Hi friends! It’s-a-me! Olivia Messer, editor-in-chief of The Barbed Wire. I’ve missed you so much — and I know you’ve missed my emojis 💖. Senior Editor Brian Gaar is on a well-earned vacation, so I’m here to tell you about all of the important, entertaining stories we’ve cooked up for you this week. Welcome back to The Barbed Wire newsletter, where we aim to make you rage, laugh, and cry in equal measure.
First up, Gov. Greg Abbott appears to be zig-zagging on THC, if for no other reason than to confuse an already news-overwhelmed public. Despite vetoing a bill that would ban all THC and hemp-based products just one month ago, Abbott on Tuesday called for a ban on all “intoxicating” THC products. “Feels a little like Groundhog Day,” Sen. Charles Perry (R-Lubbock), who introduced SB 5, said at a July 22 hearing.
We also have an absolutely gut-wrenching story from new contributor Tyler Hicks — in which he interviewed a Dallas-based ER doctor who spent two weeks in Gaza volunteering at the last remaining fully-functional hospital in the area. It’s a tough read, but it’s absolutely vital storytelling.
Meanwhile, the already must-watch race between incumbent U.S. Sen. John Cornyn and his wannabe replacement, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, got even messier in the aftermath of Paxton’s very public divorce from his state senator soon-to-be-ex-wife. (This one genuinely made me laugh out loud, which is a real gift for a story about political villains.)
Speaking of politics, Joe Rogan wants progressive Democrat state Rep. James Talarico — who is reportedly mulling his candidacy for U.S. Senate — to consider aiming even higher. “You need to run for president,” Rogan, who endorsed Trump in the 2024 race, told 36-year-old Talarico at the end of the episode. “We need someone who’s actually a good person.”
Is This the Year Texas Republicans Finally Blow It In the Senate?
By Brian Gaar
Babies Burned to Death & Pregnant Women Bombed in Tents: What a Dallas ER Doctor Saw in Gaza
Dr. Adil Husain says he will spend the rest of his life thinking about the patients he couldn’t save on his 2-week trip to Palestine, where the WHO warns the healthcare system is on the brink of collapse nearly two years into Israel’s war in Gaza.
By Tyler Hicks
When Dr. Adil Husain finally reached the hospital in Gaza, he told the staff he didn’t mind working 12-hour shifts.
They laughed.
“You’re not going to survive more than four-hour bursts,” they told him.
Husain, a 32-year-old emergency room doctor who lives in Dallas, was part of a group that called themselves “the Gaza Six”: six doctors from around the world who’d traveled to volunteer at Nasser Hospital — the last fully functioning facility of its kind in the area.
His team did as recommended. Husain worked four hours at a time with brief breaks in between, always surrounded by the sound of bombs and the site of bloodied bodies anywhere there was room: on beds, the floor, and propped against walls.
Almost every day included a mass casualty incident. On the morning of June 12, the day Husain’s team crossed the border into the West Bank, 24 civilians were killed and 200 were wounded in an attack by the Israeli military near a humanitarian aid distribution center, Al Jazeera reported. That night, 28 people — including four children —- were killed by Israeli airstrikes, while another 24 were shot trying to get food. The next day, 20 were killed by more airstrikes.
When mass casualty incidents hit fully-staffed hospitals in the United States, they overwhelm doctors and nurses, deplete blood supplies, and cost billions per year. But those doctors have a wealth of resources — and safe homes to return to at night — that Nasser’s doctors don’t.
What’s more, the World Health Organization has warned that Gaza’s health system is on the brink of collapse after “relentless and systematic decimation of hospitals.” Reports from the United Nations, Gazan health authorities, and watchdog groups say Palestinian healthcare workers have been targeted, killed, detained, and tortured. And in June, as Husain’s team arrived, the WHO said the Nasser Medical Complex was at risk of becoming non-functional.
Many experts — including the UN — have called Israel’s 21-month war in Gaza a genocide. In the first year, more than two-thirds of Gaza’s cropland was damaged, the UN found. The food and medical supplies that reach Gazans often can’t meet the demand, and nearly every day, dozens of people are killed at the aid sites. Nearly 100 were killed as recently as Sunday while grabbing sacks of flour from UN World Food Programme trucks, per NPR.
“This is a man-made starvation,” Husain told The Barbed Wire (a claim backed up by human rights organizations, including Amnesty International).
Most of the mass casualty incidents Husain experienced happened in the morning, when people — including more children than Husain could count — were shot trying to get a meal for their family.
“A lot of times they would have empty bags in their shirts or in their pants so that they could just fill it and then come back home,” he said. “But not only do they have empty bags with no food, but they’re left with life-threatening injuries or death.”
The Israel Defense Forces say they try to avoid killing civilians, and they’ve chalked up some of the deaths to “technical error.” But this — to put it mildly — contradicts what Husain and other doctors have seen.
Doctors like Husain are experiencing a reality few can imagine and many continue to deny exists, despite first-person accounts, photos, and videos of the violence. As the few remaining journalists in Gaza — including Pulitzer Prize finalists working for the Agence France-Presse — face the brink of starvation, visiting physicians are thrust into roles as messengers while coping with the horrors they witnessed.
They’re sharing their stories with the world, and for Husain, that means focusing on our shared humanity.
There was the ER nurse who traveled an hour and a half on his day off to give Husain a parting present: a bottle of cologne. There were the children who smiled wide when given chocolate, then licked the foil clean. And there was the grieving mother who, after a horrific loss, extended a grace toward Husain he’ll never forget.
“I felt honored to even be there, to be around these types of people,” Husain said.
After returning to Texas, Husain told The Barbed Wire about the people he met — the ones he lost and the ones he saved.
He can’t stop thinking about all of them.
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