Good morning. It is March 19th. It is a fine sunny morning in New York City. Birds are singing. The window is open to let in the fresh and warming air. And this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

Federal Judge Jesse Furman in New York ordered Mahmoud Khalil's case to be moved to New Jersey, which was, the New York Times writes, where Mr. Khalil was in detention when his lawyers first filed their petition for his release. The administration's effort to hustle him off to Louisiana after that did not win them the change of venue to the Fifth Circuit that they were apparently hoping for. Might as well credit the New York Times headline writers when they do a good one. The subhead on the story published online is, “The Trump administration has sought to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate, though he is a legal permanent resident and has not been charged with a crime.” A concise, accurate, straightforward account of what is going on. 

And there's even more clarity from the headline people on the front of the print newspaper. In the lead news spot, two columns wide, the paper's initial hedging has been swept away. Israel renews Gaza attack in collapse of ceasefire. “Israel Renews Gaza Attack In Collapse of Cease-Fire / 400 Reported Dead, Including Children — Netanyahu Cites Hostage Impasse.”

No more talk about how the ceasefire could be in trouble. Just the fact that Israel has ceased the ceasefire and has just started firing. The story itself does say that the attack raises the prospect of a return to all out war, but that is at least a plausibly open question if you take “all out” to mean sustained rather than intermittent. Nevertheless, as the next paragraph makes clear, what happened was pretty “all out.”

“More than 400 people,” the Times writes, “including children, were killed in the strikes, Gaza's health ministry said. Those numbers did not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but the relentless Israeli bombardment produced one of the war's deadliest single-day tolls.” And then later on, it quotes Gideon Sa’ar, the Israeli foreign minister, saying, “this is not a one-day operation. We will pursue military action in the days to come. We found ourselves in a dead end with no hostages released and no military action. This situation cannot continue.” That expression of concern for the hostages is countered by the next paragraph in the story. “In Israel, relatives of the hostages said the renewed Israeli attacks had heightened their fears that the remaining captives might never return alive. They accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government of abandoning the hostages, and some gathered in rallies demanding an immediate deal with Hamas to secure their freedom.” 

Next to that, four columns wide, is a picture of a Palestinian man cradling a small corpse wrapped in a shroud described in the caption as a victim of the Israeli airstrikes. 

In the middle of the page above the fold is a look at the auxiliary battles around the Trump administration's defiance of a judicial order to stop the rendition of prisoners to El Salvador. “Onslaught by G.O.P. on Judge
Who Issued Deportation Order / Chief Justice Rebukes
Impeachment Push.”

“Lawyers for the Justice Department,” the Times writes, began the week by trying to kick the judge, James E. Boasberg, off the deportation case, and then filed papers declaring he had no authority to stop flights of immigrants from leaving the country under the Alien Enemies Act. On Tuesday,” the Times adds, Representative Brandon Gill, Republican of Texas, filed articles of impeachment against the judge, accusing him of having abused his power. That same day, President Trump himself endorsed the idea of impeachment, calling Justice Boasberg, a centrist Democrat who lived with Justice Brett Kavanaugh while they were at Yale Law School, a radical left lunatic. “All of this — and more —,” the story continues, “prompted a rare public rebuke by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who issued a statement on Tuesday, essentially telling Judge Boasberg's critics to knock it off. ‘For more than two centuries,’ the Chief Justice said, ‘it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose,’ he added.”

Big words from someone whose own opinion-making is directly responsible for the entire situation. Having given Donald Trump the unwanted and unconstitutional gift of absolute presidential immunity for official acts, the Chief Justice is surprised to discover that the president, who might have been in prison by now without Roberts's interventions, is expanding what he claims to be official conduct far beyond the limits of the law. Maybe we should circle back on this question of whether you can issue a decision so bad you deserve to be impeached for it. 

Down at the bottom of the page, another clean, simple punchy headline. “Kennedy Wants to Let Bird Flu Spread on Farms / Scientists Warn Move
Would Be Dangerous.” 

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation's top health official, has an unorthodox idea for tackling the bird flu bedeviling U.S. poultry farms, the Times writes. Let the virus rip. ‘Instead of culling birds when the infection is discovered, farmers should consider maybe the possibility of letting it run through the flock so that we can identify the birds and preserve the birds that are immune to it,’ Mr. Kennedy said recently on Fox News, he has repeated the idea in other interviews on the channel.” I don't know. People kept killing the Kennedys. And the result is that the breed has come down to this guy. Or, you know, more directly, Mr. Secretary, that's great about the birds. Can you think of anything else that would be reproducing and evolving and growing stronger as you carried out the plan? Like maybe the virus?

But, speaking of medical and scientific expertise, the next story over is “Columbia Cuts Bring Research To Abrupt Stop.” 

“Cancer researchers examining the use of artificial intelligence to detect early signs of breast cancer,” the Times writes, “pediatricians tracking the long-term health of children born to mothers infected with the coronavirus during pregnancy. Scientists searching for links between diabetes and dementia. All these projects at Columbia University were paid for with federal research grants that were abruptly terminated following the Trump administration's decision to cut $400 million in funding to Colombia over concerns regarding the treatment of Jewish students.” Pretty disastrous last clause there for the business of putting provable factual propositions into news stories. The administration's claim to be concerned about anti-Semitism is at this point so nakedly pretextual that you're probably better off skipping it than trying to litigate what the actual motives are, in the course of a story about something else. 

Also on the page is a photograph of the unstranded astronaut, Suni Williams, emerging from her homeward-bound SpaceX capsule after a splashdown in what the announcers on the live stream decided to refer to as the Gulf of America. Congratulations, you're no longer stuck in space. You're stuck down here instead. 

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. Continue sending those along if you're able. And if nothing unexpected gets in the way, we will talk again tomorrow.