Trauma surgeons Mark Perlmutter and Feroze Sidhwa had seen warzones before. But nothing prepared them for the horrors they encountered when they arrived in Gaza to help treat people wounded in the Israel-Hamas conflict.

“The constant begging for money, the malnourished population, the open sewage — all of that was familiar to us as veteran war zone doctors,” they write in this harrowing first-person account. “But add in the incredible population density, the overwhelming numbers of badly maimed children and amputees, the constant hum of drones, the smell of explosives and gunpowder — not to mention the constant earth-shaking explosions — and it’s no wonder UNICEF has declared the Gaza Strip as ‘the world’s most dangerous place to be a child.’”

The number of badly maimed children, in particular, weighed heavily on Perlmutter and Sidhwa. “We started seeing a series of children, preteens mostly, who’d been shot in the head,” they write. “They’d go on to slowly die, only to be replaced by new victims who’d also been shot in the head, and who would also go on to slowly die. Their families told us one of two stories: the children were playing inside when they were shot by Israeli forces, or they were playing in the street when they were shot by Israeli forces.”

The Israel Defense Forces did not respond to specific questions for this story, but in an emailed statement, it said, “The IDF is committed to mitigating civilian harm during operational activity.”

Read the story.

“If you took that stage, you would get booed off of it.”

Can you guess who said this to former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy at the GOP convention? Scroll to the bottom for the answer.**

Fear Is Changing Us … Capital City columnist Michael Schaffer has been covering his hometown of Washington for years, but he’s never seen people so scared. The ramping up of political division, eroding norms of civility, came to a shocking breaking point with the shooting at Trump’s rally last week. “In 2024, Washington’s sense of unease doesn’t come from foreign terrorists or obscure ideologies or monomaniacal presidential stalkers,” he writes. “It comes from particularly unhinged participants in the otherwise mainstream acrimony between America’s left and right.”

Didn’t make it to Milwaukee for the RNC this week? Your friends don’t need to know that. Use these four talking points to sound like you were living it up at the convention. (From POLITICO’s Natalie Allison, Adam Wren, Brendan Bordelon and Stephen Heuser):

• What’s a Republican got to do to get a drink around here? Grouse about all the city’s best breweries lying outside of the Secret Service perimeter.
• Act like you were too good for the Warehouse Party: “Just anybody could get a ticket, and I heard it was sweltering in there anyway.”
• Did you run into anyone famous? Of course: “I ran into Don Jr., Kimberly, Eric, Lara — the Trumps held court at the Trade Hotel bar all week.”
• Here’s a subtle one: Keep humming Merle Haggard’s “America First.” “Oh, sorry, it’s just stuck in my head after the convention.”
• Mutter about trying to leave early on Wednesday night and running into canceled flights back to DCA (or, more harrowing, to BWI), the $500 last-minute hotel rooms, and the grim food situation at Milwaukee’s airport.
• Did the shooting come up? Of course, you can say: “I’d show you the souvenir ear bandage I got from a volunteer, but I accidentally left it at the arena.”

Hillbilly Hobbit … Newly-minted Trump running mate and Ohio Sen. JD Vance has remade himself in MAGA vision. But the former president is far from his only political inspiration. POLITICO Magazine’s Ian Ward explored his intellectual influences earlier this week. But the nerdiest among you already have an intimate familiarity with something that shaped the worldview Vance hopes to implement as a potential vice president: The Lord of the Rings. “A lot of my conservative worldview was influenced by Tolkien growing up,” Vance has said. Adam Wren unpacks Vance’s fantasy-inspired politics.

The MAGA Convention in Photos … Compared to years past, the Republican National Convention this week in Milwaukee looked distinctly Trumpian — and Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer David Hume Kennerly was there to capture it. In this vivid photo essay, Kennerly charts the rise of a new kind of convention, driven by a fervor for the man at the top of the ticket.

The Myth of Black Capitalism … In 1968, Richard Nixon enlisted the help of basketball superstar Wilt Chamberlain in an effort to win over Black voters. He claimed to be launching a bold plan to win their support away from the Democratic Party, with an experiment in economic separatism called “Black capitalism.” But it “wound up being a chimera, an illusion that Nixon used to play politics,” writes Shaun Assael.

A Dog Dressed Better Than Matt Gaetz … The GOP convention was a show of MAGA defiance and determination — but it was also something of a fashion show. Just not a very good one. We asked the “Twitter menswear guy” — fashion critic Derek Guy, that is — to evaluate the best fits and worst flops in Milwaukee this week. Some conservatives impressed him. Others appeared to source their accessories “from expired seafood.” (We’re looking at you, Trump Jr.)

From the drafting table of editorial cartoonist Matt Wuerker.

**Who Dissed answer: It was his staunch rival, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, heckling McCarthy during a live TV interview from the floor of the convention. “He looks very unhinged, I mean a lot of people have concerns about him. I’m not sure if he was on something, but I do hope he gets the help that he needs,” McCarthy told CNN’s Manu Raju.

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