Democratic Socialist Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani tried to deflect mounting criticism Thursday after a bruising mayoral debate in which his rivals painted him as untested, unproductive, and missing in action in Albany. Speaking at a press conference in Murray Hill, Mamdani accused former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa of running on empty rhetoric rather than ideas for the city. “I spent 90 minutes on stage with Andrew Cuomo and I, like many here, could tell you his critiques of me, his critiques of Curtis Sliwa, but I could not tell you what he was actually running on to deliver for this city,” Mamdani said. But the Queens lawmaker, 34, refused to answer questions from reporters about his legislative record — or his absence from the state Capitol — even as critics continued to pounce on his threadbare résumé. Cuomo, running as an independent, accused Mamdani during Wednesday night’s Spectrum NY1 debate of “never accomplishing anything,” blasting him for passing just four bills in five years. “You never even proposed a bill on housing or education,” Cuomo charged. “You don’t know how to run a government. You don’t know how to handle an emergency. You had the worst attendance record in the Assembly… Shame on you!” Sliwa, the perennial GOP contender, was even more cutting. “Your résumé could fit on a cocktail napkin,” he told Mamdani, drawing laughs from the audience. Mamdani, who entered the Assembly in 2020, has struggled to shake criticism that his legislative record is thin and his time in Albany fleeting. The New York Post reported in June that he missed roughly half of all Assembly votes this year while campaigning for mayor. After collecting his paycheck when the state budget passed in April, Mamdani didn’t return to Albany for the remainder of the session. He passed just one bill in 2024 — the same number as an 88-year-old Republican lawmaker from Nassau County who was homebound with health issues. Even some of Mamdani’s colleagues have expressed frustration. “I show up! I’m there every day doing my job,” said Assemblyman Chris Tague (R-Schoharie). “He should be an actor in Hollywood — everything is theatrics and acting with him.” While the number of standalone bills passed isn’t always the defining measure of a legislator’s influence, Mamdani has also struggled to shape the state’s sprawling budget process. His flagship free-bus pilot program, briefly included in the 2023 budget, was axed by Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie the following year after Mamdani voted against the spending plan. Cuomo, 67, used the debate to turn Mamdani’s signature issues against him, mocking his complaints that Albany hasn’t delivered funding for juvenile offender programs. “If Zohran thought that there was money locked up in Albany, maybe he should have gone to Albany and proposed a bill to release it,” Cuomo quipped. The former governor, who’s styled his independent bid as a centrist alternative to both Mamdani’s democratic socialism and Sliwa’s hard-right populism, sought to portray the Assemblyman as an unserious protest candidate. “There’s no reason to believe you have any merit or qualification for 8.5 million lives,” Cuomo said. Mamdani fired back from the stage, accusing Cuomo of rewriting history. “We just had a former governor say, in his own words, that the city has been getting screwed by the state,” he […]
Authorities are on the scene after two suspicious packages were found near a kosher supermarket in Johannesburg, South Africa, following an earlier report of a suspicious device in the area.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio: “We think it’s in Israel’s long term security, and I think our Israeli partners agree, to be able to have a Gaza that is no longer an operating space for a terrorist organization. That’s why this plan calls for the demilitarization of Gaza, and that’s what we’re committed to.”
ELIMINATED: The IDF announced that Abbas Hassan Karki, a senior Hezbollah terrorist in charge of the group’s logistics in southern Lebanon, was killed in an Israeli drone strike near the town of Toul, close to Nabatieh. Karki, who led Hezbollah’s “Southern Front” logistics and previously held several key roles, was reportedly central to rebuilding the group’s military infrastructure and overseeing weapons storage and transfers across the region.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Knesset’s annexation vote cannot proceed and warned that such a move could jeopardize all peace agreements.
A reservist from Abu Ghosh was arrested after police discovered a large cache of ammunition and military equipment in his home. He reportedly told officers he kept the items there because he didn’t want to leave them in his vehicle. Police have detained him for questioning.
The IDF concluded its largest military drill since the war began, a five-day exercise along the Lebanon border led by the 91st “Galilee” Division with support from the Air Force, Navy, police, and emergency services. The drill aimed to boost readiness for extreme defense scenarios, rapid mobilization, and offensive operations, incorporating lessons from two years of conflict. It also included logistics, medical, and maintenance training, such as evacuating casualties under fire and providing emergency support.
The last time U.S. President Donald Trump visited South Korea in 2019, he made a surprise trip to the border with North Korea for an impromptu meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to revive faltering nuclear talks. Now, as Trump is set to make his first trip to Asia since his return to office, speculation is rife that he may seek to meet Kim again during his stop in South Korea. If realized, it would mark the two’s first summit since their last meeting at the Korean border village of Panmunjom in June 2019, and fourth overall. Many experts say prospects for another impromptu meeting aren’t bright this time but predict Trump and Kim could eventually sit down for talks again in coming months. Others dispute that, saying a quick resumption of diplomacy isn’t still likely given how much has changed since 2019 — both the size of North Korea’s nuclear program and its foreign policy leverage. Talks of fresh diplomacy Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire to restore diplomacy with Kim as he boasted of his relationship with the North Korean leader and called him “a smart guy.” Ending his silence on Trump’s outreach, Kim last month said he held “good personal memories” of Trump and suggested he could return to talks if the U.S. drops “its delusional obsession with denuclearization” of North Korea. Both Washington and Pyongyang haven’t hinted at any high-profile meeting ahead of the Oct. 31-Nov. 1 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in South Korea. But South Korea’s Unification Minister Chung Dong-young told lawmakers in mid-October that it was possible for Trump and Kim to meet at Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone again when the U.S. president comes to South Korea after visiting Malaysia and Japan. “We should see prospects for their meeting have increased,” said Ban Kil Joo, assistant professor at the Korea National Diplomatic Academy in Seoul. He cited the recent suspension of civilian tours to the southern side of Panmunjom and Kim’s comments about a possible return to talks. If the meeting doesn’t occur, Ban said Kim will likely determine whether to resume diplomacy with Trump when he holds a major ruling party conference expected in January. No notable logistical preparations that imply an impending Kim-Trump meeting have been reported, but observers note that the 2019 get-together was arranged only a day after Trump issued an unorthodox meeting invitation by tweet. Kim’s greater leverage Since his earlier diplomacy with Trump fell apart due to disputes over U.S.-led sanctions on North Korea, Kim has accelerated the expansion of an arsenal of nuclear-capable missiles designed to strike the U.S. and its allies. He has also strengthened his diplomatic footprint by aligning with Russia over its war in Ukraine and tightening relations with China. Subsequently, Kim’s sense of urgency for talks with the United States could be much weaker now than it was six years ago, though some experts argue Kim would need to brace for the end of the Russia-Ukraine war. “Considering the current situation, it seems difficult to imagine Kim Jong Un coming over for talks,” said Kim Tae-hyung, a professor at Seoul’s Soongsil University. With an enlarged nuclear arsenal, stronger diplomatic backing from Russia and China and the weakening enforcement of sanctions, Kim has greater leverage and clearly wants the U.S. to acknowledge North Korea as a nuclear power, a status needed to call for the lifting of […]
A 21-year-old semitruck driver accused of being under the influence of drugs and causing a fiery crash that killed three people on a southern California freeway is in the country illegally, U.S. Homeland Security officials said Thursday. Jashanpreet Singh was arrested and jailed after Tuesday’s eight-vehicle crash in Ontario, California, that also left four people injured. He faces three counts of vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and driving under the influence causing injury, the San Bernardino District Attorney’s office said. Singh is scheduled for arraignment Friday. The district attorney’s office said he does not yet have a lawyer. Singh, of Yuba City, California, is from India and entered the U.S. illegally in 2022 across the southern border, Homeland Security said Thursday in a post on X. That revelation prompted Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to restate earlier concerns about who should be able to obtain commercial driver’s licenses. Duffy and President Donald Trump have been pressing the issue and criticizing California ever since a deadly Florida crash in August was caused by an immigrant truck driver the federal government says was in the country illegally. The Transportation Department significantly restricted when noncitizens can get commercial driver’s licenses last month. Duffy said this week’s crash wouldn’t have happened if Newsom had followed these new rules. “These people deserve justice. There will be consequences,” he said in a statement. Newsom’s office responded that the federal government approved Singh’s federal employment authorization multiple times and this allowed him to obtain a commercial driver’s license in accordance with federal law. California’s Highway Patrol said in a release that traffic westbound on Interstate 10, about 26 miles (42 kilometers) west of San Bernardino, had slowed about 1 p.m. Tuesday when a tractor-trailer failed to stop, struck other vehicles and caused a chain-reaction crash. Dashcam video from the tractor-trailer obtained by KABC-TV shows the truck slamming into what appears to be a small, white SUV in the freeway’s center lane. It continued forward, plowing into several other vehicles, including another truck. It then crossed over two lanes before crashing into an already-disabled truck on the freeway’s right shoulder. Flames can be seen erupting alongside the tractor-trailer as it crosses the two right lanes. California Highway Patrol Officer Rodrigo Jimenez says the agency has seen the KABC video and believes it is dashcam video from the truck that caused the crash. “This tragedy follows a disturbing pattern of criminal illegal aliens driving commercial vehicles on American roads, directly threatening public safety,” Homeland Security said Thursday in its X post. Deadly crash in Florida In August, a truck driver made an illegal turn on Florida’s Turnpike, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of West Palm Beach, and was struck by a minivan. Two passengers in the minivan died at the scene, and the driver died at a hospital. Homeland Security has said that truck driver, Harjinder Singh, was in the United States illegally. Florida authorities said he entered the U.S. illegally from Mexico in 2018. Homeland Security said Harjinder Singh obtained a commercial driver’s license in California, which is one of 19 states, in addition to the District of Columbia, that issue licenses regardless of immigration status, according to the National Immigration Law Center. The Trump administration has pointed to the Florida crash while sparring with California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom. In April, Trump […]
President Donald Trump said late Thursday that he was ending “all trade negotiations” with Canada because of a television ad opposing U.S. tariffs that he said misstated the facts and called “egregious behavior” aimed at influencing U.S. court decisions. The post on Trump’s social media site came after Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said he aims to double his country’s exports to countries outside the U.S. because of the threat posed by Trump’s tariffs. Trump’s call for an abrupt end to negotiations could further inflame trade tensions that already have been building between the two neighboring countries for months. Trump posted, “The Ronald Reagan Foundation has just announced that Canada has fraudulently used an advertisement, which is FAKE, featuring Ronald Reagan speaking negatively about Tariffs.” “The ad was for $75,000. They only did this to interfere with the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, and other courts,” Trump wrote on his social media site. “TARIFFS ARE VERY IMPORTANT TO THE NATIONAL SECURITY, AND ECONOMY, OF THE U.S.A. Based on their egregious behavior, ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED.” Carney’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The prime minister was set to leave Friday morning for a summit in Asia, while Trump is set to do the same Friday evening. Earlier Thursday night, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute posted on X that an ad created by the government of Ontario “misrepresents the ‘Presidential Radio Address to the Nation on Free and Fair Trade’ dated April 25, 1987.” It added that Ontario did not receive foundation permission “to use and edit the remarks.” The foundation said it is “reviewing legal options in this matter” and invited the public to watch the unedited video of Reagan’s address. Carney met with Trump earlier this month to try to ease trade tensions, as the two countries and Mexico prepare for a review of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement — a trade deal Trump negotiated in his first term, but has since soured on. More than three-quarters of Canadian exports go to the U.S., and nearly $3.6 billion Canadian (US$2.7 billion) worth of goods and services cross the border daily. Trump said earlier this week that he had seen the ad on television and said that it showed that his tariffs were having an impact. “I saw an ad last night from Canada. If I was Canada, I’d take that same ad also,” he said then. In his own post on X last week, Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, posted a link to the ad and the message: “It’s official: Ontario’s new advertising campaign in the U.S. has launched.” He continued, “Using every tool we have, we’ll never stop making the case against American tariffs on Canada. The way to prosperity is by working together.” A spokesperson for Ford didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday night. But Ford previously got Trump’s attention with an electricity surcharge to U.S. states. Trump responded by doubling steel and aluminum tariffs. The president has moved to impose steep U.S. tariffs on many goods from Canada. In April, Canada’s government imposed retaliatory levies on certain U.S. goods — but it carved out exemptions for some automakers to bring specific numbers of vehicles into the country, known as remission quotas. Trump’s tariffs have […]
Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared Friday that coordinating a cease-fire in Gaza is “a historic mission,” as the United States and its international partners work to sustain the truce, deliver humanitarian aid and prepare for a multinational peacekeeping force to enter the territory. At a press conference convened at the U.S.–Israel Civil-Military Coordination Center in southern Israel — the hub overseeing the cease-fire in Gaza — Rubio described the emerging effort as the centerpiece of America’s strategy. He warned the implementation “is not going to be a linear journey. There’s going to be ups and downs and twists and turns.” But he added: “I think we have a lot of reason for healthy optimism about the progress that’s being made.” Rubio said the State Department and affiliated agencies are increasing their presence at the coordination center, and the staffing will continue to grow to “provide personnel on things like emergency response and the coordination of humanitarian assistance.” The focus, he said, remains on the initial phase of the cease-fire plan. “We’ve got to get through the process that we’re involved in right now, which is making sure the cease-fire holds without anything disrupting it, making sure people are getting the life-sustaining aid that they need in a way that’s not being looted or stolen or diverted in any way, and at the same time, creating the conditions for the [International] Stabilization Force to come in as soon as it possibly can be put together to provide the stabilization we need to move to the further phases of this plan,” Rubio said. He issued a warning about the volatility in Gaza: “On the other side of that yellow line,” he said, referring to areas from which the IDF withdrew under the cease-fire, “there is still a terrorist group that remains armed, and we’ve seen them take actions against their own population.” Rubio urged greater media attention to Hamas’s actions against Palestinians in Gaza, saying: “That’s something to point to.” Asked whether Israel would need U.S. “permission” to resume fighting Hamas if it re-arms, Rubio replied: “I don’t think this has to do anything with permission or anything of that nature. This has to do with basically, we’re all committed to making this plan work. There is no plan B. This is the best plan. It’s the only plan. It’s one that we think can succeed. It’s one that we believe is on the way to success.” He repeatedly emphasized that the U.S. cease-fire plan benefits from broad regional support and is the “only” viable option. On the question of Hamas’s disarmament, Rubio stressed: “If Hamas refuses to demilitarize, it’ll be a violation of the agreement, and that’ll have to be enforced. I’m not going to get into the mechanisms by which it is going to be enforced, but it’ll have to be enforced.” He added: “This is a deal, and a deal requires conditions to be met. Israel has met their commitments. They’re standing at the yellow line, and that is contingent upon the demilitarization.” Rubio acknowledged the long timeline ahead. “Hamas disarmament and the demilitarization of Gaza under the second phase of the deal is a long-term project,” he said. “We want to help create the conditions here so that people in Gaza don’t have to be terrorized by […]
Top Biden administration officials personally authorized an FBI investigation that targeted nearly 100 Republican-aligned groups, donors, and even sitting members of Congress, newly released records show — a move senior Republicans are now calling one of the most egregious abuses of federal power in decades. The unclassified files, made public Thursday by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), reveal that former Attorney General Merrick Garland, then–Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, and former FBI Director Christopher Wray all signed off on the operation, code-named “Arctic Frost.” The April 2022 memo formally greenlit a sweeping probe into what the bureau described as “an apparent effort to obstruct Congress’ certification of the Electoral College” following the 2020 presidential election. Grassley accused the Justice Department and FBI of “unleashing unchecked government power at the highest levels,” warning that “Arctic Frost” amounted to “weaponized law enforcement that’s arguably worse than Watergate.” “My oversight will continue,” Grassley wrote on X, calling the findings a “bombshell” that exposed a “systematic effort to surveil political opponents.” The four-page authorization memo, dated April 4, 2022, was written by Wray and sent to Garland for approval. The FBI chief argued that “open-source reporting and public statements made by individuals closely associated with Donald J. Trump, Inc. (Trump Campaign) present an articulable factual basis indicating the existence of a federal crime.” The document was signed by Garland the following day. Beneath his signature line, Monaco scrawled a handwritten note: “Merrick, I recommend you approve.” Though initially framed as an investigation into fake elector slates allegedly submitted to the National Archives from several battleground states, the operation soon widened to include a broad range of conservative figures, advocacy organizations, and lawmakers. The probe would later provide materials used by special counsel Jack Smith in his failed criminal case against Donald Trump, which alleged unlawful efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. According to Grassley’s disclosures, “Arctic Frost” expanded far beyond the Trump campaign orbit. The FBI quietly subpoenaed phone records belonging to nine congressional Republicans, including Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), and Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.). The subpoenas sought “toll analysis” data — records showing call times, recipients, durations, and locations — for the days surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Grassley said the move constituted “a direct surveillance of members of Congress,” raising constitutional and separation-of-powers concerns. “The Biden DOJ issued subpoenas to obtain our cell phone records,” Blackburn wrote in a letter co-signed by several affected lawmakers. “We have yet to learn of any legal predicate for doing so.” Blackburn has since accused Smith of having “spied on duly elected members of Congress” and called for his disbarment. The newly released records also show that 92 Republican or GOP-linked organizations and individuals — including prominent political groups such as Turning Point USA — were investigated under Arctic Frost. Grassley said that the operation “appeared to show Arctic Frost was much broader than just an electoral matter.” “Arctic Frost wasn’t just a case to politically investigate Trump,” Grassley said at a recent committee hearing. “It was the vehicle by which partisan FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors could achieve their partisan ends and improperly investigate the entire Republican political apparatus.” […]
New York Attorney General Letitia James is set to make her first court appearance in a mortgage fraud case on Friday, the third adversary of President Donald Trump to face a judge on federal charges in recent weeks. James was indicted earlier this month on charges of bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution in connection with a 2020 home purchase in Norfolk, Virginia. The charges came shortly after the official who had been overseeing the investigation was pushed out by the Trump administration and the president publicly called on the Justice Department to take action against James and other of his political foes. James, a Democrat who has sued Trump and his administration dozens of times, has denied wrongdoing and decried the indictment as “nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system.” The indictment stems from James’ purchase of a modest house in Norfolk, where she has family. During the sale, she signed a standard document called a “second home rider” in which she agreed to keep the property primarily for her “personal use and enjoyment for at least one year,” unless the lender agreed otherwise. Rather than using the home as a second residence, the indictment alleges, James rented it out to a family of three. According to the indictment, the misrepresentation allowed James to obtain favorable loan terms not available for investment properties. James drew Trump’s ire when she won a staggering judgment against the president and his companies in a lawsuit alleging he defrauded banks by overstating the value of his real estate holdings on financial statements. An appeals court overturned the fine, which had ballooned to more than $500 million with interest, but upheld a lower court’s finding that Trump had committed fraud. James’ indictment followed the resignation of Erik Siebert as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia after he resisted Trump administration pressure to bring charges. Siebert was replaced with Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide and former Trump lawyer who had never previously served as a federal prosecutor and presented James’ case to the grand jury herself. On Thursday, lawyers for James asked for an order prohibiting prosecutors from disclosing to the news media information about the investigation, or materials from the case, outside of court. The motion followed the revelation from earlier this week that Halligan contacted via an encrypted text messaging platform a reporter from Lawfare, a media organization that covers legal and national security issues, to discuss the James prosecution and complain about coverage of it. The reporter published the exchange that she and Halligan had. “The exchange was a stunning disclosure of internal government information,” lawyers for James wrote. They added: “It has been reported that Ms. Halligan has no prosecutorial experience whatsoever. But all federal prosecutors are required to know and follow the rules governing their conduct from their first day on the job, and so any lack of experience cannot excuse their violation.” The motion also asks that the government be required to preserve all communications with representatives of the media as well as to prevent the deletion of any records or communications related to the investigation and the prosecution of the case. Separately on Thursday, defense lawyers said they intended to challenge Halligan’s appointment, a […]
Russian military planes briefly violated Lithuania’s airspace Thursday evening, the Lithuanian president said, condemning what he called a blatant breach of the territorial integrity of his European Union and NATO-member country. Lithuania’s foreign ministry planned to summon Russian Embassy representatives in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius to protest the violation, President Gitanas Nausėda said in a post on the social media platform X. “This is a blatant breach of international law and territorial integrity of Lithuania,” Nausėda wrote on X. “Once again, it confirms the importance of strengthening European air defence readiness.” Russia’s Defense Ministry, meanwhile, rejected the Lithuanian claim that Russian fighter jets had intruded into its airspace. It said in a statement that Su-30 fighter jets on Thursday conducted training flights over the Kaliningrad region in strict compliance with the rules. “The aircraft did not deviate from their flight route or violate the borders of other states, as confirmed by objective monitoring means,” the ministry said. Baltic nations already have been on heightened alert over neighboring Russia’s aggression on Ukraine. And in recent weeks, a series of mysterious drone incidents and airspace violations by Russian war planes have fueled concerns that Russian President Vladimir Putin might be testing NATO’s defensive reflexes. Some leaders have accused Putin of waging a hybrid war in Europe. Moscow denies probing NATO’s defenses. The Lithuanian armed forces said in a statement that about 6 p.m. local time on Thursday, two Russian military aircraft flew into Lithuanian airspace for about 700 meters (765 yards), The SU-30 aircraft and IL-78 refueling aircraft flew away after roughly 18 seconds. The Lithuanian armed forces believe the military planes might have been conducting refueling exercises in the neighboring Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. Two Spanish fighter jets, which had been doing NATO air policing missions, were scrambled and flew out to the area. Earlier on Thursday, Nausėda attended a summit at the European Council building in Brussels where EU leaders endorsed a plan to ensure that Europe can defend itself against an outside attack by the end of the decade. The plan is dubbed Readiness 2030. (AP)
A tense Senate confirmation hearing erupted Thursday as Sen. Ted Cruz confronted Hamtramck, Michigan Mayor Amer Ghalib, President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as U.S. ambassador to Kuwait, over a series of inflammatory past statements about Jews, Saddam Hussein, and the Muslim Brotherhood. Cruz said he would not support Ghalib’s nomination, telling the Democratic mayor that his record “stands in direct contradiction” to the Trump administration’s Middle East policy. “It appears you have a deep-felt and passionate view about the Middle East,” Cruz said. “But it is a view that is in direct conflict with the policy positions of President Trump and this administration.” Throughout the nearly hour-long exchange, Cruz grilled Ghalib on multiple social media posts and public statements that have resurfaced in recent weeks — including one in which he referred to Saddam Hussein as a “martyr,” another praising the Muslim Brotherhood as “inspirational,” and a third in which he appeared to endorse an antisemitic comment describing Jews as “monkeys for their own benefit.” When pressed by Cruz to clarify his view of Saddam Hussein, Ghalib initially said his 2020 comments were made “in a moment of anger” following an Iranian missile strike on U.S. bases in Iraq. “It was the day of January 7, 2020, when our military bases were attacked by Iran,” Ghalib said. “And in a moment of anger because we didn’t respond.” But Cruz continued: “Do you continue to believe Saddam Hussein was a martyr?” “Senator, I don’t think that. No doubt Saddam was a dictator,” Ghalib replied. “If this offended anybody who suffered from Saddam or lost a loved one, I apologize.” Pressed again for a direct answer, Ghalib added, “It wouldn’t matter — he’s in God’s hand. He will get the treatment he deserves.” Cruz then turned to Ghalib’s post lauding the Muslim Brotherhood — a group the Texas senator has sought to designate as a terrorist organization. “How would you be able to serve as an ambassador if President Trump designates the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization?” Cruz asked. “I would trust the president,” Ghalib replied. “If it’s designated, I will be committed to implement President Trump’s policies.” Ghalib defended his past social media activity, attributing some of the controversy to what he described as “bad habits” and “mistranslations” from Arabic. “Before I became mayor, I used to have a bad habit of acknowledging every post, every comment under my post,” he said. “Doesn’t mean I agree with it.” He claimed one of the antisemitic posts Cruz cited had been misinterpreted. “There was a response under that [post] that was not translated, which said, ‘You can say this in your country, but not in this country,’ meaning I didn’t agree with that post,” Ghalib said. “I know it was a bad habit, but let me be clear: I don’t agree with that statement, and I treat everybody with respect in my official capacity.” Ghalib, who became Hamtramck’s first Muslim mayor in 2021, has faced scrutiny for years over comments sympathetic to extremist ideologies. His nomination by President Trump earlier this fall drew bipartisan skepticism, but Thursday’s hearing marked the most direct confrontation to date. (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara sent a letter on Thursday to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu ordering him to increase enforcement efforts against bnei yeshivos. She claimed in her letter that the current situation “constitutes a severe violation of equality, which cannot be legally justified.” She did not address the issue of the violation of religious rights being carried out against bnei yeshivos. MK Meir Porush responded, “The Attorney General’s latest letter to the Prime Minister once again reflects her obsession with targeting the Torah world. Never before has any issue received such attention from an attorney general.” “Baharav-Miara is essentially the Attorney General for persecuting the Torah world. The prime minister knows that the more he acts in accordance with her wishes, the more she will demand additional sanctions that will harm Am Yisrael.” A day earlier, following the arrests of several bnei yeshivos, Porush stated, “Once again, the Attorney General sent the Military Police to arrest young men whose only ‘crime’ is limmud Torah.” “Although months of this draconian rampage against the Torah world have failed to achieve the goals she set, she refuses to acknowledge her failure and is trying to drag the Jewish people into a civil war.” Baharav-Miara is also continuing her campaign to invent new sanctions against Chareidim. (YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)
Cornell University is facing a storm of outrage after its student newspaper, The Cornell Daily Sun, published a professor’s op-ed accompanied by a shocking illustration — a bloodied Star of David defaced with Nazi “SS” lightning bolts drawn onto the back of a Palestinian person. The image, which appeared alongside an article by Professor Karim-Aly Kassam, ignited immediate backlash from students, faculty, and Jewish advocacy groups who called it a grotesque act of antisemitism and Holocaust inversion. The newspaper quickly took down the graphic and later republished the piece without it, but the controversy has exposed growing concerns about the campus’s cultural climate. “To me, it reflects the normalization of Holocaust inversion, both on the internet and now on Cornell’s campus,” said William Jacobson, a Cornell Law School professor and founder of Legal Insurrection, a conservative website. “This graphic is specifically inside a bloody Jewish star — no reflection of Israel at all. It clearly pursues the idea that Jews are the new Nazis. It’s obviously highly offensive.” The “SS” insignia depicted in the image was the symbol of Adolf Hitler’s secret police, the Schutzstaffel — the organization responsible for mass atrocities during the Holocaust. Kassam’s op-ed, titled “Thousand & One Eyes for An Eye,” accused Israel of seeking revenge in Gaza and equated its rhetoric toward Palestinians to that of Nazi Germany toward European Jews. “It is not unlike what the Nazis said about another peoples living in Europe to justify their genocide,” he wrote. The article was published just days after the second anniversary of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel. Backlash poured in on social media, which decried the illustration as antisemitic propaganda. Under mounting pressure, Kassam issued a statement to The New York Post, saying, “I am deeply saddened to learn that this portion of the artwork has been interpreted by some as antisemitic. That was not my intention, and I have learned from this experience.” An editor at The Cornell Daily Sun later defended Kassam in a column, arguing that the professor “did not imply that the state of Israel is equal to Nazi Germany,” but apologized for allowing the graphic to appear in the first place. Jacobson, who has long criticized the campus for what he describes as growing hostility toward Jewish students, said the episode points to a broader issue. “If a professor feels comfortable sharing a graphic like this, and the Daily Sun initially felt comfortable running it, that reflects a very toxic campus culture,” he said. “The lesson here is not to censor people but to understand what’s happened on campus. It shines a light on a profound problem.” The controversy comes as Cornell continues to grapple with allegations of discrimination against Jewish and Israeli students. Jacobson’s organization, the Equal Protection Project, is reportedly preparing a civil rights complaint on behalf of Oren Renard, an Israeli student who said he was pushed out of a class because of his national origin. Cornell’s Office of Civil Rights recently issued a finding of discrimination in that case — further evidence of a university struggling to confront deep-seated bias. (YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
The U.S. military flew a pair of supersonic, heavy bombers up to the coast of Venezuela on Thursday, a little over a week after another group of American bombers made a similar journey as part of a training exercise to simulate an attack. The U.S. military has built up an unusually large force in the Caribbean Sea and the waters off of Venezuela, raising speculation that President Donald Trump could try to topple Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Maduro faces charges of narcoterrorism in the U.S. Adding to the speculation, the U.S. military since early September has been carrying out lethal strikes on vessels in the waters off Venezuela that Trump says are trafficking drugs. According to flight tracking data, a pair of B-1 Lancer bombers took off from Dyess Air Force Base in Texas on Thursday and flew through the Caribbean and up to the coast of Venezuela. A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations, confirmed that a training flight of B-1s took place in the Caribbean. The B-1 bomber can carry more bombs than any other plane in the U.S. inventory. A similar flight of slower B-52 Stratofortress bombers was conducted in the region last week. The bombers were joined by Marine Corps F-35B stealth fighter jets — a squadron is currently based in Puerto Rico — for what the Pentagon called a “bomber attack demo” in photos online. When Trump was asked about Thursday’s B-1 flight and if it was meant to ramp up military pressure on Venezuela, he said, “it’s false, but we’re not happy with Venezuela for a lot of reasons. Drugs being one of them.” The U.S. force in the Caribbean includes eight warships, P-8 maritime patrol aircraft, MQ-9 Reaper drones and an F-35 fighter squadron. A submarine has also been confirmed to be operating in the waters off South America. Trump on Wednesday said he has the “legal authority” to carry out the strikes on the alleged drug-carrying boats and suggested similar strikes could be done on land. “We will hit them very hard when they come in by land,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “We’re totally prepared to do that. And we’ll probably go back to Congress and explain exactly what we’re doing when we come to the land.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday that the military had conducted its ninth strike, killing three people in the eastern Pacific Ocean. It followed a strike Tuesday night, also in the eastern Pacific, that killed two people and brought the overall death toll from the strikes to at least 37. The latest pair of strikes expanded the Trump administration’s campaign against drug trafficking in South America from the waters of the Caribbean to the eastern Pacific. Hegseth has drawn a direct comparison between the war on terrorism that the U.S. declared after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the Trump administration’s crackdown. “Our message to these foreign terrorist organizations is we will treat you like we have treated al-Qaeda,” Hegseth told reporters on Thursday at the White House. “We will find you, we will map your networks, we will hunt you down, and we will kill you,” he added. (AP)
