Friday, May 8, 2026
Home Blog Page 53

Ukraine announces capture of Russian commander in Bakhmut

Fox News
-
0
Ukraine announces capture of Russian commander in Bakhmut

Ukrainian Ground Forces announced Monday that their troops successfully captured a Russian army commander in the ongoing fight for the city of Bakhmut.

The 3rd Separate Assault Brigade posted on its Telegram channel that its fighters nabbed the leader of the Russian Alga Volunteer Battalion, a branch of Moscow’s 72nd Motor Rifle Brigade. The commander’s name was not released.

The reported capture, which could not be independently confirmed by Newsweek, comes as Kyiv has seen continued incremental gains in its counteroffensive aimed at reclaiming Russian-occupied territory. Newsweek reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry via email for comment Monday afternoon.

In a video attached to the Telegram post, which purportedly shows the moment the Russian commander was captured, Ukrainian soldiers can be seen moving the wounded official into a tattered building for shelter and providing him with water. The commander, according to translations provided by the account War Translated on X, formerly Twitter, tells Kyiv’s forces that he entered the region in the morning with about 120 men.

“There’s a f*** load of people who died here,” the Russian commander said when asked about the state of his battalion.

Bakhmut, an industrial city in eastern Ukraine, has been under Russian control since May following months of brutal warfare. Over the past five months since launching its counteroffensive, however, Kyiv has been slowly closing in on Russian forces in the region, including reclaiming a string of key villages south of the city last month.

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported on Sunday that its troops had “partial success” in advancing northeast of Andriivka, a key village roughly six miles south of Bakhmut that Kyiv reclaimed in mid-September. Kyiv also reported that Russia’s advances in the area were unsuccessful.

Last week, Colonel General Oleksandry Syrskyi, commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, reported that the Russian military had suffered intense losses in the battle for Bakhmut, including six tanks in 24 hours.

Ukraine’s 3rd Assault Brigade added in its Telegram post that the commander was now “one of the representatives of the exchange fund among the senior officers of the occupiers.” In August, Ukrainian intelligence spokesperson Andriy Yusov told reporters that the number of Russian prisoners of war in Kyiv’s possession had surpassed 200, according to Interfax-Ukraine.

“This means that it will be easier and more active to bring back our people,” Yusov added at the briefing.

Putin ally is ready to join war against Israel

Fox News
-
0
Putin ally is ready to join war against Israel

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov—a long-time ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin—has declared his support for the Palestinian people in light of the recent escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Palestinian militants of the Hamas group launched a surprise attack on Israel Saturday, killing hundreds of civilians as rockets launched from Gaza rained down on central and southern Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has since declared war and called for a complete seizure of the Gaza Strip, where Hamas has held control since 2008.

In a post to his Telegram channel Monday, Kadyrov pleaded “to the international community” calling for a peaceful solution to the conflict, and said that the Chechen Republic is prepared to provide its own units as “peacekeeping forces” in the event they are needed.

“I appeal to the international community so that at least once they unanimously make a fair decision regarding the situation in Palestine,” Kadyrov wrote. “I appeal to the leaders of Muslim countries—create a coalition and call on those whom you call friends, Europe and the entire West, so that they do not bomb civilians under the pretext of destroying militants.

“We support Palestine,” he added. “And we are against this war, which, unlike other conflicts, can develop into something more.

“I myself have been to Israel. And our peaceful delegation experienced first-hand attempts at overt provocation,” Kadyrov continued. “Therefore, I call for a stop to both the war and any form of escalation of the situation. If necessary, our units are ready to act as peacekeeping forces to restore order and counter any troublemakers.”

Russian officials have yet to pick a side in the conflict, although speculations arose online that Moscow could have had a role in Hamas’ successful attack, which took Israeli intelligence by surprise. While officials say there is no concrete evidence that the Kremlin assisted or trained Hamas fighters, Russia’s close ally, Iran, has long funded the militant organization

Still, Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer told reporters Monday that the United States believes Iran is only “broadly complicity” in Hamas attacks, reiterating that there is no “direct information” linking the two at this time, reported CNN.

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden has said that the U.S. firmly stands with Israel, and has vowed to provide the Israeli army with military assistance in its fight against Hamas. U.K. Prime Ministry Rishi Sunak has also pledged to send aid to Israel, where at least 10 Britons are feared to be dead or missing amid the conflict, reported the BBC, citing UK officials.

The conflict in Israel may prove useful to Russia as it continues its full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a way to distract the Western world from providing aid to Kyiv. Ukrainian military intelligence has also accused Moscow of sending Western-made weapons seized in the Russian-Ukraine war to the Gaza Strip for Hamas fighters.

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has also blamed the Hamas attack on U.S. foreign policy, writing on his Telegram channel Saturday that America has been “a key player” in the decades-long conflict in Israel.

“Instead of actively working on a Palestinian-Israeli settlement, these idiots have crept into our country and are helping neo-Nazis with all their might, pitting two close peoples against each other,” Medvedev said.

Newsweek reached out to the Russian Foreign Ministry for comment via email Monday evening.

Correction 10/9/23, 6:30 p.m. ET: This article was updated to reflect that Ramzan Kadyrov is the leader of the Chechen Republic.

Is Russia behind Hamas attack on Israel? What we know

Fox News
-
0
Is Russia behind Hamas attack on Israel? What we know

The stunningly successful surprise attack launched by Hamas from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel at the weekend has opened a dark new chapter in the years-long war between the Islamist militant group and its Israeli enemies.

Amid swirling speculation of foreign involvement, the infiltration attack—being referred to by some observers as “Israel’s 9/11″—may yet precipitate seismic shifts in Israel’s foreign affairs.

Hamas justified “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” as a response to Israel’s recent police actions in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem and to violence by Israeli settlers illegally occupying parts of the Palestinian West Bank.

The operation is believed to have killed at least 700 Israelis, wounded more than 2,100, and resulted in dozens of captives being taken back into the Gaza Strip. Israel’s response is underway, with airstrikes in Gaza killing at least 413 people, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

Israelis are now considering how the country was caught so catastrophically off guard as speculation mounts of foreign backing for the raid.

Hamas has long been funded, armed and trained by Iran, as one of the Islamist militant organizations—alongside Islamic Jihad also in Gaza, Lebanese Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, and a litany of Shia paramilitary formations in Iraq—leveraged by Tehran in its strategic confrontation with Israel and its Western backers.

The weekend attack appears to have thwarted—or at least delayed—the planned normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia; a key strategic goal for Tehran.

Initial reports—and a statement from Hamas—suggest that Iran had a hand in the landmark assault, which is thought to have been prepared over several weeks. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, though, said on Sunday he has “not yet seen evidence that Iran directed or was behind this particular attack, but there is certainly a long relationship.” Iran’s mission to the United Nations has denied any involvement.

There has also been speculation on social media of Russian involvement in the Hamas operation, though there is no evidence indicating Moscow’s alleged role. Newsweek has contacted the Russian foreign ministry by email to request comment.

The Institute for the Study of War has suggested that Russia might benefit from the shift in international attention away from its atrocities in Ukraine and towards the deteriorating situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Israel is expected to launch a fresh and bloody ground assault into Gaza in the coming days, while tensions remain high in the occupied West Bank and along the border with Lebanon, where Hezbollah enjoys de facto control.

Regardless, there is no evidence of direct Russian involvement in the weekend attack. Hamas has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007 and has a long history of infiltration operations into Israeli territory. The militants appear to have used their traditional mixture of indigenous and Iranian weapons for the assault.

Some pro-Ukrainian accounts on X, formerly known as Twitter, claimed without evidence that the Wagner Group mercenary organization may have trained the Hamas units that launched the attack. Wagner has no known presence in the Palestinian territories, while Hamas’ assault units are highly experienced and trained with the assistance of outside powers like Iran.

Others incorrectly suggested that only Russia could have instructed Hamas in its use of drone bombers to target Israeli armor and observation posts. Hamas was at the forefront of the adoption of commercial and military drones, and has regularly used them to attack Israeli military, civilian and infrastructure targets in Israel and the Gaza Strip.

Oleg Ignatov, the Crisis Group think tank’s senior Russia analyst, told Newsweek: “I haven’t seen any evidence; I haven’t seen it in public, I haven’t heard anything about this from my conversations. It’s difficult to imagine that Russia participated in the planning of this attack.

“Of course, we live in a world where we can’t exclude anything. But I haven’t seen any evidence.”

Russia has long maintained a close working relationship with Iran and its network of partner militant organizations—especially Hezbollah in Lebanon—across the Middle East, seeing them as an alternative power base capable of challenging regional American and allied interests. Moscow has drawn closer to Iran since the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The Kremlin has retained high-level contacts with Hamas. In March, the militant group sent a high-level delegation to Moscow to hold talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who subsequently warned that Hamas’ “patience” with Israel was “running out.” Hamas leaders also visited Russia in May and September 2022.

Such diplomatic channels should not be confused with direct support, Ignatov said. “Russia has very good connections with Hamas, and everybody knows about this,” he said. “But I think that was part of the policy in the Middle East that it was advantageous for Russia to have the ability to communicate with everyone.”

In seeking to bolster its international prestige and influence, Ignatov said Moscow is more interested in involvement in peace talks rather than trying to sway the fighting. “Russia would be interested in participating in any possible negotiations,” he said. “This means, of course, it would would not be interested in supporting one of the sides.”

Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov was among those who called for calm over the weekend. “It goes without saying that we always call for restraint,” the diplomat said, as quoted by the Interfax news agency. Former President Dmitry Medvedev—known for his anti-Ukrainian and anti-Western diatribes—took the opportunity to blame the U.S. for the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But some Russian propagandists reveled in Israel’s defeat. Vladimir Solovyov said the Hamas attack was a “loud slap” for Israel and its intelligence services, blaming the U.S. for failing in its role as the “guarantor of peace in the region” and claiming without evidence that Ukraine provided weapons to Hamas.

Others used the attack to hit out at Russians who fled to Israel to escape Moscow’s disastrous war on Ukraine. Margarita Simonyan, the head of RT, wrote on social media: “The country that is not at war with its neighbors is again at war with its neighbors. We await the exodus of Russian pacifists. Then again, we won’t hold our breath.”

Sergey Mardan wrote in a post on his Telegram channel: “This mess is beneficial for Russia, because the globalist toad will be distracted from Ukraine and will get busy trying to put out the eternal Middle Eastern fire.”

“Iran is our real military ally,” Marden added. “Israel is an ally of the United States. Therefore, choosing a side is easy!”

But goading from state media talking heads is not the same as foreign policy, Ignatov said. “That’s not the policy, it’s wishful thinking,” he explained.

“They think that the world works like this. If there is a war in Israel, it means that the United States will send shells and ammunition to Israel rather than to Ukraine. And that means that Russia will have an advantage.”

Update 10/9/23 at 7:35 a.m. ET: This article has been updated to include comment from Oleg Ignatov.

This Indigenous Peoples’ Day, the U.S. Needs to Support Brazil

Fox News
-
0
This Indigenous Peoples’ Day, the U.S. Needs to Support Brazil

For Indigenous people like me, our land is our home. It provides us shelter, security, and a deep connection to our ancestors. Indigenous Peoples have been forced to fight to protect our lands from invasion and destruction for centuries, and right now in Brazil, we are leading one of the largest and most critical battles to protect Indigenous lands in modern times.

Large companies, particularly from the agribusiness and mining industries, and Brazilian politicians who support them, are doing everything they can to take land from Indigenous communities, all in the name of profit. If successful, the consequences risk not only destroying the homes of nearly 2 million Indigenous Peoples from more than 300 different ethnic groups, including non-contacted peoples living in voluntary isolation, but also the planet at-large by making it impossible for the world to stave off climate catastrophe.

Indigenous land in Brazil spans across the country’s six biomes, all of which are precious ecosystems crucial to the biological and systemic maintenance of the Amazon, the world’s largest carbon sink, accounting for nearly 20 percent of the world’s carbon captured by vegetation. It is the most crucial resource in the world’s fight to mitigate climate change, and it is essential to preserving the planet for future generations. This land is critical to regulating air quality and slowing the pace of global warming.

Despite its significance, the Amazon has faced severe deforestation, with the rainforest’s tree cover stripped by about 17 percent since 1970 by greedy corporations and individuals willing to destroy this critical land for resources. Brazil has lost 69 million hectares of native vegetation in the last 30 years. However, only 1.6 percent of this deforestation has occurred within Indigenous lands, even as Indigenous lands account for 35 percent of the Amazon, a direct result of Indigenous Peoples’ work to protect the Amazon as its stewards. The battle to preserve Indigenous Peoples’ right to this land is a battle the world cannot afford to lose.

Brazilian Indigenous movements, national, and international allies are taking a stand in support of Indigenous lands and secured a major victory last month when Brazil’s Supreme Court rejected an arcane legal thesis that would put already demarcated Indigenous lands at risk and place a limit on the creation of new Indigenous territories, which would threaten and displace hundreds of Indigenous communities and open their land up to private industry.

While the Supreme Court decision represented an important win for Indigenous communities, the war still rages on, and it’s long past time world leaders recognize the urgency of what’s happening in Brazil. Leaders in the U.S. and European Union and global climate activists must start treating the protection of Indigenous rights in Brazil as a priority for the global climate agenda and do everything they can to pressure Brazilian leaders to respect Indigenous Peoples’ right to their land before it’s too late. Otherwise, their grand commitments at Climate Week and COP28 could be for naught.

The Brazilian Senate recently approved PL 2903/23, a bill that ignores the Supreme Court’s recent decision and does even further damage to Indigenous rights in Brazil. The bill threatens nearly 400 Indigenous ethnic groups with forced removal in order to pave the way for the construction of new military bases, highways, and power plants. It is no exaggeration to say this bill is a modern-day version of the Indian Removal Act passed by the U.S. Congress in 1830, which led to the infamous Trail of Tears.

It is critical to the future of the planet that Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva vetoes the entire bill before the Oct. 18 deadline. If he gets this wrong, the devastation to Indigenous communities and the vital ecosystems they have safeguarded for centuries will be irreversible.

Even if President Lula does veto the bill, the fight will still be far from over. The bill will go back to the National Congress, many of whom are highly influenced by the agribusiness and mining industries, and the threat to our global future will remain. We cannot ever stand down from this battle.

This is a fight for the future of our planet and future generations. Corporations have proven they will stop at nothing in their pursuit of profit as they exploit the environment at the expense of Indigenous lives. That’s why it takes all of us—not just in Brazil but also in the U.S., Europe, and beyond—uniting to protect the Amazon and every biome, and the Indigenous communities across Brazil and the world.

If Indigenous Peoples’ Day is to be more than just a symbolic gesture, President Joe Biden, leaders in Congress and climate activists must recognize the opportunity to prevent the dark history of Indigenous dispossession and displacement in the Americas from repeating itself. They can do so by urging President Lula to veto the bill sitting on his desk and moving forward prioritizing the rights of Indigenous People to their lands in Brazil. Our future—Indigenous Peoples’ and the world’s—depends on it.

Kleber Karipuna is an Indigenous leader of the Karipuna people of Amapá, and executive coordinator of the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, representing the Brazilian Amazon through the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon—Coiab. He holds a degree in environmental management and a master’s degree in human rights.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.

COVID Masking Hysteria Was Never About Following the Science

Fox News
-
0
COVID Masking Hysteria Was Never About Following the Science

The following essay is an excerpt from Sen. Rand Paul’s new book, Deception: The Great Covid Cover-Up, due out from Regnery on October 10.

By the spring of 2020, when I returned from my COVID sabbatical, all previous knowledge of immunity seemed to have been discarded. This contagion of “know-nothingism” could not be missed. On my return to the Capitol after recovering from COVID, I was met by a gaggle of young journalists, the ones who occupy a spot between the Capitol subway and the escalator to the Capitol. They barreled up to me with multiple masks on their twenty-something-year-old faces and demanded to know why I wasn’t wearing a mask.

I calmly explained to them that the benefit of having survived COVID-19 was that I now had immunity. They challenged me, saying that I didn’t know how long my immunity would last. I responded in kind, replying that they didn’t know my immunity wouldn’t last.

The week before I returned from quarantine, I had donated my blood to researchers at the University of Louisville for analysis. They found that I had a robust antibody response to three different sites on the COVID-19 surface.

The reporters, none of whom had a science degree (nor had any of them likely even passed an advanced science course), angrily and self-righteously excoriated me for my “ignorance” and my “dangerous noncompliance.” What they did not do was challenge my position in any meaningful way by citing scientific studies based on randomized controlled trials showing any efficacy of masking for viral infection. No. The ignorance of today’s “journalists” is staggering. They only know how to repeat the dogma fed to them.

I tried to reassure the poor flat-earthers that “of all the people you’ll meet today, I’m probably the safest person in Washington. You won’t catch COVID-19 from me!” Their eyes visible above their “BLM” and “Trust Science” masks only narrowed in angry and impotent disbelief. Our media repeatedly and stupidly conflated the use of masking in clinical and surgical settings involving body fluid spatter and bacterial infection with effectiveness against viruses 10 times smaller than the smallest bacteria in public settings.

And Anthony Fauci played along. (Except, of course, in his private email, where he advised a personal friend not to bother masking since, of course, “The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through material.”) Of course, while he was writing this privately, he was sanctimoniously lecturing me in a Senate hearing wearing a ridiculous Washington Nationals cloth mask. When I rightly called him out for his public health theater, he angrily and huffily denied that it was theater. I am still shocked at the childishly ignorant and emotional responses he gave, and by the media’s fawning response to it.

I told the press and anyone who might be interested via Twitter statements and press releases of the randomized controlled studies around the world, including the large and telling DANMASK study. Even the New York Times admitted, “Researchers in Denmark reported on Wednesday that surgical masks did not protect the wearers against infection with the coronavirus in a large randomized clinical trial.”

As Anthony Lazzarino, M.D., commented in the British Medical Journal, “The DANMASK-19 study proved that surgical facemasks have limited air filtering capacity with respect to SARS-CoV-2.”

I offered them a large, randomized-controlled mask study of influenza from Vietnam that showed the cloth mask–wearing group had more infections than the control group wearing no masks. As Dr. A. A. Chughtai and his coauthors concluded, “Rates of infection were consistently higher among those in the cloth mask group than in the medical mask and control groups.”

I would point out that the pores of a surgical mask were six hundred times larger than the virus. But, to these young nonscientists, I was portrayed as the person who did not “believe the science.” Never mind that science is about objective provability, not belief. Yet in America, under the cult of personality around Fauci, science was bastardized into something akin to religion. And yet the media accused anyone who challenged the dogma of somehow “politicizing” the virus.

Rand Paul, M.D. is the author of Deception: The Great Covid Cover-Up. He has represented Kentucky in the U.S. Senate since 2011.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.

Autonomous Fleets Are Almost Here. Are They Safe From Cyberattacks?

Fox News
-
0
Autonomous Fleets Are Almost Here. Are They Safe From Cyberattacks?

As our society transforms into a more connected world, an essential component of this shift is the need for safe and secure driving experiences on our roads. The recent hacking of a Tesla in under two minutes by France security firm Synacktiv demonstrates how serious a concern this is—attackers were able to breach the cyber controls of the vehicle to carry out a number of malicious acts, including opening the trunk of the vehicle while in motion and accessing the infotainment system.

As more connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) and electric vehicles (EVs) hit the market, it is clear that manufacturing speed is outpacing security measures. The cybersecurity of vehicles is often overlooked in the auto rollout, even though the connected nature of modern vehicles makes them susceptible to hacking and other cyber challenges.

The cybersecurity of a vehicle is vital—without it, serious injuries or even fatalities can occur. Imagine the above Tesla scenario but worse—a hacker takes control over the car and locks the doors while speeding up the vehicle on a highway. The driver or passenger of the car then gets a notification on his mobile phone asking for a ransomware in bitcoins—otherwise the hacker will crash the vehicle into the side of the road.

This is an extreme scenario, but such a Ransomware 2.0 incident is possible today. The big question is—Are we ready to enable incident management for such auto cyber challenges?

Another complicated part of this challenge is that the cyber risk is carried by the owner or operator of either individual vehicles or perhaps an entire EV fleet. The fleet could be made up of cars, buses, or trucks, and the necessary cybersecurity controls must be in place to enable greater cyber hygiene of these vehicles.

As EVs are computers on wheels, the potential for a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on multiple vehicles could disable an entire fleet of vehicles on our roads. Imagine hundreds of delivery or critical service vehicles out of service and those potential repercussions.

Fleets also depend on other critical systems to work. An Idaho hospital cyberattack earlier this year, where ambulances were diverted to other hospitals, demonstrates just how important it is to secure the entire vehicle ecosystem and not just the vehicle itself. This attack also allows us to imagine how serious it would be if the reverse scenario was true—What if the ambulance fleet itself was rendered inoperable?

If that’s not enough, think about the fragile state of our current supply chain and all the issues it has faced since the pandemic. Now imagine if a cyberattack was responsible for an entire delivery fleet to stall. The supply chain and transportation infrastructure would be totally crippled, leading to major economic disruptions.

It is important to highlight that these cyber challenges multiply manifold as trucking fleets move to autonomous trucks and lead to questions around legal liability in case of any cyber incident.

Data collection cannot be overlooked either. CAV and EV data is rich in personally identifiable information (PII) and might also contain other sensitive information such as payment card information or commercial data (such as fleet tracking and performance). Data governance regulations need to be implemented to secure the transmission and storage of this data to ensure privacy and compliance to legal and contractual obligations.

Although there are generic cybersecurity mandates in many countries, jurisdictions must legislate automotive cybersecurity specific legislations for cars operating on our roads. Countries are actively exploring the best ways to move forward with vehicle regulation—there has been emphasis on ensuring automotive manufacturers enable cybersecurity in all future models, however, with regard to operations of EVs, policies and best practices are still, slowly, being developed and legislated.

One area where more focus is needed is from an owner/operator perspective, both for individual users and for fleet owners. As consumers, we are concerned about the safety features of our new vehicle, but we do not ask any questions about the cybersecurity level of the car. There is a need for user awareness of the ordinary consumer on the criticality of cybersecurity for the smooth operations of the modern vehicle.

Fleet owners need to ensure they have effective cyber controls in place. They should have an asset inventory of all the software on their vehicles and ensure that they are aware of vulnerabilities and breaches for these software applications. Furthermore, they should carry out active cyber risk assessments for any third parties that develop vehicle software.

Finally, they must carry out real-time cyber monitoring of the vehicles and ensure that incident management processes are in place to mitigate against any adverse cyber events. Only by proactively enabling this holistic cyber governance can these fleet owners survive in this brave new connected world.

AJ Khan is the founder and CEO of Vehiqilla Inc and a Catalyst Industry Fellow at Rogers Cybersecure Catalyst, Toronto Metropolitan University’s center for research, training, and innovation in cybersecurity.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.

Kevin McCarthy’s Removal as House Speaker Was Justified

Fox News
-
0
Kevin McCarthy’s Removal as House Speaker Was Justified

“Chaos!” screamed legacy media headlines and stunned establishment Republicans last week, when a motion to vacate the House speaker’s chair succeeded by six votes and Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was removed after nine disappointing months on the job. This motion to vacate the speaker’s chair, filed by Representative Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), was the first in American history to succeed, and only the third ever attempted.

Contrary to the direst predictions of the quivering Washington GOP, the process was neither chaotic nor unjustified. The motion was carried on the first vote. Within hours of the ouster, the House Republican Conference settled on two likely candidates, House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and House majority leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), to replace McCarthy, who promptly pledged not to seek reelection. Jordan and Scalise are both widely respected in the House Republican Conference and unlikely to face an especially difficult or prolonged election when the House reconvenes on Wednesday to choose a new speaker.

Notably, this was untrue for McCarthy, who was the first speaker since 1923 not to be elected on the first ballot and proceeded to run in 15 memorably chaotic rounds of balloting before finally prevailing—curiously without being denounced for creating “chaos.” In the end, he only became speaker by desperately making promises to Republican skeptics that he failed to keep, and sheepishly agreeing that a motion to vacate his post could come from just one congressman rather than the usual higher number of members, which generally ranges from five to 20.

That episode was far more “chaotic” than Gaetz’s motion, which was rooted in well-founded objections to McCarthy’s poor leadership, and was procedurally correct under the House’s operating rules, which McCarthy had accepted in order to win election as speaker. McCarthy could have ended his race at any time during his 15 ballots, acknowledging that he did not enjoy the support of a unified House Conference whose slim four-seat majority demanded a level of unity and discipline that the House Democratic Conference has somehow managed to perfect. Instead, he pressed on, only taking the prize after knowingly making himself vulnerable to easy removal and pledging dubious support for policies and tactics that he previously rejected.

Put plainly, McCarthy knew the liabilities, accepted the risks, and when the game was up, walked away. Revealingly, he told a journalist who asked what advice he might give a successor, “change the rules.” The only minor show of disapproval in the chamber arose when Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), who will serve as speaker pro tempore until a new speaker is elected, passive-aggressively slammed down his gavel, making him look like a confounded cartoon character not getting his way, a bow-tied Elmer Fudd who just can’t believe he was outwitted by someone younger (McHenry is 47 to Gaetz’s 41, but looks and acts twice the Florida congressman’s age).

McHenry’s attitude reflects that of the GOP establishment writ large. Spending enough time in Washington can cow even nominally “conservative” Republicans into accepting that they are members of a de facto coalition government with Democrats, a permanent “uniparty” in which they are always the browbeaten junior partner, even when they hold the majority. Disrupting the orderliness of their collaboration, as Gaetz did, challenges this status quo. Is it any surprise that grown men who seriously worry about not receiving D.C. cocktail party invitations would hem and haw about principle as Florida Conservatism triumphs in practice? Ask New York Times chief Washington correspondent Carl Hulse, who unironically commented that McCarthy’s demise “reflected the challenge of wielding a Republican majority that refuses to be governed.” How dare it!

In the meantime, McCarthy frittered away his speakership violating promise after promise. When elected, he assured his conference that he would insist on spending reductions and work to reduce the national debt. Instead, he agreed to a $2 trillion deficit on top of the $33 trillion already owed, a reckless financial embarrassment that Gaetz reasonably described as “chaos.”

McCarthy promised a muscular inquiry into possible criminal activity by President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, including subpoenas, which House Democrats freely used when investigating former president Donald Trump. Instead, McCarthy’s investigations have been slow and lackadaisical, even by pathetic Washington standards, and no personal subpoenas have been issued—all while Trump, who is now confounding uniparty sentiments as the GOP’s frontrunner, is subjected to relentless civil and criminal prosecutions that are widely regarded as politically motivated even though congressional Republicans have the as-yet unused power to defund those investigations.

Just a week before losing his seat, McCarthy worked to pass a continuing resolution to avoid a government shutdown that excluded more funds for Ukraine—aid that 55 percent of Americans oppose because they realize that risking direct U.S. involvement in the war could escalate to a nuclear exchange. As chaotic as that would be, it is widely suspected that McCarthy, who personally supports increased funding for Ukraine, entertained a separate deal with the Biden administration to maintain the funding through other means.

Any of these profiles in cowardice could have damned McCarthy months ago. Collectively, they made his ouster nearly inevitable. Most significantly of all, however, his removal resulted from his worst quality: his utter failure to please his conference, which has caused Republicans to lose all year and would have continued to cause them to lose for as long he remained in place. That might have suited GOP establishmentarians, but fortunately for everyone else McCarthy is gone, for good reasons and following correct procedures.

Paul du Quenoy is President of the Palm Beach Freedom Institute.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.

The Supreme Court Should Rein In the Administrative State in CFPB Case

Fox News
-
0
The Supreme Court Should Rein In the Administrative State in CFPB Case

If ever there was a poster child for the progressive vision of an all-powerful and unaccountable administrative state, it is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). It is only fitting, then, that the nation’s highest Court has been forced to step in to determine what course the U.S. will take when it comes to the constitutional separation of powers.

On Tuesday, Supreme Court Justices heard oral arguments in Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. Community Financial Services Association of America. The narrow issue before the court is whether the CFPB’s bizarre and historically unprecedented funding mechanism of simply issuing demand letters to the Federal Reserve violates the appropriations clause of the Constitution. Progressive Justices are relying on statistics rather than the Constitution to prop up this brazen affront to the separation of powers. “This is a rounding error in the federal budget,” Justice Elena Kagan said of the $641.5 million the agency received last year.

The main issue in this case is not the price tag, but the process. We urged Justices in a friend-of-the-court brief—joined by former colleagues from both the agency and Congress—to restore the power of the purse to Congress so that the American people, through their elected representatives, can actually have a say in how the CFPB operates. The outcome of this case will help determine the answer to an even more important question, namely whether under our Constitution “all legislative powers” are truly vested in Congress or whether sweeping portions of them can be exercised by unelected administrators like those at the CFPB.

The Dodd-Frank Act created the CFPB in 2010 and granted it vast regulatory authority over consumer finance. To exercise this authority, the CFPB’s director—a single individual—was given powers that should belong to the legislative, executive, and judiciary. The agency makes its own rules, enforces them, and then adjudicates them in its own courts with its own prosecutors. Dodd-Frank also hyper-insulated the CFPB from accountability by circumventing the congressional appropriations process, bringing us to the current litigation.

Because of its unaccountable and unconstitutional design, the CFPB’s brief history is already replete with abuses and violations of the agency’s statutory authority. For example, in 2015 it sought to indirectly regulate auto dealer compensation even though Congress had expressly prohibited the bureau from regulating auto dealers in statute. The CFPB has also attempted to apply the Equal Credit Opportunity Act to people who had not even applied for credit in the first place. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has found the CFPB “violated bedrock principles of due process” when in it attempted to fine a company by retroactively applying its new interpretation of an old and established law. Most recently the CFPB has launched an initiative to cut financial service fees that it unilaterally and subjectively deems “junk fees,” a form of price controls, without citing any violation of law.

No less an authority than James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 58 that Congress’ power of the purse is “that powerful instrument” that serves as a check on “all the overgrown prerogatives of the other branches of the government.” He went on to describe the power, “as the most complete and effectual weapon” to “arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance.” When it comes to the CFPB, there are a lot of grievances to be redressed and they will likely remain so as long as the CFPB is permitted to bypass Congress for its funding.

The CFPB argued before the Supreme Court that there are other government agencies not funded through congressional appropriations. There are indeed a rare few. However, all of them are funded though some type of user fee or assessment. The CFPB stands alone in its ability to extract funds from the Federal Reserve at will and even squirrel some away for a rainy day.

The CFPB further argued that because Congress created its funding mechanism in the first place, no congressional powers are being usurped. But even if Congress attempts to enfeeble itself, it cannot unilaterally amend the Constitution and shirk its responsibilities. The appropriations clause is clear and remains foundational to our system of checks and balances.

The case before the Supreme Court is so important because we are increasingly losing the rule of law to the discretion of regulators. It is sobering to note that while Congress may pass a couple of hundred laws per year, agencies typically issue more than 3,000 regulations annually and the Biden administration is certainly keeping pace. Given that administrative rules are just as enforceable as the law itself, one can argue that over 90 percent of our “laws” are written by people who never have to face a ballot box.

Agency rules can extend well beyond minor ministerial matters. The annual costs of mushrooming federal regulations currently amount to 8 percent of GDP, according to a recent report of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. As staggering as the financial costs may be to our economy, though, the far greater cost is the damage done to the foundational principles of coequal branches of government, due process, and the value of our voting franchise. As threats to democracy are being debated, the rise of government-by-agency clearly needs to be recognized as one of them.

In its last session the Supreme Court ruled in West Virginia v. EPA that government agencies cannot assume sweeping administrative powers without clear grants of authority from Congress. Chalk up one victory for Article l of the Constitution. The Supreme Court owes it to the American people and their elected representatives to chalk up another in a decision that holds true to sound jurisprudence rather than statistics.

Jeb Hensarling is a former chairman of the House Financial Services Committee (2013-2019) and an Advisory Council member to Americans for Prosperity. Brian Johnson is the former Deputy Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Chief Financial Institutions Counsel for the House Committee on Financial Services.

The views expressed in this article are the writers’ own.

Gaza could Have Been Singapore. Hamas Turned It Into ISIS

Fox News
-
0
Gaza could Have Been Singapore. Hamas Turned It Into ISIS

Sometimes, on happier days, I like to comment on the remarkable similarities between Singapore and the Gaza Strip. Both are self-governing city-states located at key crossroads of world trade on the opposite ends of the Continent of Asia. Both combine density of population with a significant urban buildup and dramatic natural advantages, including a high-quality harbor. And yet, due to differences in civil culture and governance, Singapore has been built into the trade hub of East Asia. Gaza, as Saturday’s events have demonstrated to the world, has chosen another path: becoming a terrorist dystopia like the benighted lands formerly under ISIS.

What is Gaza like under the rule of the terrorist group Hamas? Hamas’s Taliban-like mini-emirate is a brutal tinpot dictatorship where LGBTQ+ people and anyone living other than a strictly Islamic lifestyle lives under terrible repression. This reality may help us understand the insanity and brutality of the organization that just conducted a wild, self-destructive raid into southern Israel, leaving a horrific trail of rape and torture in their wake as they perpetrated the worst massacre of civilians in the history of Israel.

During this Saturday’s attack, Hamas’s monstrous tactics included killing indiscriminately in the towns they occupied, using rape as a weapon of war, and taking hostages—including young women, the elderly, and young children. Many have drawn comparisons to ISIS tactics in Iraq and Syria, where women from non-Muslim communities like the Yezidis were parceled out as sex slaves to fighters; thousands of those women were trafficked and remain unaccounted for to this day.

Similarly, at a huge dance-all-night “Peace Festival” outside Kibbutz Re’im, at least 250 young Israelis were murdered, while dozens of young women have been taken captive. In one widely-shared video, the half-stripped body of an unconscious female was driven around the streets of Gaza in an open-bed truck with one leg splayed at an unnatural angle as men disgraced and spat on her.

This is the violence that Hamas has implicitly sworn to commit in its very founding charter, which states, “[Hamas] strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine… Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it.”

It bears repeating that there is no moral equivalency between a nation that targets murderous terrorists and a terror group that targets civilians.

One obvious difference between Hamas and Israel is that Israel could never attack a music festival in Gaza—because music in public is illegal there. More importantly, Israel goes to a great deal of trouble to avoid causing civilian casualties or harming the mosques, schools, and medical facilities where Hamas hides military targets.

In contrast, just listen to the chilling message of 22-year-old paramedic Amit Maan, hiding in the clinic where she worked, with automatic fire in the background, before her phone went dead: “Please make it stop, please make it stop… Where is the army?”

What kind of consequences will Hamas’s actions bring to Gaza? Israel has vowed a “mighty vengeance,” and there is already discussion of a long war and a possible Israeli ground invasion of Gaza. Some have even suggested that Israel end the rule of Hamas over the strip.

We have seen this movie before. As Israel clears the remaining terrorists from its territory and pushes forward into the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, Hamas plans to use their own people and the surviving Israeli hostages as human shields as they have done time and again. Callow media personalities may start to forget the horrors of yesterday and return to simplistic tropes about the “cycle of violence.”

Israel, a thriving democracy with vigorous internal debates, is now staunchly united to bring its citizens and family members home. In Gaza, the opposite is true: Free speech is vigorously crushed, and the people yearn to breathe free of Hamas rule.

For the sake of both the Israeli victims and he Palestinian people, I urge you, dear reader, not to forget the faces of the fallen and the kidnapped.

Bassem Eid is a Palestinian human rights activist.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.

Israel’s Harsh Wake-Up Call and What Comes Next

Fox News
-
0
Israel’s Harsh Wake-Up Call and What Comes Next

Israel is grappling with a colossal intelligence breakdown that resulted in an unprecedented assault from the Gaza Strip by Hamas, an Islamist movement supported by Iran, Turkey, and Qatar, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Both jihadi groups—Hamas, which is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, and extremist Islamist PIJ—are recognized as terrorist in the U.S. and Europe.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps helped coordinating and planning the attack, and Iran’ government has openly lauded it. The actions of Tehran’s Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, will provide crucial insights into Iran’s further intentions.

Israel, meanwhile, is pointedly aware of Iran as a principal sponsor of terrorism. Last month, David Barnea, director of the Mossad (Israel’s CIA equivalent), warned that top Iranian leadership will be held responsible for the murder of Israelis and Jews worldwide. The escalatory potential of this fluid situation is high.

On the Sabbath of Simchat Torah (the Joy of Torah holy day), Israelis woke to a barrage of missiles from Gaza and hundreds of terrorists breaching the security fences into Southern Israeli cities, villages, and kibbutzim.

The toll so far is grim—some 700 Israelis killed, with that number expected to rise; 130 women, men, elderly people and even children taken to Gaza as hostages, and nearly 1,700 wounded. The invading terrorists even made off with armored personnel carriers and other Israeli military equipment.

The failure of deterrence and the strategic shock recalls the Yom Kippur War, which began 50 years ago with an attack on Israel’s Bar Lev Line of outposts along the Suez Canal. However, the deliberate brutality seen in this assault, including beatings and killings of civilians, violations of corpses, and bloodshed on Israeli streets harken back to the 1948 War of Independence, which was fought town by town and village by village. Despite this difficult history, the severity of the present crisis deeply shocked Israelis and foreign observers alike. The audacity, scope, and coordination of the October 2023 attack indicate meticulous planning spanning months—and an intelligence failure of colossal proportions.

For a small country like Israel, a population of approximately 9.2 million, 700 killed equals the United States losing 26,000 in one day. The attack is proportionally much bigger than 9/11 was for the U.S. Despite the trauma, Israel is poised to respond forcefully, with an initial air campaign in Gaza already underway and ground operations likely to begin soon.

The “ripple effect” of the current conflict will influence the region for many years. The Israeli left, known for its conciliatory approach towards the Palestinians, may experience a further erosion of its already diminished political influence. In the near term, Israelis will rally around the flag, temporarily setting aside the recent bitter political disputes around judicial reforms that were being pursued by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing/religious coalition. This may offer a short-term political lifeline for Netanyahu, far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, all facing political challenges before this crisis.

As happened in Israel in earlier times of war, a broad national unity coalition or emergency government may be in the cards, but in the longer term, Israel’s current leadership is unlikely to survive politically, and Netanyahu’s legacy has been terminally tarnished. When the shooting stops and the fog of war clears, the military Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Herzi Halevy, Shin Bet Director Ronen Bar, and Military Intelligence Commander Major General Aharon Haliva, may all face a judiciary commission of inquiry, much like their predecessors after the Yom Kippur War, who were judged harshly by the Agranat Commission.

Regional and global repercussions may be expansive. The attack and Israel’s retaliation in Gaza jeopardized the progress made through the Abraham Accords. The extent of this setback hinges on Israel’s response. It has been said that Arabs support “the strong horse“—and Israel absolutely cannot afford to appear weak at this critical juncture.

What direction Iran, through its proxy Hezbollah chooses to take could pose a two-front challenge for Israel, drawing in additional hostile forces and a rain of rockets from the north. Furthermore, some Arab nations, including Egypt, have issued veiled threats against Israel if the Israeli Defense Force’s actions are seen as disproportionate. Whether these statements are mere posturing or genuine warnings remains to be seen, but Israel must take them seriously without becoming paralyzed by the possibility of incurring the temporary or long-term displeasure of its neighbors.

Importantly, China, Russia, and the Arab countries have not expressed solidarity with Israel, while Europe and the U.S. did. The United States will play a significant role in shaping Israel’s response to her security challenges. In these turbulent times, Israel faces a massive security crisis that demands careful strategic responses. The consequences of this intelligence debacle and ensuing conflict will reverberate for years to come, with the high stakes drawing the world’s attention again to the Middle East and away from China and Russia.

Ariel Cohen is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and managing director of the Energy, Growth and Security Program at the International Tax and Investment Center.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article misstated India’s position. India has condemned the attack on Israel and has offered solidarity with the Jewish State.

1...525354...86Page 53 of 86

EDITOR PICKS

POPULAR POSTS

POPULAR CATEGORY