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Begging pardons, breaking ceasefire and abortion arrests

 
Today's NATIONAL story

Trump purports to 'void' Biden pardons

What happened
President Donald Trump early yesterday said on social media he was declaring former President Joe Biden's pardons of members of the House Jan. 6 committee "void, vacant and of no further force or effect" because "they were done by autopen." The Jan. 6 committee members, he said, would now be "subject to investigation at the highest level." He provided no evidence Biden's pardons were signed with an autopen or why that would render them invalid.

Who said what
Presidents have "broad authority to pardon or commute the sentences of whomever they please, the Constitution doesn't specify that pardons must be in writing and autopen signatures have been used before for substantive actions by presidents," The Associated Press said. There's also "no power in the Constitution or case law to undo a pardon," The New York Times said. Trump was implicitly posting his "belief that the nation's laws should be whatever he decrees them to be," and his focus on the Jan. 6 committee members was a "jolting reminder that his appetite for revenge has not been sated."

The president's recent focus on autopens can be traced to the conservative Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project, which "heavily perpetuated" the theory that Biden — or one of his aides — used the device to sign important documents, NPR said. Most of the group's "initial analysis relied on documents in the Federal Register," which affixes the same digital copy of a president's signature to every signed document, The Washington Post said. The "hard copies — which would contain the actual signature — belong to the National Archives."

The "autopen narrative started to fall apart" yesterday afternoon, when White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump was merely "begging the question" of whether Biden was aware of the pardons, the Times said. After she was "reminded" that Biden had "spoken publicly about them," she "acknowledged that she had no evidence" for the allegations. 

What next?
Moving to "investigate or prosecute" anyone pardoned by Biden "would mark a significant escalation of Trump's defiance of longstanding legal norms," The Wall Street Journal said. Trump would "likely lose a legal challenge," Axios said, but only after subjecting pardoned officials to an "expensive, stressful legal battle."

 
 
Today's INTERnATIoNAL story

Israel strikes Gaza, breaking ceasefire

What happened
Israel this morning launched what it called "extensive strikes" on Hamas "terror targets" across Gaza, its first major attack on the Palestinian enclave since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government signed a ceasefire agreement with Hamas two months ago. Gaza's health ministry said at least 326 Palestinians were killed in the strikes.

Who said what
The attack was prompted by "Hamas' repeated refusal to release our hostages" and its "rejection of all the proposals" from U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and other mediators, Netanyahu's office said. "Israel will, from now on, act against Hamas with increasing military strength." Hamas said Israel's decision to "overturn the ceasefire agreement" exposed the remaining hostages "to an unknown fate." Hamas still holds 59 Israeli hostages, 35 of whom are believed to be dead.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that Israel had consulted the U.S. before launching the strikes. President Donald Trump "has made it clear" that "Hamas, the Houthis, Iran" and anyone else seeking to "terrorize" Israel or the U.S. "will see a price to pay: All hell will break loose," she said. Israel's Hostage Families Forum said Netanyahu had "chosen to abandon the hostages" and its members were "shocked, angry and terrified by the deliberate dismantling of the process to return our loved ones from the terrible captivity of Hamas."

What next?
Negotiations on ending the Gaza war have deadlocked, but it was "unclear whether the attack effectively ended the ceasefire," The New York Times said. Hamas "has not yet declared that it is resuming the war," the BBC said, "instead calling on mediators and the United Nations to intervene."

 
 
Today's Legal Story

Texas arrests midwife on felony abortion charges

What happened
Texas authorities arrested a Houston-area midwife for allegedly attempting to perform abortions, state Attorney General Ken Paxton said yesterday. The charges against Maria Margarita Rojas and an employee at one of her clinics, Jose Ley, marked the "first criminal charges under the state's near-total abortion ban and one of the few times a provider anywhere in the country has been charged since the fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022," The Washington Post said.

Who said what
Paxton (pictured above) said Rojas, 48, operated three clinics in the Houston area that had performed illegal abortions, and accused her of practicing medicine without a license. The charges were brought in Waller County, a conservative jurisdiction northwest of Houston, after an investigation by Paxton's office, District Attorney Sean Whittmore told The Texas Tribune. He said he invited Paxton, his former boss, to prosecute the case. "In Texas, life is sacred," Paxton said in a statement.

Rojas was an obstetrician in her native Peru before moving to the U.S. and getting certified as a midwife, according to Holly Shearman, a fellow midwife and friend. Shearman said she was "shocked" by the allegations. "I don't believe it for one second," she told the Tribune. "She never ever talked about anything like that, and she's very Catholic," Shearman told The New York Times. "I just don't believe the charges."

What next?
Rojas and Ley, a 29-year-old Cuban national, were charged with illegal performance of an abortion, a second-degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison, and practicing medicine without a license. Whittmore said a grand jury would consider whether to indict the two.

 
 

It's not all bad

A new tech device called OneCourt is making Portland Trail Blazer games more accessible for visually impaired fans. OneCourt resembles a thicker and larger iPad and uses data collected through cameras that track the movements of players and the basketball. It imparts "dynamic information" on the game "through touch," OneCourt CEO and founder Jerred Mace said to Oregon Public Broadcasting. "You can feel the motion of the player with the ball moving around the court in real-time."

 
 
Under the radar

Artificial intelligence giant OpenAI has trained a new model that's "really good" at creative writing, CEO Sam Altman said on X. He fed the model a prompt to "write a metafictional literary short story about AI and grief," and then posted the 1,172-word work it produced. The story's protagonist, Mila, turns to an AI chatbot, who serves as the narrator, to have a monthlong conversation about losing her partner, Kai. It's unclear when the model will be released.

Fiction writing "isn't an application of AI that OpenAI has explored much," said TechCrunch. The fact that it's experimenting now could suggest OpenAI "feels its latest generation of models vastly improve on the wordsmithing front," though historically, AI "hasn't proven to be an especially talented essayist."

The shift "signals OpenAI's growing ambitions beyond improving accuracy and predictability," said CNET. The company may be "targeting new domains away from more numerical subjects like math and programming," where it has "struggled to develop monetizable products," said market research analyst Reece Hayden. But OpenAI is "likely to experience significant backlash from creative industries" regarding "intellectual property concerns."

What's "beautiful and moving" about the short story is its "understanding of its lack of understanding" and "reflection on its limits," said novelist Jeanette Winterson at The Guardian. But the new model's writing "still sucks," said Kyle Barr at Gizmodo, and Altman is merely trying to "create a new market for ChatGPT subscriptions by promising uncreative people they can take the reins from the literary 'elite.'"

 
 
On this day

March 18, 1990

In the early morning, 13 works of art were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardiner Museum in Boston. The artworks are estimated to be worth a combined $500 million, making the theft the most expensive art heist in American history. Despite decades of investigations, the case remains unsolved.

 
 
TODAY'S newspaperS

"Rapid cuts to federal workers are eating into services," with national parks and veterans hospitals among "the collateral damage of Trump's firing spree," The Wall Street Journal says on Tuesday's front page. "Exodus depletes nuclear agency under Musk push," The New York Times says. "Trump cuts end programs that help food pantries" and farmers, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel says. "President's economic endpoint is unclear," The Washington Post says, and his "court conflict nears a boil" over likely defiance of a judicial order. "Deportation tussle roils court," The Boston Globe says.

► See the newspaper front pages

 
 
Tall tale

Devil inside

Parents in Japan trying to stop their kids from raising hell are using a digital devil to scare them straight. The app Oni Kara Denwa (Demon Calling) lets users summon a "terrifying demon" to "scold children," said The Times of London. There are "simulated video chats" with the devil for different types of "bad behavior," like fighting and not listening, with the demon threatening to make a house call if the child does not change their ways.

 
 

Morning Report was written and edited by Theara Coleman, Nadia Croes, Catherine Garcia, Scott Hocker, Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, Justin Klawans, Devika Rao, Rafi Schwartz and Peter Weber, with illustrations by Stephen Kelly and Julia Wytrazek.

Image credits, from top: Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images; Abdalhkem Abu Riash / Anadolu via Getty Images; Jahi Chikwendiu / The Washington Post via Getty Images; Illustration by Julia Wytrazek / Getty Images