On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: Israeli prime minister vows no cease-fire

Israel's prime minister vowed no cease-fire on Monday, as Israeli troops continue a ground incursion in northern Gaza. Plus, hate is surging amid the Israel-Hamas war, USA TODAY Supreme Court Correspondent John Fritze looks at the significance of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, former President Donald Trump dominates the latest polling ahead of the Iowa caucuses, and USA TODAY Health Reporter Karen Weintraub explains how gene therapies could treat or even cure sickle cell disease.

Podcasts:True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here

Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below.This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and this is 5 Things you need to know, Tuesday, the 31st of October 2023. Today, Netanyahu rejects calls for a ceasefire, plus we look at a surge in hate amid the Israel-Hamas war, and what gene therapies could mean for sickle cell disease.

♦

Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu rejected calls for a ceasefire yesterday as the Israeli military expanded its incursion into the northern part of the Gaza Strip. When asked about the massive death toll left by Israeli airstrikes in the blockaded territory, Netanyahu said no civilian would die if they went to safe zones in southern Gaza. But that's not possible for all Gaza residents and Israeli forces have also bombarded the Strip's southern end. Israel's military also announced yesterday that it had rescued a female soldier from Hamas captivity. Hamas released a short video showing three other female captives yesterday. Hamas previously had released four hostages after taking more than 220 in an attack earlier this month. Israel says more than 1,400 Israelis have been killed in this month's war, most of them civilians in that same attack.

The Gaza Health Ministry said yesterday that more than 8,300 Palestinians have been killed and more than 1,400,000 people in Gaza have fled their homes. The humanitarian crisis there is getting worse. The World Health Organization said two hospitals have been damaged in the past two days, and the relief organization, CARE reports that some patients that overcrowded Gaza hospitals are having surgery without anesthesia.

♦

As we mentioned yesterday, a mob stormed a Russian airport over the weekend trying to stop a plane arriving from Tel Aviv while some shouted antisemitic slogans. And in Berlin, vandals threw Molotov cocktails at a synagogue last week and drew the star of David on the doors of homes and apartment buildings where Jews live. These are examples of an alarming rise in antisemitic acts reported across Europe and the US in the weeks since the Israel-Hamas war broke out. In the US, the Anti-Defamation League said it recorded more than 300 antisemitic acts between October 7th and October 23rd. Of those, the group linked nearly 200 to the war and antisemitic threats posted to a Cornell University fraternity and sorority forum over the weekend, including to kill Jews on campus have prompted a police response and even intervention from New York Governor, Kathy Hochul.

Elsewhere, Germany reported a 240% increase in antisemitic acts, a week after the start of the conflict. In the US, an Illinois landlord pleaded not guilty yesterday in the fatal stabbing of a six-year-old Palestinian American boy. Prosecutors say the man was motivated by a hatred of Muslims when he stabbed Wadea Al-Fayoume 26 times and also stabbed and seriously injured his mother, Hanan Shaheen. The Department of Justice has launched a federal hate crimes investigation into the attack.

♦

Several major partisan legal battles have arrived at the Supreme Court this year from the Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals. I spoke with USA TODAY Supreme Court Correspondent, John Fritze about the nation's most Right-leaning Appeals Court. John, thanks for hopping on.

John Fritze:

Taylor. How you doing?

Taylor Wilson:

Good. Good to have you back on. So several major partisan legal battles have arrived at the Supreme Court this year from the Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals. John, what are some of the big cases we're talking about here and how do they show this to really be the most Right-leaning Appeals Court in the nation?

John Fritze:

I think the one that got attention of a lot of the folks that cover the Supreme Court is this issue regarding ghost guns because back in August, the Supreme Court turned away basically a challenge to a Biden administration rule on ghost guns. Ghost guns are these guns that are basically untraceable. People can buy them in kit form and put them together at home. They don't have a serial number and so forth. The administration put a rule in saying, "You got to put a serial number on those things and you got to run the kind of background checks that other gun sellers have to run." A bunch of groups challenged, came up through the Fifth Circuit on an emergency basis.

The Fifth Circuit said that you can't force that rule and the Supreme Court turned that back and I think this gets a little technical. What's interesting is that it went back down to the lower courts. A couple of manufacturers tried to wiggle out of that ruling. It came back up to the Supreme Court and Supreme Court said no again. So it was two slap downs of the Fifth Circuit on that issue in a pretty short period of time.

The other big one that a lot of us have paid attention to in the last few weeks involves social media and whether the White House can lean on Twitter, now X, and Facebook and other platforms to throttle content. You take those plus some others that are out there, the abortion pill being another big one. And the Fifth Circuit at least so far this term is not having a very good ride at the nation's highest court.

Taylor Wilson:

And John, the Fifth Circuit deals with appeals from courts in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Why have some conservative groups really targeted courts in this region for various issues?

John Fritze:

Yeah, it's a really interesting question because the Fifth isn't even the circuit with the highest share of Republican judges. There are other circuits with higher shares. What's interesting is that you had a lot of judges appointed by Donald Trump during his four years in office on the Fifth Circuit. And I also think geography is playing a factor. As you note, it's these three conservative states. Texas is a pretty big state obviously, and you've got a lot of folks in these states. You've also got Attorneys General Republican for the most part that are I think, eager to bring some of these culture war lawsuits against a Democratic president, in the same way that blue states often do against Republican presidents. So you see states bringing lawsuits in California and Washington when Trump was in office. It's just the reverse of that.

And also, there are some courts in Texas where conservative plaintiffs can pretty much be guaranteed to get a District Court judge who was nominated to the bench by Donald Trump. And so if you are looking for a fast ticket to the Supreme Court, Texas is a pretty good place to do that. And part of the equation there is that that Texas court, that lower court when you or the other side appeals will be at the Fifth Circuit, which is conservative, and then either side that loses is likely to go right up to SCOTUS.

Taylor Wilson:

John, what do experts say about how the Fifth Circuit could be advantageous toward helping the Supreme Court position itself as appearing more moderate on the national stage?

John Fritze:

Yeah, it's hard to get inside anybody's head here. There's a line of argument, particularly I hear it among liberals on the Left. This idea that the Fifth Circuit really helps the Supreme Court at a time when the Supreme Court is not doing very well in polls. There's a lot of concern that it's become political, particularly on the Left. There's a lot of criticism of the Supreme Court. There's this theory out there that, well, the Fifth makes it look like maybe it's not so conservative after all. It gives the Supreme Court a chance to push back on some of these even more conservative ideas. I don't know if that's true.

There's also an argument that some of what they're doing logically follows from the very conservative decisions the Supreme Court's handing down. And so you see that particularly in this guns case that's coming up in a few days here, dealing with domestic violence restraining orders. And what the Fifth Circuit found in this controversial case is, look, there was no Founding Era law that said you can bar someone from having a gun because they have a domestic violence restraining order. So there's some line of argument that, look, what the Fifth's doing is really just following the Supreme Court's lead.

Taylor Wilson:

All right, John Fritze, always great insight for us from the Supreme Court. Thank you, John.

John Fritze:

Thank you.

♦

Taylor Wilson:

New polling finds that former President, Donald Trump still dominates the race for Iowa. The Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows 43% of likely Republican caucusgoers chose Trump as their first choice, up from 42% in an August poll for the state. But support for former UN Ambassador, Nikki Haley is surging. She's pulled even with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for second with both tied at 16%. That's a three point drop for DeSantis since August, and a 10-point jump for Haley. Senator Tim Scott came in next polling at 7%. Iowa will hold its first in the nation in-person caucuses on January 15th.

♦

Gene therapy might cure sickle cell disease, but with plenty of risk and a steep cost to patients. I spoke with USA TODAY Health Reporter, Karen Weintraub to learn more. Thanks for hopping on Karen.

Karen Weintraub:

Thanks for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

So let's start with some basics here at the top. What is sickle cell disease?

Karen Weintraub:

So sickle cell is an inherited genetic disease where people's red blood cells are misshapen and they form a sickle, a rounded pointy shape. And that shape tends to get clogged in blood vessels. Somebody described it to me once as like nails in a balloon and they poke the edge of the balloon and get stuck and cause terrible pain crises. There's almost nothing that's as painful as these crises that people can have on a routine basis with sickle cell. And long-term, it can cause organ damage, lead to stroke and people often die in their 40s and 50s.

Taylor Wilson:

Yeah. And Karen, for people suffering from this disease, how brutal is it for folks living with this every day?

Karen Weintraub:

So in the most severe forms of disease, people can be in and out of the hospital on a weekly basis. It just totally dominates their lives. They have trouble staying in school, holding down jobs. It's really quite debilitating for these folks.

Taylor Wilson:

Several companies are pursuing gene therapy to treat sickle cell and an FDA panel will review one of them today. What does this kind of gene therapy involve?

Karen Weintraub:

So the one that's up today is the first therapy to be considered that uses the gene editing technique called CRISPR, which you might've heard of. It was a big deal in 2020 when the discoverers of it won the Nobel Prize. The first two women to share a Nobel Prize, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, and Charpentier co-founded a company that is one of the companies involved in this new effort. And basically, they're editing the genes of people who have sickle cell in order to get rid of that disease.

And theoretically, this will solve their problem. They will be cured, they will not have the disease anymore, which is pretty amazing if you live your whole life with a disease and then suddenly don't have it anymore. The other approach is a slightly different approach, doesn't use CRISPR, but also theoretically has the same benefit.

Taylor Wilson:

And that's up for approval later this year, correct?

Karen Weintraub:

Right. Both of them, the FDA is considering both of them for approval in December.

Taylor Wilson:

And what results have we seen so far in trials around this?

Karen Weintraub:

Yeah, the results have been pretty amazing. People who've had to have blood transfusions on a monthly basis have gone a year or more without them. About 90% of people have managed without blood transfusions for as long as a year or more. So it really turns them from regularly very ill people to people with a manageable disease or even no disease at all.

There are some significant risks involved. The therapy requires people to undergo chemotherapy, so they lose their hair, they lose their fertility, and there are other risks. So it's not without challenges, it increases cancer risk. So this is not something to be taken lightly and the people who are choosing to do it are really those with the most severe form of the disease.

Taylor Wilson:

In addition to those risks, like a lot of the innovative treatments we talk with you about here on the show, Karen, cost seems to be a real barrier here as well. Just how big of an issue is this and what do the paths look like to make it more affordable down the road?

Karen Weintraub:

So cost of gene therapy is kind of crazy. The most expensive one that's been approved so far is $3.5 million. Unclear what this one will be, but could be on that order of magnitude. Advocates say that's reasonable because you're saving potentially $4 million to $6 million for these sickest patients who are in and out of the hospital all the time, that they are costing the system that much money. Obviously, you're improving the quality of their lives, you're extending their lives. So it's worth this one time bolus of money, but it's a lot of money to pay at one time. And a lot of these folks are on public assistance because they're children, because they can't hold down jobs.

So a lot of this cost will end up on taxpayers again in the short term, but if they can suddenly become productive members of society, that will help in the long-term, will pay taxes, which they couldn't have paid before, that sort of thing. So short-term, very expensive. Long-term, potentially cost savings.

Taylor Wilson:

All right, Karen Weintraub, thanks as always.

Karen Weintraub:

Thank you.

♦

Taylor Wilson:

And before we go, happy Halloween. Whether you're taking your kids trick-or-treating or dressing up yourselves, have a happy and safe holiday. And thanks for listening to 5 Things. You can find us every day of the week, wherever you get your podcasts. And if you have any comments, you can reach us at [email protected]. I'm Taylor Wilson, back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.