American Nurse Describes Searing Experience of Working in Gaza for 26 Days

An American nurse who worked in Gaza for nearly a month is speaking out about the horrific circumstances in which Palestinian civilians are living.

Emily Callahan, a nurse activity manager for Doctors Without Borders, had been in Gaza since August. She was evacuated back to the United States last week.

“I obviously have a sense of relief that I’m home and I’m with my family and feel safe for the first time in 26 days. And I’m having a really hard time finding any joy in any of it,” she told CNN on Monday.

“Because me being safe is the result of having to leave people behind.”

Callahan described having to relocate with her team to a refugee camp in the south, which was already packed with 35,000 internally displaced people. The camp, which now has 50,000 people living there, was so short on resources that people only had access to water for two hours out of every 12.

Hospitals were so full that they were having to discharge people immediately after treating them, Callahan said, resulting in people, particularly children, walking around the camp with unhealed burns or fresh amputations.

Callahan also described the sacrifices that her Palestinian teammates made to make sure she and other foreign doctors and nurses survived. This included finding them food and water when supplies ran out, and working to get them on the evacuation buses.

“We would have died within a week without them,” she said.

Some of Callahan’s Palestinian colleagues chose to stay in Gaza rather than evacuate. She said when they got the evacuation orders, Callahan texted to ask if they would move south.

“The only answer I got was, ‘This is our community. This is our family. These are our friends. If they’re going to kill us, we’re going to die saving as many people as we can,’” she said.

Asked if she would return to Gaza, Callahan replied, “In a heartbeat. My heart is in Gaza. It will stay in Gaza.”

More than 10,000 Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israel’s ongoing retaliation to Hamas’s October 7 attack.

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin’s first item on the menu should Republicans win control of the state: nixing abortion.

“To many voters, the topic of abortion is so important, so we have been completely straightforward and clear. I will back a bill to protect life,” Youngkin told Fox News on Tuesday.

Youngkin’s proposal will cut off access to abortion at 15 weeks, with exceptions for victims of rape and incest as well as people whose pregnancies put them at risk of death. Should that happen, Virginia would join 21 states that passed extreme abortion bans after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last year.

Current Virginia law bans abortion at 26 weeks.

“It’s one of the most divisive topics across Virginia,” Youngkin told ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos earlier this week.

“I think this is a choice between no limits and reasonable limits, and I think this is one where Virginians come together around reasonableness,” Youngkin said.

Virginia is a hotly contested battleground at the moment, with both Republicans and Democrats fighting for a total takeover of the state legislature in Tuesday’s election. Currently, Republicans hold a very narrow, two-member majority in the House of Delegates, while Democrats hold the Senate. Should Republicans win, Youngkin will gain the power to enact a completely conservative agenda that would almost definitely raise his national profile and even open up a long-shot bid at the White House.

Other prospective policies under the conservative governor’s belt include tax cuts, climate deregulation, stricter criminal justice laws, and the rollback of gender-affirming policies in schools.

All 140 seats in the general assembly are on Tuesday’s ballot.

The Republican candidate for a Texas city council was arrested just hours before Election Day on federal child pornography charges.

Brad Benson, who was running for the Granbury City Council, was arrested at his home Monday morning. Benson was a small-business owner and the deputy fire marshal for the town, which is southwest of Fort Worth.

“I can confirm he was arrested by the District Attorney’s Office yesterday and charged with two felony child pornography charges,” Hood County Sheriff Roger Deeds told Newsweek on Tuesday.

The Republican Party of Hood County was forced to withdraw its support for Benson one day before his name appeared on the ballot. “The Republican Party stands for conservative, family values and the protection of children,” the RPHC said in a statement on social media condemning Benson’s actions.

“These heinous acts are antithetical to what Republicans stand for.”

Republicans have repeatedly stated that they want to protect children from violent crime and sexual predators. In many GOP-led states, this has resulted in bans on drag performances in public.

Meanwhile, Republicans across the country have worked to ease child labor laws, take away life-saving health care for transgender and nonbinary children, and even ban free school lunches. None of that sounds particularly in the best interests of children.

Republicans are working overtime to punish Representative Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, for her objections to Israel’s military bombardment of Gaza.

So far, Tlaib is facing three separate censure efforts in the House with another backup in tow, but some Republicans are looking to skip the disciplinary measure and go straight to expelling the Michigan Democrat.

“Rashida Tlaib is a sitting member of Congress with alleged ties to Hamas terrorists. This should be investigated immediately, and if true, the House should move to expel her,” tweeted Senator Marsha Blackburn on Tuesday.

Should all the censure bills against Tlaib fail, Representative Derrick Van Orden also hinted at potential expulsion. Van Orden said he will move to introduce yet another against Tlaib, who he believes no longer “belongs in this body,” reported Punchbowl News’s Mica Soellner.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene tried to censure Tlaib last week but failed after 23 of her Republican peers voted to table it, criticizing the resolution as “feckless” and filled with “legally and factually unverified claims.”

But then, on Thursday, Representative Max Miller, one of the House’s two Jewish Republicans, threw his hat into the ring, filing his own censure resolution against Tlaib.

Greene has also returned with another censure resolution using retooled language to go after the Michigan representative.

By now she’s not the only one drafting censure efforts against Tlaib. Representative Rich McCormick introduced a “privileged” censure on Monday, which forces a vote within two legislative days.

While introducing the new censure resolution, McCormick railed against Tlaib for describing the chant “from the river to the sea” as an “aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence,” and lambasted her for allegedly promoting the destruction of Israel. McCormick’s effort has faced more support from the Republican caucus than Greene’s, winning over the votes of several members who voted to table hers, including Miller, Van Orden and Representatives Darrell Issa and Austin Scott.

In a statement issued last month, Tlaib called the efforts to silence her “unhinged” and “deeply Islamophobic,” adding that she will not be bullied or dehumanized.

“It’s a shame my colleagues are more focused on silencing me than they are on saving lives, as the death toll in Gaza surpasses 10,000,” Tlaib wrote in another statement posted to X, formerly known as Twitter.

“Many of them have shown me that Palestinian lives simply do not matter to them, but I still do not police their rhetoric or actions. Rather than acknowledge the voice and perspective of the only Palestinian American in Congress, my colleagues have resorted to distorting my positions in resolutions filled with obvious lies,” Tlaib added.

The United States is a little more than one week away from a government shutdown, and Republicans are responding by … talking about gas stoves.

The House Committee on Small Business is holding a hearing this week on the effects of supposedly “burdensome” energy regulations, part of the GOP’s ongoing insistence that Democrats are unfairly trying to ban gas stoves. Republican Representative Roger Williams lashed out Tuesday at his own party for its mismatched priorities.

“It’s almost embarrassing that we’re going to have a hearing tomorrow on gas stoves and ceiling fans when we’ve got everything happening in this world,” Williams said on Fox Business.

The House managed to pass a continuing resolution in September to keep the government open. That deal ultimately resulted in Kevin McCarthy getting ousted as speaker.

His successor, Mike Johnson, said Tuesday that he has a plan to keep the government funded, but Republicans are once again struggling to come together. Their inability to agree on a budget is what brought the U.S. to the brink of a shutdown multiple times this year alone.

Congress has 11 days to figure out the budget. If it hasn’t passed a solution by 12:01 a.m. on November 18, then the government will shut down.

If this exact situation seems familiar, that’s because it has somehow already happened. In May, as the country hurtled toward a national default, the House Oversight and Accountability subcommittee held a hearing on … gas stoves. During the hearing, Democratic Representative Jared Moskowitz called out Republicans on their weird priorities.

“I got it, I get the bravado. We can pry your gas stoves from your cold, dead hands,” Moskowitz deadpanned during the hearing. “I have a six-burner, double-oven range. It sits on legs. I mean, I miss her, right now, as we’re talking about it.”

“You might own a small business, and you are worried about how you’re going to pay your employees if we default. The good news for you today is that, if you have to shut your business because the country defaults, your gas stove will still be there.”