Independent News Drop

KELI From Inkwell, this is the Independent News Drop. It's Friday, July 31. I'm Keli, with Hast.

KELI We'll start in Gaza. Israeli forces launched strikes across the territory on Friday, killing at least two Palestinians. This came hours after Hamas agreed to a draft peace deal that included a disarmament provision.

HAST The timing is the structural fact here. The strikes followed the Hamas announcement by hours, not days. Coverage has largely framed these as two separate tracks — the diplomatic and the military. The record suggests they are not.

KELI Separately, Iran. An Iranian official quoted by the Tasnim news agency said the country has comprehensive plans in place to respond to any United States military strikes, describing potential US action as, quote, mad.

HAST That quote is from a state-adjacent news agency, which matters for sourcing. What is on the record is that the statement was made and attributed officially. What is not on the record, despite heavy volume in the coverage, is any confirmed order for US strikes on Iran.

KELI Now to a domestic legal reversal. The Trump administration moved on Friday to drop a felony charge against David Hearn, a former Olympic canoe slalomist who had been accused of damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. US Attorney Jeanine Pirro, a Trump appointee who personally announced the charge at a press conference, now acknowledges the damage was the result of what her office called a botched installation during renovations the president ordered.

HAST Republican strategist Scott Jennings, appearing on CNN, said Pirro made the administration look foolish and that Hearn should consider suing. The structural point is simpler than the politics: a felony charge was brought at a press conference with emphatic language about what the government could prove. It is being dropped because the physical evidence supports the defendant, not the prosecution.

KELI An F-35B fighter jet crashed Friday near Miramar airbase in San Diego. The pilot ejected safely. The US military confirmed the incident. No further details on the cause have been released.

KELI In Peru, former president Ollanta Humala walked out of prison Friday after a court overturned his fifteen-year sentence for money laundering. Humala had been convicted alongside his wife in 2025. The ruling does not amount to a finding of innocence — the conviction was overturned on procedural or evidentiary grounds that have not yet been fully detailed in English-language reporting.

KELI To football governance. FIFA President Gianni Infantino abandoned a plan, announced only days earlier, to create a commercial entity and sell minority stakes in World Cup rights to private investors. The backlash was immediate and came from European football associations, several of which announced a boycott.

HAST What the coverage tends to call a reversal is more precisely a forced retreat. The plan was not withdrawn for reconsideration — it was dropped under institutional pressure before it could be implemented. The underlying question of whether FIFA will seek private capital for World Cup operations has not been answered. It has been deferred.

KELI Finally, former Vice President Kamala Harris, speaking at an event Friday night, listed what she called the most effective presidents in American history. Her answer included Barack Obama. It did not include Joe Biden, under whom she served as vice president for four years and on whose ticket she ran in 2024.

HAST There is no record of Harris being asked directly about Biden in that exchange. The omission is on the record. The interpretation — whether strategic, deliberate, or incidental — is not.

KELI Before we close, a word from Inkwell. Over at Gil's Intelligent Version there's a piece on what the original words of scripture actually say about the Trinity — before any translation decided for us.

HAST Six words, examined in Hebrew and Greek. It's at inkwell dot wiki, slash trinity.

KELI That is the drop for Friday, July 31. From Inkwell, I'm Keli.

HAST And I'm Hast. We'll be back Monday.