Israel Strikes Beirut, Breaking a Ceasefire—Again

Breaking a year-long ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, Israel struck the suburbs of Beirut on Sunday, killing at least five people and wounding 28 others, according to the BBC and Lebanon’s Health Ministry.

Israel says it killed a senior Hezbollah official, Haytham Tabtabai, in an attack aimed at discouraging the militant group from rearming.

Hezbollah has not attacked Israel since the ceasefire began last November, according to the AP.

In a statement, Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun accused Israel of refusing to implement its side of the deal, post-ceasefire. He asked the international community to “intervene with strength and seriousness to stop the attacks on Lebanon and its people.”

This is not the first time Israel has broken its ceasefire with Hezbollah, nor has the country kept its ceasefire agreement with Hamas.

According to the Gaza Government Media office, Israel has violated the ceasefire with Gaza nearly 500 times in 44 days, killing hundreds of Palestinians, reported Al Jazeera.

Yesterday in Gaza, Israel launched airstrikes that killed at least 24 people. One strike targeted a vehicle, killing 11 people and wounding over 20. Hospital director Mohamed Abu Selmiya told reporters that most of the victims were children.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said that it launched the strikes after a Hamas fighter shot at Israeli soldiers in Israeli-occupied Gaza, none of whom were hurt. Earlier in the week, Israeli strikes killed at least 33 other Palestinians.

Israel has mounted more and more attacks on Gaza and on Lebanon in recent weeks, despite ceasefire agreements. The intensified strikes come at the same time as the U.N. Security Council endorsed President Donald Trump’s peace plan for Gaza, which would create a “Board of Peace” to oversee the future of the region.

But as Israel continues to kill civilians in Gaza and Lebanon, despite existing ceasefires, it’s hard to find hope that Trump’s new peace plan will do much of anything at all.

FBI Director Kash Patel has come under fire for using taxpayer-funded resources like government planes and SWAT protection for personal reasons.

When his girlfriend, country singer Alexis Wilkins, performed at an NRA convention, she had an FBI SWAT team as her bodyguards. The agents were members of a special unit trained to rescue hostages and penetrate barricaded buildings, according to The New York Times. Once the team had secured the convention center, they departed. But Patel didn’t like that.

He reportedly lambasted the team’s commander for leaving Wilkins without protection while she chatted with fans on the convention floor.

It’s only the latest incidence of Patel using taxpayer-funded resources for his own personal activities. He’s been treating specialized FBI agents like his and his girlfriend’s private security detail, as well as jet-setting across the globe on government planes, according to the Times.

Former FBI agent Christopher O’Leary criticized Patel’s actions, telling the Times that his use of the private plane and SWAT agents for his girlfriend’s detail “are indicative of his lack of leadership experience, judgment and humility.”

And Patel’s right-wing allies aren’t happy either: “Is she considered Kash’s spouse?” asked Grace Chong, an influencer who works for Steve Bannon, on X. “Is that why she’s getting protection because if not then why are we paying for this?”

Patel claims that Wilkins is getting this level of protection because she’s received death threats. But that doesn’t explain his extensive travel—to see her, and for other personal and business-related reasons.

An FBI spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal earlier this month that Patel had taken nearly a dozen personal trips since becoming FBI director in February, compared to former FBI Director Robert Mueller’s itinerary of 10 personal flights over a four-year period.

After his surprisingly warm meeting with President Donald Trump, NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani reiterated that yes, he still believes Trump is a fascist.

During an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Kristen Welker pressed Mamdani about the recent event at the White House. By all accounts, the two had gotten along unexpectedly well, and the president had beamed at the press conference afterwards. Trump also posted several photos of the two together on his Truth Social account.

The unexpectedly friendly vibes turned the meeting into somewhat of a public spectacle, and Welker referenced an exchange with a reporter that took place about Mamdani’s previous usage of the term fascist. She asked if he still believed that the president was one.

“That’s something I’ve said in the past, and I say it today,” Mamdani said.

“Do you still believe President Trump is a threat to democracy?” Welker followed up later.

“Everything that I’ve said in the past I continue to believe,” Mamdani said. “That’s the thing that I think is important about politics, is we don’t shy away from where we have disagreements, but we understand what brings us to that table.”

Later in the interview, Welker tried again, raising a valid point.

“I think that some of your supporters would be curious to know … you say you stand by your past statements, that yes he’s a threat to the democracy, how do you square working with someone who you still think is a threat to the democracy?”

“I think working for the people of New York City demands that you work with everyone and anyone—and that you always look to find those areas of agreement while not overlooking the places of disagreement,” Mamdani said.

The friendly meeting between two politicians who had insulted each other for months (Trump has called Mamdani “my little Communist,” among other things) shocked and irritated Trump’s MAGA base, including far-right activist Laura Loomer, who denounced the event on social media.

While Trump and Mamdani, who is a democratic socialist, disagree on nearly everything, the two seem to have bonded over affordability, and their shared love of New York City.

President Donald Trump’s rage has not cooled for the six Democrats who posted a video reminding military and intelligence personnel that their duty is to the Constitution, not to him.

The president fired off two Truth Social posts late Saturday night in an all-caps rant about the issue, writing: “THE TRAITORS THAT TOLD THE MILITARY TO DISOBEY MY ORDERS SHOULD BE IN JAIL RIGHT NOW, NOT ROAMING THE FAKE NEWS NETWORKS TRYING TO EXPLAIN THAT WHAT THEY SAID WAS OK. IT WASN’T, AND NEVER WILL BE! IT WAS SEDITION AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL, AND SEDITION IS A MAJOR CRIME. THERE CAN BE NO OTHER INTERPRETATION OF WHAT THEY SAID!”

Next, he posted, “MANY GREAT LEGAL SCHOLARS AGREE THAT THE DEMOCRAT TRAITORS THAT TOLD THE MILITARY TO DISOBEY MY ORDERS, AS PRESIDENT, HAVE COMMITTED A CRIME OF SERIOUS PROPORTION!”

These are clearly the ramblings of a man who is totally OK, and who doesn’t worry at all that the things he tells the military to do—like, say, strike foreign boats in international waters, acts which have killed over 80 people so far—may be illegal.

The president has been posting about this issue for several days now, and his ravings have consequences. MAGA influencers online are now calling for the so-called “Seditious Six” to be arrested. And on Friday, five out of the six Democrats who created the video received bomb threats to their homes or offices.

No one was harmed, but Trump’s posts about the issue have been condemned by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

It was here for a bad time, not a long time: The U.S. Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has been officially disbanded.

The shady department led by tech billionaire Elon Musk, which laid off scores of workers and gutted parts of the federal government, has faded away into oblivion, according to an exclusive from Reuters.

When Reuters journalists asked about the department, which set out to reduce government spending but fell short on its promises while creating chaos in the federal workforce, the Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor said, “That doesn’t exist.”

DOGE is no longer a “centralized entity,” he added.

The Trump administration has been signaling the end of DOGE since the summer, according to the report, and the president generally talks about it in the past tense. Many of DOGE’s staff have since found jobs elsewhere in the government, like acting DOGE Administrator Amy Gleason, who is now an official adviser to RFK Jr. at the Department of Health and Human Services.

DOGE’s legacy is both very stupid and very sad: It decimated the federal workforce, including Social Security personnel at local offices, and made it easier for hackers to access your data. The agency tore apart USAID, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of lives lost globally. And all this for projected savings—numbers that grew smaller and less ambitious every time Musk mentioned them.

While DOGE may fade away into a fever dream of Trump’s first 100 days, its effects—and the suffering it inflicted—will be felt for a long time.