In one of his most pointed criticisms of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yet, President Biden suggested that the Israeli leader may be dragging out the war in Gaza for his political benefit.

“There is every reason for people to draw that conclusion,” Biden told Time in a new wide-ranging interview published Wednesday.

The president also said that he believed some of Israel’s actions in the war have been “inappropriate” and a “mistake.”

The new interview, which was conducted May 28, comes days after Biden announced a new three-stage deal to end the war—including a ceasefire, the release of hostages, and the rebuilding of Gaza—and said that it is “time for the suffering to stop.” His answers to Time were, at times, vague and contradictory, but amounted to some of his most direct public criticism of Netanyahu and the Israeli military since the war began on Oct. 7, when Hamas killed approximately 1,200 Israelis and took more than 250 hostages, including some Americans.

Netanyahu has grown increasingly unpopular among Israelis since the start of the war, due in part to his inability to free the hostages; Israeli officials have also threatened to resign and demanded Netanyahu publicly promise that Israel will not indefinitely occupy Gaza. Meanwhile, Israel’s national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, said last week the war could last through the end of the year.

When it came to the question of whether Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza, as International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan publicly alleged last month, Biden was more tepid in the Time interview: “The answer is it’s uncertain and has been investigated by the Israelis themselves…But one thing is certain, the people in Gaza, the Palestinians have suffered greatly, for lack of food, water, medicine, etc. And a lot of innocent people have been killed,” Biden said, adding that “a lot of it has to do not just with Israelis, but what Hamas is doing in Israel as we speak.”

According to the latest numbers from the Associated Press, the war has killed more than 36,000 Palestinians, in addition to the 1,200 Israelis killed on Oct. 7. Officials have described the humanitarian crisis in Gaza as “absolutely catastrophic.” Samantha Power, the top US humanitarian official, said in April that famine was likely underway in parts of Gaza, and the situation has only grown more dire following the Israeli seizure of the Rafah border crossings. And recent reports, including one in the Washington Post, have alleged that some radical Israeli settlers have attacked aid trucks bound for Gaza, preventing crucial supplies from getting in.

But when the Time reporter asked if Biden believed that Israel was intentionally starving civilians, allegations that are included in the I.C.C. applications for arrest warrants, he said: “No, I don’t think that. I think they’ve engaged in activity that is inappropriate.”

He continued, saying that he advised Israeli officials not to “make the same mistake we did going after [Osama] bin Laden…it led to endless wars.”

“Don’t make the mistakes we made,” Biden said. “And they’re making that mistake, I think.”

It remains unclear if Israel and Hamas will accept the plan that Biden announced on Friday. Netanyahu’s allies have since expressed strong opposition to the proposal; Hamas has signaled a more positive reaction. But while Biden urges the two sides to accept the deal, as my colleague Noah Lanard wrote, there is still a lot Biden could do independently if he was serious about ending the war, including ending the sending of weapons to Israel, increasing aid to Gaza, and ensuring compliance with federal laws that restrict U.S. support for nations restricting American aid and implicated in “gross violations of human rights.”

Following former President Trump’s first criminal conviction—and his rambling against the outcome—he’s claiming that the possibility of being sentenced to house arrest or jail time doesn’t bother him.

“I’m okay with it,” Trump said on Fox & Friends Weekend, in his first interview since a dozen jurors handed down guilty verdicts on 34 of 34 felony charges for falsifying business records on Thursday.

The Fox & Friends hosts said they spent 90 minutes interviewing the former president at his Bedminster, New Jersey estate. In the 11-minute clip that aired Sunday, Trump ranted and repeated many of his complaints about the case and his political opponents: the people trying to hold him accountable are “deranged,” the trial was “a scam,” President Biden “can’t put two sentences together,” Democrats are “a threat to democracy.” Trump also called the guilty verdict, which he plans to appeal, “tougher on my family than it is for me.”

And, ever the martyr, the former president added that he thinks a sentence of jail or house arrest would throw his adoring public into upheaval. “I’m not sure the public would stand for it,” he said. “I think it would be tough for the public to take. You know, at a certain point, there’s a breaking point.”

But that remains to be seen. A CBS News/YouGov poll released today found that while 45 percent of respondents thought Trump should not serve prison time for the conviction, 38 percent think he should, with 17 percent unsure. An ABC/Ipsos poll found that half of Americans agree with the verdict—and nearly as many, 49 percent, think Trump should end his presidential campaign because of it.

Meanwhile, top Republicans are privately bracing for the possibility that their presumptive nominee may be incarcerated when the party officially nominates him at July’s Republican National Convention, according to a report on CBS’ Face the Nation. The former president’s sentencing is set for July 11; the four-day RNC kicks off in Milwaukee on July 15.

Some legal experts think Trump’s chances of jail time are slim given his age, 77, and his lack of a criminal record. He could simply be sentenced to probation. But incarceration is certainly possible, especially given Trump’s repeated violations of a gag order barring him from “threatening, inflammatory, denigrating” remarks about witnesses, jurors, court workers, and their families.

One thing is for sure: Jail time wouldn’t stop his campaign. “He is running for president,” Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, told the BBC on Sunday. “Nothing will change there.”

GOP Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who previously called January 6 rioters “insurrectionists” who “should face the full extent of federal law,” is now singing a different tune: Many of those insurrectionists, he believes, should be “considered” for, and receive, presidential pardons.

On NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Cotton said people “who did not attack a law enforcement officer, [and] who did not damage public property ” on Jan. 6 should be “considered” for a pardon.

“Anyone who is charged with silly misdemeanors about parading on public grounds without a permit, who did not attack a law enforcement officer, who did not damage public property, their pardon should be considered—in many cases, I would say it should be granted,” Cotton said. (As Meet the Press fill-in host Peter Alexander pointed out, that’s different from Trump’s recent pledge to pardon all of the more than 800 rioters who have been sentenced, whom he has called “hostages” and “political prisoners.”)

The senator went on to insist that he believes the Supreme Court will soon erase the insurrectionists’ convictions anyway, referring to Fischer v. US, the case focused on the Justice Department’s use of the “obstructing an official proceeding” charge against January 6 participants. (As my colleague Dan Friedman wrote, a favorable ruling for the rioters could disrupt the convictions of 350 participants; as Dan also wrote, it’s not clear how the high court will rule in the case, contrary to Cotton’s claims that it’ll be a slam-dunk for the rioters. A decision is expected by the end of the month.)

Cotton’s change of heart over the treatment of the insurrectionists under the law may have something to do with his rumored status as an increasingly attractive contender as Trump’s vice-presidential nominee, according to a New York Times report published last week. The Times report, which cites three anonymous people close to Trump, says the now–convicted felon sees Cotton as disciplined and an effective communicator, and likes the fact that he served in the Army and is a fellow Ivy League graduate.

Another part of his apparent VP audition on Meet the Press this morning came when Cotton—who voted to certify the 2020 election results—said that, while he does not believe that Congress has the authority to reject electors certified by states, he’d only accept this year’s results “if it’s a fair and a free election.”

“Any candidate of any party has a perfect right to pursue legal remedies if they believe there’s been fraud or cheating in an election,” Cotton said. Trump and his allies, of course, made use of this right, filing more than 60 court cases challenging the results of the 2020 contest. All but one failed; the sole legal victory was on a technical matter in Pennsylvania, and would not have changed the election outcome in the state, where Biden won by more than 80,000 votes, according to USA Today.

Other rumored Trump VP contenders have played the same game as Cotton, publicly reversing their previously articulated positions to align with Trump’s, or walking back previous criticisms of him. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) have all gone on television and, in various ways, refused to commit to certifying this year’s election results no matter who wins—even though Scott and Rubio both voted to certify the 2020 results. (Vance was not yet in office in 2020, and has since said he would not have certified the results. Stefanik voted to overturn them.)

But for all his posturing, when this morning’s interview turned to talk about Trump’s VP shortlist, Cotton played coy. “I suspect only he knows who’s on his short list,” Cotton said of Trump. “I have not talked to the president or his campaign about his vice-presidential selection or any position in his administration.”

He added, “Any great patriot, if offered a chance to serve our country by the president, would have to consider it seriously.”

And any aspiring Trump VP, it appears, has to abandon their convictions and fall in line with the ex-president to be seriously considered for the job.

Amid global outrage over Israel’s devastating attack near a tent camp in Rafah that killed at least 45 displaced Palestinians, Israeli airstrikes on Tuesday reportedly hit another displacement camp killing at least 21 people.

Reuters reported that the Tuesday attack occurred in an evacuation area in Al-Mawasi, west of Rafah, where Israeli officials had advised Palestinians to move for their safety. As of Tuesday afternoon, a spokesperson for the Israeli military told Reuters that officials were “not aware of this incident”; the Israeli military later denied the attack. But witnesses told Reuters they spotted Israeli tanks and armored vehicles with machine guns in central Rafah. State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters Tuesday afternoon that American officials had not yet been able to verify those reports.

The latest reported incident comes after the Sunday bombing of an area near a tent camp in western Rafah that killed at least 45 people. Harrowing videos from the scene that circulated on social media showed fire engulfing the tents and charred bodies being pulled from the flames. In one video, an adult is seen holding up what appeared to be a toddler missing multiple body parts. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the Sunday incident the result of “a tragic mishap” but offered no signs of slowing down Israel’s assault on Rafah. The Israeli military said the strike was targeted and struck a compound about a mile from a humanitarian zone, and that it killed two senior Hamas militants.

A spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces said the deaths of civilians occurred due to an “unexpected and unintended” fire that broke out following the airstrike “for reasons that are still being investigated.”

Those explanations were insufficient for several world leaders and humanitarian groups. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres condemned the attacks, which he said “killed scores of innocent civilians who were only seeking shelter from this deadly conflict.”

“There is no safe place in Gaza,” Guterres added. “This horror must stop.”

French President Emmanuel Macron said he was “outraged” by the Sunday attacks and that “these operations must stop.”

The International Rescue Committee also condemned the attacks and alleged they violated international humanitarian law.

American officials have been comparatively more muted, with some wondering how Sunday’s attack would square with President Biden’s pronouncement earlier this month that he would stop sending weapons to Israel if it proceeded with a major ground invasion in Rafah. (That threat quickly proved meaningless, given that the Biden administration announced last week it was beginning a process to attempt to send another $1 billion in weapons to Israel.)

As of Tuesday afternoon, Biden does not appear to have publicly addressed the deadly attacks on civilians in and near Rafah’s tent camps. A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. At Tuesday’s press conference, reporters pressed Miller, the State Department spokesperson, for more clarity on what actions by Israel, exactly, would constitute Biden’s so-called red line that would lead him to stop sending weapons.

“Is there actually a red line?” one reporter asked. “Do you have a yardstick by which you measure a red line that Israel may cross?”

Miller responded by referring to comments that National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan had made last week in which Sullivan said “there’s no mathematical formula.”

“What we’re going to be looking at,” Sullivan said last week, “is whether there is a lot of death and destruction from this operation or if it is more precise and proportional.”

Today, reporters at the State Department briefing sought a clearer answer.

“So in theory,” the reporter who asked about the red line continued, “Israel can strike anywhere, basically, and say, ‘there are Hamas operatives?'”

“I’m not going to deal with your theories,” Miller replied. “I’m going to deal with reality.”

Miller added that US officials would continue to monitor the situation in Gaza and that “we will continue to impress to [Israel] the importance of conducting legitimate operations that go after Hamas in a way that minimizes civilian harm.” He added that so far, Israel’s attacks in and near Rafah are not “on the scale” of previous incursions they conducted earlier in the war, including in Khan Younis, which Israeli forces invaded in December and destroyed more than half of buildings, according to the Associated Press. Miller also said U.S. officials will push Israeli officials to investigate what led to the deadly Sunday strikes and make their findings public.

Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh also declined to specify a “red line” when a reporter asked on Tuesday if the Department of Defense has one. Singh also said she does not know if U.S.-provided weapons were used in the Sunday airstrike.

The US’s continued support for Israel, despite the deepening humanitarian crisis, comes amid a series of international court developments seeking to hold Israel accountable for the devastation. Last week, the top U.N. court ordered Israel to halt its offensive in Rafah, and International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan announced he was seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders for alleged war crimes. Earlier this year, the International Court of Justice also ruled that a case brought by South Africa alleging Israel is committing genocide in Gaza will go forward and that, in the meantime, Israel must take steps to prevent genocide and get more humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Despite all this, Biden continues to have Bibi’s back. The State Department has also come under fire from humanitarian aid groups after concluding in a delayed report released earlier this month that Israel was not restricting the flow of U.S. aid into Gaza, which more than 20 aid groups said was contrary to what their representatives had witnessed on the ground.

But as my colleague Noah Lanard has written, if Biden was serious about ending the war in Gaza, several concrete steps, including the restriction of arms transfers and military aid, are available to the president. In the meantime, as the past couple of days have shown, it’s overwhelmingly Palestinian children and innocent civilians who are paying the price of Israel’s war in Gaza.

Update, May 29: This story has been updated to clarify the location of the Sunday airstrike and to incorporate statements from Israeli and American defense officials.

Moms for Liberty is on a mission.

The conservative “parents’ rights” group will spend more than $3 million on ads in swing states ahead of the election, according to a Wednesday report in the Associated Press.

Known for stirring the panic about pronoun usage in schools and pioneering book bans across the country, Moms for Liberty plans to target voters in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. They hope to expand to Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania later this year, according to the AP.

Tina Descovich, one of the co-founders of Moms for Liberty, said that their goal is to “activate” their members who do not vote. The group doesn’t endorse specific presidential candidates, but their preferences—for electing right-wing representatives—are clear: The latest ad campaign, the AP reports, will attack President Biden for his recently-enacted Title IX rules that extend safeguards to LGBTQ students.

The group refused to divulge their funding source for the new campaign to the AP, with Descovich only saying “investors” want to see the group “grow in specific states.” (As my colleague Kiera Butler has reported, Moms for Liberty has acknowledged that they have worked with the well-funded conservative groups the Heritage Foundation and the Leadership Institute.)

A spokesperson for the group did not immediately respond to questions from Mother Jones.

The announcement comes as Moms for Liberty’s latest effort to soften their image and make inroads in blue and purple states. As Kiera has reported, the group has recently shifted its focus from book bans and pronoun panic to literacy issues, essentially alleging that schools are too “woke” to teach reading correctly. Earlier this year, I attended Moms for Liberty’s town hall in New York City, where they trotted out their new talking points about literacy issues, along with their go-to culture war screeds against alleged indoctrination of students by social justice-oriented teachers and mandatory masking in schools during the pandemic. Backlash to that event was swift, from both local politicians and protesters. Last year, they held their national conference—which Kiera attended—in Philadelphia, where several of the then-Republican candidates for president attended; a few hundred protesters were also present.

The Moms have recently attracted a swell of bad press, thanks to a disastrous 60 Minutes interview in which the co-founders struggled to defend their stances; a chapter leading quoting Hitler in a newsletter last year; some members’ close ties to the Proud Boys; and, perhaps most notably, the group’s national co-founder Bridget Ziegler becoming embroiled in a sex scandal after it came out that she and her husband, Florida GOP chair Christian Ziegler, were involved in a three-way sexual relationship with a woman—even though Bridget Ziegler played a key role in the passage of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, which forbade discussion of LGBTQ issues in many school settings. (Christian Ziegler was accused of rape by the other woman in the encounter—an allegation he denied, and which authorities ultimately declined to prosecute—and was booted from his post within the state Republican party earlier this year.)

Descovich insisted to the AP that the negative press has not hurt the group: “No one reached out to me and said, ‘We’re not going to donate to you anymore because of these stories,’” she said. “Everybody understands that the work we’re doing is going to be under intense attacks and scrutiny.”

An unanswered question, though, remains: Who is the deep-pocketed donor, or donors, paying for their election-year ad buys in swing states?

As the group’s arch nemesis, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, told the AP, there’s likely a few reasons they’re not revealing that.

“Given the timing of their new push and given that they will not reveal their investors, they’re telling you two things,” Weingarten said. “One, they’re telling you it’s not grassroots. And two, they’re telling you that they’re operatives for somebody else.”

When Leonard Rubenstein saw the news on Monday that International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan is seeking arrest warrants for Hamas and Israeli leaders for alleged war crimes, he was struck by what he considered to be a glaring oversight: The charges made no mention of the well-documented, devastating Israeli military attacks against Palestinian health workers and facilities.

“It’s been so devastating in Gaza,” Rubenstein told Mother Jones, “and it’s never been the subject of a specific international prosecution.”

As founder of Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition, Rubenstein has brought together more than 40 organizations to raise awareness about attacks on health care in conflict zones and increase the documentation and accountability of those attacks. According to a new report that the Coalition released today, there were 761 reported incidents of violence against health care in Gaza and the West Bank—the highest of any country or territory experiencing conflict that the group tracked last year.

Nearly 500 of those reported incidents of violence occurred in Gaza, where 143 health workers were killed—the largest number recorded in any conflict since 2016, the report notes. In addition, there were more than 120 incidents of health care facilities damaged or destroyed. According to the report, all but six of those incidents occurred after Oct. 7, when Hamas launched a deadly attack on Israel, killing 1,200 Israelis and taking more than 250 hostages, including some Americans. Close to 200 other reported incidents of violence, including the killings of 3 health workers, occurred in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. According to the report, Israel reported 33 incidents of violence against health care last year, resulting in the deaths of nearly two dozen health workers in Israel.

These figures are part of a broader—and troubling—global trend. According to the new report, there were more than 2,500 reported incidents of violence against health care workers in 2023 across 30 countries and territories—a 25 percent increase compared to 2022, and the highest number the coalition has ever reported since it first began tracking these attacks 11 years ago.

With 418 instances, Myanmar, where internal armed conflicts have been raging since the brutal February 2021 military coup, had the second-highest number of reported incidents of violence last year, which included the arrests of more than 100 health care workers and the killing of 37. In addition, there were more than 180 incidents in which health care facilities were damaged, destroyed, or occupied.

The third-ranking country for reports of violence is Ukraine, where the military has been battling Russian forces since the February 2022 invasion. More than 390 acts of violence took place there, including the killings of 109 health workers and more than 200 incidents of health care facilities being damaged, destroyed, or occupied. Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sudan also had particularly high rates of violence. State forces were deemed responsible for nearly half the incidents included in the report; other armed groups—like Hamas, for example—were responsible for the rest of the attacks, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.

Rubenstein, a human rights lawyer who is currently at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, is also the author of the 2021 book Perilous Medicine: The Struggle to Protect Health Care from the Violence of War. He notes several explanations for the overall spike in violence. One is the increasing use of explosive weapons and drones that are sometimes used in combination, which, he says, “makes it much easier to [deploy] weapons for all kinds of groups.” Deconfliction, a practice that is supposed to involve advanced planning by military personnel to protect humanitarian actors in conflicts, has also largely failed, especially in Gaza, Rubenstein adds. But for him, the greatest culprit in the surge of violence simply boils down to a lack of “political will” among leaders to take more decisive actions to address it.

“Right now, we are in a position where there’s great recognition of the problem, [and] expressions of outrage when health care is attacked, but no serious action to stop it,” he told me.

Zaher Sahloul, a Syrian physician who has worked in conflict zones around the world, is the president of MedGlobal, an organization that deploys health care volunteers and supplies to conflict zones around the world. He was not involved in compiling the report, though MedGlobal is a member of the coalition. When I asked him to explain what he considered to be the reasons for the lack of prosecution or actions to stop the violence, he gave me a one-word response: “Racism.”

“Most of the victims are, frankly, from the Global South,” he said. “When people who are not Western are killed, it’s [seen as] not very important.”

Historically, there have been some well-intentioned efforts to address these attacks. Rubenstein points to a 2012 resolution adopted by the World Health Assembly requiring the World Health Organization to collect and report information on attacks on health care. Four years later, the U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution demanding “an end to impunity” for attacks on medical facilities and personnel. But critics—including Rubenstein and Sahloul—criticize both resolutions, alleging their accountability mechanisms are inadequate.

Quantifying the number of these attacks is also a crucial issue, but security concerns and communications blockades have made data collection difficult, according to the report. Moreover, “the gendered impact of violence against health workers remains largely unreported,” even though the majority of health care workers globally are women. In Afghanistan, where the Taliban has implemented draconian restrictions on the lives of women and girls since its August 2021 takeover, the report notes, “Health workers were arrested because they had failed to separate male and female patients or, in the case of women, for traveling without a mahram (male guardian).”

So what can be done? Recommendations include urging human rights groups to collect data on these attacks; creating a mechanism within the UN Security Council to refer allegations of these attacks to the ICC for prosecution; and for militaries to adopt no-weapons policies in health facilities and otherwise review their training to ensure they prioritize protecting health facilities in battle. The report’s first recommendation brings us back to where we began: The ICC “should prioritize investigations and prosecutions” of attacks on health workers and the patients they treat, including, specifically, in Ukraine, Israel, and the occupied Palestinian territories.

If they will, remains unclear. A spokesperson for the ICC Prosecutor’s Office said they could not comment in response to Mother Jones‘ questions about why the warrant requests from this week failed to include any reference to attacks on health care. The Israeli military often tries to justify its attacks on hospitals in Gaza by claiming that Hamas is using them as shields in which to hide or camouflage a network of tunnels in which munitions are stored and combatants hide. Rubenstein, Sahloul, and other critics assert the Israeli Defense Forces have failed to back up these claims. Instead, they appear to have failed to take steps to minimize harm to patients in hospitals as required by the Geneva Convention and baselessly have conducted mass arrests of Palestinian health care personnel.

“Overall,” Rubenstein said, “I think impunity for the attacks has had the effect of allowing them to continue with no consequences to the perpetrators.”

In the meantime, the situation in Gaza is bleak. The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, said on Tuesday only seven of their two dozen health facilities in Rafah are operational and have not been able to receive medical supplies for over a week due to the Israeli seizures at border crossings.

Sahloul does not expect things will improve anytime soon. “Attacks on health care lead to irreversible, lower access [to] health care,” he told me. The attacks on Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza, for example, he said, “Will be felt for generations, because it’s near impossible to bring back the expertise, the connections, the networks, the technology…even if the war stops.”

“When doctors flee because they are afraid for their lives,” he added, “they don’t come back.”

Update, May 23: This story has been updated to clarify Sahloul’s comment about the alleged role of racism in the failure to prosecute attacks and to clarify Rubenstein’s comment about the use of explosive weapons and drones together.

This morning, International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan announced he was seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders—Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, and Ismail Haniyeh—for alleged war crimes. 

If a panel of three ICC judges approve the warrants, Netanyhau and Gallant could face charges for crimes against humanity, including the starvation of civilians. The Hamas leaders could face charges including murder, taking hostages, and torture, related to actions during and following the October 7th attacks that resulted in the deaths of approximately 1,200 Israelis and the kidnapping of more than 250 hostages, including some Americans. 

Israel, Hamas, and the United States all condemned the news. President Biden called the announcement “outrageous.” Netanyahu said that in seeking the warrants, Khan had created a “twisted and false moral equivalence between the leaders of Israel and the henchmen of Hamas” and that the ICC was denying Israel’s right to self-defense. Hamas said in a statement the ICC announcement “equates the victim with the executioner.” 

Khan refuted the idea that anyone was being unfairly targeted, telling CNN in an exclusive interview announcing the news that “this is not a witch hunt.” 

“Nobody is above the law,” Khan added. “No people…have a get out of jail free card, have a free pass to say, ‘well the law doesn’t apply to us.’”

“This is not a witch hunt”: International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor @KarimKhanQC appointed an independent panel of international legal experts to review the arrest warrant process. pic.twitter.com/ch2bZ5qa5U

— Christiane Amanpour (@amanpour) May 20, 2024

This afternoon, I called up David Bosco, executive associate dean and professor in the Department of International Studies at Indiana University Bloomington, to better understand the significance and ramifications of the news from the ICC. Bosco is the author of Rough Justice: The International Criminal Court in a World of Power Politics, and he has written about the relationship of the ICC to Israel and Palestine. We spoke about the meaning, and limits, of today’s announcement. 

This interview has been lightly condensed and edited. 

I think when most people hear “arrest warrant,” they assume imminent prosecution. But that’s not quite the case here—can you explain what is actually happening right now? 

The first important point is that all that’s happened right now is that the prosecutor has requested there be arrest warrants. Those have to be approved by a three-judge panel at the ICC. There’s no arrest warrant issued until those judges decide. And that’s a process that could take anywhere from a couple of weeks, to maybe even a couple of months.

And then if we do get arrest warrants—the ICC has no police force, no SWAT team that can go in and arrest people. So long as [the] people [prosecuted] are in Palestine or in Israel, it’s very unlikely that they would appear at the Hague. 

Can you say more about the significance of this decision and what might have motivated the ICC prosecutor to make this announcement?

I think the prosecutor really realizes how controversial charges—particularly the charges against Israeli leaders—are going to be, and is trying to provide as much support, and indicate that it’s kind of not just his decision. So at the same time that he released his statement, there was almost an amicus brief from a group of international law experts supporting the prosecutor’s decision. That’s also something unusual; the prosecutor doesn’t usually have an expert panel backing him up on his decisions. 

So what tangible impacts, if any, will these warrants have on the leaders’ daily lives?

I think it’s going to vary. For the leaders of Hamas, I don’t think there will be much impact, because either these people are in Gaza or some of them are traveling to other parts of the region, but not to countries that are ICC members.

Now for Netanyahu and Minister Gallant, it would be a different situation, because these are people who would hope to travel widely in representing Israel. If an arrest warrant ultimately is issued, that means that Netanyahu and Gallant would have to be very careful about where they travel, and traveling to an ICC member state will put them in significant risk, because ICC member states have a legal obligation to detain somebody who’s been charged by the court.

I saw the Israeli Foreign Minister has said he’s going to urge other foreign ministers not to comply with the warrants if they are issued. Is it likely that Israel could successfully exert pressure on ICC member states not to enforce this, or do you think the pressure of being a member state would compel relevant countries to comply? 

We’ve already seen the United Kingdom—and I expect we’ll see more ICC member states—expressing opposition to this move. But there’s a big difference between saying, “we think the prosecutor got it wrong here,” and saying, “if an arrest warrant comes out, we’re not going to obey it.” That would be a much bigger step, and it would be very hard for many of these countries to take that step, because then you are really kind of breaching your obligations to the ICC. And many of the European countries were among the most supportive of creating the ICC, so I think that would be a very hard step for them. 

Can you also provide a little background context on how it is that both the US and Israel are not member states of the ICC? Historically, why did that happen?

US policy is actually quite responsible for the creation of the ICC in a lot of ways. The US was the biggest supporter of the Nuremberg trials, it was the biggest supporter of the Yugoslav war trials, and the Rwanda Tribunal. And those things were ultimately what led to the creation of the ICC. So I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that you wouldn’t have the ICC in historical terms if it hadn’t been for US policy and US advocacy of international justice. 

But the US has always had this kind of dual personality, where it really likes international law in some respects, but gets very nervous about accepting the jurisdiction of an international court. So the US balked back in the 1990s, when the ICC was being negotiated, and decided they did not want to ultimately be a part of the court once it became clear they weren’t going to have control of the court’s docket. 

The US is just not comfortable with the court exercising jurisdiction over Americans, and Israel has felt very much the same way. 

Both sides have alleged that it’s unfair for their leaders to be the subject of possible arrest warrants. From a symbolic perspective, is the ICC equating the leaders of Israel with the leaders of Hamas? What kind of signal is the ICC trying to send here? 

I think what the ICC would say is, “we’re not in the business of setting up equivalencies.” There are moral and historical questions that weigh on how you see Hamas compared to how you see the government of Israel. And I think what the ICC would say is: That’s not our job; our job is to simply assess whether there are individuals who have committed war crimes or crimes against humanity—saying that Netanyahu may have committed war crimes is not the same thing as saying that Netanyahu is the same as the leader of Hamas. But inevitably, in the public discourse, people tend to say: “Whoa, the ICC is treating them all the same.”

If you think about World War II, for example, the Nuremberg trials, of course, focused on the crimes of Nazi Germany. But there were undoubtedly war crimes committed by the US and by the British during World War II. It so happened that the Nuremberg trials were set up so they could only consider the crimes of the Axis powers, but it’s probably not inaccurate to say that Franklin Roosevelt or Harry Truman committed war crimes. That doesn’t mean that they’re equivalent to Nazi leaders. So I think the ICC would say: That’s a judgment for historians, and ethicists and things—that’s not our job. Our job is to simply decide if there were crimes committed and investigate and prosecute those.

Israeli officials have continually tried to justify the strength of their response and the conditions in Gaza by saying they’re acting in self-defense. Do the charges that the Israeli leaders could face if these warrants are issued negate that argument? 

No. Because basically in international law, there’s a divide between what’s referred to as jus ad bellum—that’s Latin for the right to use force. And how you use force, jus in bello. And those two are considered to be separate. So you can say that Israel was justified in using force in Gaza as a matter of self-defense. And that might be right from a legal perspective, when it comes to the right to use force. But that is a totally separate question from the question of what you do during the conduct of hostilities. And the same standards are supposed to apply to countries whether they are the aggressor or whether they’re the one defending. So whether they are just in their war or unjust they’re going to be subject to the same rules about how you use force.

You can’t just say: We’re acting in self-defense and therefore the rules don’t apply to us. 

Now, there are a bunch of really hard questions that prosecutors—if this ever reaches trial—are going to have to show, like, for example, “how much humanitarian aid are you obliged to let in during a conflict?” These are complicated questions where you’re balancing the military necessity versus the humanitarian impact.

But the short answer is: no, the fact that Israel might be acting in self-defense doesn’t absolve it from legal scrutiny. 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that this could jeopardize ongoing efforts to reach a ceasefire deal. What’s your response to that, do you agree?

He’s pointing to a dilemma that has often been identified around international criminal justice, which is that there may be simultaneously the need to try to develop a pathway out of the conflict at a diplomatic level while there is a need to try to pursue justice and investigate crimes. 

It’s hard to judge how accurate that is. There is a mechanism for trying to get out of that dilemma, if you really think it is a dilemma. The UN Security Council actually has the power to freeze an ICC investigation, because I think that people drafting the ICC statute didn’t realize that there might be a situation where we need to prioritize diplomacy over an investigation.

Just so I understand, is the thought that Israeli leaders would be unwilling to travel to neutral ground because they’re worried about the threat of arrest? How would the arrest warrant practically impact their decision about whether or not to engage in diplomacy?

That’s a very good question, and I don’t think it’s very clear. I think if there were to be negotiations, it would be in a place like Egypt or, you know, somewhere that’s not an ICC member state. So it really wouldn’t be an issue in terms of exposure to arrests—so I don’t think that’s the issue. 

I think it’s more that the kind of outrage, honestly, that Israeli officials might feel, having been targeted in this way, that would make them less willing to engage in a diplomatic [manner]. But I don’t know that that’s right. I’m skeptical that that argument is necessarily the case here, that the justice process is necessarily getting in the way of diplomacy. And Israel, certainly, and the US, have an incentive to kind of exaggerate, I would say, that possibility. 

How do you think this—the issuing of the warrants for Israeli leaders, and the US’s strong condemnations of it—impacts the perception of the US, considering that one of this country’s closest allies is being pursued by the ICC alongside the group responsible for carrying out the Oct. 7 attacks and Vladimir Putin, who was charged by the ICC for his role in the war in Ukraine? 

I think the perception of the US on these issues is that the US engages in double standards when it comes to international justice. I think that perception is pretty baked into the view of the US, particularly on these issues, so I don’t think the fact that some US officials were very positive about the charges against Putin are now outraged by the charges against Israeli officials [is surprising]. I think that’ll just kind of reinforce and confirm that sense that ultimately, it all comes down to politics.

At this point, the ICC news is largely symbolic—there won’t be any imminent arrests or prosecutions—and the International Court of Justice case brought by South Africa alleging Israel is committing genocide in Gaza will take years to play out. So what purpose would you say these international institutions have when they can’t take any imminent action to address the humanitarian crisis that’s unfolding as we speak? Is there any reason for people who are concerned about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza to actually put faith in these institutions? 

The short answer is I don’t think people should have a lot of faith in the ability of international judicial institutions to deal with a situation like this, or to really meaningfully impact a situation like this. Just like when we saw the arrest warrants against Putin and other Russian officials—within a few weeks, those were pretty much forgotten, and the war has continued, and there’s no sign it’s made any difference. So that is the reality: often times international law and international judicial institutions are going to have very little impact on these ongoing crises. 

That’s not the same as saying they’re irrelevant. Because we have to also think about the very long-term, gradual impact on norms of behavior in the international system. And you have to think about what incentives are being created for other national leaders down the road. And that is hard to judge, but international law may not be as meaningless as it sometimes seems in the midst of a crisis like this. 

The ICC is a very new creation. The idea that in the midst of an ongoing conflict, you’re having charges brought against officials for that conflict—this is a very new experiment. So that’s why, I think, we have to be careful about saying, “well, it’s not having an immediate impact, and therefore it’s irrelevant.” The international legal system is in a very gradual development toward what we hope, ultimately, will be a well-functioning system, that is really now a kind of embryonic system.  

The way to be somewhat optimistic about it is the question is not: “Are these moves by the ICC going to change the Gaza conflict?” It is: “Are we making one step in the process that 20, 25 years down the road is really going to be impacting the way that leaders think?”

Do you have an answer to that question at this point? 

I think it’s really kind of up in the air. I don’t think we know how this experiment is going to play out. 

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.)—all of whom are among the possible candidates, NBC News reported last week—have all failed to answer “yes” when television hosts have asked them if they will commit to accepting the results no matter who wins. Their responses have ranged from simply insisting Trump will be the next president, to spreading election misinformation, to falsely claiming that Democrats are trying to sabotage free and fair elections.

Today, one more lawmaker joined their ranks. When Kristen Welker, host of NBC’s Meet the Press, put that question to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.)—who is also reportedly on the shortlist—he replied: “No matter what happens? No. If it’s an unfair election, I think it’s going to be contested by either side.”

In his approach to undermining a lynchpin of US democracy, Rubio opted to take the Stefanik approach and attack Democrats. He noted, “I think you’re asking the wrong person. The Democrats are the ones that have opposed every Republican victory since 2000, every single one. Hillary Clinton said the election was stolen from her and that Trump was illegitimate.” 

“But she conceded,” Welker replied. 

“She said that Trump was illegitimate. She said that the election had been stolen,” Rubio went on. “Kamala Harris agreed. By the way, there are Democrats serving in Congress today who, in 2004, voted not to certify the Ohio electors because they said those machines had been tampered with.”

To be clear: Those Democrats said they were not aiming to change the outcome of the election but to draw attention to voter disenfranchisement, CNN reported at the time. A report released by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee the following year concluded that there were “numerous, serious election irregularities in the Ohio presidential election, which resulted in a significant disenfranchisement of voters,” particularly minority and Democrat voters.

But Rubio was on a roll and undeterred by facts. “And you have Democrats now saying they won’t certify 2024 because Trump is an insurrectionist and ineligible to hold office,” he went on. “So you need to ask them.”

WATCH: Will you accept the results of the 2024 no matter who wins? @kwelkernbc asks.@SenMarcoRubio (R-Fla): "No matter what happens? No, if it's an unfair election."

Welker: "Senator, no matter who wins."

Rubio: "I think you're asking the wrong person." pic.twitter.com/COUL2MvPm9

— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) May 19, 2024

Welker reminded Rubio that he voted to certify the 2020 election results. She then reminded him of his own apparently long-forgotten position on the matter four years ago, when he said, “Democracy is held together by people’s confidence in the election and their willingness to abide by its results.”

Trump, meanwhile, continues to deny the legitimacy of his loss and has sowed doubt about whether he’ll accept the result of a free and fair election. Earlier this month, he took a preemptive attack and zeroed in on a single state, suggesting that he may not accept the 2024 presidential results from Wisconsin when asked in an interview with a local newspaper.

“If everything’s honest, I’ll gladly accept the results. I don’t change on that,” Trump told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, in a state where he recently appeared at a rally. “If it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the country.”

Referring to Trump’s continued questioning of the election results, Welker asked Rubio, “By your own definition, are Donald Trump’s claims undermining Americans’ confidence in democracy?” Rubio refused to respond directly. Instead, he parroted unfounded claims about election fraud and falsely claimed NBC News did not cover controversies surrounding Hunter Biden. 

“I’m telling you that if it’s unfair, we are going to do the same thing Democrats do,” Rubio asserted. “We’re going to use lawyers to go to court and point out the fact that states are not following their own election laws.”

His desperate defense of Trump’s election denial—despite his own certification of the 2020 election results—comes as a major shift for Rubio, who Trump used to deride as “Little Marco” during the 2016 GOP primary when they both vied for the nomination. As my colleague Pema Levy reported then, during that contest Rubio called Trump a “con artist,” a “lunatic,” not to mention, “rude and obnoxious and offensive.” He also questioned Trump’s ability to spell and…the size of his hands. Yet, when it came time to cast his ballot, he still voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020. 

While Rubio spewed a lot of lies today, there’s one thing he’s said about Trump on the campaign trail in 2016 that is worth remembering, given that Trump is currently ensnared in his first criminal trial. “Friends do not let friends vote for con artists,” Rubio told his supporters. 

As student protests swept through other colleges and universities, even forcing the cancellation or readjustment of commencement ceremonies, Morehouse students spoke to the press about their discomfort with Biden’s appearance. They confronted the school’s President, David Thomas, about his invitation to the president, and some members of the Morehouse faculty and others from Spelman and Clark Atlanta—two other historically Black colleges—demanded in an open, unsigned letter that administrators cancel his appearance, alleging that the school was “endorsing genocide” by having him speak.

I reported this week that the Biden administration has moved to send another $1 billion in weapons to Israel—even after the President told CNN that he would stop shipping certain weapons to Israel if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proceeded with a major ground invasion of Rafah. Despite this warning, Israeli forces have already begun the incursion, forcing an estimated 800,000 Palestinians to flee the area, according to the UN. Thomas told the Washington Post that administrators initially reached out to the White House in September about the possibility of Biden speaking, a month before the start of the Israel-Hamas war. 

But commencement ceremonies and Biden’s appearance largely came and went without disruptive protests—though a couple of speakers did find ways to acknowledge the plight of Palestinians. In his opening evocation, Rev. Claybon Lea Jr. called for leaders to value “human life…whether they live in Israel or Palestine,” and said that Jesus Christ was a “Palestinian Jew.” (Biden is a devout Catholic.)

The valedictorian, DeAngelo Fletcher, used part of his address to call for an “immediate and permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip,” prompting applause from the audience—and Biden himself. Fletcher told NPR this week, “Biden has been on a tirade in the Middle East, giving billions and billions of dollars to foreign countries.”

#Morehouse valedictorian, Deangelo Fletcher, calls for an “immediate and permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip” — met with applause from crowd and @POTUS behind him. pic.twitter.com/jlckIGES8C

— Garrison Hayes (@garrison_hayes) May 19, 2024

Signals of opposition to Biden’s appearance were peaceful and relatively unobtrusive; the most unified one was when the entire graduating class remained seated when he took the podium. Several students in the audience appeared to wear keffiyehs, some sat with their backs turned to Biden, and another student appeared to be holding up a Palestinian flag. 

During his remarks, Biden acknowledged what he described as the “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza and called for an “immediate ceasefire,” to “stop the fighting and bring the hostages home.” He also addressed the scale of protests against the war on college campuses, saying, “I support peaceful nonviolent protest. Your voices should be heard. And I promise you I hear them.” Noting that he is working towards “two-state solution…the only solution,” Biden said, “I know [the war] angers and frustrates many of you, including my family. But most of all, I know it breaks your heart. It breaks mine as well.” He was likely referring to reports that First Lady Jill Biden has urged him to “stop it now.”

The President spoke vehemently against racism and showcased his track record supporting the interests of Black voters, with whom his support has recently eroded. While Biden retains an advantage over Trump with Black voters overall, a Washington Post/Ipsos poll published last month found that 55 percent of Black Americans under 30 years old disapprove of his job performance; in contrast, a year ago, 56 percent of that group approved of Biden. 

“You started college just as George Floyd was murdered, and there was a reckoning on race,” Biden told the graduates, before later condemning “the poison of white supremacy.” 

“Instead of forcing you to prove you’re ten times better, we’re breaking down doors so you have 100 times more opportunities,” he added, touting the more than $16 billion his administration has allocated to HBCUs. He noted his history of supporting Black leadership, and said many Morehouse graduates now worked in his administration. He reminded his audience of his role as vice president to the first Black president; his naming of a Black woman as his vice president; and his appointment of the first Black woman to be a Supreme Court Justice. 

But whether these statistics—and Biden’s long history of supporting Black leaders—will be enough to swing the hotly contested election in his favor remains to be seen. A Carnegie poll released last month found that 59 percent of Black Americans believe US should restrict military aid to Israel to ensure that American weapons are being used in alignment with international human rights law, and that the number of Black Americans who reported feeling connected with the plight of Palestinians grew from 32 percent in October 2023 to 45 percent in March. 

That’s one of the central findings of a new report released Tuesday, which found that there were nearly 86,000 average abortions per month in 2023, compared to about 82,000 a month in 2022. The rise is due, in part, to the increasing popularity of telehealth abortions, in which providers in blue states virtually prescribe and mail abortion pills—including to patients in red states—thanks to so-called shield laws that protect them from prosecution. According to the report, telehealth abortions accounted for nearly 1 in 5 abortions nationwide—about 19 percent—from October to December of last year.

The new report is part of a recurring study sponsored by the Society of Family Planning and known as #WeCount, which is aimed at providing quarterly updates on abortion access post-Dobbs. Earlier #WeCount reports found telehealth abortions accounted for 15 to 16 percent of all abortions conducted between July and September of last year, or about 14,000 abortions each month. This is a marked increase from April 2022, when telehealth abortions only accounted for about 4 percent of abortions nationwide, or about 3,600 a month, or December 2022, when they accounted for about 8,500 abortions every month, or 11 percent of the total. 

Medication abortions have long been a target of the anti-abortion movement, which has perpetrated myths about the so-called dangers of abortion pills. The recent case before the Supreme Court—FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine—seeks to drastically restrict access to mifepristone, the first pill in the two-drug regimen, even as more than 100 studies have affirmed its safety and effectiveness. And recent research—including a paper published just this week in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine—has confirmed that the pills are just as safe when they’re prescribed virtually as in person.

Ushma Upadhyay, a professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, and co-author of the #WeCount report, says, “As the word gets out, as more people talk about it—on Reddit, online—and feel more comfort with this model, I expect that the numbers will increase.” 

A decision in the Supreme Court case on mifepristone—including the attempt to restrict telehealth access—is expected at the end of June. As my colleague Pema Levy has written, during the oral arguments in March, the justices appeared to be unlikely to roll back access to mifepristone. Upadhyay agrees but notes that even if the justices do place some restrictions on the drug, it’s “very possible” providers would continue mailing the pills from states that have enacted shield laws.

The latest #WeCount data also sheds light on the importance of shield laws during the post-Dobbs era. From July to December of last year, about 40,000 people—most of whom were in states with abortion bans—were able to access reproductive healthcare thanks to shield laws. Data from five states that had shield laws in effect last year—Massachusetts, Colorado, Washington, New York, and Vermont—are included in the latest #WeCount report. California only enacted a shield law for telehealth abortion providers in January.

These laws, Upadhyay says, seek to “minimize legal risks for those providing abortion care,” but do not “reduce the risk of criminalization, of being prosecuted because of perceived laws against self-managed abortion.” While only Nevada has a law that explicitly criminalizes self-managed abortions, Upadhyay said that people may assume that a state abortion ban may also criminalize receiving medication abortion in their state. There have not been any prosecutions of providers who have sent abortion pills to red states under shield laws, though court challenges to the laws are expected. Still, as restrictions mount—Florida, for instance, which was a haven for abortion access in the South, just imposed a 6-week ban on May 1—Upadhyay says “more people may turn to abortions provided under shield laws.” 

Other reasons for the overall increase in abortions post-Dobb include new clinics in blue states, increased funding for abortion care—from some blue state governments, private foundations, and individual people giving to abortion funds—and the destigmatization of abortion in states with fewer restrictions. But the new data should not be interpreted to suggest Dobbs hasn’t had a disastrous impact. As #WeCount co-author Alison Norris, a researcher at the Ohio State University, pointed out to reporters on Tuesday, the report found that nearly 180,000 fewer abortions were provided in-person in states that had total or 6-week abortion bans. In other words, telehealth abortion and shield laws are not adequate replacements for brick-and-mortar clinics. 

“People need trusted, in-person care locally,” Norris said. “They shouldn’t have to drive hours.”

Clinics are essential options for people who only learn about their pregnancy at, or after, 10 to 12 weeks at which point they are no longer eligible for medication abortions. Telemedicine is also not an option for those who learn something about their pregnancy after the first trimester that makes them need or want to terminate it. Teens and low-income people, in particular, also face major barriers to traveling for in-person care if they reside in states that no longer have operating clinics. 

“Our biggest concern is that with the rising numbers, people will interpret this as, ‘everybody’s getting their abortion,'” Upadhyay says. “It’s so important to highlight that there’s a lot of unmet need…there are people who are just not getting the abortions and continue to be forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term.”