there was rocky. After President Joe Biden tapped her to lead NIH in May, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) held up her nomination for months in an effort to extract a comprehensive plan to lower drug prices from the White House.

He and Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman were the only members of the Democratic caucus to vote against confirmation. Thirty-four Republicans also voted no.

In a speech preceding the vote, Sanders called Bertagnolli, who most recently led the National Cancer Institute, “an intelligent and caring person,” but said he was not convinced that “she is prepared to take on the greed and power of the drug companies.”

Fetterman echoed Sanders’ concerns.

As chair of the Senate committee with jurisdiction over health care nominees, Sanders refused to hold a panel vote until last month when he relented after the Biden administration struck a deal with biotech company Regeneron that included a reasonable pricing clause for a Covid therapy it's developing with federal assistance.

Then five Republicans joined Democrats to advance Bertagnolli's nomination out of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

During her confirmation hearing last month, Sanders and ranking member Bill Cassidy (R-La.) pressed Bertagnolli on her approach to drug pricing and whether she'd add reasonable pricing clauses to NIH contracts. She told both members that she couldn't commit to any particular drug pricing policy.

Bertagnolli did offer insight into her priorities as NIH director, including improving clinical trials.

"One of the other commitments I want to make is for clinical trials — since it’s been one of my core expertise — that are faster, more inclusive, more responsive to the needs of people,” she told the HELP committee last month. “It’s one of the major initiatives that I’d like to see happen at NIH."

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Boris Johnson asked to be injected with Covid on TV to calm British public, inquiry hears

Former aide to the prime minister says comments were "made in the heat of the moment."

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The Next Generation of Law Students Is Obsessed With Lina Khan

Lina Khan had spent the day doing TV interviews and press conferences defending the administration’s new tough-on-mergers stance. Now the chair of the Federal Trade Commission joined a more hospitable crowd. Squeezed into the corner of a bar steps from the White House, she urged law students not much younger than her to join the growing antitrust movement.

“This is just the very, very, very, very beginning of this work, and we need all of you to be in this movement, to be coming into government, to bring all your skills and talents to bear,” said Khan to whoops and cheers.

Waiting in the wings was an eager Columbia Law School student, Sahaj Sharda. He grasped the mic from Khan.

“Antitrust is like a great lever that lets the small lift up the large, opens new space for new ideas and inventions, enterprises and energy,” he said earnestly. “And you, the lawyers of tomorrow, are the fulcrum from which that lever draws its strength.”

The 34-year-old Khan stood nearby, a smile on her face.

Critics have called it “hipster” antitrust, but make no mistake: Antitrust is hip.

It’s been decades since government regulators were seen as anything but a punch line. Derided on the right as drags on the economy and on the left as rubber stamps for business, those in the federal bureaucracy aren’t accustomed to tributes. Now, as they aim to build an antitrust movement that would transform the economy, they’re on the receiving end of the kind of hero worship on display that summer evening — especially among law students.

The aspirational speech was typical of the way Khan, who is taking on corporate giants like Amazon and Microsoft, is greeted by campus denizens. And she’s not the only one. A few minutes later, the Justice Department’s chief antitrust enforcer Jonathan Kanter and his top deputy, Doha Mekki, arrived to glad-hand the students they hope to rally to their cause. Students, advocates, enforcers and congressional staffers exchanged congratulatory “Happy merger guidelines day” un-ironically.

The movement that Khan helped build has reached law schools across the country, attracting scores of trustbuster mini-mes. Once sparsely attended antitrust classrooms are bursting at Loyola University Chicago Law School. A quarter of students’ submissions to the Georgetown Law Journal focused on antitrust last year. And when Kanter filled a 200-person room at Columbia Law School, he stayed so long afterward to shake hands he missed his flight.

There’s even merch. At the Anti-Monopoly Summit held this May in Washington, attendees picked up a union-made mug bearing the names of President Joe Biden’s antitrust enforcers. Cabinet officials and senators spoke, and the president himself recorded a cheerleading video message for attendees. After years of mainstream indifference, the movement finally has clout.

Whether it’s a force with real staying power or a passing fad is yet unknown. But Khan, Kanter and their allies clearly hope that cultivating the next generation can help ground it.

Emma Wallace rattled off the names on the mug — Wu, Khan and Kanter — and blurted, “Oh my God, these are like nerdy superheroes, right?”

A student at Loyola University Chicago Law School, Wallace found herself drawn to the new antitrust revival after reading The Master Switch by Tim Wu, who would go on to become Biden’s White House competition czar. As a college student at Fordham University, Wallace said she would walk past the Time Warner buildings during their proposed deal to merge with AT&T and think to herself, “All that power, all that consolidation.”

When Zaakir Tameez arrived at Yale Law School — Khan’s legal training ground — he was eager to find a way to channel his frustration with the country’s vast inequality. Antitrust was the answer, and Yale, he realized, was an intellectual hotbed of antitrust scholarship.

“Antitrust at Yale is full of brainiacs and bros,” he explained. “Brainiacs who are critically undermining the broken assumptions of traditional antitrust theory. And bros who want to see antitrust enforcers flex their muscles and show their guns.” (He didn’t say which camp he fell in.)

Khan, who happens to be not much older than many law students, is at least partially responsible for inspiring young people to turn to antitrust. After seeing her at the FTC, it’s clear that the DOJ’s civil rights division and the EPA aren’t the only options for those seeking a vehicle for change.

Khan’s rise has been rapid. In 2017, while a student at Yale Law School, Khan authored a paper called “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox” that sought to reframe antitrust law and single out the internet’s top dog as a monopolistic monstrosity. Khan was well-schooled in the issues, having spent several years as a journalist and researcher at the antimonopoly group, the Open Markets Institute, while being mentored by its leader Barry Lynn, who has long argued for an antitrust revolution.

In a series of events that’s now movement lore, Khan’s article elevated her profile, opening doors in Congress and leading to a plum academic job at Columbia Law School. She didn’t stay long before being tapped to lead the FTC at the age of 32.

The Covid pandemic and its fallout supercharged the push to rethink antitrust policy. Americans saw sudden shortages of critical necessities and a rise in evictions and unemployment. And whenever there’s a recession, law schools tend to get more popular. The number of law school applicants jumped nearly 13 percent in 2021, the biggest increase since 2002 when the dot-com bubble burst and sent hordes studying for the LSAT.

With growing interest in antitrust, student demand led more law schools to hire professors solely to teach the subject, several professors said; before then, schools would frequently offer the course every other year or not at all. New chapters of Law and Political Economy Project, a left-leaning academic network that backs the aggressive antitrust agenda, have been sprouting up at law schools across the country. And the federal agencies that handle antitrust policy are eager to match growing student appetite, hiring more recent law school grads and developing relationships on campuses.

Tina LaRitz, a recent graduate of NYU Law School, started an antitrust student group with Sharvari Kothawade, after falling “in love” with it during a DOJ summer internship. The government was sure to return the affection: Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Doha Mekki spoke at the NYU group’s first event.

Kanter, meanwhile, has been traveling across the country to recruit law students into the Justice Department and the larger movement. In his two years at DOJ, Kanter has visited at least a dozen schools, preaching to those eager to overturn a legal regime that he and his allies view as far too lax in letting huge corporate mergers consolidate power and influence.

“I think the antitrust status quo was built by young folks who came with these ideas about economics,” Kanter said in an interview. “They infused those ideas into the agencies, private practice and academia. We’re seeing a similar kind of energy just coming from a different ideological point of view — one focused on faithfully enforcing the law.”

Mark Meador remembers when antitrust wasn’t nearly as cool. He’s not one of the new young revolutionaries — he entered the University of Houston Law School in 2008 — and at the time, the issue wasn’t on his radar or that of many classmates. But he picked up a course on a whim and was smitten.

“What is fair competition? What should markets look like? What are the dangers of concentrated power?” he said. “All of that kind of stuff just sort of naturally appealed to me. Zooming 15 years later to now, I can see why today’s law students would also be drawn to antitrust.”

Meador eventually worked on antitrust while at the Texas Attorney General’s office and later did stints with the FTC. His ardor for antitrust is hard to deny: His Virginia vanity license plates were the U.S. legal code granting the FTC its authority to crack down on unfair competition.

Unlike many new trustbusters in the making, Meador is a conservative. Like his liberal counterparts, he’s distrustful of concentrated corporate power. But he is a member of the Federalist Society and worked for the conservative Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who has also been a harsh critic of Silicon Valley. Indeed, the widespread skepticism toward Big Tech is one reason why the new antitrust movement has the potential to win some bipartisan support.

Still, even as Khan has become a hero at law schools far and wide, she’s also become a villain, largely on the right. The Wall Street Journal opinion page has called her an “establishment phony” and “Machiavellian” and run headlines such as “Lina Khan Blocks Cancer Cures.”

For allies and supporters, the critiques have lent her notoriety and burnished her reputation among fans.

“In the end, they will have actually galvanized a great deal more support for her than opposition,” said Tamar Katz, who recently graduated from Columbia Law School and worked as a research assistant for Wu.

Serious opposition to the antitrust revolution-in-the-making does exist. According to those hoping to crack down on corporate consolidation, the resistance stems from financial, political and ideological interests, as well as the natural challenges that come with telling smart people they’ve been wrong for 40 years.

“There’s a tremendous amount of indoctrination,” said Darren Bush, a University of Houston Law School professor who once taught Meador. “It can almost be like a religion.”

But even as Biden’s trustbusters have won popularity on campus, they’ve sometimes struggled in court. The DOJ failed to block a major sugar deal and lost a criminal price-fixing case against former poultry company executives after three trials. For its part, the FTC lost a case attempting to block Meta’s purchase of a virtual reality app and failed to stop Microsoft’s plan to acquire Activision Blizzard, a leading maker of video games.

Supporters of the new antitrust agenda say that this is just the growing pains that come with attempting to convince judges to steer away from the status quo. Critics argue the Biden regulators are pushing bad law and bad economics, and that the defeats should encourage them to pull back.

Khan and Kanter defended their records in court, with Kanter pointing to the DOJ’s successful bid to block the merger of the first and fourth largest U.S. book publishers. The two also pointed to abandoned mergers as one key indicator of success; as enforcement steps up, big companies are shying away from major deals after years of record mergers and acquisitions.

“In many ways, it feels like we’re just getting started. We’ve blocked close to 20 mergers either in court or deals that are abandoned,” said Khan in an interview. “We’ve had a whole set of really landmark lawsuits.”

Some companies, such as the grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons who are seeking a $25 billion megadeal, are still trying to merge. And big losses could have an impact on student perception of the government, and on how they discern their long-term careers. Why work for peanuts at a struggling federal agency while swimming in student debt when a major law firm will offer starting pay at $215,000 per year?

But Kanter is optimistic. He said his shoe leather recruitment has panned out: Summer interns come into his office to say that his lectures on their campuses prompted their application.

“There’s real momentum,” he said. “When I think about all these students going into the workforce, going into public policy, going into enforcement and academia, it’s very clear that we’re getting at the beginning of an inflection point.”

Khan said her goal is to make the FTC the premier landing spot for idealistic, trustbusting students as it was in the 1960s and 1970s. To that end, the agency recently launched an honors program for attorneys just out of law school to create a pipeline for top-notch talent. But she also needs to convince the American people that economic inequality is not an accident but the result of “concrete policy and law enforcement decisions.”

“One of the effects of antitrust becoming a more technocratic enterprise and arcane over the last few decades has been that in the public, antitrust was no longer seen as a key set of laws that were designed to protect the public,” she said. “And I think that had a spillover effect in law schools as well.”

Law schools have been ground zero for movement-building before. A weekend at Yale in 1982 helped launch a conservative revolution in the law with the birth of the Federalist Society, a group that now helps handpick Supreme Court nominees.

Asked whether the Federalist Society could be a model for building long-term change, Khan didn’t dismiss the notion. “That’s something that I think about a lot, my day job in terms of institutional durability,” she said. “We absolutely need a deeper bench of law students.”

Kanter, for his part, said he sees himself and Khan as “agents of transition.”

“I’m kind of keeping the chair warm until they take over,” Kanter said. “I firmly believe that there’s this next generation that’s waiting in the wings.”

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Attacks on US troops in Middle East spike amid military buildup

Attacks on American troops dramatically ramped up over the weekend, the Pentagon said Monday, as the U.S. military sent ships and a submarine into the region.

U.S. troops stationed in Iraq and Syria have been attacked by rockets and drones 38 times since Oct. 17, Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said Monday, an increase from 31 on Friday afternoon. Forty-six service members in total have now reported injuries from the attacks, which he called “harassing,” he said.

Ryder did not specify the source of the attacks, but the Pentagon has recently blamed similar events on Iran-backed proxies.

Sunday was a particularly violent day, with five rocket and one-way drone attacks near Al-Asad Airbase, Iraq, and in two locations in Syria, according to a Defense Department official, who was granted anonymity to give details on a sensitive topic.

The U.S. military was able to thwart most of the attacks, the official said, adding that the majority of missiles and drones failed to reach their targets.

The increase in attacks came as Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited the region, including an unannounced trip to Iraq on Sunday. During the stop, Blinken received a briefing on threats to American troops in the region, and called the attacks “unacceptable.”

Blinken also met with leaders in Israel, Jordan and Turkey, and stopped in the West Bank, in a whirlwind trip aimed at cooling tensions in the region.

Also this weekend, the Pentagon blitzed the air waves with announcements of new force movements. The Navy posted photos and videos of the USS Gerald R. Ford and USS Dwight D. Eisenhower carrier strike groups exercising together with two Italian frigates in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. On Saturday, U.S. Central Command posted photosof the Eisenhower group arriving in the Middle East, and announced the deployment of a bomber task force over the region as well.

Then Sunday, the Defense Department took the rare step of announcing it had deployed an Ohio-class guided-missile submarine to the region.

The movements are designed to “further support our deterrence efforts in the region,” Ryder said Monday.

All of the 46 service members who sustained injuries were hurt during attacks that occurred prior to the U.S. retaliatory airstrikes on Oct. 26, said Ryder, noting that many of the troops reported injuries in the days and weeks after the initial attacks. The injuries were sustained primarily in attacks on Al Asad in Iraq and the Al Tanf garrison in Syria on Oct. 17 and 18; one additional service member was wounded in an incident in Erbil, Iraq, on Oct. 26.

“Reporting data is highly dependent on self-reporting when injuries are not visually evident to medical personnel providing care directly following an incident,” Ryder said of the fluctuating numbers.

Twenty-four service members were diagnosed with traumatic brain injury, Ryder said. Two of those were initially returned to duty, but have now been transported to Germany to receive further treatment “out of an abundance of caution,” he said. They are in stable condition, he added.

The additional injuries included headaches, perforated eardrums, tinnitus, rolled ankles and more, he said.

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Gaza has lost telecom contact again; Israel’s military says it has surrounded Gaza City

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Gaza came under the third total communications outage since the start of the war, while Israel’s military announced late Sunday that it had encircled Gaza City and divided the besieged coastal strip into two.

“Today there is north Gaza and south Gaza,” Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari told reporters, calling it a “significant stage” in Israel’s war against the Hamas militant group. Israeli media reported that troops are expected to enter Gaza City within 48 hours. Strong explosions were seen in the northern Gaza Strip after nightfall.

But the “new collapse in connectivity” across Gaza reported by internet access advocacy group NetBlocks.org and confirmed by Palestinian telecom company Paltel made it even more complicated to convey details of the new stage of the military offensive.

“We have lost communication with the vast majority of the UNRWA team members,” U.N. Palestinian refugee agency spokesperson Juliette Touma told The Associated Press. The first Gaza outage lasted 36 hours and the second one for a few hours.

Earlier Sunday, Israeli warplanes struck two central Gaza refugee camps, killing at least 53 people and wounding dozens, health officials said. Israel said it would press on with its offensive to crush the territory’s Hamas rulers, despite U.S. appeals for even brief pauses to get aid to desperate civilians.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said more than 9,700 Palestinians have been killed in the territory in nearly a month of war, a number likely to rise as Israeli troops advance into dense, urban neighborhoods.

Airstrikes hit the Maghazi refugee camp overnight, killing at least 40 people and wounding 34 others, the Health Ministry said. The camp is in the zone where Israel’s military had urged Palestinian civilians to seek refuge as it focuses its offensive on the north.

An AP reporter at a nearby hospital saw eight dead children, including a baby, brought in after the strike. A surviving child was led down the corridor, her clothes caked in dust, an expression of shock on her face.

Arafat Abu Mashaia, who lives in the camp, said the Israeli airstrike flattened several multi-story homes where people forced out of other parts of Gaza were sheltering.

“It was a true massacre,” he said. “All here are peaceful people. I challenge anyone who says there were resistance (fighters) here.”

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

Another airstrike hit a house near a school at the Bureji refugee camp in central Gaza, and staff at Al-Aqsa Hospital told the AP at least 13 people were killed. The camp is home to an estimated 46,000 people and was struck on Thursday as well.

Despite appeals and overseas demonstrations, Israel has continued its bombardment across Gaza, saying it is targeting Hamas and accusing it of using civilians as human shields.

On the ground, Israeli forces in Gaza have reported finding stashes of weapons at times, including explosives, suicide drones and missiles.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, a day after talks with Arab foreign ministers in neighboring Jordan.

Abbas, who has had no authority in Gaza since Hamas took over in 2007, said the Palestinian Authority would only assume control of Gaza as part of a “comprehensive political solution” establishing an independent state that would also take in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, lands Israel seized in the 1967 war.

His remarks seemed to further narrow the already slim options for who would govern Gaza if Israel succeeds in toppling Hamas. The last peace talks with Israel broke down more than a decade ago, and Israel’s government is dominated by opponents of Palestinian statehood.

Earlier in his tour, Blinken met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who on Sunday reiterated while visiting an air force base that “there will be no cease-fire without the return of our abductees.”

Arab leaders have called for an immediate cease-fire. But Blinken said that “would simply leave Hamas in place, able to regroup and repeat what it did on Oct. 7,” when it launched a wide-ranging attack from Gaza into southern Israel, triggering the war.

Swaths of residential neighborhoods in northern Gaza have been leveled in airstrikes. The U.N. office for humanitarian affairs says more than half the remaining residents, estimated at around 300,000, are sheltering in U.N.-run facilities.

Israeli planes once again dropped leaflets urging people to head south during a four-hour window on Sunday. Crowds could be seen walking down Gaza’s main north-south highway carrying baggage, pets and pushing wheelchairs. Others led donkey carts.

One man said they had to walk 500 meters with their hands raised while passing Israeli troops. Another described seeing bodies in damaged cars along the road. “The children saw tanks for the first time. Oh world, have mercy on us,” said one Palestinian who declined to give his name.

Israeli’s military said a one-way corridor would continue for residents in the north to flee to the southern part of Gaza.

The U.N. said about 1.5 million people in Gaza, or 70% of the population, have fled their homes. Food, water and the fuel needed for generators that power hospitals and other facilities is running out. No fuel has come for nearly one month, the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency said.

The war has stoked tensions across the region, with Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group repeatedly trading fire along the border.

Four civilians were killed by an Israeli airstrike in south Lebanon Sunday evening, three of them children, a local civil defense official and state-run media reported. The Israeli military said it had attacked Hezbollah targets in response to anti-tank fire that killed an Israeli civilian.

Hezbollah said they fired Grad rockets from southern Lebanon into Israel in response.

In the occupied West Bank, at least two Palestinians were shot dead during an Israeli arrest raid in Abu Dis, just outside of Jerusalem, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. The military said a militant who had set up an armed cell and fired at Israeli forces was killed.

At least 150 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the start of the war, mainly during violent protests and gun battles during raids.

Many Israelis have called for Netanyahu to resign and for the return of roughly 240 hostages held by Hamas. Some families are traveling abroad to try to make sure the hostages aren’t forgotten.

Netanyahu has refused to take responsibility for the Oct. 7 attack that killed more than 1,400 people. Ongoing Palestinian rocket fire has forced tens of thousands of people in Israel to leave their homes.

In another reflection of widespread anger in Israel, a junior government minister, Amihai Eliyahu, suggested in a radio interview that Israel could drop an atomic bomb on Gaza. He later called the remarks “metaphorical.” Netanyahu suspended Eliyahu from cabinet meetings, a move with no practical effect.

Among the Palestinians killed in Gaza are 4,008 children, the Gaza Health Ministry said, without providing a breakdown of civilians and fighters.

The Israeli military said 29 of its soldiers have died during the ground operation.

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