Greetings! Happy World Animal Day to those celebrating.

Let’s get into today’s top stories.

🇵🇸 Reporters escorted through Gaza City document near-total devastation. International journalists, allowed into central Gaza City on a military-guided visit, described block after block of pancaked concrete, roofless apartment towers, and streets braided with twisted rebar where entire neighborhoods once stood. The tour, tightly controlled by the Israel Defense Forces, offered a rare, ground-level view: clinics hollowed out, markets flattened, and utility lines dangling like cut nerves. Aid groups say food, water, and fuel access remain inconsistent, while hospitals struggle to power basic equipment amid a long-running humanitarian emergency. The reporting underscores the scale of reconstruction needs, measured in the tens of billions, and the logistical reality that safe corridors, demining, and steady fuel deliveries are preconditions for any rebuild. Forensics teams and residents are still recovering bodies from rubble piles, complicating even a rough accounting of the dead. Diplomats argue a durable cease-fire tied to verifiable access is the only route to stabilize mortality and halt displacement. The embedded dispatches add new visual evidence to a dossier already stuffed with satellite images and casualty ledgers. The crisis afflicting Gaza has been deemed a genocide by the United Nations (UN) and International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) with famine declared by Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), confirmed by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), UNICEF, World Food Program (WFP), and World Health Organization (WHO).

🇸🇾 Damascus quiet as Syria heads toward its first parliamentary vote. Authorities encouraged turnout while security services keep a visible presence; opposition figures abroad call the process noncompetitive. In the capital’s side streets, campaign posters are sparse and voter awareness is thin, a sign of how exhaustion and economic strain have blunted politics after years of conflict. Analysts say low salience reflects bruised purchasing power and the outflow of millions of Syrians, as well as skepticism that parliament can dent executive control. Still, incremental shifts—new faces on party lists, technocrats pitching service delivery, hint at localized jockeying beneath the surface. International observers remain limited, and parameters for independent monitoring are narrow. With inflation, fuel shortages, and infrastructure decay top of mind, the ballot’s real test is whether it touches daily life at all. In Damascus, the mood is muted, the traffic normal, and the stakes, for now, mostly symbolic.

🏛️ Shutdown theater: Oval Office summit devolves into viral trolling. The administration’s high-profile meeting with congressional leaders produced no breakthrough on a funding deal, but it did produce a flurry of memes: Trump 2028 hats, a sombrero cameo, and the sort of optics war that thrives when appropriations don’t. For federal workers and contractors, the punchline lands as furloughs, delayed grants, and paused rulemaking; for markets, it lands as basis points of uncertainty layered atop an already complex issuance calendar. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) reiterated the split between “excepted” and paused services as agencies stretch thin contingency plans. National parks, civil cases, and passport lines bear visible scars, while unseen ones, missed inspections, and lapsed grants pile up in inboxes. Each week of lapse typically trims tenths from quarterly growth, with travel, permitting, and procurement taking early hits. The political stalemate now orbits a familiar question: clean stopgap or policy riders. The photo-ops won; the appropriations didn’t.

⚖️ New U.S. Supreme Court term opens with muscular tests of presidential power. The docket sets up clashes over executive immunity, agency structure, and the scope of federal authority in culture-war arenas from LGBTQ protections to tariffs and birthright citizenship. Court-watchers expect opinions that ripple through how presidents wield emergency and regulatory tools—and how lower courts police them. Business groups and civil-liberties advocates filed dueling amicus briefs, signaling broad consequences for workplace rules, campus speech, and immigration. The term will also probe when and how the judiciary can curb or bless sweeping administrative rewrites. Because cases arrive staggered, the political weather may shift even as the justices deliberate; midterm dynamics will loom over the calendar. Practically, agencies are gaming out contingency regulations in case doctrines move quickly. Oral arguments start this month; consequential decisions curtain-call in late spring.

🎭 “Saturday Night Live” (SNL) kicks off Season 51 tonight with a refreshed cast. The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and SNL brass launch the new season under the usual pressure cooker: keep the satire sharp without chasing every headline, and engineer a viral sketch before Weekend Update even signs on. Expect meta riffs on streaming bloat and election-year fatigue alongside musical bookings designed to own Monday’s charts. Studio 8H logistics are unchanged (tight rehearsals, cue-card ballets, and sketch-triage after dress rehearsal), yet the distribution math keeps shifting toward clips over live tune-ins. Advertisers still prize the show’s live halo, especially for brand-safe humor that sells on Sunday. New cast dynamics tend to set by week three or four; the writers’ room calibrates to who can carry cold opens versus taped pieces. If early numbers mirror last fall, demo strength will ride social breakout moments as much as overnights. For longtime viewers, the mission statement endures: a national mood ring, updated every Saturday.

📉 No jobs report due to shutdown for the first time since 2013. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) can’t release the monthly employment situation during a funding lapse, leaving markets and Main Street without the payrolls print that anchors rate bets, hiring plans, and wage talks. Economists warn that missing one reading scrambles seasonal adjustments and narrows visibility on turning points in labor demand. The absence also blunts policy debate by replacing data with vibes: anecdote-rich, spreadsheet-poor. Traders turn to private proxies and high-frequency series—claims, card swipes, job postings—to approximate what the official survey would have said. Employers face the same fog, from staffing firms to CFOs modeling year-end budgets. The historical precedent isn’t reassuring; 2013’s shutdown created a data pothole analysts were still smoothing weeks later. The bottom line: when the dashboard goes dark, piloting gets riskier.

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That’s all for today!

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See you tomorrow!