Good morning. It's June 7th. The suffocating pall of humidity is lifting from New York City. Schools are closed for students in K -12 schools. They are open for students in 6 -12 schools. As we go deeper into the chaotic endgame of the New York Public School year, when figuring out if your kid has school becomes an LSAT problem. And this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. Apologies for skipping yesterday's edition. We had technical difficulties, specifically technical difficulties about whether the Home Depot installation crew would attach a new dishwasher to our existing water hookup. But we're back on the job this morning, as is the old dishwasher indefinitely. And so the news. The lead story on the front of the New York Times is Israelis attack civilian shelter and kill dozens. If it hadn't already,

The Israeli military has by now pretty clearly exhausted the public relations advantages that it won in the long ago dispute over whether Israel was unfairly blamed for that early hospital missile strike before Israel embarked on its unambiguous campaign of destruction against all the civilian infrastructure of Gaza. The first sub -headline is, said it hid militants, but then comes, officials in Gaza count women and children among the dead.

That minimal deference to the Israeli line extends into the story itself. An Israeli airstrike on Thursday hit a United Nations school complex in central Gaza that had become a shelter for thousands of displaced Palestinians, the Times writes, and Israel said Hamas militants. Gazan health officials said dozens of people were killed, including women and children. The story goes on to give various accounts of how many women and children different sources saw killed. Crowds gathered at Al -Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Dera Bala a city in central Gaza, to weep and pray over the dead. A local Palestinian videographer posted footage showing a young woman with the body of her small son. Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, an Israeli military spokesman, said he was not aware of any civilian casualties resulting from the strike. They're not even trying to be plausible anymore, and the Times is treating it appropriately. Likewise, in the next story over, the Israelis gave reporters a tour of one of their abusive camps for—

Palestinian detainees. So the Times stuck a few obligatory quotes about how there's nothing wrong going on in among the carefully reported accounts of abuse. Next to that, a dispatch from the Hunter Biden trial, where the prosecution continued the rather easy job of establishing that Hunter Biden is a mess. Wilmington, Delaware. The story begins, Hallie Biden walked briskly to the witness box, passed her brother -in -law and ex -boyfriend, Hunter Biden, to chronicle a star -crossed relationship that ended in anguish, her own addiction, and eventually his criminal prosecution. Brother -in -law and ex -boyfriend is a heck of an identifier. I think they're getting closer and closer to convincing people that Hunter Biden might have had a drug problem. And then comes a truly incredible White House memo from Peter Baker for Biden's D -Day speech and unlikely template. The unlikely template you see is Ronald Reagan's famous speech from the Cliffs of Normandy in 1984.

Too many in both parties, Baker writes, Mr. Reagan's speech remains the gold standard of presidential oratory, and none have matched it at Normandy since. He goes on to write, if there is something audacious about Mr. Biden, a staunch Democrat who was no friend of Mr. Reagan's in the 1980s, summoning the spirit of the Republican legend, it speaks to the up -and -down, black -as -white nature of politics in today's America. Let's be clear. Joe Biden is going to the cliffs of Normandy commemorate the anniversary of D -Day, an actual event where actual people gave their actual lives to defeat the actual Nazis. However much people may worship Ronald Reagan's speech, the idea that our combat -avoiding actor president somehow owns D -Day and that it's crossing party lines for a Democratic president to go make a D -Day speech. Talk about up is down, black is white politics.

Just pure cynical brain poisoning for Peter Baker. Inside the paper on page A15, the backlash continues consolidating its gains. Jeremy W. Peters reports, diversity statements in hiring may be on the way out, citing Harvard and MIT's decisions recently to stop requiring DEI statements from applicants. And below that, good old Anamona Hardicolus writes, Penn bans protest encampments on campus. There is not one.

Quote in the piece criticizing Penn's decision to change the rules governing protests on campus for the sake of silencing the pro -Palestinian movement, even as the story notes in passing, that on Monday, Representative Virginia Foxx, a North Carolina Republican who leads the House committee that has held several hearings on campus anti -Semitism, and the chairs of five other committees, told Penn in a letter that they were conducting a review of the university's entitlement to federal funds.

That paragraph wraps around one of the Times's internal inline subheads, which reads, struggling to balance free speech with the safety of students. Like, what are you talking about? They're not balancing free speech. They're shutting down free speech. And safety -wise, they already called the cops on the students. The only balancing act here is them trying not to trip over their feet and fall as they sprint backwards away from the basic principles that they supposedly operated under to comply with an ever more demanding neo -MacArthur -ite inquisition. In other news about gutless, cowering failed leaders, Kathy Hochul gets a full page up top with time's end delicacy. Critics see lack of affinity for a city in Hochul congestion pricing pullout. That means she's done nothing for us and now she screwed us over. Next one down, governor's move leaves MTA budget in limbo. Again, limbo is an understatement.

She just eliminated $15 billion worth of planned revenue, making a huge array of scheduled maintenance and improvements to the transit system impossible to carry out. And then down the bottom of the page, New Jersey leaders celebrate shelving of New York City's congestion pricing plan. Just a complete debacle. She set out to pander, and the only people who are really happy about it are not her constituents. Maybe she should try running for governor of New Jersey. That is the news. Thank you for listening.

Please subscribe to Indignity to keep us and the dishwasher going. Have a lovely and relaxing weekend if you can. And if all goes well, we will talk again on Monday.