Good morning. It's May 22nd. It's a warm morning on the way to a hot day 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. In coordinated announcements, Norway, Ireland, and Spain all said that they will recognize a Palestinian state next week. EAP reports in response to the announcements in Europe, Israel's far -right national security minister, Itamar Ben -Gavir, paid a provocative visit Wednesday to the Al Aqsa Mosque compound, which the AP describes as a flashpoint in Jerusalem, meaning the place where right -wing Israelis like to go to start fights with Muslims. We will not even allow a statement about a Palestinian state, the AP quotes Ben -Gverus saying. On the front of the New York Times today, the right -hand news column is an application of the Times' tried and true vibes and momentum slumbering rule of the people framework to the case of Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu gains from a request for his arrest, is the headline. As with Donald Trump, the idea is that the threat of accountability has strengthened the hand of the otherwise unpopular bad man. If the headlines in Israel were anything to go by, the request by the International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor for an arrest warrant against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Times writes, seem to have granted the Israeli leader one of the most fortuitous turnarounds in his long and turbulent political career. Okay, the headline from Haaretz that crossed my timeline was, Jerusalem not the Hague. Israel must investigate Netanyahu for crimes against humanity. Also, analysis. Thanks to Netanyahu, the ICC's equivalence between Israel and Amos will go global. Haaretz is obviously not a Netanyahu -friendly publication, but that sure doesn't sound like outrage expressed by Israelis across the political spectrum, as the Times describes the national mood. Instead, it seems to very neatly carve out a position of not endorsing the International Criminal Court's move, while steadily maintaining the position that Netanyahu is bad and his prosecution of the war is also bad. Elsewhere on page one, homeowners feel pinched as insurers losses rise. It's a story about how it's not just flooded Florida, and combustible California, where homeowners insurance companies are bailing out. The opening anecdote is about someone who lives in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. And the story went to bed before the news that a tornado had smashed the town of Greenfield, Iowa. As a violent storm system moved around the middle of the country, various outlets are describing the Greenfield tornado as deadly, but there doesn't seem to be any particular death toll attached to it yet. NBC just has.

Iowa state police confirmed a number of people had died. On the left side of page one, Biden's truce with big oil is collapsing. A pause on gas exports rankles executives. Here's how the time sets up the story of causes and effects. It says Joe Biden had imposed restrictions on drilling as part of his ambitious climate agenda, but he also approved an enormous $8 billion oil project in Alaska. The United States had become the world's leading exporter of natural gas and no other country in history was pumping more crude. The industry was enjoying record profits. Then in January, Mr. Biden paused new permits for export facilities for liquefied natural gas. That decision galvanized oil and gas companies against Mr. Biden, according to industry lobbyists, and will be the undercurrent at a fundraising lunch set for Wednesday in Houston. You have to get down past the fold on West to the jump before the times recollect that the beneficiary of the planned fundraiser, Donald Trump, asked energy executives to donate $1 billion to his campaign so that he could retake the White House and dismantle Mr. Biden's climate regulations. Note that the story does not say that the United States stopped being the world's leading exporter of natural gas and producer of crude oil, or that the industry had stopped enjoying record profits. So the two competing explanations are that despite all that, one regulatory action by Biden was just too much for the industry to take, or that Donald Trump directly and explicitly promised to give them a better deal if they would pay for his campaign. I guess you just have to decide which of those explanations seems more likely to be the primary cause. That is the news. Thank you for listening. Please subscribe to Indignity to keep us going. And if all goes well, we will talk again tomorrow.