A humanitarian aid crisis in Gaza

USA Today

16-05-2025

A humanitarian aid crisis in Gaza | The Excerpt
On Friday's episode of The Excerpt podcast: Arwa Damon, former CNN Senior International Correspondent and president and founder of INARA, joins The Excerpt to discuss the latest concerns about starvation in Gaza. Arwa wrote an essay earlier this week for the Atlantic Council detailing Gazans' famine fears. USA TODAY White House Correspondent Bart Jansen breaks down Supreme Court arguments over President Donald Trump's efforts to limit birthright citizenship. What can we expect from this summer's Trump birthday military parade? Staffing cuts leave the National Weather Service scrambling to cover vital shifts. Join The Excerpt and author Niall Harbison, whose story we featured, on Reddit for an AMA from 12:30 - 1:30 p.m. ET in the r/IAmA subreddit.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Friday, May 16th, 2025. This is The Excerpt. Today we get a closer sense of the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza. Plus the Supreme Court wrestles with birthright citizenship questions and what to expect from a giant military parade this summer.
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Gaza's more than 2 million people face prolonged food shortages according to the World Health Organization and a global hunger monitor the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification said this week that half a million Gazans face starvation. Those startling numbers come as no humanitarian assistance has been delivered to Gaza since March 2nd. For more on the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza, I spoke with Arwa Damon, a former CNN senior international correspondent and President and founder of the International Network for Aid, Relief, and Assistance, also known as INARA. Arwa, thank you so much for giving me a few minutes on this.
Arwa Damon:
Thank you. My pleasure.
Taylor Wilson:
So we've seen this humanitarian crisis really spiral since March, in particular, we know that a global hunger monitor has warned that half a million people face starvation. What can you tell us about the latest, especially as it pertains to some of these hunger concerns?
Arwa Damon:
No food has entered Gaza, not even a single grain of rice, not even a single bag of flour for well over two months right now. In the last few weeks we've seen the World Health Organization announce that it has run out of its stocks. The World Central Kitchen whose work in Gaza was vital, providing hot meals, they have also stopped being able to do that because they've run out of supplies. My own organization, INARA, we had to stop our own hot meal deliveries that we were doing to the shelters that we work with around two weeks ago now because we couldn't find anything to cook up. Keeping in mind, especially in the last two to three weeks, when we say hot meals, we really just mean rice because that was all that there was to cook with. And so if you think that over 2 million people are living in these conditions, the vast majority of whom right now are subsiding on a single meal a day, if even that, it gives you an idea of just how dire the situation is.
And then add to that, the reality of they don't have access to clean water, they don't have access to proper medical treatment, and they're constantly having to deal with the fear of being bombed, the fear of death that is either going to come to them from the skies or it's going to come to them because they starve to death.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, as you say, as part of this humanitarian nightmare, Israel has ramped up military strikes this week. How severe have these been and what has this meant for Gazans who have already been displaced for years and I guess, do they have anywhere else to go, to hide Arwa?
Arwa Damon:
No, there's never been anywhere to hide in Gaza. And that's been the situation, not just since October 7th, but any other time that Israel has bombarded the Gaza Strip. And over the course of the last 18, 19 months, even when we've seen Israel declare certain areas of Gaza, these so-called safe zones, we've still had numerous times where people in their tents on the beachfront in Mawasi and [inaudible 00:03:23] being bombed. We've seen hospitals being bombed. And so there's very much this sense of death can come at any moment, but especially since the ceasefire broke, Gazans are feeling an even more intense and different level of fear. And you see this manifesting itself, especially in the children. You have children that have started bedwetting, you have children that are basically traumatized into complete silence. And you have children who say things like, "I've lost faith in myself. I don't trust myself because I allowed myself to hope during the ceasefire. And now I've realized that that was a lie."
Taylor Wilson:
Devastating. President Trump is in the region this week, Arwa. Talk us through the Trump administration's latest approach to Gaza. And I know this U.S-backed humanitarian organization will start work there by the end of the month under what's been a pretty criticized aid distribution plan. What can you tell us about that and how likely is it that this plan will be effective?
Arwa Damon:
The vast majority of us in the humanitarian community are extremely critical of this plan for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it contravenes any sort of baseline or standard that is established to be able to distribute humanitarian aid to a population. It militarizes access to aid. And then if you look at it just logistically, logically speaking from the perspective of Gaza, it doesn't make sense. There are over 400 distribution points in Gaza right now, and this plan wants to reduce those to 4. There is no transportation system in Gaza as well. So if I just sort of even simplify it further, let's say that there is a family in Gaza City that wants to get its food parcel under this new system that's going to be established. They have to walk roughly six to seven hours to get to any one of these distribution points, and then they're handed a food parcel.
Now any decent food parcel weighs between 30 to 50 kilos, so that's like roughly 70 to 100 pounds. How are they supposed to carry that back to their tent? And then let's hypothetically assume that they are able to carry that back to their tent. How are they supposed to cook? Because there's no fuel source. If you have a family and kids who are starving, you're going to have to choose to either be forcibly displaced once again to be in proximity to the food or stay where you are and continue to watch your children go hungry. But just to give you an idea, in this clip that the team sent to me, the kids are running around holding cucumbers, laughing and shrieking over a cucumber the way that children and other parts of the world laugh and shriek over the biggest chocolate bar that they have ever seen.
Taylor Wilson:
That says it all. Arwa Damon is President and founder of the International Network for Aid, Relief, and Assistance. Thank you so much for your perspective and insight here, Arwa. I appreciate it.
Arwa Damon:
And thank you for having me.
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Taylor Wilson:
The Supreme Court yesterday wrestled with whether to let President Donald Trump broadly enforce his changes to birthright citizenship as courts consider whether those changes are constitutional. I spoke with USA TODAY White House correspondent Bart Jansen to learn more. Bart, thanks for joining me.
Bart Jansen:
Thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
So just starting here, Bart, what exactly was the Supreme Court dealing with in its arguments yesterday?
Bart Jansen:
The underlying issue that they're talking about is birthright citizenship. President Trump issued an order on his first day of the second term saying that the children of two undocumented immigrant parents would no longer be recognized as citizens. Birthright citizenship is something that's been recognized since the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1868. And so this would be a dramatic change in policy that stood for 150 years. This case hurtled toward the high court faster than most cases, primarily because the Trump administration also wants to stop federal judges across the country from imposing nationwide injunctions on his policies. Over the past few decades, judges have more and more been saying, "Well, you can't do such and such a thing here and you can't do it anywhere in the country." And so the Trump administration, they're asking the justices to stop the ability of federal judges from ordering nationwide injunctions. We may only get a decision on injunctions and not get to that underlying issue of birthright citizenship.
Taylor Wilson:
And so just on that injunction point, what did we hear specifically from the justices? What did they focus on, on that angle?
Bart Jansen:
It's a thorny question for them because it's sort of arisen just out of practice. There were very few of them until the Obama administration and now they've just snowballed in recent terms. But administrations of both parties are frustrated by them because basically you can pick and choose a judge that you think is going to give you a good ruling. So the Trump administration is trying to halt nationwide injunctions, but it's not clear what mechanism the justices would use to do that. I mean, they could just say, "Okay, no more of these." But what's unclear then is well then you've got a policy that would leave children born to undocumented immigrants citizens in one state and not citizens in the other during the years that it takes the courts to ultimately resolve this question. So it's not clear how the justices can resolve that issue where you feel like, okay, everybody is getting heard.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, Bart, so big debate yesterday. Where do we go next with this conversation?
Bart Jansen:
Well, now we wait for the nine justices to make a decision. We don't know whether they're going to rule on just the injunction facet of the case or go all the way to say it looks like even if we don't have a national injunction from a federal court judge, that we as the Supreme Court might extend a national injunction so that the Trump policy is still blocked. That would be the best case scenario for the states and the individuals who brought these lawsuits. Of course, the justices could also throw out national injunctions and then let the birthright citizenship aspect of the case continue to be argued in lower courts. And that's where we might have the, what one lawyer called the chaos on the ground, where people aren't certain whether their children are citizens or it might make certain Democratic states magnets for immigrants to deliver their children. So we're going to wait for a decision by the end of June for probably at least on the injunction aspect of the case, and we'll have to see if they go further and talk about birthright citizenship.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Bart Jansen covers the White House for USA TODAY with a great breakdown for us as always. Thanks, Bart.
Bart Jansen:
Thanks for having me.
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Taylor Wilson:
A military parade planned for June 14th, the Army's 250th anniversary and President Donald Trump's 79th birthday will feature dozens of tanks moving through the streets of Washington, warplanes overhead and some 7,500 soldiers housed in government office buildings downtown according to Army planning documents. USA TODAY had an exclusive look at the latest planning that detailed the elaborate choreography required for a massive military parade, an unofficial birthday party with few, if any, precedents. Is the parade a celebration of the Army's storied heritage or an homage to Trump and the political movement he leads, or both? Army officials say that they have long planned a major celebration for their milestone anniversary. But Democratic lawmakers say Trump has co-opted the parade for his own political purposes. You can read more with the link in today's show notes.
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It's been a rough few months for many National Weather Service employees, more than 550 of the 4,800 weather service employees were either dismissed, retired, or accepted incentive offers to leave after the Trump administration ordered agencies to reduce staff and draft reorganization plans. Now many of the nation's 122 local weather service forecast offices typically staffed 24/7 are shorthanded. The departures included many senior level meteorologists who retired. To try to address the gaps, weather service officials are offering employees who remain on staff opportunities to transfer to try and fill positions. And earlier this month, five former directors of the weather service wrote a letter to the American people expressing concern about the staffing shortages and other issues.
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And later today we're joining author Niall Harbison, whose interview and story we featured this past Sunday on Reddit for an AMA. This will take place in the I Am A subreddit beginning at 11:30 AM Eastern. We hope to see you there.
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And thanks for listening to The Excerpt. We're produced by Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan, and our executive producer is Laura Beatty. You can get the podcast wherever you get your pods, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. If you have any comments or questions, you can always email us at [e-mail]. I'm Taylor Wilson. I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.