“I walked through the fire all by myself”
Haunting video shows five-year-old Palestinian girl walking through flames after Israel bombed school where she was sheltering
Please watch this horrifying report by the UK-based Channel 4 News about Waad Jalal Al-Sheikh Khalil, a five-year-old Palestinian girl in Gaza. On Monday, she survived an Israeli airstrike on the school where she and her family were sheltering. The bombing killed the girl’s mother and five of her siblings. Her father and one of her brothers survived but were badly injured.
“I walked through the fire all by myself,” the girl said, tears running down her face. “I want to see my sisters, to be with them—but they’re dead.”
Five years old.
She should be going to school, making friends, playing with toys, singing songs. Instead, she’s surrounded by rubble, sobbing because soldiers killed most of her family.
The thing I remember most about being five is my parents giving me a Super Nintendo for my birthday. I remember playing Super Mario World and Star Fox. I remember just being a kid.
When this girl is my age, she will remember explosions, fire, debris, and death. And that’s assuming Israel doesn’t kill her before then.
I try not to throw around the word “evil,” but I feel confident using it to describe Israel’s genocidal slaughter of civilians in Gaza. The people responsible for this campaign of mass murder are just plain evil—and that includes the American politicians who have been showering Israel with the weapons its soldiers have been using to create countless scenes like this one.
Can’t we all agree that children deserve to live? That’s become a controversial thing to say recently, at least if the children in question are Palestinian. It shouldn’t be.
Maura Healey hands it to Trump, praises migrant crackdown
This piece was first published by Luke O’Neil’s Welcome to Hell World newsletter.
Legendary poster dril has a handful of tweets that people can’t stop referencing. Here’s one of them:
Keep it in mind while you read these comments about immigration policy from Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, which were reported by the State House News Service.
“I told President [Joe] Biden that he needed to act on the border and shut it down two years ago, three years ago now. I think that some of what Donald Trump has done on the border makes a lot of sense, right? And the tightening there,” Healey told reporters after an unrelated event on May 20.
“I won’t get into specifics. But the general move and recognition that there needed to be more control brought to the border is absolutely correct. And certain things have been done that make a lot of sense,” she added.
Healey’s words raise a lot of questions. What exactly did she mean when she told former President Biden “to act on the border and shut it down”? Was she suggesting that the US should prohibit all migration into the country? Because it’s not clear what else that would mean, and it’s the sort of idea one associates with far-right racist cranks, not Democratic governors of solidly blue states.
And which of Trump’s border policies does the governor believe “make a lot of sense”? She said she wouldn’t “get into specifics,” but inquiring minds want to know! I asked Healey’s spokesperson to clarify her comments, but I did not receive a response.
I posted Healey’s remarks on Bluesky, and many people shared their thoughts. Most were just plain angry at the governor. But one person wrote, “The cardinal sin of democrats is feeling like they have to complement the despot before they criticize him.” Others said that Healey had made a “right turn” or was pivoting in preparation for a possible future presidential bid. Ironically, I saw even more of this sentiment on X the Everything App, where members of the frothing-at-the-mouth-racist Blue Checkmark brigade were convinced that Healey was being insincere and only praising Trump to play politics.
But that’s not what’s going on here. A recent Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey found that less than half of Americans approve of Trump’s immigration policies. The survey found that only about four out of 10 independents and about two out of 10 Democrats support the policies. These are the people that Healey, a Democrat, should be appealing to if she wants to win another election.
If we’re thinking purely in terms of the horse race, it does not make strategic sense to concede an issue to your opponent if their policies are wildly unpopular with your base and relatively unpopular with independents. But more importantly, carrying water for Trump’s cruelty is wrong. You do not, under any circumstances, gotta hand it to Trump for his immigration crackdown. And yet here we find ourselves.
To understand why Healey is praising Trump, you need to understand that she is not a liberal or progressive—she is a cop. Before being elected governor, she was the state’s attorney general, which makes her a prosecutor, which makes her a cop. As attorney general, Healey constantly defended harmful and regressive policies like cannabis criminalization. She advocated for loosening our state wiretapping law to give police expansive surveillance powers. And she pushed the state legislature to not prohibit police from conducting violent “no-knock” raids at homes with elderly people and children. Her ideology is cop.
It’s this cop worldview that explains what’s really going on: Healey is praising Trump’s border policies because she genuinely agrees with him. Healey views migrants as a burden that must be managed with the violence of the state, not as potential community members who will uplift us if we uplift them. Healey isn’t under pressure from her constituents to say she wished Biden shut down the border or that Trump actually has some pretty good points about keeping migrants out of the country if you think about it. This is not a trick. This is what Healey really believes.
If you want a leader who will fight for the causes you support, you need someone who shares your values. When someone shares your values, they won’t agree with you on everything—no one will—but they are persuadable. They might change their approach if you and enough like-minded others demand it. But if someone doesn’t share your values, they don’t care what you think and you’ll have a much harder time influencing them.
If you are someone who believes migrants deserve to be treated with dignity and welcomed into our communities, Healey does not share your values. She is trying to tell you that, and you should take her seriously.
Local defense attorneys push for better pay
A group of Massachusetts bar advocates—private attorneys who courts appoint to represent indigent defendants in criminal cases—said they would stop taking court-appointed cases on Tuesday to demand better pay, WBZ reports.
According to WBZ:
Right now, for work in Massachusetts District Court, these lawyers are paid $65 an hour. In neighboring New Hampshire, they make $125 an hour, in Maine the rate is $150 per hour, and in Rhode Island, the rate is $112 an hour.
"No one's looking to get the Commonwealth to say, 'OK, we're going to pay you what you get on your private cases,'" [lawyer Sean] Delaney explained.
Private defense attorneys can make over $300 per hour for their work - which is part of the reason many say they're stepping back from court-appointed work to focus on private cases.
"It's not about lining our pockets either. It's about ensuring what Massachusetts was 30 years ago. In my opinion, we were the preeminent state in the country," Delaney said. "Anyone who is eligible, based upon their economic status deserves zealous representation, qualified attorneys, and that is what is dropping off [here]."
The story notes that bar advocates handle about 80 percent of court-appointed cases, so the work stoppage could impact indigent peoples’ access to legal representation.
The Massachusetts Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS), the state’s public defender agency, handles the other 20 percent of court-appointed cases. In an emailed statement, CPCS said that it supports the bar advocates’ demand for higher pay.
The statement reads in part:
Bar Advocates and private attorneys represent the overwhelming majority of indigent clients across the Commonwealth. Their work in District and Superior Courts, in mental health facilities, on behalf of children and families, and in other settings where the right to counsel attaches is vital to a just legal system. They are indispensable to fulfilling the constitutional guarantee of counsel.
“We support our private attorneys and agree that they should be paid more for the essential work they do,” said CPCS Chief Counsel Anthony Benedetti. “These lawyers provide critical representation to people at some of the most difficult moments of their lives. Their commitment is a cornerstone of public defense in Massachusetts.”
CPCS continues to advocate for increased hourly rates and sustainable funding. During the past several years, the agency has worked closely with members of the Legislature to push for improvements in compensation, including supporting legislation and budget amendments aimed at raising rates across all practice areas.
“We are grateful to both the House and the Senate for their efforts to address these long-standing issues,” Benedetti said. “We are especially grateful to the House for proposing millions in additional funding for the private bar line item in their budget, and to the Senate for advancing amendments last week that propose hourly rate increases in specific case types. These are meaningful steps forward during an extremely challenging fiscal year. We look forward to continuing to work with both chambers and the Governor to build a stronger, more sustainable public defense system.”
If you missed it, check out my Sunday appearance on The Young Jurks. I discussed my reporting on the James Carver case with host Mike Crawford.
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Anyway, what’s all for now.