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Good evening. It's Wednesday, March 20.
Tonight: Israel's war in Gaza, now in its sixth month, is still raging without any end in sight. In the last week, several leading international aid organizations, as well as the World Bank, documented that what they call a catastrophic famine among the 2.2 million people of Gaza is no longer merely probable, but rather inevitable and imminent. There are well-documented cases now of young Palestinian children, including babies, dying of hunger, the single worst and most painful way for a human being to die. At the start of the war, back in October, Israel's defense minister, Yoav Gallant, vowed that Israel would block all food and water from entering Gaza, and they have obviously made very good on that war promise.
People obviously have very different views on this war. That is an obvious statement. It is very polarizing. But there is one point that is simply beyond dispute. This is not Israel's war only, but also America's. In particular, it is Joe Biden's war. Immediately after October 7, Joe Biden flew to Israel to do what he has done so many times in his decades in Washington, namely, he promised Tel Aviv unlimited financing and arms from the American Treasury for their new war without any conditions. Last November, an Israeli general admitted what many Israel supporters in the U.S. often try to deny, namely that the only reason that Israel is capable of fighting this war for six months and destroying Gaza is because of the financial and military support it provided by President Biden and conversely, if Joe Biden cut off American aid to Israel, Israel's ability to continue to bomb, occupy and destroy Gaza would come to an end. That admission has significant implications for American citizens, American policy and American values. And we will examine those tonight.
Then: one of Donald Trump's closest aides, Peter Navarro, went to prison today for four months. His crime: he refused to comply with a congressional subpoena that directed him to appear for a hearing of the January 6 committee. Navarro's argument for refusing to attend that hearing was that the information they sought was protected by executive privilege, and regardless of what might think of that defense, what matters here is that many top Washington officials over the years have been formally charged with contempt of a subpoena by Congress, but Navarro is the very first in American history to ever go to jail for this crime. Over and over, American law is being weaponized, and the criminal justice system is politicized by the very people who claim that they are the only guardians of American democracy and norms. We will take a look at this case to see yet again what pro-establishment anti-Trump lawfare really looks like when it's in its most vivid form.
And then finally: last month, President Biden nominated a longtime corporate lawyer named Sparkle Sooknanan for a lifelong position on the federal court as a district court judge. Today, Sparkle Sooknanan appeared for a confirmation hearing in the Senate, and one of her most critical interrogators was Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri. Hawley focused on the work she did for the large corporate law firm Jones Day, where she defended multiple hedge funds who are trying to extract as much wealth as possible from Puerto Rico right after the island suffered a massive debt crisis and Jones Day and this Biden nominee attempted to leave ordinary people who are bondholders in Puerto Rico on the hook for that debt, while hedge funds created all sorts of innovative arguments to ensure that they were paid in full.
Senator Hawley's line of questioning reveals a great deal about the reality of both political parties when it comes to values and policies like corporatism and neoliberalism, and it also reveals a lot about the types of people the White House chooses to shape American law for decades to come through lifelong appointees to the federal bench. We'll examine this genuinely interesting exchange that happened in the Senate and highlight what it reveals. To help us explore that, we will speak to the good friend of our show, Matt Stoller of the American Economics Liberties Project, who is one of the country's leading antitrust experts and also a vocal critic of what is often called Big Law, namely, the massive, sprawling corporate law firms that often lobby defend the nation's centers of financial and political power. Matt has worked in almost every nook and cranny in Washington for years. He understands it and critiques it as anyone and always has a lot of interesting things to say, and I'm sure that tonight will be no exception.
For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
