Israel

In the past two days, three senior Defense Department officials have been suspended and one has resigned. Their departures are apparently connected to an internal investigation into "recent unauthorized disclosures of national security information." On Tuesday, Dan Caldwell, who has been working closely with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Darin Selnick, the Defense Department’s deputy chief of staff, were escorted from their office by guards. Then, yesterday, Colin Carroll, chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg, was ousted, too. John Ullyot, a top Pentagon spokesman, also announced he was resigning.All four men are military veterans.

A federal immigration judge ruled on Friday that the government could deport Mahmoud Khalil, not a student, but a “Columbia University graduate.” Judge Jamee Comans, a former Mississippi police officer and a Biden appointee in 2023, said that Khalil’s political activities posed “potentially serious foreign policy consequences” for the United States, which is claiming that Khalil is undermining “US policy to fight anti-Semitism.”  Khalil supporters talk about him like he’s Nelson Mandela on Robben Island, Dr. King writing letters from Birmingham jail or Oscar Wilde staring wistfully at the moon from his cell in Reading Gaol. But anyone looking to ding the Trump administration on its deportation policy could find a better example of injustice.

It's been a minute since Democrats have heard any good news coming out of Florida, a one-time swing state where Republicans now hold a 1.2 million voter advantage in party registration. And so, the fact that Democrats were looking forward to watching special election results in the Sunshine State in two heavily conservative districts Tuesday night is surprising – and reflects some important realities about national and local politics. Perhaps the most important dynamic is the national scoreboard. Republicans went into the night holding a 218-213 advantage with four seats vacant, and came out of it up 220-213, despite two Florida wins that were surprisingly lackluster.

President Donald Trump warned Hamas that there would be “hell to pay” when he returned to the White House if the terrorist organization continued to hold the hostages that it and Gazans have held for almost 500 days. Around eighty hostages, living and murdered, remain in Gaza.Last night, Trump laid out what “hell to pay” could look like: a potential American takeover of the Gaza Strip, maximum pressure against Iran and arms shipments to Israel.Trump, who famously compared the Arab-Israeli conflict to a “real-estate deal” in 2015, proposed a radical reshifting of the entire region, alongside Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu — the first foreign leader he’s hosted in person in the White House in his second term.

By the time you read this, the first raft or two of Donald Trump’s executive orders will have been promulgated. No one outside the charmed circle of his close advisors knows what is coming down the pike, but all indications are that the orders will be energetic and far-reaching. Colin Powell would probably have pulled out the phrase “shock and awe.” Most observers believe that there will be robust attention to immigration, the border, energy, regulation, taxes and the conduct of elections. There will probably also be orders touching the fate of some 1,500 people charged in connection with the self-guided tour of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. I would not be surprised if there were also orders regarding the conduct of some of the prosecutors involved in those cases.

President Joe Biden has taken actions that will make former and President-elect Donald Trump’s transition into the White House difficult, slowing him down with federal rules and other roadblocks, according to inside sources and Trump himself.  Last week, Trump talked to reporters outside of Mar-a-Lago about the departing Biden administration.  “They’re trying everything they can to make things more difficult,” Trump said.  He also told reporters that Biden was being “sneaky,” despite the current president’s public pledge to cooperate with the incoming administration’s transition into the White House.  “They try to be sneaky,” Trump said at a press conference.