Good morning. It is March 3rd. It is sunny in New York and it's supposed to be getting milder. And this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

On the front of this morning's New York Times, the lead news story is “EUROPEANS SEEK PATHWAY TO MEND U.S.-UKRAINE RIFT
 / EMBRACE OF ZELENSKY / To Bring Trump Back, Starmer Urges Allies to Shoulder More.”

Dateline “London, European leaders raced on Sunday to salvage Ukraine's ruptured relationship with the United States, with Britain and France assembling a coalition of the willing to develop a plan for ending Ukraine's war with Russia. They hope this effort will win the backing of a skeptical President Trump.” Yeah, here is the use of “skeptical” in the same way it's used for RFK Jr. and vaccines. Donald Trump is not skeptical of Western Europe's efforts to sustain and support Ukraine as it defends its territory from Russian invasion. He is opposed to it. Trump supports Russia and opposes Western liberal democracy and nothing is going to convince him not to try to hang Ukraine out to dry because hanging Ukraine out to dry is the outcome he wants. You don't have to dig into conspiratorial business to draw the basic picture. Trump got impeached for trying without success to use Ukraine as a political weapon against Joe Biden. Volodymyr Zelensky would not cooperate. Ukraine goes with Joe Biden in his enemies column. NATO goes with Ukraine. And that's it. The United States doesn't have alliances. It just has whatever the president does or doesn't personally support. 

The next column over on the page is “Israel Halts Aid For Gaza to Try To Revise Deal / Proposing to Accelerate Release of Hostages.” 

Dateline “Jerusalem, Israel announced on Sunday that it was immediately halting the entry of all goods and humanitarian assistance into Gaza, trying to force Hamas into accepting a temporary extension of the ceasefire in the war. The move,” the Times writes, “disrupts the existing agreed-upon framework for negotiating a permanent end to the war and puts the fate of the hostages into uncharted territory. The draconian halt on goods and aid, including fuel, is also likely to worsen conditions for the roughly 2 million inhabitants of Gaza after the 15-month war left much of the coastal enclave in ruins.” Draconian is a good word, but the words that don't show up when you search the story are “law” or “war crime,” as in deliberately starving civilians violates international law and is clearly a war crime. The Times grants Israeli officials anonymity to say things that are blatant self-serving lies, nonsense, or both. “Israeli officials,” the Times writes, “speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the government believed that the aid and goods that entered the enclave in recent months and during the temporary ceasefire meant there were enough supplies in Gaza for several more months. They did not offer further details.” If Gaza did have enough food, contrary to every known fact about conditions in Gaza, then cutting off the food supply would not be a very effective pressure tactic, yet, Israel is cutting off the food just in time for Ramadan as a pressure tactic. Maybe another condition of their anonymity was that they wouldn't take follow-up questions. 

Down below those on the bottom half of the page “As Musk Claims Power in U.S., His Mother Is a Hit Overseas.”  A coy headline on a story about how foreign countries have suddenly begun piling speaking engagements and advertising work on May Musk, the 76 year old model and daughter of a Canadian far-right activist who transplanted his family to apartheid South Africa to help build the racist society of his dreams. “In late 2024,” the Times writes “she visited China at least four times to endorse or model for seven brands there, including makeup products, down jackets and massage devices.” She also gave talks in Kazakhstan and Dubai, but the Times is just drawing the dots without having the reporting to connect them.

“The Times could not confirm,” the Times writes, “how much Ms. Musk has earned overseas in recent months. Although in her endorsements and speeches, she often emphasizes her connection to Mr. Musk, there is no evidence that she has sought to influence U.S. government policy, nor is there evidence that she has taken work linked to China's government.” Plenty of smoke and a highly flammable environment, but no certifiable news of fire. 

More favorably for the Trump administration, another below the fold headline is “Used to Causing Dread, Drug Cartel Now Feels It / Arrests and Seizures as Mexico and Trump Step Up Pressure,” full of frightened and aggrieved quotes from the Sinaloa cartel about how now the war on drugs is really working. “‘You can't be calm you can't even sleep because you don't know when they'll catch you’ said one high ranking member of the Sinaloa cartel who like other cartel operatives spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of capture ‘the most important thing now is to survive he added, his hands trembling.’” Okay. Why didn't anybody think of militarizing and cracking down harder before this? It seems to work so well. 

Next to that is a story about how Donald Trump's indiscriminate crackdown against undocumented migrants has terrorized Corona Queens and sent business slumping there. People are ordering takeout from restaurants. We're not showing up at all for fear of immigration raids. “At a Colombian bakery,” the Times writes, “the shop used to take in about $1,600 most mornings, but now makes about $900.” 

On page A14, Donald Trump is going back to indiscriminate drone killing, as he did in his first term. “Under restrictions imposed by the Biden administration,” the Times writes, “U.S. military and CIA drone operators generally had to obtain permission from the White House to target a suspected militant outside the conventional war zone. Now commanders in the field will again have greater latitude to decide for themselves whether to carry out a strike. The previous Trump system,” the Times writes, “permitted targeting militants based only on their status as members of a terrorist group, meaning commanders could, if they chose to do so for policy reasons, blast away at low-level foot soldiers. By requiring the president's personal approval, the Biden system essentially limited strikes to particular high-value targets.” 

Next to that, “thousands go to national parks to protest job cuts. Thousands of people,” the Times writes, “gathered on Saturday at national parks from California to Maine to protest the Trump administration's firing of at least 1,000 National Park Service employees last month.” The Times reports that “there were protests in at least 145 sites, according to one of the organizers. Protests were held in popular spots like Yosemite in Northern California, the Grand Canyon in Arizona, Acadia in Maine, Yellowstone in the Northwest, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, and Great Falls Park in Virginia as well as lesser-known places like Effigy Mounds National Monument in northeastern Iowa. Tensions,” the Times' writes “have been particularly high at Yosemite, where employees have unfurled upside-down American flags in protest across iconic sites like Yosemite Falls and El Capitan.” That's the swift public response. 

As for the judicial response to Donald Trump and Elon Musk's efforts, on page 815, the headline is, “Judge Seems to Doubt Claims of No Formal Role for Musk. A federal judge said on Friday that it seemed factually inaccurate for the Trump administration to keep insisting that Elon Musk has no formal position in an operation that has led to mass firings of federal workers and the hobbling of the nation's foreign aid agency.” This isn't a lawsuit about USAID, one of the very first things destroyed in the ongoing spree of destruction. On Friday, the Times wrote “the plaintiffs asked the judge to block Doge representatives from coming through USAID data and systems as a method of short-term relief. They said their clients, some of whom were stationed abroad, had suffered physical and psychological harm, had missed payments and were cut off from the agency systems and other potentially life-saving services while awaiting further direction. The judge,” the Times writes, “declined to issue an immediate decision.” 

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 Mack Scocca-Ho. You, the listeners, keep us going with your paid subscriptions to Indignity and your tips. Please continue sending those along if you can. And if nothing unexpected gets in the way, we will talk again tomorrow.