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On today's episode of The Excerpt podcast: Israel has expanded its offensive in south Gaza. USA TODAY Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page recaps her sit down with Liz Cheney, who says she's ready to consider a third party. The Supreme Court appears split on whether the Sackler family can be sued over the opioid crisis. Watch or listen to a special episode on the issue here. USA TODAY Supreme Court Correspondent John Fritze breaks down a case that could have implications for how the government taxes the wealthy. A former U.S. diplomat has been charged with working as a secret agent for Cuba.

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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 today is Tuesday, December 5th, 2023. This is The Excerpt. Today Israel expands its offensive in Gaza South. Plus Liz Cheney speaks out about 2024 ahead of her new book, and we have the latest from a busy week on the Supreme Court.

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Israel intensified its bombardment in and around the city of Khan Younis in Gaza South yesterday. Israel's airstrikes and ground defensive have already devastated much of the territories north and pushed many civilians to Gaza South. Three quarters of Gazans have already had to leave their homes, and as Israel expands its defensive in the South, many of them are now left with fewer and fewer options for safety. Gaza's health ministry says around 15,890 people have been killed since October 7th.

An Israeli army official gave a similar figure for Gaza's death toll yesterday after weeks of Israeli officials doubting the ministry's count. Israel says it must remove Hamas from power to prevent a repeat of an October 7th Hamas attack that killed around 1,200 people in Israel. Hamas also took some 240 people hostage. Meanwhile, the UN heard testimony yesterday surrounding claims that Hamas committed sexual violence during the October 7th attack. Gilad Erdan, the Israeli ambassador to the UN, said evidence points to such violence, including reports from first responders at sites where militants struck, and from military reservists who worked to identify the bodies of those killed. Hamas issued a statement denying that it's militants committed sexual assaults.

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Liz Cheney says she's ready to consider a third party while continuing to warn that former president Donald Trump poses a grave threat. USA Today Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page spoke with Chaney ahead of the release of her new book, and I caught up with Susan for a recap. Thanks for making the time, Susan.

Susan Page:

Oh, you bet.

Taylor Wilson:

So Susan, can you just start by reminding us a bit about who Liz Cheney is and what her backstory looks like?

Susan Page:

Liz Cheney was a rising star in the Republican Party, three times elected to the house from Wyoming, a member of the congressional leadership, but then along came January 6th, she then voted to impeach President Trump and agreed to serve on that select committee that was investigating what happened on January 6th. And since then she has lost her position in the leadership. Then she lost her congressional seat and now she's out with a new book.

Taylor Wilson:

And Liz Cheney told you that it may be time for a new third party. What exactly did she say here, Susan, and why does she feel that way?

Susan Page:

Well, she says that she wants to bring the Republican Party back to its conservative roots, but she says that may not be possible. It's been transformed into the image of Donald Trump. So she says that after this election, this 2024 election, maybe it'll be time to forge a new conservative party. What she also said, that I thought was incredibly interesting and a little surprising, is that she hasn't ruled out running for president herself next year on the No Labels ticket, which is a third party bid that promises to put a Republican and a Democrat on the ticket. That would be, I think, very big news indeed.

Taylor Wilson:

And I'm curious, she's very focused on stopping Trump. That's the priority. Did she say anything about whether she might support President Joe Biden as a means to that goal?

Susan Page:

So she wouldn't address who she'd vote for. She said she won't vote for Trump, but she wouldn't commit or suggest whether she would vote for Biden or not. If she ran on the No Labels ticket, which she says is a possibility but not a certainty, there are a lot of Democrats who think that would be very bad for Joe Biden and good for Donald Trump because it would give Republicans who don't want to vote for Trump another place to be. Now she says if she believed that the effort was going to be a spoiler, that it was going to deliver the election to Trump, that she wouldn't do it.

Taylor Wilson:

When it comes to Capitol Hill, she also had some comments. What does Cheney say about the state of the Republican controlled house and Congress as a whole right now?

Susan Page:

This is amazing. I mean, she is from a family that once defined Conservative Republicanism, her father, the two-term Vice President, a member of Congress himself, Dick Cheney. But she says that she thinks Republicans and other Americans ought to vote to put Democrats in control of the House of Representatives because she says her fellow Republicans cannot be trusted to certify the results of a legitimate election in 2024.

Taylor Wilson:

And this new book called Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning comes out today. Susan, what else is she saying here? Does she reveal anything the public might not have been aware of?

Susan Page:

Well, she says that her father is very proud of her, and she says that her five children are very proud of her. But she says she came home once from one of those televised January 6th hearings that we all watched so closely, and her youngest son said, "I'm so proud of you, mom. Now can we work on getting my learner's permit?"

Taylor Wilson:

All right, Susan Page with some great insight here from your sit down with Liz Cheney. Thanks so much, Susan.

Susan Page:

Thank you.

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Taylor Wilson:

The Supreme Court yesterday appeared divided over whether the Sackler family, which made its fortune selling a drug that fueled the country's opioid epidemic, could be shielded from civil lawsuits by paying $6 billion to victims in drug treatment programs as part of a bankruptcy settlement. Justices are being asked to decide a question related to bankruptcy law, but the case also involves the debate over how much to punish the family for their role in the opioid crisis and whether blowing up the current settlement might jeopardize any payout for tens of thousands of victims and their families. Most victims support the settlement with Purdue Pharma, the company that made Oxycontin and marketed the drug as less addictive than other opioids. But the Justice Department stepped in to question whether courts can absolve the Sackler family from future lawsuits.

Supporters say it's unclear whether a better deal could ever be reached with Purdue, and the bankruptcy fight has already dragged on for years. But opponents have questioned the actual scope of support for the settlement, noting that it's impossible, for instance, to count future victims. A child who lost parents to opioids, for example, might not be able to bring a claim against the Sacklers today, and under the agreement would then be barred from doing so forever. You can hear more about this case and the broader conversation in a special episode with my colleague Dana Taylor and Supreme Court Correspondent John Fritze from earlier this fall. We have a link in today's show notes.

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And in another case, a retired couple is suing over several thousands in taxes, and it could have major implications for how the government taxes the earnings of wealthy Americans. I spoke with USA TODAY Supreme Court correspondent John Fritze for more. John, good to have you on.

John Fritze:

Thanks, Taylor.

Taylor Wilson:

So John, let's just start here. What's that issue in this case surrounding this couple fighting taxes?

John Fritze:

Most Americans, when they think about income tax, they probably think about their paycheck, and it's pretty easy to understand what income is in that context. You get a paycheck, so you receive or realize this income and the government takes a piece of that out, an income tax. The question here is what happens if you have earnings, but you don't "realize the income"? And what happened here was this couple, Charles and Kathleen Moore had invested quite a bit of money in a foreign company. It was a company in India and the profits from their investments, they never realized, they never put that money in their pocket. Instead, that money was reinvested in the company. What they argue is that they shouldn't have to pay income tax on that because they never actually put that money in their pocket.

Taylor Wilson:

So John, what are the potential broader implications here?

John Fritze:

Yeah, I mean, it's tax code, right? And it gets really wonky and really complicated really fast. But I think, for our purposes, the thing to know is that there's a lot of parts of the tax code that work like this. There are other taxes, not really for individuals, but for types of businesses and so forth, partnerships, passthroughs, where there is a similar situation in how income tax works. What the federal government says is, "Look, we've been doing this for a long time and no one's challenging this other stuff." The federal government says that if this particular tax provision at issue in the case of the Moores, if this thing is overturned, then that alone could cost the federal government 340 billion over the next decade. And there's concern on that side of this case that if you overturn this provision, that all these other provisions that we just talked about, that those two would at least be open to a challenge and that could cost the federal government a lot of money.

Taylor Wilson:

Yeah. So John, you write that some experts feel this fight is really about disrupting a possible wealth tax. How does this case fit into that?

John Fritze:

The wealth tax deals with taxing unrealized, again that word, taxing earnings that you don't put in your pocket. That could be financial holdings, assets, equities, and so forth. So wealthy folks tend to have a lot of those, and they don't, as you think about it, you don't pay tax on the growth in a stock, let's say, until you cash it out, until you sell it, then you pay the income on it. And there has been this idea that that allows super rich individuals in the country to sort of skirt around some tax liability and that they sort of exploit these loopholes to reduce their tax burden. And some people have said, "Look," and Democrats in particular have talked about, "Well, maybe there's a way to get at those earnings with a wealth tax." And President Biden himself has, for a couple of years, proposed this idea of taxing unrealized capital gains. And so that's a real policy debate that's out there. I think politically it's not going anywhere, but if the court were to side with the Moores, depending on how they ruled, it could also be legally shut down by this case.

Taylor Wilson:

John, Senate Democrats have called on Justice Sam Alito to recuse himself from the tax case. Why is that?

John Fritze:

So at the height of the ethical scandals involving the Supreme Court, Justice Alito gave several interviews to the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, and it just so happens that one of the authors of those pieces, a person who did the interviews and wrote them, a guy named David Rivkin, happens to be one of the attorneys representing the Moores. And so Senate Democrats, based on that, and based on the fact that these articles were very kind of one-sided, that Democrats have asked for Alito to recuse himself from the case.

Alito in a statement a few months back, balked at that, said, "Nothing doing." And his argument was that a lot of justices have sat for interviews with media and then declined to recuse in cases that those media companies were involved in. It's not clear all of the questions that Justice Alito took with the Wall Street Journal. Certainly the pieces came out very proAlito without much room for their other side of the argument. But folks can go read those and I guess make up their own determination about whether those are analogous things that happened.

Taylor Wilson:

John Fritze, always great insight and analysis from the Supreme Court. Thanks so much, John.

John Fritze:

Thank you.

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Taylor Wilson:

A former US diplomat and ambassador to Bolivia has been charged with working for more than four decades as a secret agent for the Cuban government according to the Justice Department. Manuel Rocha was arrested in Miami on Friday and appeared in federal court yesterday. A complaint filed in US district court states that he's accused of serving as a covert agent to support Cuba's "clandestine intelligence gathering mission against the United States." Investigators say Rocha provided the US with false and misleading information to protect his mission, traveled outside the country to meet with Cuban intelligence operatives and made false statements to obtain travel documents. An undercover FBI agent met with him three times and investigators say that during the meetings he referred to the US as the enemy. You can read more with a link in today's show notes.

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And thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio. If you use a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm back tomorrow with more of the excerpt from USA Today.