“the return of the 20 remaining living hostages who had been taken by Hamas. The terrorist group is still looking for the remains of the 28 hostages they killed, to hopefully return the bodies to the families of those still grieving their loss. Meanwhile, 2,000 Palestinian prisoners were released back to the West Bank and to Khan Younis, in the Gaza Strip, to fulfill the terms of the deal.
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“The main issue still hasn’t been solved: Hamas’s weapons,” Akram Atallah, a London-based Palestinian journalist, told The New York Times. “The Israelis are demanding Hamas disarm, which is not a simple administrative measure. Hamas was founded on the basis of bearing arms.” The most likely possible outcome looks like Hamas refusing disarmament, the Israeli military responding with some amount of continued surveillance and physical presence in the Strip, and some amount of conflict bubbling up sporadically.”
Israel’s decision to go into Gaza City, Hamas’s remaining stronghold, helped get Hamas to agree to a cease fire. Israel’s failed strike on Hamas in Qatar helped put countries like Qatar on notice that Israel was serious, and helped get them to more strongly support a deal. Trump sending people perceived as close to himself as negotiators helped convince Middle East actors that Trump was serious about a deal and that these negotiators negotiated on his behalf. Trump made very strong demands that effectively would amount to a Hamas surrender. Hamas agreed to some, but quibbled with others. Trump just accepted the yes and said we’ll figure out the other stuff later, creating a cease fire.
Deploying the National Guard isn’t just costly in the direct costs of the deployment, but in how it takes workers and students away from work and school.
The United States military is making extrajudicial illegal killings of potential drug traffickers, apparently killing a boat of Colombians this time. The U.S. is threatening a regime change war with Venezuela.
Many private data sources rely on BLS data. BLS data is extremely important for knowing what’s happening in the economy. It needs more resources to improve its processes. Instead, it’s being politicized by Donald Trump.
The Navy said they didn’t want any more littoral combat ships because they sucked, but Congress spent a bunch more money building more of them due to district politics.