On Monday, flights at Beirut’s airport were canceled as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to carry out a “harsh” military attack on Lebanon, following Saturday’s deadly strike on a Syrian Druze community in the Israeli-occupied Golan town of Majdal Shams. The horrifying incident killed 12 children on a soccer field.

Israel and the U.S. immediately accused Hezbollah of hitting the town with a Falaq-1 rocket launched from southern Lebanon. Hezbollah has denied it was behind the attack and both it and the Lebanese government have called on the United Nations to undertake an independent investigation.

The way that blame for this incident unfolded publicly lends itself to competing theories of responsibility. Earlier Saturday, Hezbollah had announced it had launched a series of attacks on nearby Israeli military installations in retaliation for the killing of four Hezbollah fighters in an Israeli air strike in southern Lebanon. When news of the deaths at the soccer field began to emerge, Hezbollah swiftly issued a statement saying that it had “no connection to the [Majdal Shams] incident at all, and categorically denies all false allegations.” Hezbollah charged that an Israeli Iron Dome interceptor missile had missed its target and hit the town. Israel has claimed it identified the Hezbollah commander of the strike.

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One of the most important decisions you face as a forecaster is simply when to publish a statistical model for public consumption. If you’re just running a model for your personal edification — or to make bets with — the threshold may actually be lower. If you’re evaluating the impact of a player injury on an NFL or NBA game that you’re considering betting on, for instance, then you might only get a couple of minutes before some reasonably rational assessment of the impact has already been priced into prevailing betting lines. Under these circumstances, a good first-pass estimate can go a long way. By the time you dot all the ‘i’s and cross all the ‘t’s to incorporate the impact of the injury into a formal model, it may be too late.

When you issue a statistical forecast publicly, though, I think the responsibility is slightly greater. In some cases, probabilistic forecasts can be confusing to people. And in other circumstances, people can take statistical models too seriously and treat them as oracular when in fact all models rely on the researcher’s assumptions. Let’s not get too carried away with this — some assumptions are better than others, which is why some models are better than others. (And putting a model behind a paywall is a pretty useful trick for self-selecting a more knowledgeable reader base.) But there are times when a subjective estimate may be better, especially in unforeseen circumstances that your model wasn’t really designed to handle.

For instance, when Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race last Sunday, I suppose we could have just done a hot swap and immediately replaced him with Kamala Harris — pollsters have periodically tested the Harris vs. Trump matchup, especially since Biden’s disastrous debate on June 27. But I think this would have misinformed even our smart, self-selected group of Silver Bulletin readers more than it informed them. The polls were already in flux, given Biden’s mounting crisis on top of the assassination attempt against Trump on top of the Republican convention, which is typically a period when polls can produce short-lived bounces. And Harris’s candidacy was still hypothetical, although she was clearly prepared, working behind the scenes to become the Democrats’ presumptive nominee within 24-48 hours.

Key figure:

The federally appointed monitor tasked with overseeing the United Auto Workers, Neil Barofsky, is ratcheting up his conflict with UAW President Shawn Fain, announcing another investigation into the union leader who rose to national prominence amid the successful “Stand Up Strike” against the Big Three automakers.

Yet newly unveiled documents suggest Barofsky’s pursuit of Fain has less to do with concerns over union self-dealing and more to do with the politics of Israel-Palestine.

Barofsky was appointed in 2021 as the result of the Department of Justice-led consent decree put in place in lieu of prosecution of the union itself for rampant corruption, following prison sentences for two consecutive UAW presidents.

Some major Democratic donors have told the largest pro-Biden super PAC, Future Forward, that pledges worth roughly $90 million are now on hold if President Biden remains atop the ticket, according to two people who have been briefed on the conversations.

The frozen contributions include multiple eight-figure commitments, according to the two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the situation. The decision to withhold such enormous sums of money is one of the most concrete examples of the fallout from Mr. Biden’s poor debate performance at the end of June.

Future Forward declined to comment on any conversations with donors or the amounts of any pledged money being withheld. A Future Forward adviser would say only that the group expected contributors who had paused donations to return once the current uncertainty about the ticket was resolved.

Key quotes:

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) met with President Biden Thursday night to relay the sentiments of the House Democratic Caucus regarding his reelection bid, as concerns grow within the ranks about the incumbent’s ability to beat former President Trump in November.

The meeting — revealed in a letter to colleagues Friday morning — came after Jeffries spoke with a large swath of House Democrats in the two weeks since last month’s debate, which prompted concerns about Biden’s viability at the top of the presidential ticket. . The meeting took place after Biden’s high-stakes press conference that evening, a source familiar told The Hill.

Jeffries said he passed along the “full breadth” of thoughts he heard within his caucus.

Not sure if this violates rules, but this is breaking news and the primary source. Local news video.

17th house Democrat calls for Biden to step down. Post NATO-news conference, 6:30 Pacific Time

Key quote:

Even from behind bars, Steve Bannon’s message is clear: Republicans want Joe Biden to stay in the presidential race. Why? Because they know it will be better for Donald Trump.

In an email interview with Matthew Boyle from far-right Breitbart News, the former Trump adviser was asked what he made of the Democrats sticking with Biden amid widespread criticism of the president’s performance in last month’s debate and the calls for him to drop out of the presidential race.

“So we got the candidate we want … and the country is stuck with a nonperforming cadaver,” Bannon replied.