Georgia rep introduces measure to censure Tlaib over Palestinian conference remarks

WASHINGTON — A Georgia Republican congressman introduced a measure Wednesday to censure Michigan U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib over remarks she gave at a Palestinian conference in Detroit over the weekend.

Rep. Buddy Carter, who is running for the U.S. Senate in Georgia, cited Tlaib's criticism of GOP and Democratic lawmakers in Congress as "sellouts" for their support of Israel, claiming she was "vilifying" fellow politicians and had framed support for Israel as "soul corrupting."

In the measure, Carter wrote that Tlaib should be censured for "promoting and cheering on terrorism and antisemitism" at the People's Conference for Palestine and claimed that she "cheered on one of the most radical and antisemitic conferences in America."

"I’m a big supporter of Israel and of the Jewish people, and her comments I found to be vile and disgusting and certainly not appropriate for a member of Congress to be making, nor to be participating in the conference she was participating in," Carter told The Detroit News.

—The Detroit News

Redistricting poised to spread ahead of midterm elections

WASHINGTON — A tit-for-tat style partisan congressional redistricting fight Republicans started in Texas appears ready to expand in the next few months, with some states poised to redraw their congressional maps and officials in others publicly considering doing so.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a new map into law last week that targets five Democrat-held seats for the midterm elections in 2026, and California, Ohio and Utah appear to be headed to new maps as well.

Political one-upmanship may also spark new maps in states such as Illinois, Indiana, New York and Maryland. Missouri’s Republican governor has just called a new legislative session for redistricting.

Adam Kincaid, executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, said that many states are still in limbo about their redistricting plans, putting the country in an “interesting purgatory.”

—CQ-Roll Call

Humanity is rapidly depleting water and much of the world is getting drier

LOS ANGELES — For more than two decades, satellites have tracked the total amounts of water held in glaciers, ice sheets, lakes, rivers, soil and the world’s vast natural reservoirs underground — aquifers. An extensive global analysis of that data now reveals fresh water is rapidly disappearing beneath much of humanity’s feet, and large swaths of the Earth are drying out.

Scientists are seeing “mega-drying” regions that are immense and expanding — one stretching from the western United States through Mexico to Central America, and another from Morocco to France, across the entire Middle East to northern China.

There are two primary causes of the desiccation: rising temperatures unleashed by using oil and gas, and widespread overpumping of water that took millennia to accumulate underground.

“These findings send perhaps the most alarming message yet about the impact of climate change on our water resources,” said Jay Famiglietti, a hydrologist and professor at Arizona State University who co-authored the study. “The rapid water cycle change that the planet has experienced over the last decade has unleashed a wave of rapid drying.”

—Los Angeles Times

UAE warns Israel annexing West Bank would be deemed ‘red line’

The United Arab Emirates warned Israel that annexation of Palestinian territory in the West Bank would constitute a “red line” and “severely undermine” the regional vision for peace and integration underlying the U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords.

The comments represent the sharpest rebuke the UAE has directed at Israel since the start of the war in Gaza almost two years ago. They came shortly after Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Wednesday urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to call a Cabinet meeting and approve the extension of Israel’s grip over the West Bank.

“Annexation in the West Bank would constitute a red line for the UAE,” assistant minister for political affairs at the UAE’s foreign ministry, Lana Nusseibeh, said in remarks shared with several media outlets, including Bloomberg News.

Taking over Palestinian territory “would severely undermine the vision and spirit of Accords, end the pursuit of regional integration and would alter the widely-shared consensus on what the trajectory of this conflict should be – two states living side by side in peace, prosperity, and security,” Nusseibeh said.

—Bloomberg News