JD Vance Snubs Netanyahu as Israel Ramps Up War on Gaza

Vice President JD Vance has reportedly decided to skip visiting Israel on Tuesday due to the country launching a massive operation to expand its massacre in Gaza.

Axios, citing a senior U.S. official, reported Monday that Vance didn’t want to visit Israel because he didn’t want his trip to indicate that the Trump administration was endorsing Israel’s expanded operation at the same time that the White House is trying to push for a ceasefire and hostage deal. Officially, Vance says that “logistical” issues prevent the trip from taking place.

But Vance’s snub of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, coupled with President Donald Trump’s decision not to visit Israel during his Middle East trip last week, suggest that the White House isn’t happy with Netanyahu’s decisions regarding Gaza right now. Netanyahu is stubbornly refusing any agreements to end Israel’s 19-month war on the Palestinian territory, which has caused a human rights catastrophe.

White House envoy Steve Witkoff has been pressing Israel and Hamas to accept an updated proposal for a ceasefire deal that would free the remaining hostages in Gaza. But Israel has begun mobilizing troops for Operation Gideon’s Chariots, which would forcibly displace two million Palestinians from the territory in a shocking display of ethnic cleansing.

For now, Israel has resumed allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza after two months, responding to pressure from the Trump administration and Europe. Trump even said last week that “a lot of people are starving” in Gaza, a rare acknowledgment of the humanitarian crisis Israel has caused in the territory.

That crisis only continues to worsen as Israel now seeks to begin wider ground operations in Gaza. More than 53,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed since October 2023, which is very likely an undercount, with nearly 3,200 killed since Israel resumed airstrikes in March, following a brief ceasefire. This doesn’t include people dying due to famine and starvation caused by Israel’s aid restrictions. It’s going to take a lot more than a missed visit to end the onslaught.

Donald Trump is threatening to sue American businesses for discussing the apparently cozy relationship he has with Qatari leadership.

In a post on Truth Social Sunday, the president publicly threatened to sue ABC News for reporting on the super luxury jumbo jet he received as a gift from Qatar.

“Why doesn’t Chairman Bob Iger do something about ABC Fake News, especially since I just won $16,000,000 based on the Fake and Defamatory reporting of Liddle George Slopadopolus,” Trump wrote, referring to a December arrangement in which ABC agreed to donate $15 million to Trump’s presidential library to settle his defamation lawsuit against the anchor.

“He was given warnings, but just couldn’t be restrained by ‘management.’ Now I see they are at it again, and I again give these SleazeBags fair warning!” he said.

The jet was widely interpreted as a foreign bribe, including by longtime supporters of the president’s agenda, such as far-right influencers Ben Shapiro and Laura Loomer. It was one of the most lavish gifts ever bestowed on a U.S. president.

“The wonderful country of Qatar, after agreeing to invest more than 1.4 Trillion Dollars in the United States of America, deserves much better than Misleading (Fake!) News. Everyone, including their lawyers, has been told that ABC must not say that Qatar is giving ME a FREE Boeing 747 Airplane, because they are not,” the president continued online, apparently incensed that a news organization was doing its job.

“Instead, and as Fake News ABC fully knows and understands, this highly respected country is donating the plane to the United States Air Force/Defense Department, AND NOT TO ME,” he posted. “By so doing, they are saving our country, and the American Taxpayer, hundreds of millions of dollars. ABC Fake News is one of the WORST.”

Claiming that the plane is going toward the Defense Department is a convenient workaround that would allow Trump to ethically accept the pricy present, since it is obviously illegal for a president (or any U.S. public officeholder) to accept gifts “of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State,” per the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause.

Except that the plane is not actually being donated to the American people. Instead, Trump is opting to use the luxurious aircraft as his new Air Force One until “shortly before he leaves office,” at which point he will transfer ownership of the plane to his presidential library foundation, sources with knowledge of the arrangement told ABC News.

Richard Briffault, a Columbia Law School professor, told NPR News Trump’s decision to accept the jumbo jet is a “pretty textbook case” of violating the emoluments clause, clarifying that if Trump hands the jet over to his library after leaving office, then it’s “not really a gift to the United States at all.”

“[Gifts are] designed to create good feelings for the recipient and to get some kind of reciprocity,” Briffault told NPR. “But the thing that [Trump] can give, of course, is public policy—weapons deals or whatever. And then, of course, it’s an incentive to other countries to give similar gifts as another way of influencing presidential decision-making.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s new strategy for defusing Donald Trump’s Qatari jet controversy is an oldie but a classic: Blame Joe Biden.

During an appearance on NBC News’s Meet the Press Sunday, Bessent tried to explain why it would be appropriate for Trump to accept a $400 million Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from the Qatari royal family to replace Air Force One—a move that has raised deep concerns about foreign corruption from across the political spectrum.

“Well, it’s not the president accepting it, it’d be the United States government,” Bessent said. “And Senator [Markwayne] Mullin said this weekend that talks had actually begun under the Biden administration.”

“I think this is an off-ramp for many in the media not to acknowledge what an incredible trip this was,” Bessent added, touting the trillions in foreign investments the president had secured during his multiday tour of the Middle East last week.

Last week, Mullin claimed that the “conversation” about accepting a luxury plane “started with Qatar with Biden a year ago.”

“What no one is talking about is [that] this same 747 has been in negotiations for a year,” Mullin said on CNN Wednesday.

A spokesperson for the Oklahoma Republican told Fox News that Mullin had been privy to a recent conversation with the Qataris and had gleaned information about the Biden administration’s reported involvement in plane talks. The Trump administration hasn’t confirmed this surprising claim, and neither has Biden’s team.

Meanwhile, Trump has been quick to try to defend himself, but not so quick to play offense.

Bessent’s assertion that the luxury plane would be a gift to the U.S. government and not Trump himself doesn’t hold much water either, considering that Trump will be the only president who uses the new Air Force One before it will be moved to his presidential library foundation in 2029, where it may be available for him to use as a private citizen.

Joe Biden’s announcement Sunday that he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer surprised many, but a doctor told MSNBC’s Morning Joe Monday that Biden has probably had cancer for many years.

“Oh, he’s had this for many years, maybe even a decade, growing there and spreading,” said Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist and bioethicist who is the brother of politician Rahm Emanuel and talent agent Ari Emanuel. “It’s a little surprising I look back at the records, and there’s no evidence that when he got his health status and the medical records were released, that he had a prostate-specific antigen.”

The fact that the cancer had spread to the bone, Emanuel told hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, indicated that it has been in Biden for “for a very long time.”

“We don’t know [how many years], obviously, and it is a little surprising to many of us oncologists that he wasn’t diagnosed earlier,” Emanuel said, noting that a regular prostate exam would have very likely caught the cancer.

“I would say it is surprising that he did not get this test given the fact that the proclivity of presidential physicians is test more rather than less, and I think it is a little, it’s a little strange,” Emanuel added. “We do know from the population, like I said, 7 percent of people diagnosed with prostate cancer get it diagnosed at the metastatic moment, when it’s already metastatic. So it’s not unusual that people can say, ‘No, I don’t want the test,’ or their doctor doesn’t recommend it or they don’t get the tests for one reason or another.”

The expert opinion of Emanuel, who also served as an adviser in the Obama administration and was on Biden’s Covid-19 advisory board when he was president, indicates that either Biden’s medical evaluations weren’t as thorough as they could have been or that the former president kept this information hidden from the public.

Whatever the case may be, these new cancer revelations do not reflect well on the Biden administration, which has already been facing criticism in recent weeks for how the final months of Biden’s presidency were handled and how details of his mental decline were kept from the public and his own staff. It seems that may have also extended to the president’s physical health.

President Trump wants to investigate Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen, Bono, and Oprah Winfrey.

“HOW MUCH DID KAMALA HARRIS PAY BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN FOR HIS POOR PERFORMANCE DURING HER CAMPAIGN FOR PRESIDENT? WHY DID HE ACCEPT THAT MONEY IF HE IS SUCH A FAN OF HERS? ISN’T THAT A MAJOR AND ILLEGAL CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION? WHAT ABOUT BEYONCÉ? … AND HOW MUCH WENT TO OPRAH, AND BONO??? I am going to call for a major investigation into this matter,” he wrote on Truth Social at 1:34 a.m. on Monday.

“Candidates aren’t allowed to pay for ENDORSEMENTS, which is what Kamala did, under the guise of paying for entertainment. In addition, this was a very expensive and desperate effort to artificially build up her sparse crowds. IT’S NOT LEGAL! For these unpatriotic ‘entertainers,’ this was just a CORRUPT & UNLAWFUL way to capitalize on a broken system. Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!”

This is an incredibly useless thing to post so late at night. Trump is irked at Bruce Springsteen for talking about how much he dislikes him on tour, so he goes on an unhinged rant calling for a Justice Department investigation that would do nothing for anyone, especially not anyone who actually needs help. It’s rich to read a man who is making shady billion-dollar crypto deals and who just accepted a luxury jumbo jet from the Qatari government speak about what is “CORRUPT & UNLAWFUL.”

For what it’s worth, the Harris campaign did come under scrutiny for making some large checks to the production companies of Oprah Winfrey and Beyoncé, especially after she was defeated so resoundingly. The Harris campaign paid $165,000 to Beyoncé’s Parkwood Production Media LLC on November 19, and $1 million to Oprah’s Harpo Productions.

The Supreme Court has once again ordered President Donald Trump to cool his jets on using the Alien Enemies Act to conduct deportations.

The high court ruled 7-2 Friday to temporarily block the Trump administration from deporting another set of detainees in northern Texas, Venezuelan immigrants accused of being gang members who feared they would be the next to be removed from the country under the wartime powers law.

The court sided with the detainees, ruling they should have been given more notice to contest their removal, and sent the case to a lower appeals court to decide whether Trump can legally deport the immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act and how much notice detained immigrants should receive before being deported.

“We decide today only that the detainees are entitled to more notice than was given on April 18, and we grant temporary injunctive relief to preserve our jurisdiction while the question of what notice is due is adjudicated,” the seven justices wrote in the majority opinion.

“Under these circumstances, notice roughly 24 hours before removal, devoid of information about how to exercise due process rights to contest that removal, surely does not pass muster.”

Naturally, conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas couldn’t even agree on this meager ruling. Justice Kavanaugh concurred.

The court even went so far as to quote itself on the Fifth Amendment, a worthwhile action given Trump and Stephen Miller’s constant redefinition of the very straightforward policy.

“[T]he Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law in the context of removal proceedings.”

This story has been updated.

A MAGA judge in Texas has issued a sweeping ruling that destroys workplace discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people in the United States. 

Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who holds a reputation for being a far-right activist judge, declared that while Title VII of the Civil Rights Act does not protect LGBTQ people from workplace harassment based on their sexual or gender orientation. The case was brought forth by the Heritage Foundation, a far-right, culturally conservative organization that heavily influenced the writings and goals of Project 2025.  

Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee, specifically targeted transgender people in his ruling, stating that they had to simply deal with any kind of discriminatory treatment in their workplace. He deduced that “a male employee must use male facilities like other males,” an assertion that completely invalidates transgender identity in its entirety rather than actually acknowledging the issues they face at work. Kacsmaryk even went so far as to order federal employment policy to remove“all language defining ‘sex’ in Title VII to include ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity.”. 

This all directly contradicts the Supreme Court’s 2020 Bostock v. Clayton County ruling, which stated plainly that Title VII protects LGBTQ workers from identity-based firing and harassment. 

Kacsmaryk is not new to this. He has been referred to as the “go-to jurist” for right wingers looking for judicial validation for cruel, oppressive, and deeply culturally conservative policy. He attacked LGBTQ protections in the Affordable Care Act, suspended FDA approval of the live-saving abortion pill mifepristone, and tried (and failed) to make Planned Parenthood pay $2 billion to Texas and Louisiana on the grounds that they were “defrauding” Medicaid. This is yet another coordinated attack from the right intended to erode hard fought social justice victories.

Donald Trump’s former lawyer turned U.S. attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba is planning to file federal charges against a sitting congresswoman.

Democratic Representative LaMonica McIver could be charged as early as Friday, according to the New Jersey Globe, for events that transpired last week when McIver, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman, and Representative Rob Menendez paid a visit to Delaney Hall, which Immigration and Customs Enforcement has started using to house immigrant detainees.

After all four were admitted into the prison, the three members of Congress tried to include Baraka in conversations. The mayor had repeatedly sought in previous days to serve the owners of the facility, Geo Group, with summonses over code violations, including refusing to grant access to the facility and failing to have an evacuation plan in place. He had been denied entry during his previous attempts.

But a scuffle took place with ICE agents, protesters at the facility’s gate, and the four, with at least one member of Congress shoved. Baraka was subsequently arrested. McIver tried to physically protect Baraka, perhaps providing Habba with a flimsy justification to arrest her. The three representatives have faced spurious accusations from the right that they attacked or punched ICE officers, and received threats of reprisal from Republicans in Congress.

Last week, the members of Congress denied any wrongdoing.

“We’ve reviewed the body cam footage shared by DHS which confirms what we’ve said from the beginning: ICE agents put their hands on Members of Congress and arrested the Mayor of Newark on public property,” a Watson Coleman spokesperson said at the time. “Nobody was ‘body slammed,’ nobody ‘assaulted’ any agents, and this footage confirms that.”

The footage seems to back up Watson Coleman’s account, as does New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy.

“LaMonica, Bonnie Watson Coleman, and Rob Menendez have absolute rights to inspect those facilities,” Murphy said to the Globe Friday. “And if [a federal charge] goes ahead, I think it’s just as I said about Ras Baraka: outrageous.”

So long as the Constitution remains as written, conservatives will have to find a new presidential frontrunner to replace Donald Trump on the 2028 ballot. But options, so far, seem scant.

An obvious choice would be Vice President JD Vance, who has emerged as a “clear favorite” in the race, per The New York Post. Most vice presidents in recent decades have attempted a run for the presidency (19 out of 49 prior veeps have shot their shot), with a third of them actually making it to the White House. But Steve Bannon, one of the far-right’s most resilient political operatives, has another possibility in mind: ex-Florida Representative Matt Gaetz.

“I don’t say this lightly. I’m a pretty good judge of horseflesh in this area,” Bannon, a former Trump adviser, told Gaetz on his podcast War Room. “If you keep doing what you’re doing, if you have interest, you’re a future president of the United States.”

“Only if you’re a future chief of staff,” Gaetz replied to Bannon.

The remarkably unpopular Florida politico lost his House seat in an unlikely gamble after Trump nominated him to serve as attorney general in November. The conveniently timed appointment—and Gaetz’s subsequent resignation—had the added benefit of killing the House investigation into Gaetz’s alleged misconduct with women and minors that include accusations of sex trafficking. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Unfortunately for Gaetz, the unsuccessful bid for Trump’s Cabinet also left him without a job, as he was forced to drop his own nomination when it became clear that Republicans weren’t going to vote for him.

Gaetz reportedly pulled his nomination just minutes after CNN reached out to the ex-lawmaker for comment on a bombshell revelation that the Ethics Committee had been notified of a second sexual encounter between Gaetz and a 17-year-old he was accused of having sex with.

In a statement following Gaetz’s withdrawal, Trump said he had “much respect” for the Florida politician and predicted Gaetz would have a “wonderful future.”

Donald Trump has always boasted about hiring “the best people,” but his special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, was a real estate investor and lawyer before being chosen for the role, with no foreign policy experience. So, he opened up Netflix.

Witkoff told The Atlantic that he has been learning on the job thanks to Netflix documentaries like “Turning Point: The Vietnam War.” Witkoff has also reportedly read books to brush up on international affairs, although the article didn’t mention which ones.

Shortly after his inauguration, Trump tasked Witkoff with negotiating a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and has since expanded his role to work on mediating between Ukraine and Russia. Witkoff has broken with past U.S. policy by directly reaching out to Hamas, and meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin by himself, relying only on Putin’s interpreters.

“I spent a lot of time with President Putin—talking, developing a friendship, a relationship with him—and that led to Marc getting on the plane,” Witkoff told Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, during an FII Institute forum in Miami in February, describing his success in getting American schoolteacher Marc Fogel released from Russian prison.

Witkoff has brushed off criticism about his lack of experience, relating foreign policy to his business background. He told The Atlantic that “[d]iplomacy is negotiation. I’ve been doing it my whole life.”

Trump chose Witkoff because they’re friends. The two have known each other since the 1980s, and Witkoff was golfing with Trump at Trump International Golf Club in Florida during an assassination attempt in September. But how does any of that demonstrate skill at resolving international conflicts and representing American interests?