Driving the news: Hegseth will arrive in Israel on May 12 and meet with his counterpart Israel Katz and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
– Hegseth will then travel to Saudi Arabia to join Trump‘s trip to the Gulf.
– Trump will also visit Qatar and the UAE but is not currently expected to visit Israel.
The episode has left some senior White House officials questioning the need for a traditional National Security Council and content to leave Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whom Trump on Thursday named as Waltz’s interim replacement, in a caretaker role for quite some time, a decision that will likely diminish an institution that has had a powerful role in shaping the foreign policy of modern presidencies. And it sidelines a key figure in the White House with a long track record of favoring military intervention, officials said.
(April 22, 2025)
Dan Caldwell was one of the strongest voices at the Pentagon opposing war with Iran. Then he was falsely accused of leaking classified documents and fired.
(April 22, 2025)
“You’re being accused of leaking classified information, but the people accusing you would have no way of knowing whether you did that or not because they haven’t polygraphed you or taken your devices, your private devices,” Carlson declared.
Caldwell suggested that the true source of the leaks were opponents of President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Secretary Hegseth’s foreign policy within the Pentagon, who had been pushing for war with Iran.
(April 22, 2025)
The Israel lobby is working overtime right now trying to destroy the anti-war team that Trump has assembled. We‘ve learned that former Israeli Mossad agents are working overtime on both social media and behind the scenes trying to discredit Pete Hegseth. Neo Con Mike Waltz has now hired a dual citizen and former IDF official to work under him. And three anti-war DoD officials were just fired.
Defence minister‘s threats to annex Gaza distract from legislative coup d‘état at home
Document published by justice minister, hours after government voted to oust Shin Bet chief, calls Gali Baharav-Miara ‘long arm of the opposition,’ says she runs a tyrannical authority
srael‘s Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara said earlier Friday that the prime minister was not allowed to appoint a new internal security agency chief after the government decided to sack Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar.
„According to the decision of the Supreme Court, it is prohibited to take any action that harms the position of the head of the Shin Bet, Ronen Bar,“ she said in a message to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu published by a spokesperson. „It is prohibited to appoint a new head of Shin Bet, and interviews for the position should not be held.“
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweets, “There will be no civil war!” hours after Israel’s most revered jurist, former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak, expressed his fear that the country is heading in that direction due to the government’s recent efforts to fire the head of the Shin Bet security agency and the attorney general.
“The State of Israel is a country of law and according to the law, the Israeli government decides who will be the head of the Shin Bet,” Netanyahu tweets, before adding, “Shabbat Shalom.”
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir responds to the High Court’s temporary injunction against the dismissal of Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar with a post on X reading: “Judicial overhaul now!”
Ben Gvir was reinstated to his post earlier this week when his Otzma Yehudit party returned to the government following Israel’s resumed offensive in the Gaza Strip.
The order will remain in place until the court can hear the petitions that have been filed against his dismissal.
It says it will hear the petitions no later than April 8.
The government voted overnight to remove Bar from his position by April 10 at the latest.
The attempt to fire Mr. Bar is likely to be contested in the country’s Supreme Court.
The real issues are: Who is to blame for failing to prevent Hamas’s October 7 invasion, will the failures be fixed, and will the Shin Bet be turned into a loyalty agency that looks the other way when Jewish extremists perpetrate violence against West Bank Palestinians, as many observers say happened to the police under National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, which is to say under Netanyahu.
Dismissing the Shin Bet head during the investigation, Bar argues, is tainted with “extraneous considerations and a personal and institutional conflict of interest that could not be more serious.” It risks jeopardizing the investigation, he says, which is a danger to the country’s security.
He also pushes for a state commission of inquiry into October 7: “The urgent national need for such an investigation cannot be subordinated to the personal considerations of those involved in the matter, as it is the only way to ensure that such a multi-system failure will not occur again.”
(…)
The announcement was made despite a letter sent to the government by the Attorney General’s Office earlier in the day, which stated that the government must obtain a recommendation from an advisory committee before weighing Bar’s dismissal.
Citing a cabinet resolution from 2016, the office said that the Senior Appointments Advisory Committee must sign off on the dismissal of anyone from seven different senior civil service positions, including the head of the Shin Bet.
(14.03.2024)
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., delivered an address on the Senate floor to call for a two-state solution amid the conflict in Gaza and new elections in Israel.
(19.03.2024)
It was here, he recalled, inside this hulking red brick school deep in south Brooklyn, where at 16 he was glued to his transistor radio to hear breaking news of the Arab-Israeli War of 1967. It was where he idolized Sandy Koufax, the Jewish pitcher for the Dodgers who refused to play on Yom Kippur, and learned it was cool to be proud of his heritage.
And on Sunday, Mr. Schumer, the New York Democrat, majority leader and highest-ranking Jewish official in the United States, returned to explain how his upbringing in Jewish Brooklyn in the shadow of the Holocaust prompted him to deliver a politically risky speech that brought about a watershed moment in the politics of U.S.-Israeli relations.
In the weeks since Donald Trump returned to office, Democrats and legal scholars have warned that he’s provoking a constitutional crisis by trying to expand his power and ignore laws that stand in his way.
On Wednesday, the White House had a new response to that. It’s not the president who is causing the problem, said press secretary Karoline Leavitt, it’s the judges who are blocking some of his agenda by saying it’s illegal.
(February 10, 2025)
In the last 21 days, more than a dozen lawsuits have been filed alleging that the administration’s actions violate the rule of law and are contrary to the Constitution or laws of the United States. The list grows longer every day.
These actions have forced affected parties to seek relief in the courts, which stand as a bulwark against these violations. We support our courts who are treating these cases with the urgency they require. Americans know there is a right way and a wrong way to proceed. What is being done is not the right way to pursue the change that is sought in our system of government.
These actions do not make America stronger. They make us weaker.
(February 10, 2025)
Tracking the Trump administration’s failure to follow the judiciary’s orders.
(February 10, 2025)
There is no universally accepted definition of a constitutional crisis, but legal scholars agree about some of its characteristics. It is generally the product of presidential defiance of laws and judicial rulings. It is not binary: It is a slope, not a switch. It can be cumulative, and once one starts, it can get much worse.
After President Trump left the White House in 2021, critics of his norm-breaking use of executive power implored Congress to tighten legal limits on when presidents can unilaterally reshape American government with the stroke of a pen. But lawmakers largely did not act.
Before his departure, the president released a three-minute recorded video message saying he was cooperating only to prevent bloodshed between the secret service and law enforcement.
[Sound bite: President Yoon Suk Yeol (Korean-English)]
“I have agreed to appear before the CIO, despite the investigation being illegal, to prevent bloodshed.
The embattled president had been holed up in his fortified residence for weeks surrounded by his Presidential Security Service team, evading arrest as he faces several probes and an impeachment trial.
The Corruption Investigation Office (CIO), which is working with police and the defense ministry to investigate Yoon, first attempted to detain him earlier this month, but it failed after an hours-long showdown in which soldiers and members of the presidential security detail blocked some 80 police and investigators from approaching the presidential compound.
Südkoreas Ermittlungsbehörden haben am Mittwoch Präsident Yoon Suk Yeol verhaftet.
Er steht im Zusammenhang mit der Ausrufung des Kriegsrechts am 3. Dezember im Verdacht des Hochverrats.
The acting president’s remarks come after a second warrant was issued last Tuesday, allowing the president to be detained for questioning about the martial law incident for up to 48 hours.
The letters were sent by the CIO two weeks after it obtained warrants to search the presidential residence in Yongsan District, central Seoul, and take Yoon into custody over his short-lived imposition of martial law on Dec. 3.
A CIO-led attempt to execute the warrant on Jan. 3 failed in the face of resistance from a combined force of 200 PSS and military personnel who blocked investigators and police from gaining access to the presidential residence.
Nach dem Verfassungsgerichtsgesetz soll im Falle der Abwesenheit des Angeklagten ein neuer Termin festgelegt werden. Sollte er auch den neuen Termin versäumen, kann die Verhandlung ohne ihn laufen.
(January 8, 2025)
Eighteen People Power Party (PPP) lawmakers who broke through police barricades to vote in favor of repealing martial law have since been labeled traitors. So too have the 12 alleged lawmakers who supported President Yoon‘s impeachment. Recently, acting President Choi Sang-mok faced similar accusations after appointing two Constitutional Court justices. But this raises a critical question: Who is betraying whom?
Without the actions of those 18 lawmakers, the PPP would remain tarnished by its complicity in shielding martial law. Without Choi’s decision, the impeachment trial could have descended into a legal quagmire, leaving the nation paralyzed.
The Ministry of National Defense reportedly conveyed to the Presidential Security Service (PSS) on Jan. 3 that deploying the 55th Guard Corps to block the arrest was inappropriate. On Thursday, the PSS reportedly responded that it „understood“ the ministry’s position.
A ministry official said soldiers from the 55th Guard Corps would not be deployed again to obstruct similar attempts to execute the president’s arrest warrant. However, the ministry clarified that it was not considering withdrawing the battalion from its assignment under the PSS.
Es gab kritische Stimmen, nach denen beim ersten Versuch der Verhaftung von Yoon am 3. Januar zu wenig Personal im Einsatz gewesen sei. Demnach wird damit gerechnet, dass beim zweiten Versuch das Einsatzpersonal stark aufgestockt wird.
(Update: 2025-01-08 15:45:31)
Die Verteidiger machten zugleich deutlich, dass sie nicht akzeptieren würden, sollte ein solcher Befehl beim Bezirksgericht Seoul West beantragt werden. Denn nicht dieses Gericht, sondern das Bezirksgericht Seoul Zentral sei das zuständige Gericht für das Büro für Korruptionsermittlungen gegen hochrangige Beamte (CIO).
(Update: 2025-01-08 15:45:43)
Das Bezirksgericht Seoul West hat einem weiteren Antrag auf einen Haftbefehl gegen den suspendierten Präsidenten Yoon Suk Yeol stattgegeben.
Das Büro für Korruptionsermittlungen gegen hochrangige Beamte (CIO) gab diese Bewilligung am Dienstag bekannt. Der erste Haftbefehl war am Vortag abgelaufen.
The CIO told reporters that its investigators were confronted by around 200 secret service officials and troops, who formed a human wall some 200 meters ahead of Yoon’s residence.
A few CIO prosecutors were eventually allowed to approach the residence to present the arrest warrant to secret service chief Park Chong-jun around 10:10 a.m., but he denied access to the residence, citing presidential security regulations.
About 100 officials from the CIO and the police had been in the presidential compound during the standoff.
Die Entscheidung traf das Büro für Korruptionsermittlungen gegen hochrangige Beamte (CIO) am Freitagnachmittag.
Das CIO begründete die Entscheidung mit der fortgesetzten Auseinandersetzung mit dem Sicherheitsdienst des Präsidenten. Daher gehe das Büro davon aus, dass die Vollstreckung des Haftbefehls de facto unmöglich sei.
Wegen der Besorgnis über die Sicherheit der vor Ort eingesetzten Mitarbeiter stelle es die Vollstreckung ein, fuhr das Büro fort.
According to Spiegel, SPD members of the Bundestag in a recent meeting joined local and regional politicians in voicing doubts over Scholz’s chances to succeed and called for Pistorius to step in.
The comments were made on Tuesday at a meeting of the Seeheimer Kreis (Seeheim Circle), a conservative wing of the SPD which claims to be aiming at “a modern and pragmatic policy,” the German newspaper reported
Die politischen Turbulenzen in Berlin wirken sich auch auf die Parteien in München aus. Während die FDP demonstrativ Gelassenheit zeigt, geben sich die Grünen kämpferisch – und der OB rückt von Olaf Scholz ab.
Mr. Scholz vowed to keep governing until the end of the year and then to demand a confidence vote in Parliament in January, a test he may fail. That would open the way for early elections, a rarity in Germany since World War II, possibly in March.