U.N. Inquiry Says Israel Is Committing Genocide, and Trump Threatens Crackdown on Liberal Groups

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0:37Today's Tuesday, September 16th. Here's what we're covering.

0:45A United Nations commission investigating the war in Gaza said this morning it's found that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians. the panel's most sweeping findings yet about Israel's conduct. In earlier reports, it said Israel had committed crimes against humanity, but had stopped short of a genocide declaration. Now, the panel's leader says, quote, The responsibility for these atrocity crimes lies with Israeli authorities at the highest echelons who have orchestrated a genocidal campaign. The report details the deaths of civilians in strikes on densely populated areas, crippling attacks on hospitals, and the destruction of educational, religious, and cultural sites, saying the consequence was the erasure of Palestinian identity.

1:33A spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry denounced the report as fake and said that it was Hamas who had attempted genocide against Israelis. Israel has previously accused the UN of being biased against it. While the UN commission that issued the report has no enforcement power, The leader of the panel that conducted the investigation said its findings would carry weight with the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. The announcement came at the same time as Israel has launched its ground offensive in Gaza City. It kicked off the operation overnight with an intense bombing campaign, aiming to take control of the city, even as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are still there.

2:13We are all terrified, a former schoolteacher sheltering in an apartment in western Gaza City told the Times. Death would be more merciful than what we're living through.

2:34In Washington, D.C. yesterday. Welcome back. This is the vice president of these United States, J.D. Vance, your host. The vice president guest-hosted Charlie Kirk's podcast and used the platform to announce a sweeping crackdown by the Trump administration on liberal groups. We have to talk about this incredibly destructive movement of left-wing extremism that has grown up over the last few years. While investigators are still working to definitively determine a motive in last week's killing of Kirk, Vance claimed, without evidence, that the gunman was part of a left-wing network that funds and incites violence against conservatives.

3:12Trump's top policy advisor, Stephen Miller, came on the show as well and doubled down on that claim. With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people. It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie's name. Senior administration officials told The Times that details of the crackdown are still being worked out, But one said that they would be trying to draw links from liberal groups to incidents like attacks on Tesla dealerships and immigration agents.

3:46You have the crazies on the far left who are saying, oh, Stephen Miller and J.D. Vance, they're going to go after constitutionally protected speech. No, no, we're going to go after the NGO network that foments, facilitates and engages in violence. While there has been a wave of violence across the political spectrum in the U.S. in recent years, the administration appears to be focusing only on threats to their own party, looking past incidents like the killing this summer of a Democratic state lawmaker and her husband in Minnesota. Meanwhile, some Democrats in Congress have warned that the White House could use Kirk's killing as a pretense to crush political dissent.

4:26Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut wrote on social media, quote, pay attention, something dark might be coming.

4:43Now, three more updates on the Trump administration. A federal appeals court has ruled that Lisa Cook can remain on the board of the Federal Reserve, despite President Trump's ongoing effort to force her out. The administration has accused Cook of mortgage fraud, saying that's grounds to fire her, though she has not been charged with a crime. The Times recently reviewed one of Cook's loan records, which suggests she did not try to deceive lenders, as Trump has repeatedly claimed. The president's been trying to staff the Fed with his own picks as he pressures the traditionally independent institution to carry out his economic agenda.

5:23For now, Cook will stay as the Fed kicks off its crucial two-day meeting today, where it's expected to make a decision on interest rates. Also on Capitol Hill. I don't want to see us get into some war with Venezuela because the president is just blowing ships willy-nilly out of the water. Democratic lawmakers are speaking out after President Trump announced that he'd ordered the U.S. military to carry out another deadly strike on a boat from Venezuela. The military has now blown up two boats that Trump claimed were carrying illicit drugs, saying he was defending the country from cartels. These lawless killings are just putting us at risk because it means other countries now may decide to blow an American ship out of the water and claim that it was engaged in drug trafficking.

6:10Senator Adam Schiff echoed what legal experts have said, that this kind of strike is illegal. The administration has not provided any detailed rationale for why it would be lawful and not murder or war crime. Schiff also emphasized that the Constitution requires the president to get congressional approval for this kind of military action. And. I'm signing a presidential memorandum to establish the Memphis Safe Task Force. Yesterday, the president signed off on a plan to send National Guard troops and federal agents to Memphis. his latest show of force in a blue city. Memphis' Democratic mayor said he did not ask for the help.

6:53Crime rates there have dropped this year, though they remain high compared to other parts of the country. This summer, Trump ran into legal pushback when he sent the National Guard into Los Angeles against the wishes of the mayor and California's governor. But in this case, Trump said Tennessee's Republican governor requested the support.

7:16On farms across the Midwest, the U.S.'s trade war with China is beginning to take a toll. Soybeans that would normally be harvested and exported to Asia are now set to pile up in large steel bins. China used to buy more than half the soybeans grown in the U.S. every year. But it stopped in retaliation for President Trump's steep tariffs on Chinese goods. The Times visited farms in North Dakota, including one about two hours outside Fargo, where China was their biggest customer. Now, for the first time in the more than 75 years that the farm has been operating, China's buying nothing. The farm's expected to lose$400 ,000.

7:57In August, Trump called publicly for China to step up its soybean purchases, which raised some farmers' hopes that a deal was close. Top officials from the two countries met this week for negotiations, but nothing on this was announced, and harvest season is just weeks away. One farmer told the Times the standoff is particularly upsetting because the U.S. spent decades building up China as a key customer for soybeans. He said, quote, Are we going to lose a generation of farmers because of the trade war? I think that's what we're fast approaching.

8:38And finally, researchers have announced a new discovery about ants that's pretty mind-blowing. So just hang in there for a second while I explain the science. In a paper published this month in the journal Nature, scientists explained how they noticed something odd in the colonies of Mediterranean harvester ants. The colonies had a bunch of hybrid ants around, doing all the work and heavy lifting. Those hybrids were a mix of their species and another one. Fair enough. It's not unusual for queen ants to mate with another species. But the thing is, there should not have been any of that other species around to mate with.

9:17The closest ones are hundreds of miles away. So how were the queens finding them? What the researchers discovered floored them. They were being hatched at the colony by the queens, who were somehow able to lay eggs from a different species. Basically, it's like a human giving birth to a chimpanzee. But as one of the researchers explained, it's actually even weirder than that. It's like humans having chimps and then mating with those chimps to make hybrid offspring who do all the housework. This kind of phenomenon, xenoparody or foreign birth, has not been seen before in any creature. One biologist who worked on the project called it, quote, sci-fi material.

10:05Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, Times tech reporter Kashmir Hill on how some chat GPT users have gotten caught in dangerous delusional spirals. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.

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