hello i m abby phillip in washington. welcome to cnn newsroom we begin this hour in the middle east, where both violence and tensions are escalating. today israeli forces unleashed air strikes in southern lebanon and gaza and israel says it struck targets belonging to the palestinian militant group hamas. israel blames hamas for firing 34 rockets from lebanon yesterday and the latest barrage since the two countries were at war back in 20 in 2006. now that has raised fears of an escalating conflict across the region, and just overnight, we learned that israel has mobilized some of its military reserves. a short time ago, israel s defense minister ordered security bolstered across the country after two israeli women were shot to death in the west bank. israel has called it an act of terror. let s get straight to cnn s fred pleitgen, who is near the israeli gaza border, and scott mclean is in beirut, lebanon, for us as well. but let s start with you, fred. fred you did talk to t
trip ahead for you just one lawmaker who joined protesters demanding meaningful gun legislation at the state capital kept her seat yesterday. representative gloria johnson, a white woman, slammed the expulsion of her colleagues justin jones and justin pearson, two of the state s youngest black lawmakers, saying she was the only one to be spared was quote, pretty clear. outrage over the pair s removal is being felt across the country, coupled with the concern of the dangerous precedent this is sending. and a short time ago, tennessee s black caucus whose chairman called the decision an assault on democracy that quote, smacks of overt racism spoke out. it looked like a jim crow era trial, where we saw two black men fighting for their careers, fighting for their reputations. the world is watching tennessee, and yet again, they re watching it for the wrong reasons. quite frankly, i m kpexhausted. what are we going to do now is it going to be business as usual, it happened t
a friend and says harlan crow doesn t have business before the court. harlan crow is not a party as far as i know, to any particular case in front of the court, but you could make an argument that he does have an interest in how the court rules as someone who is pretty active in the political space and has an interest in how the court leans. does that is that clear in the guidance and the law as it is right now that that might be a problem? clearly it is a problem. there s a billionaire who s the donator enormous amounts of money to conservative causes and surely is very interested in a lot of cases that come before the court. whether or not he has a direct economic interest in a party before the court is beside the point. this is why we have the disclosure rules with respect to gifts. we can t say. well you should disclose these gifts and not those gifts because someone has a case before the court. or might be related to a party before the court. no we require disclosure of all free t
multimillionaire megadonor would have been interested in clarence tom a the commissioner of the eeoc, or a lowly staffer to john danforth of missouri they became friends at a moment in which clarence thomas was at the height of his career at the highest court in the land. even if it is entirely coincidental, the point of the ethics disclosures is not necessarily to actually identify episodes of corruption, although that s certainly part of it, it s to minimize the appearance of impropriety, and what we have here, whether or not there is actual corruption underlying it, is broadly, the appearance of impropriety. a sitting justice going for lavish trips at the expense of this multimillionaire mega donor to republican causes, causes that are repeatedly before the supreme court. so the idea that harlan crow doesn t have business before the court, that s one thing, but he funds a number of causes that