New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, in a piece published on Thursday, said Biden was considering whether to pursue a U.S.-Saudi mutual security pact that would involve Saudi Arabia normalizing relations with Israel.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, one of Biden’s most trusted aides, was in Jeddah this week with Middle East envoy Brett McGurk discussing the possibility of a normalization deal, White House officials said.
Masses of Israelis protest government‘s judicial coup in wake of the Knesset revoking the High Court‘s ability to nullify laws it deems unreasonable
In Tel Aviv alone, some 174,000 Israelis are rallying at Kaplan Square, according to Channel 13. The Ynet news site has the figure there at roughly 160,000.
Netanyahu has since said he will seek to build consensus before approving further changes to the judicial system, but also pledged the coalition will move forward alone if no deal is reached.
“There is no rebellion in Likud. We all want to reach agreements and need to make the maximum effort to do so, but we will not give the other side a veto,” the ruling party said in a statement.
According to the report by Ynet, Gallant intends to work toward such a coalition with the National Unity party headed by Gantz, and Yesh Atid headed by Lapid, even if it meant that he would have to resign from his ministerial post.
This potential switch would primarily be made to replace the far-right Religious Zionism headed by Bezalel Smotrich and Jewish Power headed by Itamar Ben-Gvir, in order to halt movements toward extremism, and return to a national conesus.
(28.07.2023)
“I know this is a controversial view, but I’m willing to say it,” Alito told the Journal. “No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court — period.”
Although the Constitution enables Congress to structure the lower federal courts, it explicitly vests judicial power within a singular Supreme Court.
(…)
The piece also revealed Alito’s first public comments on the recent ethics push since he authored an op-ed for the same paper that was shared just before a ProPublica investigation into an undisclosed Alaskan fishing trip the justice accepted in 2008 paid for by a conservative donor was made public.
(04.07.2023)
As Democrats reel from another painful set of defeats at the Supreme Court in recent weeks, President Biden is facing renewed pressure from a range of elements in his party, from liberal lawmakers to abortion rights activists, to more forcefully embrace far-reaching changes to the high court.
„We had to put Israeli democracy back on an equal footing with other democracies. The essence of democracy is the balance between the will of the majority and the rights of the minority. This balance has been violated over the last 20 years, because we have the most activist court on the planet,“ Netanyahu declared.
He also referred to the „internal debate going on right now in the United States about the powers of the Supreme Court, about whether it‘s abusing its powers, whether they should be curtailed.“
(Fri July 28)
“What you’re talking about is a situation, or potential situation, where in American terms, the United States’ Supreme Court would take a constitutional amendment and say that it’s unconstitutional, Netanyahu said. “That’s the kind of the kind of spiral that you’re talking about, and I hope we don’t get to that.”
The so-called “reasonableness” law is an amendment to one of Israel’s Basic Laws, which exist in place of a formal constitution.