Good morning. It's November 25th. It's a nice, bright, normal autumn day in New York City. And this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

The front of the morning New York Times is dominated by a three column photo of a nine year old boy named Mahmoud Ajjour, sitting in a beam of sunlight in Qatar, wearing a tank top with almost nothing extending out of the sleeve holes. The Israeli army blew his arms off in Gaza. The Times writes that he is among the relatively small number of badly wounded Gazans who have survived a war that has killed tens of thousands. It also describes him saying, “mama, scratch my hair, scratch my nose.” On the way inside the paper to four more full pages of photographs of ordinary Gazans, many of them children, missing eyes and limbs and other parts, the reader has to pass through the Times saying “the war in the Gaza Strip began after Hamas attacked Israel, killing some 1200 people. The Israeli military says it has taken measures to limit civilian harm as it tries to defeat the militants, but its campaign has taken a staggering toll on Palestinians.” Obviously, the Times feels like it has to do that so as not to be screamed at for presenting a lopsided story, but the only clause that should come after “the Israeli military says it has taken measures to limit civilian harm” is, “but the Israeli military is lying.” “Of the tens of thousands killed in the Israeli bombardment and invasion,” the Times writes, “Gazan health officials estimate about 15,000 were children.” The photo essay, again, deals with the relatively lucky ones, the tiny proportion who were able to make it to Qatar and receive treatment for their wounds. Countless others with similarly grave injuries, are trapped in Gaza, where the Israeli military has repeatedly intentionally attacked hospitals, killed or detained and tortured medical providers, cut off access to basic hygiene and medical supplies, and left the wounded to face anguish and avoidable death. One 18-year-old with an amputated leg recalls her father cleaning the wound with vinegar. This is what America's bipartisan foreign policy consensus looks like. 

Elsewhere on page one, the right hand lead news column is “transition fund for Trump keeps donors cloaked. Risk of ethics breach. He has not signed usual pact that requires disclosure.” By “risk of ethics breach,” the Times means ethics breach. “President-elect Donald J. Trump,” the Times writes, “is keeping secret the names of the donors who are funding his transition effort, a break from tradition that could make it impossible to see what interest groups, businesses, or wealthy people are helping launch his second term.” 

“Could make impossible” meaning will make impossible. Mr. Trump, the Times continues, “has so far declined to sign an agreement with the Biden administration that imposes strict limits on that fundraising in exchange for up to $7.2 million in federal funds earmarked for the transition. By dodging that agreement, Mr. Trump can raise unlimited amounts of money from unknown donors to pay for the staff, travel, and office space involved in preparing to take over the government.” Leaving $7.2 million on the table is a small price to pay to get unrestricted secret donations. “Unlike with campaign contributions to the Times Notes, foreign citizens are allowed to donate to the transition.” A professor of public policy who studies presidential transitions tells the Times, “When the money isn't disclosed, it's not clear how much everybody is giving, who is giving it, and what they're getting in return for their donations.” Meaning it's not clear to the public. It's going to be perfectly clear to the people who want to know. 

Next to that, in the second column, is a Reporter's Notebook from Trump cheerleader Shawn McCreesh. “Love and hate in hometown leans… love? City thaws for Trump, a guy from Queens.” 

“Reporter's notebook” is an interesting choice of rubric for this one because by all appearances Shawn McCreesh does not have in his notebook any commentary from anyone who has actually “thawed for Trump.” McCreesh writes “‘He’s a New Yorker — that’s what he is, that’s the first thing he is,’ said Cindy Adams, a longtime New York Post columnist and Trump confidante. ‘The president-elect is such a New Yorker,’ she said, that he even has a special phone line that can be reached only by “a few super New Yorkers” he trusts. Naturally, she is one of them. ‘I just talked to him on his private number,’ she said. ‘I call him, and he answers it automatically. Nobody else answers that phone.’” So someone who's been in the tank for Trump, as part of her job for decades. Next up, “John Catsimatidis, the billionaire owner of the Gristedes grocery store chain who has known Mr. Trump for many years, said simply, ‘I think he misses New York.’” Those are the testimonials about how New York loves Donald Trump now. Donald Trump's best friends say it's true. 

Down past the fold, below the raw rock overage of Donald Trump, the headline is “immigrants seeking safeguards as threat of deportation nears. Foreign born residents,” the Times writes “have been jamming the phone lines of immigration lawyers. They're packing information meetings organized by nonprofits. And they're taking whatever steps they can to inoculate themselves from the sweeping measures Mr. Trump has promised to undertake after he is inaugurated on January 20th.” Yes, but have you considered that Cindy Adams loves him? 

And on the top left, the headline is “Fraud Hunters Earn Windfalls Tied to COVID Private Citizens Set Up Their Own Inquiries.” It's a piece about how regular citizens are playing good-government vigilante by investigating fraudulent use of the paycheck protection program, inspired by their ability to get a cut of the recovered funds under the False Claims Act. This has, the Times reports, “allowed some private citizens to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars, or in some cases more than a million dollars, for chasing pandemic relief fraud.” And then you get the tsk tsk paragraph. “The practice has stirred up some controversy. Some argue that the provision was meant to encourage whistleblowers, with insider knowledge, to come forward, but some private citizens who have filed suits said they had relied heavily on publicly available information, stitching together evidence they sourced from the internet to build their cases.” The story goes on to say that” the Small Business Administration's inspector general has estimated that more than $200 billion, or at least 17 % of the pandemic loans the agency distributed, was awarded to potentially fraudulent actors. The majority of PPP loans have been forgiven by the federal government.” The understaffed federal government is now overloaded by these suits brought by people investigating the things that the government wasn't investigating. The big absence in this whole account of how non-government actors are tracking down fraud using public information is the absence of the New York Times itself. The only mentions of the Paycheck Protection Program this summer and fall as the president, who opened the unsupervised spigot of cash to rip off artists, was running to become president again, appear to have been simply references to the fact that the program existed in the roundup of where Joe Biden and Donald Trump stand on the issues and its replacement where Kamala Harris and Donald Trump stand on the issues. And then a mention that Marco Rubio helped set up the program when Trump nominated him to be secretary of state. The last coverage of the fraud was an April story about the Justice Department asking for more funding for enforcement. 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. The indignity morning podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod. The theme song is composed and performed by Max Scocca-Ho. You, the listeners, keep us going, with your subscription and tip money. So please send in some if you haven’t, and barring something unforeseen, we will talk again tomorrow.