Good morning. It is October 17. It is sunny and cool 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. 

Reuters has reported that the United States carried out another unprovoked military strike against an apparently unarmed vessel in the Caribbean, and the story says, "In what is believed to be the first such case, there were survivors among the crew, a US official told Reuters, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not offer additional details about the incident, which has not been previously reported, except to say that it was not clear that the strike had been designed to leave survivors. The development," the story continues, "raises new questions, including whether the US military rendered aid to the survivors, and whether they are now in US military custody, possibly as prisoners of war." It's not strictly accurate to say that none of the US strikes before left survivors. At least one reportedly did, but the military deployed an immediate follow up strike to kill them all off. 

And on the front of this morning's New York Times in the second news column, is the story that the military commander of the forces carrying out the boat massacres resigned yesterday. "U.S. Admiral In Boat Strikes Exits Abruptly Commander Has Held Post for Under a Year. The military commander overseeing the Pentagon's escalating attacks against boats in the Caribbean Sea that the Trump administration says are smuggling drugs, said on Thursday that he was stepping down," the Times writes. "The officer, Admiral Alvin Holsey is leaving his job as head of the US Southern Command, which oversees all operations in Central and South America, even as the Pentagon has rapidly built up some 10,000 forces in the region in what it says is a major counter drug and counter terrorism mission, it was unclear" the story says, "why Admiral Holsey is suddenly departing less than a year into what is typically a three year job and in the midst of the biggest operation in his 37 year career. But one current and one former US official, both of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters, said that Admiral Holsey had raised concerns about the mission and the attacks on the alleged drug boats." The story goes on to say, "while Admiral Holsey has been the highest ranking military officer overseeing the airstrikes, the decision to carry them out has been driven by the White House, and the strikes themselves have been conducted by Special Operations Forces, with Admiral Holsey largely cut out of the decision making." The story elsewhere notes "Admiral Holsey, who is black, becomes the latest in a line of more than a dozen military leaders, many of them people of color and women who have left their jobs this year. Most have been fired by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth or pushed out."

In the rightmost lead news column the news is "BOLTON INDICTED ON HIS HANDLING OF U.S. SECRETS A TOTAL OF 18 COUNTS A Bitter Enemy of Trump Who Faced Scrutiny Under Biden. John R Bolton," the Times writes "the national security hawk and former advisor to President Trump, who became one of his most outspoken critics, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Maryland on Thursday on charges of mishandling classified information. An 18 count indictment accused Mr. Bolton of using personal email and a messaging app to share more than 1000 pages of diary notes about his day to day activities as Mr. Trump's National Security Adviser in 2018 and 2019. The notes which were sent to two family members who did not have security clearances included National Defense Information, such as details classified as top secret according to the indictment." The story notes that Donald Trump is openly, publicly hostile to John Bolton, but "while Mr. Bolton is part of a string of perceived enemies of the President to become prosecutorial targets," the story says "the federal investigation into him gained momentum during the Biden administration, when US intelligence agencies gathered what former officials have described as troubling evidence, the prosecution appeared to follow normal departmental channels without firings or force transfers. Kelly O Hayes, the US Attorney in Maryland, was among the career prosecutors to sign off on the charges in conjunction with the Justice Department's National Security Division. By contrast, Mr. Trump, in recent weeks, has removed or sidelined prosecutors in order to secure indictments against two of his longtime targets, James P Comey, the former FBI director and Letitia James, New York's Attorney General."

Taking up the rest of the top of page one is a four column infographic map "Trump Targets Democratic Areas by Halting Billions. More than 200 infrastructure projects in blue strongholds have had their federal funding cut off during the government shutdown. Page A12." The map features blue and red bubbles scaled to the amount of money involved, superimposed on blue and pink congressional districts to show who's getting hit. By far the largest of those blue bubbles representing New York City, but involving so much money that its width extends from the Maine border to Northern Virginia, is the $17.84 billion yanked away from the gateway rail tunnel and the Second Avenue subway. 

Below the map and thematically linked, the story is "Less FEMA Aid Flows to Areas Hit by Disaster." It starts in Cave Cty, Arkansas, which was hit by a tornado in March and denied federal disaster money, which meant, according to the mayor, "'racking up a bill of about $300,000'" the Times writes, "he said, could end up eating 15% of the small town's annual budget. The story goes on to say that "FEMA has been delaying disaster declarations and aid payments to communities, adding new hurdles to access some grant funds and cutting off the flow of money intended to boost resilience and prevent future disasters from causing so much damage." Later on the story says "slower than expected. Hurricane and wildfire seasons have meant few recent tests of the evolving emergency response system allowing FEMA to stretch its Disaster Relief Fund further than it might otherwise. The Fund had been forecast to run out of money by now, but as of the end of September, it was projected to contain more than $2 billion down from a routine $22.5 billion infusion from Congress in March. Since January," The Times writes "Mr. Trump has approved 32 federal disaster declarations, which make available a variety of federal aid programs to communities and individuals. That's far fewer than the average of more than 60 declarations per year from fiscal years 2015, through 2020, 15 through 2024 according to the Congressional Research Service," although the story then says, "Mr. Trump has rejected nearly a dozen state requests for FEMA aid so far this year, on par with the number of rejections during his first administration, as well as President Joe Biden's term, according to FEMA data." 

Right below that on the jump page, the headline is, "Judge orders FEMA to release funding for anti terrorism and security to MTA. A Manhattan federal judge on Thursday," the Times writes, "ordered the Trump administration to restore nearly $34 million in anti terrorism and security funding for the New York City subway and regional railroads that he said had been withheld illegally in August, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said the Metropolitan Transportation Authority would receive the money less than two months later, without explanation or any note to the authority, FEMA cut the award to zero. The agency said later that it had done so because New York City is a so called sanctuary city for undocumented people. The judge noted. 'The withholding of these funds is arbitrary, capricious and a blatant violation of the law,' wrote the judge, Lewis A Kaplan of federal district court. He said he was granting a permanent injunction requiring the government to grant the funding to the authority."

Down at the bottom of page one, the headline is, "Mamdani, Reaching Out to Jews, Finds Supporters and Skeptics /  Trying to Heal Unease Over Israel Stance." The lead of the story seems to be doing a little reaching of its own. "The tension spilled out of the synagogue onto the sidewalk," the Times writes "Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, was walking into what should have been friendly territory a liberal reform congregation in Park Slope, a neighborhood in Brooklyn synonymous with progressive politics. But from the moment he arrived last Sunday afternoon, it was clear that even here, Mr. Mamdani would face skepticism and anxiety about some of his foundational beliefs. Protesters waving Israeli flags stood on the steps of the main sanctuary of the synagogue Congregation Beth Elohim chanting 'shame' and inside at a closed door meeting, synagogue leaders posed questions to Mr. Mamdani, reflecting the fears that have grown among some in the Jewish community in the two years since the October 7 attacks in Israel. And the Times does describe some challenging questions inside the synagogue, but protesters showing up to wave Israeli flags outside the building does not mean that the tension was spilling out of the synagogue. It's like when anti semitic protesters showed up on Broadway outside the fence of Columbia University, and their behavior was incorporated into the brief against the Columbia campus protesters, the people who are on the outside are on the outside for a reason, and if they were representative of the situation inside, they would probably be inside.

Another equivocal headline action inside the Paper on page A 12 under the "Government Shutdown" header. The headline is, "Feud in Congress could save Georgia senator, or cost him." Sure, or in between those two diametrically opposed possibilities, it might also not have much effect. The senator in question is Jon Ossoff. The day Senator Jon Ossoff won a tight runoff in 2021" the Times writes, "cementing democratic control of the Senate. His first pledge to Georgia voters was that he would protect their health care now, a fight Democrats have undertaken to preserve a key piece of the Affordable Care Act is at the heart of a government shutdown stalemate that could shape Mr. Ossoff's uphill fight for re election next year." The story doesn't point to any polling that says that the fight is, in fact, uphill. It just gestures toward the fact that Donald Trump won Georgia in 2024 and the idea that "digging in," in defense of what the story identifies as what he promised voters he would defend, is going to somehow be a liability for him, is being put forward in the story by "Heath Garrett, a GOP strategist in Georgia who was chief of staff to former Senator Johnny Isakson, a Republican," Republican Representative Buddy Carter, who is one of the candidates in the Republican primary, hoping to run against Ossoff next year, and then, just before the end, one political science professor who tells the Times that it would be a "calculated risk, but reasonable" for him to try to appeal to independent voters by turning against Senate Democrats and voting with Republicans on a stopgap funding bill. But the Times writes "undecided voters will only matter if Democrats turn out across Georgia to vote for their incumbent. And some strategists say Mr. Ossoff's more pressing imperative is to focus on the base of the party that is clamoring for their representatives in Congress to defy Mr. Trump." 

And back on page one, there's a story about the solution to the to the last undecoated section of the sculpture of encrypted text at CIA headquarters, the sculptor was in the process of setting up an auction to reveal the solution when a writer came up with the text of the segment in a pretty straightforward parable about secrecy and encryption. The writer didn't crack the ciphering mechanism, but discovered that the sculptor had accidentally archived a copy of the underlying undecoded text at the Smithsonian. The auction for the authorized version of the solution is nevertheless underway and continues into November. 

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, enjoy the weekend. There's some marching going on., if anyone sees the need to do some marching, and if nothing unexpected gets in the way, we will talk again on Monday.