Netanyahu vows to continue war amid air strike condemnation

[Daily Kos Morning Roundup]( [Abbreviated Pundit Roundup]( is a long-running series published every morning that collects essential political discussion and analysis around the internet. - [Netanyahu vows to continue war amid air strike condemnation]( Israeli officials had spent much of Monday scrambling to find out what went wrong in Rafah. How did a “precision strike” using specialised munitions with “reduced warheads” result in a firestorm which killed dozens and injured scores? Following last week’s ruling by the ICJ, ordering Israel to halt any operations in the Rafah area that might inflict further harm on the Palestinian population, Israel knows that the eyes of the world are on it. It is under enormous pressure to explain its actions. It says the operation was based on intelligence, and it seems both Hamas figures were killed. But the presence of huge numbers of civilians and, it seems, a significant quantity of flammable material, raises a great many questions about how this incident was planned and executed. - [Daily Kos has missed its fundraising goals two months in a row. Please start a monthly recurring donation to help us stay strong]( - [The rightwing plan to take over ‘sanctuary’ cities – and rebuild them Maga-style]( Trump has for years railed against cities, particularly those run by Democratic officials, as hotbeds for crime and moral decay. He called Atlanta a “record setting Murder and Violent Crime War Zone” last year, a similar claim he makes frequently about various cities. His allies have an idea of how to capitalize on that agenda and make cities in Trump’s image, detailed in the conservative Project 2025: unleash new police forces on cities like Washington DC, withhold federal disaster and emergency grants unless they follow immigration policies like detaining undocumented immigrants and share sensitive data with the federal government for immigration enforcement purposes. [...] Trump has posited creating new cities whole cloth as well, predicated on the idea that cities now are uninspiring at best. Last year, he talked about building “freedom cities” on federal lands, though this idea hasn’t entered into his speeches lately, which have taken a darker turn. At the time, he said there should be a contest to charter 10 new cities using vacant, federally owned land. And he challenged local leaders to work with him to get rid of “ugly buildings”, make cities and towns more liveable and build new monuments to “our true American heroes”. - [The Surprisingly Predictable Reason Why Trump Nostalgia Is On the Rise]( Memory is a strange thing. We remember the past as better than it was. This is a well-documented cognitive bias called nostalgia bias. [...] Nostalgia is a common response to uncertainty and unease. Citizens feeling uncertain and uneasy turn their minds to what they perceive as happier times, in the past. Politicians who promise to restore “the good old days” resonate with this nostalgia impulse. These politicians also emphasize the current decline and chaos. Change threatens some people. Under threatening change, some people seek refuge in nostalgia. [...] In real life, the promise to restore national greatness is a frequent hallmark of fascism. In his 2004 book, the Anatomy of Fascism, Robert Paxton defined fascism as “a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.” Fascism requires more than an obsession with decline. But it starts from this sense of decline. And the illusion of decline is real and persistent. For as far back as we have polling, polls consistently find widespread belief that morality, honesty, civility, and hard work were better in the past. A recent comprehensive academic analysis looks at 70 years of opinion polling across 60 countries and found that perception of moral decline was ubiquitous and constant. - [The Stench of Climate Change Denial]( ...many American homes, especially in the Southeast, aren’t connected to sewer lines, and more and more septic tanks are overflowing, on a scale vastly greater than what I remember from my vaguely smelly hometown — which is both disgusting and a threat to public health. The cause? Climate change. Along the Gulf and South Atlantic coasts, The Washington Post reported last week, “sea levels have risen at least six inches since 2010.” This may not sound like much, but it leads to rising groundwater and elevated risks of overflowing tanks. The emerging sewage crisis is only one of many disasters we can expect as the planet continues to warm, and nowhere near the top of the list. But it seems to me to offer an especially graphic illustration of two points. First, the damage from climate change is likely to be more severe than even pessimists have tended to believe. Second, mitigation and adjustment — which are going to be necessary, because we’d still be headed for major effects of climate change even if we took immediate action to greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions — will probably be far more difficult, as a political matter, than it should be. - [America isn't ready for a Trump trial verdict]( There are at least three likely options that await us on the other side of deliberations. Trump could be convicted of falsifying business documents to cover up hush money payments, made in the interest of affecting the 2016 presidential election’s outcome. The jury could conclude the prosecution didn’t make its case and fully acquit him. Or the jury could report that they’re deadlocked, causing Judge Juan Merchan to declare a mistrial. Assuming there is a verdict, once the foreperson has announced the jury’s decision, any prior assumptions about the 2024 presidential race will need to be recalculated. Polls taken since Trump was first indicted have only been able to ask respondents to consider hypotheticals. A survey conducted in March by Politico Magazine and Ipsos found that a conviction could cost Trump just over a third of independents in the fall. Likewise, a February poll from NBC Newsshowed a conviction in the New York trial taking a major chunk of Trump’s support from independents and prompting a major swing from 18- to 34-year-olds to support President Joe Biden over Trump. And an ABC News/Ipsos survey conducted in late April found that 20% of Trump supporters polled would “either reconsider their support (16%) or withdraw it (4%)” if he’s convicted. We are now finally moving away from possibility to hard and fast reality, which may look very different than the predictions based on polling. And encouraging as those statistics may have been for Democrats, they still left unanswered some important questions. None of the polls above asked voters how an acquittal would affect their support for the former president, something that remains a possibility. Also, there’s no guarantee that the number of people who would change their vote would be enough to shift the election’s outcome in any given state... - [Tis the season for farmer's markets and trips to the park—this Daily Kos tote is perfect for veggies, books, and anything else you need to carry]( - [Was the upside down flag at Samuel Alito’s house illegal?]( For the Alitos, the most relevant portion of U.S. Code is: “No disrespect should be shown to the flag of the United States of America. … The flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.” The notion of hanging a flag upside down to communicate distress has a long history in maritime culture, likely dating back to the British Isles in the 17th century, according to the North American Vexillological Association, an organization of flag scholars and enthusiasts. It was commonly used by ships through the 18th and 19th centuries until the development of more effective communication systems, notably radio. By now, “neither the International Code of Signals nor U.S. inland rules of the road recognize the inverted ensign as a distress signal,” and “signal books published by the U.S. maritime agencies specifically discourage its use.” (Today, ships in dire distress are supposed to signal with “N” and “C” international code flags — which stand for “November” and “Charlie” — or other specified flags.) As a result, an inverted flag “has largely become a political signal,” the association has written. Want to write your own stories? [Log in]( or [sign up]( to post articles and comments on Daily Kos, the nation's largest progressive community. Follow Daily Kos on [Facebook](, [Threads](, and [Instagram](. Thanks for all you do, The Daily Kos team We're not asking for much Over the past 12 months, the average donation to Daily Kos has been just $9.44. 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