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• Sen. Dianne Feinstein returned to the Senate this week, defying calls for her resignation.
• As her health declined, her staff began to follow her wherever she goes in the Capitol, per Rolling Stone.
• “They will not let her leave by herself, but she doesn’t even know it,” a former staffer said.

Dianne Feinstein’s office makes sure a staff member constantly follows the senator around the Capitol out of concern for what she might say to reporters amid her declining health and old age, multiple sources told Rolling Stone.

Feinstein returned to the Senate on Wednesday after spending nearly three months away from Washington due to a shingles infection. But her mental acuity has also faced scrutiny in recent years with reports revealing how the 89-year-old senator would at times forget conversations and struggle with her short-term memory.

Shortly before her hospitalization in March, Insider reported how Feinstein seemed confused about how she voted on the Senate floor.

For the past few years, Feinstein’s staff felt it necessary to ensure the senator is never alone when she walks around the Capitol, sources told Rolling Stone.

Jamarcus Purley, a former staff member fired last February for work performance issues, told the magazine that Feinstein’s office developed the system without her knowing.

“They will not let her leave by herself, but she doesn’t even know it,” Purley said.

Fellow Democratic colleagues, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have recently called for the longtime senator’s immediate resignation. Feinstein has since defied those calls but previously said she would retire at the end of 2024.

The California Democrat is the longest-serving woman in the US Senate — a milestone she reached after being in her seat for more than 30 years. Beyond California, Feinstein has made an indelible mark in American politics, leading the effort on an assault-style weapons ban and the investigation of the CIA’s detention program.

Feinstein’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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(JTA) — Fighting between Israel and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza ended after five days, as a ceasefire took effect and appeared to hold late Saturday night.

Over the course of the fighting, 33 Palestinians were killed in Gaza, including civilians and combatants. Two civilians were killed in Israel — a woman in the central Israeli city of Rehovot and a Gaza resident who was working in a town on the Israeli side of the border.

Islamic Jihad shot more than 1,000 rockets at Israel during the conflict; many that were aimed at populated areas were intercepted by Israel’s missile defense systems, and some fell short in Gaza. Israel conducted hundreds of airstrikes in Gaza, killing six Islamic Jihad leaders.

This round of fighting began on Tuesday as Israel assassinated senior leaders of Islamic Jihad, which is designated by the United States and European Union as a terror group. Those assassinations followed a day of heavy conflict between the two sides one week earlier, after a senior member of Islamic Jihad died of a hunger strike in Israeli prison. Tuesday’s airstrikes also came after far-right figures in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition pushed for a harsher response to the Gaza rockets.

Egypt mediated Saturday’s ceasefire, and a statement from Netanyahu’s office “thanked Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and expressed the appreciation of the State of Israel for Egypt’s intensive efforts to secure a ceasefire.” The statement added that Israel would refrain from further airstrikes as long as rocket attacks from Gaza ceased.

Unlike previous rounds of conflict between Israel and militants in Gaza, Hamas, the militant group that controls the coastal strip and is likewise designated as a terror group by the United States and EU, appeared to remain on the sidelines. Israel and Hamas have fought several times in recent decades, with their most deadly conflict taking place in the 2014 Gaza War.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post Ceasefire ends Israel-Gaza conflict after five days of fighting appeared first on The Forward.

PIKE COUNTY, Mo. (KTVI) — A Missouri mother safely delivered her own baby boy in a car thanks to the help of a Pike County 911 dispatcher.

Christie Rosenstengle welcomed baby Reece into the world on May 11 in her and her husband’s car. It was about 1:30 a.m., and Rosenstengle’s husband, Kaleb, was driving them to the hospital when Rosenstengle said it was time.

“As soon as we were about to pull off in Eolia, I said my water’s going to break… You have to stop. Stop the car. Pull over.”

On the other end of the phone was a Pike County 911 dispatcher Faith Cooper.

“The operator, she was fantastic,” Rosenstengle said. “She asked us ‘How far apart are her contractions?’ Like, trying to help us establish if we needed to pull over if we needed to keep going.”

Her contractions were less than 3 minutes apart.

“She taught Kaleb through helping me deliver the baby, and he’s done it before,” Rosenstengle said. “But it was cool to have her there as a reassurance to know that he was doing everything he should have been doing.”

This is her fourth baby and the second born in the car. The first time she delivered her baby, she was in her driveway with no help because her phone was dead.

Pike County 911 said this is the first time dispatchers have assisted with childbirth since they implemented emergency medical dispatch in 2020. All Pike County 911 dispatchers are certified in EMD and CPR.

“We are grateful for the training and everything think that they have done to make it safer,” Rosenstengle said.

And she said she was extremely thankful for the dispatcher.

“I think we’re going to have to give her lots of snuggles, huh, buddy?” Rosenstengle said as she looked down at her son in her arms.

She said she plans to bring little Reece to meet Cooper next Friday.

(The Hill) — The GOP backlash to a former Navy digital ambassador who performs as a drag queen highlights a growing focus for Republican lawmakers overseeing the military.

Even before Joshua Kelley was hammered for making Instagram videos under the drag queen name Harpy Daniels, Republicans held hearings on diversity programs at the Pentagon and blasted drag shows and LGBTQ events on military bases and naval ships.

The attacks on the Pentagon have alarmed LGBTQ and transgender rights groups, who are locked in similar culture wars across the country.

Barbara Simon, the head of news and campaigns at GLAAD, said the criticism of LGBTQ representation in the military was “part of a pattern of attacking trans people as an opportunity to engage the base” and to “confuse people with this information about who trans people are.”

“This is not about anything other than targeting trans people,” Simon said. “And because it’s something that a lot of people don’t understand, they’re taking advantage and exploiting people’s relative unfamiliarity with trans people in general — but trans people have always served in the military.”

The clash over transgender inclusion in the military took center stage in 2019 when former President Trump banned service members with “gender dysphoria,” who were taking hormones or had undergone a gender transition, from serving. 

That policy was reversed within the first week of President Biden taking office, and his administration has advanced efforts to prohibit transgender service member discrimination and ensure access to gender-affirming care. For the first time in 2021, transgender service members were allowed to serve openly.

Under Biden’s watch, the Pentagon has also more aggressively pursued diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs and the Defense Department outlined an equity action plan last year.

The more robust DEI efforts have angered GOP lawmakers, who say it negatively impacts military readiness and hurts recruitment as nearly every military branch struggles with getting new servicemembers.

At a March House Armed Services hearing on DEI programs, which saw testimony from top officials at the Army, Air Force and Navy, Rep. Mark Alford (R-Mo.) said the focus on diversity was dividing America and making the country weaker.

“Does a future Chinese soldier holding a gun — or a Russian or Iranian target-trained on Americans — do they care what color he or she is?” he asked. “Does the enemy care what pronoun we are using when he or she is pointing a weapon at us?”

Each of the officials told the congressman that diversity made the armed forces stronger.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) made the argument more succinctly in a tweet earlier this month. 

“Our military has only one purpose, the defense of our country,” she wrote. “Our military needs to train men for war, not turn men into fake women.”

Katherine Kuzminski, a senior fellow and program director of the Military, Veterans & Society program at the Center for New American Security, said it was “unfair” for the GOP to attack the military’s lethality and fighting capabilities over diversity promotion.

“If what we’re afraid of is [Russian President] Vladimir Putin thinking poorly of our military readiness because we enable pronouns,” she said, “all we have to do is look at the outcomes on the battlefield that the Russian army is facing right now.”

However, Kuzminski said the “crossfire” over transgender and LGBTQ inclusion is “affecting overall perceptions of military service” and impacting recruitment, even if the individual servicemembers and DEI programs are not.

An annual survey from the Ronald Reagan Institute released in December found public trust in the military dropped to 45 percent in 2022, down from 70 percent five years ago. And 50 percent of Americans cited “woke” practices undermining military effectiveness as a reason for losing trust either a great deal or some.

Kuzminski advised military leaders to highlight the achievements of transgender and LGBTQ members, but refrain from making political statements or promoting high-profile events that may become politicized.

“This is where it’s up to military leadership to have the wisdom to navigate what will make their servicemembers become a political football and take a step back from that,” Kuzminski said. 

While military hearings in the Senate and House have frequently seen Republicans attack DEI efforts, none has garnered as much attention as the fight centered around Kelley.

Kelley, a non-commissioned naval officer and popular drag queen on Instagram and TikTok, was invited last year to participate in the Navy’s “Digital Ambassador” pilot program aiming to bolster recruitment efforts online.

Republican senators, reacting to an article in The Daily Caller, sent a letter to Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toros earlier this month questioning the “promotion of social media influencers who post behaviors or activities many Americans deem inappropriate.”

“Where does the Navy draw the line on promotion of the personal activities of its influencers?” the senators wrote. “Would the Navy enlist burlesque or exotic dancers to reach possible recruits? Such activity is not appropriate for promotion in a professional workplace or the United States military.”

In an interview with NewsNation this week, Kelley said the Navy had reached out to a number of candidates for the program in the goal to reach a wide range of demographics.

“The military itself is one of the largest, diverse and adaptable organizations,” Kelley said. “I simply see it as the diversity we have because it makes us stronger.”

Kelley also said LGBTQ members have been reaching out about enlisting and that engagement has skyrocketed following the media clashes. 

In a statement, the U.S. Navy said the program concluded as scheduled in March and it was reviewing the program, but did not respond to a request for comment on the GOP criticisms.

“The Navy Digital Ambassador Program was a pilot program designed to explore the digital environment to engage communities and demographics outside the Navy’s traditional sphere of influence,” a spokesperson said.

Republicans are also concerned about the promotion of certain events, recently attacking a nonbinary naval officer after the service member read a poem during an LGBTQ-themed event on a naval ship. 

On social media, the naval officer, Audrey Knutson, expressed joy in taking part in the event, but Republicans referred to Knutson as selfish and distracting from the military’s mission. 

GOP congressional members have repeatedly discussed drag shows on military bases  during hearings, on social media or other commentary.

Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) expressed outrage in an op-ed on Fox News this month over drag shows at military bases in Montana, Virginia and Nevada. The 2021 event at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana reportedly included a drag queen story hour for children, events that have provoked particular ire among conservatives across the nation.

“Radical activists and their allies in the Biden administration seek to stifle viewpoints that run contrary to their own — regardless of the cost,” the senator wrote. “They seem to define diversity as everybody looking very different, but forced to sing from the same woke hymnal. Their actions are actually extremely disrespectful toward Americans who volunteer to serve their country.”

Daines has introduced legislation to ban drag shows and “adult cabaret” performances on military bases, with co-sponsors from Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Ted Budd (R-N.C.), Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla), though it stands little chance of passing in the Democrat-controlled upper chamber.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said at a House Armed Services hearing in March that drag shows are not something the Pentagon funds. 

Base commanders generally have the discretion to manage recreational activities on site and not all of them are directly organized and funded by the military. 

Drag shows, however, are nothing new and have been associated with the U.S. military going back to the 19th Century. 

In World War II, soldiers dressed up as females for performances to provide entertainment.

David Stacy, the government affairs director at LGBTQ-rights group Human Rights Campaign, said the “idea that drag performances are harmful has no basis in research and fact.”

“Nobody’s being forced to participate in these activities. This is something that people are voluntarily able to do,” Stacy said. “There’s all sorts of entertainment on a military base [and] all kinds of ideological viewpoints are represented in our military.”

“There’s not one viewpoint that servicemembers have,” Stacy continued. “They come from all walks of life.”