MICHIGAN â On Tuesday, August 4th, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic nomination for Michiganâs United States Senate seat, prevailing in the most expensive Senate primary in American history. The race drew record breaking outside spending from AIPAC and corporate special interests, totaling nearly $70 million, Abdul having been outspent 11:1.
An average of $95 was spent for every vote against Abdul, more than 10 times as much as Abdulâs $9 per vote average.
(December 27, 2022)
Haaretz continued:
Twenty years on, this is no longer the stuff of movies: Toka‘s tech allows clients to do just that and moreânot just diverting a live feed but also altering old feeds and erasing any evidence of a covert op.
Technical documents reviewed by an ethical hacker prove that Toka‘s tech can alter both live and recorded video feedsâall without leaving any forensics or telltale signs of a hack (in contrast to NSO‘s Pegasus spyware, or Intellexa‘s Predator, which leave a digital fingerprint on targeted devices).
7:11 PM · Jul 21, 2026
12:49 AM · Jul 22, 2026
The House on Tuesday approved a procedural vote to advance the $1.15 trillion 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, which includes a section to further integrate the US and Israeli militaries, a plan that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said was his idea.
The rule to allow floor debate and a vote on the NDAA and several pieces of legislation passed in a 214-211 vote, and a final vote on the Houseâs version of the NDAA is expected to take place on Wednesday. The procedural step came after the House Rules Committee denied a vote on an amendment introduced by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) to strip Section 219, the Israeli integration plan, from the bill.
Hegseth, and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, came armed with an $87.6 billion Trump administration supplemental request that includes more than $67 billion for the war and other Pentagon spending.
And as Hegseth announced that the conflict had racked up $37.5 billion in costs, it is expanding. More US troops died over the weekend, bringing the death toll to 18; CNN reported that 100 American personnel had been injured since early July;
That figure came from a line of questioning by US Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), as Hegseth appeared before the Senate Appropriations Committee to support Trump‘s June supplemental funding request, which includes tens of billions for the Pentagon.
Hegseth told Durbin that the $37.5 billion estimate includes what‘s been spent so far, plus some projected spending through the end of the fiscal year in Septemberâan exchange quickly met with fury by various critics, many of whom pointed out the range of ways that money could have been better spent by an administration allegedly dedicated to combating „waste, fraud, and abuse.“
Senate Democrats on Tuesday blocked the advancement of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, citing President Trumpâs war with Iran, which continues to rage following the collapse of the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding.
The NDAA would provide the Pentagon with over $1.1 trillion in funding as part of the White Houseâs plan for a $1.5 trillion military budget for 2027, a nearly 50% increase from this year. The bill also includes an amendment, Section 1217, to further merge the US and Israeli militaries under a plan being pushed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
A procedural vote of 50-46 fell well short of the 60 votes that it needed to advance the NDAA. Every Democrat, except two who werenât present for the vote â Senators Jon Fetterman (PA) and Alex Padilla (CA) â voted against advancing the sprawling military spending bill.
(July 13, 2026)
The House provision, which has a Senate version known as Section 1217, would also forbid the president of the United States from limiting intelligence collaboration with Israel over its human rights abuses. If the President ever wants to limit such collaboration, he or she must tell Congress and can only cite American national security as a basis.
In other words, these bills would connect the US and Israeli militaries in unprecedented ways and make it exceedingly difficult for any future president to unwind this partnership with a foreign government.
(June 16, 2026)
Buried in the US$1.15 trillion National Defense Authorization Act is a provision that would deepen US military cooperation with Israel while walling that cooperation off from further congressional oversight.
Section 219 (formerly section 224) creates the role of an âexecutive agentâ focused on folding Israeli technology into US weapons programs, and vice versa, including in missile and air defense technologies as well as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, cyberwarfare, and autonomous systems. Once implemented, the provision would speed efforts to embed Israeli technologies into US weapons systems in ways almost never codified into law, even for allies. As the protracted experience with unwinding Turkish participation in the F-35 program shows, practically, integration binds the United States to rely on producers in ways that become next to impossible to walk back later, even if lawmakers want to.
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Section 219 also calls for âdata fusion.â In defense doctrine, data fusion means combining feeds from many sensors and intelligence sources into a single targeting picture. The United States would be absorbing Israeli data, which may have been collected under problematic mass surveillance programs. Moreover, section 219 would be reinforced by section 622 of the intelligence appropriations bill, which mandates intelligence sharing and would further promote combining US intelligence streams with Israeli ones that could then be used by the Israeli military for targeting.
WASHINGTON â The Defense Department was funded with a budget of nearly a trillion dollars, but it is running out of cash, according to three U.S. officials, a former defense official, outside experts and two congressional staff members.
Israel has not responded to our verbal & written demandsâthat is not going to change, unless we change it by taking action.
Israel claims sovereignty & continues to threaten our peace deal, yet they rely on us to bail them out. This is calculated.
We have to respond accordingly and stop this cycle once and for all.
Lead with action: remove their leverage, otherwise they will not take us seriously.
An open SOH & peace in the region have to be our focus. Israel is playing spoilerâwe must limit their ability to do so.
At times, he said, âWe seem to be right on the cusp of a major breakthrough in the agreement, and then all of a sudden thereâs a major explosion that goes off in a major population center in Beirut, and a lot of people who have nothing to do with Hezbollah lose their lives, and thatâs not acceptable.â
Vance said Trump has become frustrated with Israel for attacking Lebanon.
(June 18, 2026)
In response to those attacks, Vance pointed out that two-thirds of Israelâs defense weapons have been built and paid for by Americans and that the problem for Israel âis not Donald Trump.â
âAnybody in Israel who thinks their biggest problem is the President of the United States needs to wake up and smell the reality of the situation in that country,â he added.
Vice President JD Vance on Thursday delivered an extraordinarily direct rebuke to Israeli critics of the U.S.-Iran peace agreement, as he sought to defend the preliminary deal with repeated misrepresentations of some of its terms.
âDonald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time,â Mr. Vance said. He added, âIf I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world.â
The task now is not to reward Trump politically, nor to excuse the recklessness that produced this war. It is to prevent the war from returning. Democrats can condemn the decision to start it without sabotaging the agreement that ends it. They can hold Trump accountable without helping Netanyahu drag the United States back into conflict. The choice before them is not between opposing Trump and supporting peace. It is between learning from Americaâs endless wars and repeating them.
We should also quietly get our troops out of the bases in the Gulf that can be reached by Iran. This ensures Iranian hardliners canât strike us to drag us back into the fight.
Take away every factor that we can control that could force us back into the war on Israel or Iranâs terms.
Set all conditions that we can control in our favor.
(June 2, 2026)
The ministry said Europe accounted for â 36 percent of the defence deals, followed by the Asia Pacific at 32 percent, the Middle East and North Africa at 15 percent, and North America âat 13 percent.
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Yet Lead Left PAC has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Galindoâs behalf ahead of Tuesdayâs primary runoff. Democrats are accusing Republicans of orchestrating the effort.
âYou have an openly bigoted person who has no business in elected office getting boosted by a Republican PAC,â Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) said. âSo the Republican leadership here, of course, is going to go to great lengths to hide that.â
The district is a Trump +10, and Galindo would certainly be a weaker opponent for the GOP in November than Garcia.
The Congressional Leadership Fund, the GOP super PAC aligned with House Republican leaders, has declined to say if itâs behind Lead Left PAC.
Galindo caught Democrats off guard when she placed first in the March 3 primary, despite spending just a few thousand dollars on her campaign. After a mysterious super PAC spent nearly $1 million boosting her bid, Democrats were forced to grapple with the possibility that she could win the nomination â an outcome the party worried could jeopardize its chances in the district and tie them to rhetoric theyâve denounced.
(4 May 2026 16:12 BST | Last update: 2 hours 57 mins ago)
Iranian sources told MEE that Iranian intelligence had established the Emirati role in the attacks went beyond hosting US bases.
One official said: „Iranian intelligence believes the UAE also made some of its own air facilities available for operations against Iran.“ Abu Dhabi has served as an advanced platform for Israeli interests in the region, the official said.
He suggested this included „deception operations“ – false-flag Israeli attacks on Oman and at least one other country intended to look like Iranian ones.
Iran also believes that cooperation included the use of the AI infrastructure within the UAE to support data collection and analysis for US and Israeli targeting.
If Iran were to be invaded, the UAE would be treated as an aggressor, one diplomat told MEE.
That the UAE has gone way beyond its Gulf neighbours in supporting the US and Israeli attack on Iran, is down to one man, its President Mohammed bin Zayed, often referred to by the acronym MBZ.
(December 16, 2023)
Israeli leaders believed that Hamas was more interested in governing than fighting. By the time the agents discovered the ledgers in 2018, the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was encouraging the government of Qatar to deliver millions of dollars to the Gaza Strip. He gambled that the money would buy stability and peace.
Mr. Levy recalled briefing Mr. Netanyahu personally in 2015 about the Hamas portfolio.
(April 24, 2026)
âThat was not in a serious context. We have never planned to collect such a tax,â Purbaya told reporters in Jakarta on Friday, putting an end to days of uncertainty.
Behind his response lies a deeper legal framework that governs the worldâs oceans.
Purbaya pointed to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, or UNCLOS, a cornerstone of international maritime law that enshrines the principle of freedom of navigation.
(April 8, 2026)
The legal picture is also complicated. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, bordering states cannot demand payment simply for granting passage through a strait. They may, however, impose limited charges for specific services, such as piloting, tugging, or port assistance, provided these are not applied more heavily against vessels from any particular country.
n Iranian business newspaper reported in April that reconstruction would take at least 12 years.
âThe nuclear issue is honestly Betamax now,â Alan Eyre, a former member of the US team that negotiated the Iran nuclear deal, told MEE, referring to the now obsolete 1975 video cassette player.
âEveryone is talking about what the Iranians are willing to give up. But that is largely a function of what they are willing to get,â he added. „What the Iranians want is money.“
Eyre said there are four ways Iran can be compensated for a deal that reopens the Strait of Hormuz and ends with an agreement on its nuclear programme: reparations, tolling, unblocking frozen assets, and sanctions relief. Of the four, he believes a toll in the Strait of Hormuz is the likeliest path for a deal.
„This budget was formulated, honestly, before we went into conflict with Iran,“ Jules Hurst III, the Pentagon‘s acting chief financial officer, told reporters at a briefing April 21.
In addition, the Trump administration separately plans to ask Congress for more than $200 billion in supplemental funding for the Iran war, according to reports.
On Saturday, Turkish media reported that Saudi Arabia and Qatar will provide Pakistan with $5 billion in financial assistance to help shore up Islamabad‘s dwindling foreign currency reserves, which currently stand at about $16.4 billion.
The development comes as the UAE is requiring Pakistan to repay a $3.5 billion debt by the end of the month.
Pakistan‘s reserves have come under additional pressure recently, thanks to rising costs for imported fuel resulting from the US-Israeli war on Iran.
Der Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) zahlt Honorare an Journalisten. Aus GrĂŒnden des âStaatswohlsâ hĂ€lt die Bundesregierung Namen und genaue Summen jedoch zurĂŒck.
President Trump is expected to unveil his request for a $1.5 trillion military budget for the 2027 fiscal year on Friday, Reuters has reported, marking a 50% increase from this yearâs already massive budget.
The 2026 military budget marked the first to officially exceed $1 trillion, which was achieved by Congress passing a 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) worth about $900 billion and combining it with $150 billion in supplemental military spending that was included in the so-called Big Beautiful Bill, a reconciliation bill that became law last year.
The White House is expected to go with a similar strategy to reach $1.5 trillion. It may request an NDAA worth about $1 trillion or less and seek a supplemental spending bill for $400 to $600 billion.
The agreement would fund other DHS components, such as the Transportation Security Administration and US Coast Guard, but the House will still need to act before funded agencies within the department can reopen.
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However, asked whether he believes the House will adopt the same measure to fund most of the department, Thune said, âI donât know what the House will do.â
âIt looks like everybody is going to stare at each other for a little while,â Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Wednesday, before nodding at lawmakersâ best hope for getting a deal â their overwhelming desire to leave town.
âYou know how it is around here, itâs not Thursday yet,â he said.
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One GOP senator, granted anonymity to speak candidly, summed up their feelings: âI just want to go home.â
CHICAGO â Gov. JB Pritzker emerged as the kingmaker in deep-blue Illinois after pouring millions of dollars and staking his political reputation to deliver his hand-picked Senate candidate a primary victory on Tuesday.
The result strengthens Pritzkerâs standing within his party at a critical moment, as he prepares for a November gubernatorial campaign for his third term and looks ahead to a potential presidential run in 2028.
The primaryâs biggest winner might be Strattonâs top booster: Gov. JB Pritzker.
The Democratic governor, who is widely seen as a 2028 presidential contender, was unopposed in his own primary as he seeks a third term. But he pumped millions of dollars into lifting Stratton over two members of Congress in the race to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin.
More than $32 million in outside spending poured into four Chicago-area House contests, a tidal wave of cash led by groups tied to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the crypto sector and the artificial intelligence industry.
AIPAC and the A.I. industry wound up with split decisions. The crypto sector lost the two races where it spent roughly 90 percent of its money. And progressives failed to build momentum early in midterm primary season.
Here are four takeaways from primary night in Illinois:
The survey also probed the question of Israeli influence over Trumpâs decision-making. Americans were split over the question of Trumpâs loyalty, with 47% saying he is more responsive to the American people than to Israel, and 46% saying he is more responsive to Israel.
Among independents, a crucial voting block that swung the election to Trump, half â 50-44% â said that Trump prioritizes Israeli interests over those of Americans. Among Republicans, 17% said the same. Democrats overwhelmingly held that view, 75-17%.
Asked if the Trump administration was pursuing its war with Iran âprimarily for American interestsâ or âprimarily for Israeli interest,â the public was also divided, but half â 50-41% â said that he was considering America first. Another 9% said they didnât know.