Benjamin Netanyahu Says Not To Get “Hung Up” On Peace

As Israel continues to escalate its violent campaign against Palestinians, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joined CNN’s Jake Tapper for an interview, in which the Israeli prime minister said he is not going to be bothered to get “hung up” on peace with Palestinians.

“If we wait for them, we’re not going to have peace,” Netanyahu said in the interview Tuesday evening, describing his plan to instead focus on other nations like Saudi Arabia first. “I think we’ll circle back to the Palestinians and get a workable peace with the Palestinians.”

In other words, Netanyahu’s grand master strategy is to delay addressing the devastating crisis Palestinians face, brought by the actions of the government he leads, because apparently Palestinians aren’t ready to come to the table to negotiate on not being occupied.

“I went around them (Palestinians). I went directly to the Arab states and forged, with a new concept of peace … I forged four historic peace agreements: the Abraham Accords,” he said.

When Tapper asked Netanyahu whether would be willing to give the right to vote to people residing in the West Bank or East Jerusalem, Netanyahu dodged the question and said he’s “willing to have them have all the powers that they need to govern themselves, but none of the powers that threaten us.”

Netanyahu also streamed lie after lie as he attempted to justify his proposal to weaken the Israeli judiciary by allowing a simple majority in the Knesset to overturn any Supreme Court decision. This would subject an independent supreme court to the party in power (thus making it no longer an independent).

Israel is currently led by the furthest right government ever, so such a plan would be all the more convenient for Netanyahu—especially as he himself seeks to evade accountability from his own corruption trial. Netanyahu’s justice minister, Yariv Levin, told the Israeli Knesset two weeks ago that the charges against Netanyahu “contributed to a very broad public understanding that there are failures that need to be corrected” in the judicial system.

The United States certainly has its own role in affirming Netanyahu’s nonsense. Beyond sending billions of dollars in military aid to Israel, the U.S. simply fails to recognize the humanity of Palestinians. Last week, Vedant Patel, spokesman of Biden’s State Department, refused to acknowledge that Palestinians are occupied. Israeli forces killed at least 35 Palestinians in just the first month of 2023.

Nikki Haley will run for president in 2024, The Post and Courier reported, a significant shift away from her previous stance that she would not compete against her former boss Donald Trump.

Haley is expected to formally announce her run on February 15, but the Post and Courier reported her intentions Tuesday night, citing an anonymous member of her “inner circle.”

The former South Carolina governor will join what is expected to be a crowded field for the Republican nomination. Haley is currently predicted to be one of at least three women, including South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem and former Representative Liz Cheney, and one of at least two people of color, alongside Representative Tim Scott.*

Haley has been signaling her presidential ambitions for a while, despite making headlines in April 2021 for saying she “would not run if President Trump ran.” But in recent months, particularly since the start of January, she has been active on Twitter with posts either about how it’s time for a “new generation to lead” or about popular right-wing talking points, such as critical race theory and voting rights, aimed at winning over Trump’s base.

Haley was outspoken against Trump during the 2016 election, initially endorsing Senator Marco Rubio for president. But after Trump won, she happily accepted a position as United Nations ambassador and has become a loyal follower.

Haley spoke during the 2020 Republican National Convention in support of Trump. During her speech, she insisted, “America is not a racist country,” only to say immediately afterward that she and her family faced “discrimination and hardship” as Indian-Americans.

During the 2022 midterms, Haley called for Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock to be deported. (The state’s first Black senator was born in Savannah.)

Haley often plays up her Indian heritage as a sign that the GOP is not racist, falling into a familiar trap. From Herschel Walker not being allowed to speak in interviews and Byron Donalds being patted on the head when he voted for Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House, Republicans of color seem to just be political pawns.

* This post originally misstated Noem’s title.

One day after the Republican National Committee directed Republicans to “go on offense” against abortion rights, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz signed a bill codifying abortion rights as a guaranteed right to Minnesotans. The legislation will shield residents from any looming Republican attacks, even those that come from the courts.

The Protect Reproductive Options, or PRO, Act codifies protections to reproductive health care, including abortion, birth control, sterilization, and family planning and fertility services. The act, just a page long, guarantees that “every individual has a fundamental right to make autonomous decisions about the individual’s own reproductive health.”

The new law comes as Minnesota Democrats now lead all three chambers of the government, as they maintained the state House and governorship, and took control of the state Senate in November. In a midterm election partially defined by backlash against the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the new narrow majority poetically codified abortion rights into state statutes.

Abortion rights were already protected in Minnesota after a 1995 Supreme Court decision deemed that the right to an abortion was protected by the state constitution’s right to privacy; the PRO Act further enshrines this right and serves to shield it from any potential future court decisions.

In the wake of the overturning of Roe, Minnesota is among 17 states (and D.C.) that have laws protecting the right to an abortion. In New York, which already has protections, lawmakers passed an amendment that would enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution; voters will have the final say as they vote on the amendment through a ballot initiative in 2024.

Florida officials are on a tear to block school programs that they deem too “woke.” Governor Ron DeSantis announced Tuesday he plans to defund diversity, equity, and inclusion programs on state college campuses, as public school teachers are hiding their classroom libraries thanks to a new law.

DeSantis told a press conference he wants to see DEI, which he referred to as “bureaucracies,” “wither on the vine.”

“These bureaucracies are hostile to academic freedom,” he said.

DEI programs are important in helping combat implicit bias and providing support for students or employees who are members of a minority community.

DeSantis’s plan would also require students to take core classes on the history and philosophy of Western civilization.

The proposal will go before the state legislature in March. It’s part of a larger war the governor is waging against “woke culture.” This includes signing a law limiting what professors can teach about race and another that would require tenured faculty to receive performance reviews every five years. If they are not up to standards, which have not been specified yet, they could be let go (defeating the purpose of tenure). DeSantis has also blocked high schools from teaching an A.P. African American studies class.

Meanwhile, also in public schools, teachers in at least two counties have been told to hide their classroom libraries, either by wrapping the bookshelves in paper or by removing the books entirely.

A state law passed last summer mandated that school libraries must offer books that are age-appropriate, pornography-free, and “suited to student needs.” The state Department of Education issued guidance earlier this month stating the law applies not only to school-wide libraries but also to teachers’ personal classroom collections. Teachers are required to vet all the books in their classrooms—as if they didn’t have enough on their hands—and could face up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine if any books violate the new, opaque rules.

But there is very little guidance on what exactly constitutes appropriate material, and the draconian approach has upset educators and students alike. Michelle Jarrett, the president of a state association that helps school library programs, warned that removing classroom libraries could be detrimental to students as they could fall behind on reading abilities.

Marie Masferrer, a board member of the Florida Association for Media in Education and a school librarian, told The Washington Post that at one school, “the kids began crying and writing letters to the principal, saying, ‘Please don’t take my books, please don’t do this.’”

Video released Tuesday by CBS News shows Donald Trump invoking the Fifth Amendment hundreds of times during his deposition last summer in the New York attorney general’s fraud case against him.

Letitia James filed a $250 million civil fraud suit against Trump, his company, and three of his adult children (Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric). In the footage from August, the former president is seated in a Manhattan conference room answering James’s questions. By CBS’s count, Trump pleads the Fifth more than 400 times over the course of the nearly four-hour interview.

Trump pleads the Fifth so many times that at one point, he is told he can simply say “same answer” to speed up the proceedings. He declines to answer questions about the involvement of two Trump Organization executives in the fraud scheme or about his longtime accounting firm, which said that decades’ worth of his financial statements are unreliable.

At the end, Trump reads a prepared statement in which he calls the lawsuit “very unfair” and says that “anyone in my position not taking the Fifth Amendment would be a fool, an absolute fool.”

The Trump Organization was found guilty of tax fraud and fined $1.6 million earlier this month. James’s civil suit seeks to shut the company down in New York and sanction the four accused Trumps.

Trump also appears to have lied in sworn court documents for the civil suit. The presiding judge ordered him to provide defenses to James’s suit, resulting in a document that The Daily Beast says “read like a joke.”

In the document, Trump says he wasn’t president of the Trump Organization during his term at the White House, despite previously testifying he was an “inactive president.” He also said he didn’t have a financial stake in a real estate company, even though he previously testified that he did. His own lawyer even tried to argue there is no formal entity known as the “Trump Organization.”

Meanwhile, Trump is also facing investigations into his involvement in the January 6 attack, his alleged mishandling of classified documents, and his businesses’ finances. He is being sued by the Capitol Police and Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police for allegedly inciting January 6, and by writer E. Jean Carroll for both rape and defamation. The Manhattan district attorney is presenting evidence to a grand jury this week that Trump allegedly paid hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels.