Good morning. It is May 29th. It is gray and damp in New York City with showers that just won't go away, and this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

And like the day, the news is a real mess. The nonprofit NOTUS newsroom, that's News of the United States, is reporting that the 73 page report produced by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Make America Healthy Again commission is filled with citations to the scientific literature that, NOTUS writes, are “rife with errors from broken links to misstated conclusions. Seven of the cited sources,” NOTUS writes, “don't appear to exist at all.” One epidemiologist credited in the report for having written a study told NOTUS, “the paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with. We've certainly done research on this topic, but did not publish a paper and JAMA pediatrics on this topic with that co-author group or with that title. It's not clear,” the story continues “that anyone wrote the study cited in the MAHA report. The citation refers to a study titled changes in mental health and substance abuse among U.S. adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic, along with a non-functional link to the study's digital object identifier. While the citation claims that the study appeared in the 12th issue of the 176th edition of the journal JAMA Pediatrics, that issue didn't include a study with that title.” The story scrupulously avoids speculating about the glaringly obvious probable cause of defective or non-existent citations appearing in what was supposed to have been a comprehensive report that was somehow bashed out by Kennedy's commission in the very brief time that Kennedy has been the secretary of health and human services, but it would be startling if there were any explanation other than that they simply asked an AI chat bot to spit out a report on chronic health problems in America. 

In other nonprofit newsroom reporting, ProPublica has the headline, “Death, Sexual Violence and Human Trafficking. Fallout from USAID withdrawal hits the world's most fragile locations.”

“Exclusive State Department records show as the Trump administration abandons its humanitarian commitments, diplomats are reporting that the cuts have led to violence and instability while undermining anti-terrorism initiatives. In the southeastern African country of Malawi,” ProPublica writes, “U.S. funding cuts to the United Nations World Food Program have yielded a sharp increase in criminality, sexual violence and instances of human trafficking within a large refugee camp, U.S. embassy officials told the State Department in late April.”

The story goes on to say “to the north, the U.S. embassy in Kenya reported that news of funding cuts to refugee camps food programs led to violent demonstrations, according to a previously unreported cable from early May. During one protest, police responded with gunfire and wounded four people. Refugees have also died at food distribution centers, the officials wrote in the cable, including a pregnant woman who died under a stampede. Aid workers said they expected more people to get hurt as vulnerable households become increasingly desperate.”

Beyond the second order effects of unrest from gutting the World Food Program, there are also the first order effects. In Kenya, ProPublica writes that “the WFP will cut its rations in June down to 28 percent, or less than 600 calories a day per person, ‘a low never seen before,’ the WFP’s Kenya country director Lauren Landis told ProPublica the WFP standard minimum for adults is 2100 calories per day.” 

Elsewhere in documentary investigations, Wired writes, “the United States government has collected DNA samples from upwards of 133,000 migrant children and teenagers, including at least one four-year-old, and uploaded their genetic data into a national criminal database used by local, state, and federal law enforcement, according to documents reviewed by Wired. The records, quietly released by the US Customs and Border Protection earlier this year, offer the most detailed look to date at the scale of CBP's controversial DNA collection program. They reveal for the first time just how deeply the government's biometric surveillance reaches into the lives of migrant children, some of whom may still be learning to read or tie their shoes, yet whose DNA is now stored in a system originally built for convicted sex offenders and violent criminals.” 

Elon Musk wrote a post on x.com last night saying that he was leaving his job with the federal government. The New York Times headline on the news is “A disillusioned Musk, distanced from Trump, says he's exiting Washington.” 

“The billionaire has made clear he is frustrated with the obstacles he encountered as he tried to upend the federal bureaucracy.” A rather elegiac and thematically overstuffed way of talking about the more straightforward fact in Musk's post that his appointment as a special government employee was always time-limited and he's reaching the end of that time. Not that obstacles like that have necessarily, historically, kept Donald Trump from doing as he wishes with personnel, but it's pretty strange to write a whole article as a write-around delving into what Musk's subjective motivations for announcing he was leaving the government may have been without mentioning— or mentioning that he had mentioned—the direct formal procedural requirement that he separate himself from government service. By missing that point in favor of writing about Musk's disillusionment with national politics, the Times managed to get another piece of news wrong. “Still,” the story says, “several of Mr. Musk's most prominent deputies appear to be ensconced in their new government roles. Steve Davis, a loyal executive who has worked for Mr. Musk across many of his businesses, including at X, remains a regular presence at the General Services Administration, according to two people who have interacted with him recently.”

But Bloomberg Today is reporting that Davis is out under the straightforward, vibes-free headline, “Musk's number two also departing Doge as officials hit time limit.” 

On the front of this morning's New York Times, the lead news column is, “THREAT BY ISRAEL SHADOWS U.S. BID FOR AN IRAN DEAL / NEW PUSH FOR STRIKES / Tension With Netanyahu Grows as Trump Tries for Nuclear Talks.” That headline stack is just a close remix of the lead, “As the Trump administration,” the Times writes, “tries to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has been threatening to upend the talks by striking Iran's main nuclear enrichment facilities, according to officials briefed on the situation.” The story continues, “the clash over how best to ensure that Iran cannot produce a nuclear weapon has led to at least one tense phone call between President Trump and Mr Netanyahu and a flurry of meetings in recent days between top administration officials and senior Israeli officials.” 

The story goes on to say, “at the core of the tension between Mr Netanyahu and Mr Trump is their differing views of how best to exploit a moment of Iranian weakness, that weakness is the result of Israeli attacks on Iran's air defenses and on Hezbollah, reducing the chances that Israeli aircraft would be shot down on their way to or from attacking Iran.” And because Benjamin Netanyahu is involved, Donald Trump has the rare experience of not being the most malignant person involved. 

“Mr. Netanyahu,” the Times writes, “has argued that Iran's vulnerability will not last long and that the time is right for an attack. Mr. Trump has argued that Iran's weakness makes it a perfect moment to negotiate an end to Iran's enrichment program, backed up by the threat of military action if talks fall apart.”

The jump for that story is part of a two-page spread inside the paper, rounding up various news about our Israeli allies. “Israeli warplanes,” another story says, “bombed the main international airport in Yemen again on Wednesday in retaliation for recent missile attacks by the Iran backed Houthi militia.” The story says “the airport is a vital link for more than 20 million Yemenis in Houthi held areas, providing access to life saving medical treatment, medicine and aid.”

Next to that, the headline is “UN condemns Israel's new aid program in Gaza, Under the new Israeli design system,” the Times writes, “four aid sites in southern Gaza are being secured by Israeli soldiers and overseen by private U.S. contractors. Previously, the United Nations largely coordinated the distribution of aid in the enclave, but Israeli officials have been eager to bypass the world body, accusing it of anti-Israel bias and failing to prevent Hamas from hoarding supplies. UN officials the Times writes, “have boycotted the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, saying that it fundamentally violates humanitarian principles. They say Israel's vision would replace hundreds of UN distribution sites with just four, requiring many Palestinians to travel miles and pass through a cordon of Israeli troops to obtain aid.” 

On the next page, Israel is considering sanctions against the genocidal officials Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, and at the top of the page, the headline is “Israeli soldiers fatal shooting of a Palestinian teen born in New Jersey. By “a Palestinian teen born in New Jersey,” they mean an American, a 14 year old American citizen named Amer Rabee, was shot to death in the West Bank on April 6th. “The Israeli military,” the Times writes “has accused Amer and two of his friends of hurling rocks toward the highway and endangering civilians It described the boys as terrorists and said its soldiers had eliminated one and shot the other two. Amir's family and one of the surviving boys denied the accusation, saying they were picking almonds. Amir was shot multiple times in his upper body, according to photographs his family shared with the New York Times.” That was throwing rocks toward the highway. That is the reason the Israeli military gives for shooting a 14-year-old American boy to death and calling him a terrorist.

Back on page one, the second news column is, “As Tariffs Rise, So Do Schemes To Avoid Them / Methods Like Shipping via Third Countries.” The story about the rise of offers of tariff fraud was put to bed before the news, as discussed in yesterday's newsletter, that the United States Court of International Trade has declared all of Trump's tariffs illegal. 

Down at the bottom of the page, there's a story about a company that is deploying driverless 18-wheelers on American highways. The Times writes “some truckers, academics, and labor groups are uneasy. They see an unregulated and risky sphere emerging and worry that American roads could be facing a new menace. Brian Block, an auto safety expert in Maryland, said that federal oversight of the new robo trucks was ‘totally inadequate’ and that the technology was being rushed into use with ‘alarming speed.’

Later on, story says that “a survey conducted by AAA this year found that 61 % of motorists in the United States feared self-driving vehicles and that 26 % were unsure about them.” Those figures seem almost irrelevant to the question of how Americans feel about sharing interstate highways with full-size semi trucks under no human control, a technology whose entire purpose is to save a few people money while making life worse and more dangerous for everyone else.

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 through your paid subscriptions to Indignity and your tips. Continue sending those along if you are able. And if nothing unexpected gets in the way, we will talk again tomorrow.