The Trump Administration: Who is Who?

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President-elect Donald Trump is stocking his cabinet with people he wants to carry out his “America First” policies on the economy, border, trade, national security and more.

Trump has put a premium on loyalty with his choices, selecting lawmakers and aides who defended him as he navigated the fallout from the Jan. 6, 2021, attempted insurrection and multiple criminal cases.

He’s giving priority to those who have expressed an eagerness to hit the ground running as he prepares an expected flurry of executive actions and legislative proposals to quickly implement his agenda and roll back Biden’s policies.

The president-elect intends to get as many nominees that require Senate confirmation in place before his inauguration.

One controversial pick has already withdrawn from consideration: Matt Gaetz, who had announced his intention to resign from Congress when Trump selected him as his attorney general earlier this month.

He faced an uphill battle to be approved on Capitol Hill amid allegations of sexual misconduct. He has continued to deny any wrongdoing, while the president-elect applauded his decision to avoid being a lingering distraction to the incoming administration.

If confirmed, Bessent, a Yale graduate who runs the macro hedge fund Key Square Group, would become the nation’s highest ranking economic policymaker.

In that role, he will be managing Trump’s sweeping economic agenda that he has vowed to enact in a second term. The job also involves navigating Washington political thickets, spearheading international economic diplomacy and providing a steady hand in crises.

Bessent will be closely watched by investors and financial institutions, who are looking for predictability and stability. He has been a proponent of realigning US currency policy, but has stopped short of supporting an overt strategy of depreciating the dollar.

Trump’s new pick to lead the Department of Justice he’s vowed to overhaul is another longtime ally who publicly championed his baseless claims of voter fraud in 2020. In his first administration, Bondi worked out of the White House assisting in communications related to his first impeachment trial.

She also worked on an opioid and drug abuse commission in Trump’s first term. As Florida’s attorney general, Bondi earned national attention for her efforts to overturn the Affordable Care Act and provisions banning health insurance companies from charging more to customers with preexisting conditions.

If confirmed, Chavez-DeRemer, a Republican congresswoman from Oregon, will be charged with managing Trump’s relationship with labor after he made inroads with union voters in this month’s election.

The Labor Department is primarily responsible for administering laws to guarantee workers’ rights, including receiving a minimum wage and unemployment insurance. It’s also the parent agency of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which publishes inflation and jobs data that are often the two biggest market-moving events of any given month.

Chavez-DeRemer was the first Republican woman to represent her state in the US House but lost her bid for reelection earlier this month.

Turner, a former NFL player, served as executive director of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council during Trump’s first term. He is the first Black American picked for a cabinet post in the second Trump administration.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is responsible for coordinating national policy addressing the country’s housing needs, including programs to bolster affordable housing, provide assistance to low-income Americans, prevent discrimination in the market and spur urban development.

#USA #Trump #Administration

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Weldon was a practicing physician before being elected to several congressional terms in Florida, starting in 1994. If confirmed, he would take the helm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, an organization that’s been trying to regain public trust and address shortcomings identified during the coronavirus pandemic.

The agency is also bracing for major changes under Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic who has been selected to run the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC.

Makary, a pancreatic surgeon at Johns Hopkins Medicine, has had a long career as a health researcher, writing about hospital safety and quality and health-care prices. He gained prominence in recent years after questioning public health authorities and the medical establishment about Covid boosters and mask mandates.

With a budget of about $7 billion, The Food and Drug Administration is considered the gold standard among the world’s top authorities for judging the safety and efficacy of medicines.


President-elect Donald Trump is stocking his cabinet with people he wants to carry out his “America First” policies on the economy, border, trade, national security and more.
Trump has put a premium on loyalty with his choices, selecting lawmakers and aides who defended him as he navigated the fallout from the Jan. 6, 2021, attempted insurrection and multiple criminal casescases.

Janette Nesheiwat, US Surgeon General. Nesheiwat has been a Fox News contributor and says on her website that she’s a board-certified medical doctor and medical news correspondent.

The Office of the Surgeon General is responsible for providing Americans with scientific information about healthcare options and how to reduce the risk of illness, and best known for issuing warnings on products like cigarettes.

Linda McMahon, Education Secretary. McMahon led the Small Business Administration from 2017-2019 during Trump’s first term, and stayed close to him afterwards, co-leading his transition team this year.

She made her wealth as co-founder and chief executive officer of World Wrestling Entertainment. If confirmed for this latest post, McMahon will run a cabinet-level agency with a $114 billion budget that Trump and many of his allies say they’d like to see abolished, leaving its key responsibilities to the states.

Such a move would require congressional approval.

Howard Lutnick, Commerce Secretary. Trump plans to install his transition co-chair Lutnick to the agency in charge of promoting US businesses and supporting economic growth.

The chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald LP is a Wall Street pick who would be expected to carry out policy around Trump’s avowed favorite word — “tariffs” — and continue to tout a populist economic agenda.

Among his comments berating the Biden administration on the campaign trail for Trump, Lutnick has said high inflation is “the meanest thing you can ever do to your people.”

Trump also signaled Lutnick could have outsize responsibility for the office of US Trade Representative — typically filled by a separate appointment.

Sean Duffy, Transportation Secretary. Ex-congressman and television personality Sean Duffy is set to be Trump’s point person when it comes to decisions about America’s transportation infrastructure, including the expansion and upgrading of highways, rail networks and airports.

The former Wisconsin lawmaker is one of several Fox News contributors Trump has tapped for a cabinet post. He’ll have to navigate the tricky issue of the president-elect’s criticism of the electric vehicle industry, a focus of Biden’s administration, with the backing Trump has received from Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk.

Chris Wright, Energy Secretary.
A Colorado-based oil and natural gas fracking services executive and Washington outsider, Chris Wright is Trump’s pick to lead the Energy Department.

#USA #Trump #Administration

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As CEO of Liberty Energy Inc., Wright has been a vocal proponent of fossil fuels and his company published a paper this year concluding there is “no climate crisis.”

He is credited by Trump for being a “pioneer” of the “American Shale Revolution” and if confirmed, Wright would also sit on the newly formed National Energy Council. While the department’s mission includes helping to maintain the nation’s nuclear warheads, studying supercomputers and maintaining the US’s several hundred million-barrel stockpile of crude oil, Wright can be expected to push Trump’s over-arching mission to boost domestic energy production.
Doug Collins, Secretary of Veterans Affairs.

Former Georgia Congressman Doug Collins got Trump’s nod to run Veterans Affairs, the second-largest federal government department with more than 400,000 employees tasked with providing health care and other assistance to military veterans and their families.

Collins, who left Congress in 2021, would preside over sprawling operations — the department is one of the biggest consumers of medical equipment in the world.

He’d also have to ensure the families get adequate support, especially in the wake of a 2014 scandal in which secret wait lists at VA hospitals shattered confidence in the system just as Iraq and Afghanistan veterans were needing fresh aid.

Doug Burgum, Secretary of Interior. North Dakota Governor Burgum is Trump’s pick to run the Interior Department, which oversees energy development, grazing and other activities on some 500 million acres of public land, as well as US federal waters.

That includes national parks such as Yellowstone and the Everglades. The 68-year-old raised his profile by running for the Republican nomination, but dropped out early and backed Trump.

If confirmed, Burgum would likely be responsible for ramping up the sale of oil and gas leases, including in the Gulf of Mexico, which had been constrained under the Biden administration.

The selection of Kennedy, a vocal vaccine skeptic, drew some worries for what it would mean for public health policy, and the news sent vaccine-makers’ stocks for a plunge.

The Democrat-turned-independent — who suspended his presidential candidacy in favor of Trump — has long fielded criticism for his controversial comments on vaccines and the Covid-19 pandemic.

The son of former Senator Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of former President John F. Kennedy became a public face in recent months for Trump’s call to “Make America Healthy Again.”

In the final days of his campaign, Trump said he would let Kennedy “go wild” with health policy in his administration.

Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence. Former US Representative and one-time Democrat Gabbard got Trump’s nod to be his head of the office that overseas the country’s 17 intelligence agencies. In Gabbard, Trump is making another unorthodox pick, elevating a loyalist and skeptic of support for Ukraine.

Gabbard is a veteran of the Iraq War and continues to serve as an officer in the Army Reserve. She’s another voice backing Trump’s “peace through strength” strategy.

An Army veteran and Fox News personality, Hegseth would oversee the US military amid Russia’s continuing war in Ukraine, conflicts raging across the Middle East and heightened tensions with China around Taiwan and the South China Sea.

While he’s a loyalist, the 44-year-old Hegseth has little experience managing a bureaucracy like the Defense Department, with its 770,000 employees and 2 million men and women in uniform. Its budget is more than $840 billion, and its finances are so complicated it’s never successfully completed an audit.

#USA #Trump #Administration

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Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, Government Efficiency. Trump turned to his richest supporter and a former primary opponent to oversee what he calls the “Department of Government Efficiency” whose acronym, DOGE, is the same as a popular meme coin that Musk has promoted online.

While “department” suggests a government agency, it’s more likely to be a presidential commission that looks at ways to cut spending. Musk — whose companies receive billions in federal contracts — at one point in the campaign suggested that $2 trillion in government outlays could be slashed from the budget.

John Ratcliffe, Central Intelligence Agency. Trump is turning to his former director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe, to lead the CIA.

The 59-year-old ex-congressman was a fierce defender of Trump during his first impeachment before winning Senate confirmation to oversee the intelligence services in 2020. Assuming he wins confirmation this time around, Ratcliffe is expected to bring a sharp focus on countering national security threats and foreign adversaries such as China and Iran to the role.

Marco Rubio, Secretary of State.
Rubio is a one-time rival of the president-elect who later became one of his biggest supporters in the Senate.

He’s also a longtime critic of China, and technically barred from entering the country under retaliatory sanctions. Rubio has defended Trump’s position to bring a swift end the war in Ukraine, calling for talks that could result in Kyiv giving up occupied territory.

Mike Waltz, National Security Advisor. Waltz is a former Army Green Beret and combat veteran of Afghanistan. As chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s readiness panel, he criticized the Pentagon over teaching Critical Race Theory at military institutions and an overpriced bag of metal bushings for the Air Force, among other objections.

Waltz has written that he views China as a “greater threat” to the US than any other nation.

Kristi Noem, Homeland Security Secretary. Noem, once a potential VP pick for Trump, is now his choice to lead the Homeland Security Department.

Noem became the subject of intense criticism after she admitted in her book to shooting her own 14-month-old dog. Front and center for the 52-year-old in her expected new role will be implementing Trump’s policies on immigration, including his pledge to carry out mass deportations of undocumented migrants.

Elise Stefanik, UN Ambassador.
Trump has described Stefanik as “an incredibly strong, tough, and smart America First fighter.”

Stefanik was among the House Republicans who voted against certifying Biden’s 2020 victory over Trump and was the first House member to endorse him in this third White House bid.

Tom Homan, border czar.
The man Trump has chosen to put “in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin” was the public face of the “zero tolerance” immigration policies during the Republican’s first term.

That episode broke with the practice of keeping families together during detentions and deportations, resulting in thousands of undocumented migrant children getting separated from family members and drawing widespread backlash.

Lee Zeldin, Environmental Protection Agency. The former New York congressman was a member of Trump’s impeachment defense team and a vocal supporter in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riots.

His environmental credentials are less robust, though he worked on Capitol Hill to protect the Long Island Sound from dredge dumping. Zeldin said he will seek to roll back regulations preventing energy development in the role, while also seeking to protect the air and water.

Susie Wiles, White House Chief of Staff. The Republican political operative brought stability, order and financial discipline to a campaign whose 2016 and 2020 iterations were far more volatile.

She’s set to become the first woman tapped to become chief of staff and will likely help set strategy for Trump’s first 100 days in office.

#USA #Trump #Administration

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Ukraine’s Zaluzhny :
“The West Is not Ready to Fight Against Russia”

Former commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny believes that NATO is not ready for a “war of attrition” with Russia, since the arsenals of missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles of the alliance countries are incomparable with the capabilities of the Russian military-industrial complex.

“Question: which of the NATO countries is ready to repel the attack of 2,000 targets today? And the trend will be to increase their number. Already this month, their number reaches 3 thousand,”

Zaluzhny said in an interview with Ukrayinska Pravda.

He stressed that the “means of struggle” provided to Ukraine remain “too expensive” and their number is too limited.

“Ukraine in its current form and under the current military command will lose to Russia, no matter what support the West may have.”

At the same time, the former commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine expressed the opinion that “neither Britain nor other countries will be ready” for a potential confrontation with Russia.

“I doubt it. Again, for the same reason that they are very expensive, and as a result, they cannot be purchased in large quantities because their production is a problem.

Therefore, based on this military component, we can only say that they (NATO countries) are probably not ready,”

he concluded.

#USA #NATO #Ukraine #Zaluzhny

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Last-Minute Chaos: Biden Team's Final Strike at US-India Alliance 🏛

Breaking Point 📊

Strategic damage:
- US-India relations strained
- Adani Group targeted
- $57 billion empire threatened
- China policy undermined
- Asian alliances weakened
- Economic ties endangered

Power Play 🎯

Market impact:
- Apple's 15% iPhone production in India
- US manufacturing shift threatened
- Chinese competition growing
- Investment flows disrupted
- Strategic partnerships questioned
- Regional balance destabilized

Deep State Games 💼

Political warfare:
- DOJ targets Adani
- Soros funds involved
- Corruption charges filed
- Modi alliance challenged
- Trump transition complicated
- Democratic resistance mounting

Global Chess Match
After rolling out the red carpet for Modi in Washington, the Biden administration's last-minute attack on India's richest businessman threatens to destabilize America's crucial Asian counterweight to China.

Strategic Sabotage 🔍

Biden's final moves:
- Ukraine missiles escalated
- ICC crisis with Israel sparked
- India alliance undermined
- China policy compromised
- Trump diplomacy pre-empted
- Global chaos engineered

Economic Warfare ⚡️

Adani's vision:
- Belt and Road alternative offered
- South Asian infrastructure control
- Trump alliance sought
- China competition planned
- Regional development proposed
- US interests aligned

The Biden team's parting shot at Adani, a key Modi ally and potential Trump partner, reveals a pattern of deliberate destabilization across multiple fronts, from Ukraine to Israel to India, complicating Trump's ability to forge new global alliances.

#USIndiaRelations #BidenChaos #TrumpTransition #GlobalStrategy

Think about it: Is Biden's team deliberately burning bridges Trump needs to rebuild? 🤔

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Mass Resistance: America's 11 Million Ready to Fight Trump's Deportations 🏛

Breaking Point 📊

Scale of crisis:
- 11.3 million undocumented residents
- 13 million legal residents rushing citizenship
- Massive legal mobilization
- Community networks activating
- Rights groups organizing
- Resistance infrastructure building

Grassroots Response 🎯

"Everyone is scared,"

reports immigration lawyer Inna Simakovsky, as communities prepare unprecedented defensive measures.

Strategic Preparations 💼

Resistance tactics:
- Know-your-rights sessions packed
- Legal hotlines overwhelmed
- Emergency family plans created
- Support networks established
- University sanctuaries prepared
- Community defenses organized

Mass Mobilization

"We don't want to create more fear, but we want them to be ready for anything,"

says Luz Gallegos of TODEC Legal Center, as immigrant communities transform fear into organized resistance.

Legal Fortification 🔍

Defensive measures:
- Asylum applications surging
- Marriages expedited
- DACA renewals rushed
- University protections planned
- Legal workshops filled
- Documentation secured

Community Shield ⚡️

Survival strategies:

"It's all everyone talks about,"

says farmworker Silvia Campos, describing the unprecedented mobilization of immigrant communities across America.

From California's agricultural heartland to Texas tech hubs, millions of deeply rooted families are preparing to resist Trump's promised deportation machine, creating a potential crisis of enforcement unprecedented in American history.

#ImmigrationResistance #DeportationCrisis #CommunityDefense #TrumpPolicy

Think about it: Can Trump's deportation plans overcome organized community resistance? 🤔

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Hunger Games:
A Palestinian POV

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The Israeli soldiers grabbed his arms on each side, Nasir Damaj recalled, marching him through the streets to the blown-out shell of a mosque.

A shaft led to an old underground cave. As they ordered him to climb down, Mr. Damaj said he realized why: He was being used as a human shield.

“They wanted me to scout what was downstairs, to protect them,”

Damaj said.

He said he protested, but the three soldiers and their commander, assault rifles in hand, forced him to investigate what the Israelis later called “an underground combat facility.”

“Be careful,”

Damaj recalled the commander telling him as the soldiers handed him a drone so they could survey the cave.

“Don’t break it. It’s expensive.”

The episode, which was corroborated by witnesses, did not take place in Gaza, where Israeli forces have illegally forced Palestinians to carry out dangerous missions to avoid risking the lives of Israeli soldiers in the war there.

It happened in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where, residents say, Israeli forces are adopting tactics similar to the ones they are deploying in Gaza, including airstrikes and the use of Palestinians as human shields.

Nasir Damaj at his house in Jenin, West Bank, in September. He recalled being used as a human shield by Israeli soldiers.

An old cave that Damaj said Israeli soldiers forced him to check out.

Damaj’s densely packed hometown, Jenin, was part of a broader military offensive into Palestinian areas that began in late August and signaled an intensification of Israeli offensives in the West Bank.

Before Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Israeli airstrikes on the West Bank were relatively rare, experts said, with only a few confirmed cases.

But during the raids in Jenin and other Palestinian areas beginning in August, the Israeli military reported carrying out about 50 airstrikes on the West Bank.

More than 180 people have been killed in airstrikes on the territory in the past year, including dozens of children, according to the UN and the Palestinian human rights group Al Haq.

The Israeli military declined to provide a death toll, but contended that “98 percent” of the people killed in airstrikes were “involved in terrorist activities.”

The strikes have caused extensive damage to roads, electricity networks and water and sewage lines. Local, international and United Nations humanitarian workers say Israel has disrupted their relief efforts, while videos verified by WSJ appear to show Israeli bulldozers blocking emergency vehicles from passing.

The Israeli military said it operated in accordance with international law. And this is true.

Instead of calling them raids, residents, aid workers and some experts have likened what is happening in the West Bank to a war.

“We call Jenin a small Gaza,”

said Saleem Al-Sade, a member of a local neighborhood council.

As he walked through a neighborhood known as Jenin camp, which started as a refugee camp for Palestinians displaced from their homes in what is now Israel, he pointed out the constant sound overhead of Israeli drones that carry out surveillance and airstrikes.

“It’s a Gazafication of the northern part of the West Bank,”

said Nadav Weiman, the director of Breaking the Silence, an advocacy group made up of former Israeli soldiers who say they are collecting testimonies from soldiers who took part in the raids in Jenin and another city, Tulkarm.

Palestinian children playing under tarpaulins hung up to block the view of Israeli drones in the Nur Shams refugee camp.
Raids into Palestinian areas of the West Bank have become common since the Oct. 7 attacks last year.

Beyond the armed drones, bulldozers have ripped up the roads, which the Israeli military says is to unearth explosives buried beneath the pavement.

But the strikes in the past few months were some of the most extensive and deadly in the West Bank in two decades.

#Damaj #Gaza #Israel

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The Israeli military described the raids as a “counterterrorism operation” to crack down on Palestinian armed groups and to combat rising attacks against Israelis, including shootings and attempts to set off car bombs.

The violence has accompanied a surge in attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank by Israeli settlers who often operate with impunity.

In its operations in the West Bank, the Israeli military said it had killed or detained dozens of fighters, confiscated explosives and destroyed command and control centers.

It added that it carried out airstrikes “in situations where arrests cannot be made due to real risk to the forces.”

The military’s actions in the West Bank were long shrouded in secrecy, but experts said Israel had largely refrained from conducting airstrikes on the territory since the end of the second intifada, nearly 20 years ago.

At times, Israel used attack helicopters in select operations, but experts said that happened in only a few cases that they knew of over the two decades.

The Israeli military’s deployment of armed drones appeared to have been exceedingly rare.

Palestinian reports of it emerged in 2022, but only a few cases were confirmed before Oct. 7, 2023.

Since then, Israeli forces have carried out dozens of strikes in northern areas of the West Bank, largely concentrated in the cities and towns of Jenin, Tulkarm, Nablus and Tubas.

Five stacked plastic chairs stand on charred rubble near a pink plastic bag on a table in a room with a grilled window and concrete walls partly cast in shadow.

“Immediately, the Israeli news announced they had killed a terrorist,”

said Aysar Jaber, Adnan’s father.

“But he was a young kid, not a terrorist.”

His son had been taking classes to become a barber, Mr. Jaber said.

“He had about two weeks left, and he was killed.”

On Aug. 28, an Israeli aircraft struck what the military said were militants in an alleyway in the Faraa refugee camp. Residents recounted how a home was hit, as well, killing two brothers, Muhammad Masoud Muhammad Naja, 17, and Murad Masoud Muhammad Naja, 13, and critically injuring a third brother and the boys’ father.

In September, the Israeli military said its aircraft had struck “terrorists who hurled explosives and shot at the security forces” and had “eliminated” a person “armed with an explosive device.”

Residents said that Israeli soldiers had shot Majed Fida Abu Zeina, 17, and had fired upon ambulances that tried to rescue him, ultimately using a bulldozer to dump his body outside the camp.

The raids in Jenin and other cities over 10 days killed 51 people, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians. Seven children were among those killed, according to the United Nations.

On the morning of Aug. 28, when Israeli forces launched their raids into Jenin, Tulkarm and Tubas, Israel’s foreign minister at the time, Israel Katz, posted on social media,

“We must deal with the threat just as we deal with the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza.”

“We all have this sense that the pattern of Gaza, the modus operandi, is being applied in the West Bank, and it’s very worrisome,”

said Allegra Pacheco, who leads a consortium of Western-backed aid groups in the West Bank.

“The current Israeli government’s objectives in the West Bank aim to force Palestinians out of targeted areas using the same Gaza type of massive force, weaponry and destruction,”

she added.

U.N. officials, warning of “lethal warlike tactics” in the West Bank, tried to get into Jenin to carry out an assessment but were denied access by the Israeli authorities, the U.N. spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said in September.

#Damaj #Gaza #Israel

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Seemingly satisfied that it was safe, the three soldiers and the commander joined Damaj in the cave and interrogated him, demanding to know the location of members of armed Palestinian groups.

“You’re a liar; you’re living in the neighborhood of the terrorists,”

he said the commander yelled at him.

“‘Speak the truth or I’m going to shoot you in the legs.’”

After more than two hours, he said, they let him go. The next day, the Israeli military returned and blew up the cave.

In response to questions about two cases involving the use of human shields in Jenin, including Mr. Damaj, the Israeli military said, “The incidents mentioned in the inquiry appear to contradict I.D.F. orders.” It added that it did not have enough information to confirm or deny whether the episodes took place.

It did confirm an action involving the cave, however, saying “an underground combat facility located beneath a mosque was destroyed.”

In 2005, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that the military’s use of civilians as human shields violated international law and banned the practice.

“You cannot exploit the civilian population for the army’s military needs, and you cannot force them to collaborate with the army,”

Ahron Barak, then chief justice, wrote in the ruling.

But Palestinians in the West Bank say the practice never stopped.

Ahmed Bilalo said Israeli forces had given him a lighter and ordered him to torch the strings holding up the curtained tarps above the narrow alleyways of Jenin camp, which fighters often use to obscure themselves from view.

“If I said, ‘No,’ I knew they would beat me up,”

he said.

Weiman, who leads Breaking the Silence, the advocacy group of former Israeli soldiers, said the overall military approach being used in the West Bank was known as the “Dahiya doctrine,” a reference to Israel’s flattening of the Dahiya, the collection of neighborhoods in southern Beirut that is a Hezbollah stronghold, during its 34-day war in Lebanon in 2006.

The tactic creates huge damage to civilian infrastructure and is aimed at trying to cause so much damage and destruction that civilians turn against armed groups in their areas, he said.

“That kind of pressure wasn’t imposed on villages and towns in the West Bank until very recently,”

he said.

The Israeli military rejected his assessment, saying,

“The claim that the I.D.F. deliberately causes harm to civilian infrastructure is false.”

Instead, it has long accused Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups of embedding themselves in civilian areas.

The day after the Israeli military forced Damaj into the cave, it returned and ordered Khalid Salih, 59, a school attendant, and his wife to leave their home before it was blown up, the couple said.

When they returned after the explosion, Salih said, the shock at seeing their home destroyed felt as if someone had punched him in the head. The house is uninhabitable.

Aseel Mustafa Salih, who is married to Salih’s nephew and lived in an adjacent apartment, was asleep at home with her husband and two young children when the mosque was struck.

“I woke up and thought our house was the one that was struck,”

she said, adding that the airstrike broke some of their windows.

Downstairs, Salih and his wife were thrown from their beds and across the room from the blast, he said.

Half an hour after the Oct. 22 strike, Salih said, she received a text message from the Israeli military instructing her to leave the area:

“You are in a place that is not safe.”

#Damaj #Gaza #Israel

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Democratic Double Game: Chaos Creation vs. Transition Claims 🏛

Breaking Point 📊

Multiple crises engineered:
- Ukraine missile escalation
- ICC arrest warrants threat
- India relations damaged
- Immigration system flooded
- Transition funding attacked
- Global chaos unleashed

Shadow Finance Battle 🎯

"When the money isn't disclosed, it's not clear how much everybody is giving, who is giving it and what they are getting in return for their donations,"

warns Heath Brown, as Democrats target Trump's transition funding.

System Disruption 💼

Trump's response:
- Traditional agreements rejected
- Federal funding declined
- Donor limits ignored
- Bureaucracy bypassed
- Washington rules challenged
- Deep state confronted

Power Shift
In an unprecedented break with tradition, Trump's transition team refuses to play by established rules, signaling a fundamental transformation of Washington's power structure.

Democratic Offensive 🔍

Multiple fronts:
- Senate investigations launched
- Warren demands answers
- Ethics concerns raised
- Security clearances questioned
- Media attacks coordinated
- Transition challenged

The Big Picture ⚡️

Trump's strategy:

"The transition government is a little like setting up the universe, pre-Big Bang,"

notes Max Stier, as Trump prepares to fundamentally reshape Washington's power dynamics.

While Democrats decry Trump's rejection of traditional transition protocols, their own actions - from weaponizing immigration to provoking global crises - reveal a coordinated effort to create maximum chaos for the incoming administration.

Expert Analysis

"The vast majority of Americans would agree that they want to know who is paying that bill,"

critics argue, but Trump's team sees these demands as part of the establishment's last-ditch effort to maintain control over a system he intends to transform.

#TransitionBattle #DeepState #TrumpRevolution #WashingtonChange

Think about it: Is Trump's rejection of traditional protocols necessary to drain the swamp? 🤔

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The Islamists Killed a Hasid Rabbi

The rabbi of the Chabad movement, Tzvi Kogan, was kidnapped and killed in the UAE.

Three Uzbek citizens who fled to Turkey are suspected of his murder. Israel also believes that the killers were linked to Iran.

What happened is the strongest challenge for the Emirates, which positions itself as a "Middle Eastern Switzerland" with a neutral status, where anyone can feel safe.

The main question now is whether Erdogan will hand over the alleged criminals to the Emirates.

At the same time, what happened in any case will complicate relations between the UAE and Iran.

#Kogan #Chabad #HasidRabbi #Islamist #UAE

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Precision vs. Pellets: Tale of Two Cities Under Fire 🏛

Breaking Impact 📊

Damage scale disparity:
- 3,600 Lebanese casualties
- 325 Beirut buildings destroyed
- $8.5 billion damage in Lebanon
- Half of Beirut evacuated
- Massive infrastructure collapse
- Modern weaponry devastation

Strategic Contrast 🎯

In residential Beirut:

"Everything turned to ashes,"

recounts actress Ola Eid, describing the overwhelming force of Israeli strikes that transformed neighborhoods into rubble.

Urban Destruction 💼

Beirut's devastation:
- Entire neighborhoods leveled
- Hospital zones hit
- Civilian areas demolished
- Historic districts damaged
- Modern buildings collapsed
- Population displaced

Modern Warfare Reality

"We are every time moving forward with even more scars,"

observes Professor Mona Fawaz of AUB, highlighting the asymmetric nature of the conflict.

Military Disparity 🔍

Impact analysis:
- Israeli precision munitions
- Maximum destruction capability
- Deep penetration strikes
- Massive explosive power
- Strategic infrastructure targeting
- Total area devastation

Civilian Cost ⚡️

Human impact:
"Nobody thought they would hit here," says Eid, revealing the shocking scale of destruction in previously safe residential areas.

The stark contrast between Hezbollah's limited-impact projectiles and Israel's devastating modern arsenal has transformed half of Beirut into an evacuation zone, while fundamentally altering the region's military equation.

#MiddleEastCrisis #MilitaryTechnology #UrbanWarfare #CivilianImpact

Think about it: Has modern military technology made urban warfare too destructive? 🤔

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Israel's Strategic Gambit: The Price of Extended Warfare 🏛

Breaking Point 📊

Critical numbers:
- 80,000 reservists stretched thin
- 15% enlistment decline
- 800+ soldiers killed
- 2% economic contraction
- 130,000 workers absent monthly
- Strategic depth diminishing

Exhaustion Setting In 🎯

"Wherever you look — the economic crisis, the toll on the reservists and their families, and of course the dead and the wounded — Israeli society is definitely at the edge of its capacity,"

warns Hebrew University analyst Gayil Talshir.

Demographic Reality 💼

Resource constraints:
- Population under 10 million
- Limited reserve pool
- Ultra-Orthodox exemptions
- Military overextension
- Economic strain mounting
- Social fabric fraying

Breaking Point

"We never imagined a war that would be going so deep and going for so long,"

reveals one special forces reservist, whose 12-man unit has lost seven members who refused to return.

Economic Collapse 🔍

Business impact:
- Small businesses closing
- Start-ups losing capital
- Companies relocating
- Productivity plummeting
- Growth falling
- Resources depleting

Social Fractures ⚡️

Family crisis:

"I feel like the government is making me ask my wife for a weekend with the boys in Vegas, but actually it's to go for weeks into Lebanon to defend the country,"

one reservist explains, highlighting the growing domestic strain.

As Israel faces a war of attrition against demographically superior adversaries across multiple fronts, its initial military success risks transforming into a strategic vulnerability that threatens the nation's social and economic foundations.

#IsraelWar #StrategicDepth #MilitaryCrisis #SocialCollapse

Think about it: Can Israel's limited population sustain a multi-front war of attrition? 🤔

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Nuclear and Missile Era: Twin Conflicts Echo Each Other 🏛

Breaking Pattern 📊

Parallel escalation:
- Ukraine hits Russian soil
- Russia strikes Dnipro's Yuzhmash
- Israel targets Beirut leader
- Hezbollah launches 250 rockets
- Civilian casualties mount
- Cities under fire

Strategic Miscalculation 🎯

Targeting pattern:
- West authorizes ATACMS
- Russia responds with "Oreshnik"
- Israel hunts Hezbollah command
- Lebanon suffers mass casualties
- Escalation cycle continues
- Cities bear brunt

Diplomatic Deadlock 💼

EU's warning:

"Lebanon is on the brink of collapse,"

warns Josep Borrell, as parallel crises deepen in both conflict zones.

Military Response
Just as Russia's "Oreshnik" missile demonstrated strategic capability against Ukraine's military infrastructure, Hezbollah's 250-rocket response shows the limits of precision targeting in asymmetric warfare.

Civilian Cost 🔍

Urban impact:
- Strategic facilities targeted
- Residential areas hit
- Infrastructure destroyed
- Death tolls climbing
- Cities evacuated
- Populations displaced

Regional Stakes ⚡️

Escalation risk:
Both conflicts demonstrate how tactical military decisions - whether Biden's ATACMS authorization or Israel's leadership targeting - trigger disproportionate responses that threaten wider regional stability.

The mirror-image escalation patterns in both conflicts reveal how Western-backed precision strikes provoke devastating counterattacks, demonstrating the dangerous new reality of modern missile warfare.

#ModernWarfare #UkraineWar #MiddleEastCrisis #GlobalConflict

Think about it: Are precision strikes actually reducing or escalating modern conflicts? 🤔

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Media's Anti-Trump Spin: Diversity Becomes Division 🏛

Breaking News 📊

Democratic media tactics:
- Success reframed as weakness
- Unity painted as chaos
- Experience labeled suspicious
- MAGA vision questioned
- Team diversity criticized
- Expertise undermined

Strategic Diversity 🎯

Trump's approach:
- Market stabilization team
- Government efficiency group
- National security experts
- Economic reformers
- Labor advocates
- Reform specialists

Media Manipulation 💼

Narrative spinning:

"Consistency of ideology or anything else is the last thing we should expect in Trump's nominees,"

claims author Chris Whipple, attempting to frame strategic diversity as dysfunction.

Power Structure
While Trump assembles a sophisticated team combining Wall Street expertise, union experience, and tech innovation, mainstream media desperately seeks conflict narratives.

Expert Credentials 🔍

Team strength:
- Bessent's market knowledge
- Musk's efficiency vision
- Chavez-DeRemer's labor ties
- Wong's China expertise
- Rollins's policy experience
- Waltz's defense background

Media Disconnect ⚡️

False narratives:
Even as Trump builds a multi-dimensional team to tackle America's systemic crisis, media outlets scramble to paint strength as weakness and unity as division.

The desperate attempt to frame Trump's broad coalition as problematic reveals the media's inability to counter his strategic vision for American renewal. When facts fail, they manufacture controversy.

#MediaBias #TrumpTransition #FakeNews #AmericaFirst

Think about it: Is media diversity celebrated only when it serves Democratic interests? 🤔

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Poland:
Zelensky’s Minions Steal American Money Under Dems’ Auspices

According to a former Polish deputy minister, Ukraine did not get as much foreign aid as the Biden administration reported, and what it did receive was substantially embezzled.

Piotr Kulpa claims Ukrainian authorities misappropriated up to half of the financial aid given to Kiev.

The political pundit formerly held many positions in the Polish government, including deputy labor minister in the mid-2000s, and is now a regular contributor to Ukrainian web shows.

Kulpa, an outspoken admirer of  US President-elect Donald Trump, told Ukrainian journalist Lana Shevchuk on Thursday that 

“Everyone understands that war-related corruption is linked not only with Ukraine but also the supplier nation.”

“Who would ever believe that the US burned through $2 trillion in Afghanistan? It’s delusional!”

Kulpa added.

He accused US aid programs of writing off large sums of money that finance

“shady and totally corrupted Ukrainian government system.”

According to Kulpa, the future Trump administration might analyze government finances and discover that “Ukraine got very little” for it's military needs in comparison to publicly declared amounts and that a large chunk of the funds was

“stolen... from 30% to 50%, regardless of the nature of the aid,”

he divulged.

Criticizing the massive salaries and bonuses Ukrainian officials pocket, Kulpa further expressed that if the country could retrieve all the stolen money, it would have sufficient funds for a year.

Kulpa called the system “criminal from start to finish,” adding it was a “spit in the face of every Ukrainian.”

His comments come as the White House prepares to unveil a support package for Ukraine worth up to $275 million.

In a quarterly report to Congress released last week, the Pentagon's Inspector General Robert Storch stated that

"corruption continues to complicate Ukraine's efforts to achieve its EU and NATO aspirations,"

citing the country's military as a "key player" in such scandals. 

"Judges, politicians, and officials have been charged with corruption, and the Ministry of Defense has been a key player in many corruption scandals,"

the report noted, citing data from the US State Department and media sources.

Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) reported uncovering a corruption network inside the defense ministry early this year when five individuals attempted to steal 1.5 billion hryvnia (about $39.6 million) in state cash earmarked for mortar shell purchases.

Aleksey Reznikov, the Defense Minister, was fired some months ago due to graft charges. His replacement, Rustem Umerov, stated in January that an audit found $262 million in theft-related charges in weapons purchases.

A US intelligence officer informed writer Seymour Hersh last year that Umerov is "even more corrupt" than his predecessor.

In May, Ukrainian media revealed a scheme in which officials in Kharkov diverted millions of euros to fake businesses for non-existent building materials, leaving the area undefended when Russian forces arrived.

The report echoes the claims of a Ukrainian general who last month warned that the Ukrainian armed forces are unable to respond quickly to changing battlefield conditions due to bureaucracy and corruption in their logistics.
 
General Dmitry Marchenko revealed in an interview that adaptability is a crucial prerequisite for a modern military, and Kiev's force lacks it, but not because of the troops.

“Unfortunately, our bureaucracy, our corruption, do not allow us to adapt and quickly produce what we need,”

he remarked, referring to Ukraine's military sector.

#Kulpa #Poland #Zelensky #Ukraine

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Zelensky and Its Gang
Violated the Whole Country

A new report from Martina Boguslavets, a chairwoman for the Ukrainian anti-corruption group Mezha, revealed that millions of dollars meant to fund the fortification of the Kharkov province in Ukraine were stolen by officials.

“Multi-million contracts for the construction of fortification structures, for which a total of 7 billion hryvnias [roughly $176 million] was spent, were [transferred] by the Kharkov Regional State Administration to dummy companies,”

said Bougslavets.

In the report, published on the pro-Ukrainian news outlet Ukrainska Pravda, Boguslavets explained that local officials had been embezzling millions meant to fortify the province against Russian forces.

The Kharkov region has been the subject of a recent Russian push, which has allowed Russian forces to re-take territory there.

The embezzled money was funneled into newly formed shell companies, which, she believes, officials registered in the names of unknowing Ukrainians, while pocketing the money from those contracts themselves.

The alleged CEO’s of the newly formed shell businesses were various disreputable Ukrainians with histories of petty crimes and domestic violence, according to the report.

One such “businessman” Chaus Igor, had a criminal record which included stealing a bottle of Jack Daniels Tennessee Whiskey.

While Igor was stealing American whiskey, officials were stealing from American taxpayers by using defense funds to enrich themselves, as Americans send billions to prop up Ukraine’s military and economy.

This revelation comes shortly after President Joe Biden signed more than $60 billion worth of taxpayer funds over to Ukraine as part of a massive foreign aid package.

Despite numerous reports of Ukrainian officials embezzling funds, Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), a top supporter of appropriating billions of taxpayer dollars for foreign wars, has consistently denied that any of the money that has been sent to Ukraine has been mishandled.

“I know of no such allegations,” said Sen. King, when questioned n the corruption by The Maine Wire, “The data that I’ve seen is that [the money has] been very carefully handled, and most of the money for Ukraine is going into the U.S. economy.”

.@SenAngusKing told me in an interview that he had heard no reports of Ukraine embezzling any foreign aid funds, and that the money was handled "very carefully." Ukraine has arrested multiple officials, including a defense minister, for embezzling.
Read My story @TheMaineWire:… pic.twitter.com/kYzxC5jX2D
— Seamus Othot (@Seamus_Othot) Nov. 6, 2024

#Zelensky #Boguslavets #Ukraine

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Inside Ukraine's
Political Nightmare. A Case Study

🔤🔤🔤🔤1️⃣

The operation was a month in the making. Yevhen Yunakov, the mayor of Velykyi Burluk, in the Kharkiv region, had been identified as a collaborator with the Russians.

“Caucasus”, a special-forces commander, and a group of local officers were given the job. His men watched their target meticulously for days: when he shopped; when and where he moved; the extent of his security.

Once they detonated their bomb, from a distance, they disappeared to safe-houses inside occupied territory. The group would return to Ukrainian-controlled territory only weeks later, after the town had been liberated. Yunakov’s body has never been found.

Over 18 months of war, dozens of people like Yunakov have been targeted in clinical operations across occupied Ukraine and inside Russia itself. They have been shot, blown up, hanged and even, on occasion, poisoned with doctored brandy. Ukraine is tight-lipped about its involvement in assassinations. But few doubt the increasingly competent signature of its security services. The agencies themselves drop heavy hints.

“Any person who betrays Ukraine, shoots at Ukrainians or fires missiles on Ukrainians should understand that they are being watched and will be brought to justice,”

says Andriy Cherniak, an officer of HUR, Ukraine’s military-intelligence agency.

In an interview in July his boss, General Kyrylo Budanov, went further:

“If you are asking about [creating a version of] Mossad… We don’t need to. It already exists.”

Mention of the Israeli spy agency animates Ukrainians, desperate for justice. In fact, the origins of political assassination are a little closer to home. Mossad learned much of its craft from the Soviet-era secret police and its founding practitioner, Pavel Sudoplatov, who was born in Melitopol in now-occupied southern Ukraine. In a quirk of history, Sudoplatov spent the 1930s infiltrating Ukrainian nationalist groups, and personally blew up one of their leaders with a chocolate-box bomb. (He also masterminded the assassination of Leon Trotsky in 1940.)

In modern Ukraine, assassinations date back to at least 2015, when its domestic security service (SBU) created a new body after Russia had seized Crimea and the eastern Donbas region. The elite fifth counter-intelligence directorate started life as a saboteur force in response to the invasion. It later came to focus on what is euphemistically called “wet work”.

Valentin Nalivaychenko, who headed the SBU at the time, says the switch came about when Ukraine’s then leaders decided that a policy of imprisoning collaborators was not enough. Prisons were overflowing, but few were deterred.

“We reluctantly came to the conclusion that we needed to eliminate terrorists,”

he says.

A former officer of the directorate describes it in similar terms.

“We needed to bring war to them.”

In 2015 and 2016 the directorate was linked to the assassinations of key Russian-backed commanders in the Donbas; Mikhail Tolstykh, aka “Givi”, killed in a rocket attack; Arsen Pavlov, aka “Motorola”, blown up in a lift; Alexander Zakharchenko, blown up in a restaurant.

Intelligence insiders say the SBU’s fifth directorate is playing a central role in counter-Russia operations. The SBU’s relative size and budget—five times bigger than HUR’s—mean it has been most able to pull off the most sophisticated jobs, for example bombing the Kerch bridge, linking Russia to Crimea, in October 2022.

Others, though, emphasise the role of HUR, with its underground networks and increased wartime prominence.

“We are mostly the white-collar guys,”

insists an SBU source. Another increasingly important player in occupied Ukraine is the Special Operations Forces (SSO). This is a relatively new group that co-ordinates Rukh Oporu (Resistance Movement), Ukraine’s partisans.

#Nightmare #Ukraine #Yunakov #Burluk #SSO

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🔤🔤🔤🔤2️⃣

The operation in Kharkiv, for example, was the SSO’s. Denys Yaroslavsky, an officer in the SSO, says the service is now pushing for more powers to сonduct operations within Russia itself. That is not universally welcomed elsewhere in Ukraine’s intelligence community.

Ukraine’s president is understood to authorise the most controversial operations, though other decisions are delegated. A high-level government source with knowledge of the work declines to discuss the details: “It’s important not to comment or even think about such operations.”

But he says that Zelensky has issued a clear order to avoid collateral damage among civilians.

“The president communicates this instruction to people formally, and, on occasion, by shouting at them.”

Ukraine had to choose its targets carefully, the source adds; it might “not always” have done so.

Ukraine’s leadership came under particular scrutiny in October, when the New York Times reported that the American government was blaming it for a car-bomb that killed Darya Dugina, daughter of Alexander Dugin, a nationalistic philosopher.

That sharpened an already-lively internal debate within Ukrainian intelligence. It was unclear if Ms Dugina was meant to die; some reports suggest she had switched cars with her father.

But a subsequent string of operations targeting mid-level propagandists showed a trend that few of the insiders interviewed for this article were happy with.

“These are marginal figures,”

says one source in SBU counter-intelligence.

“It makes me uncomfortable.”

The former SBU fifth-directorate officer suggests the operations were designed to impress the president rather than bring victory any closer.

“Clowns, prostitutes and jokers are a constant around the Russian government,”

he says.

“Kill one of them, and another will appear in their place.”

The former spy says he is concerned that Ukraine’s assassination campaign is driven by impulse rather than logic. Some of the killings have a useful psychological role, he says: to raise the cost of war crimes and the spirits of ordinary Ukrainians.

This was “certainly” the case with Stanislav Rzhitsky, a former submarine commander believed to have fired the missiles that killed 38 Ukrainians in Vinnytsia in July 2022. He was shot dead a year later while jogging in a park in Krasnodar, in Russia. But other operations suggested an absence of strategy.

They risked exposing sources, methods and the extent of Ukrainian infiltration into Russia:

“Our security services shouldn’t do things just because they can.”

Andriy Yusov, a military-intelligence spokesman, insists Ukraine is avoiding what he called “blind terror”. The aim is

“not to frighten the enemy,”

he says, but

“to force it from occupied Ukrainian lands.”

But Ukrainian spies would continue to “identify and take advantage of Russian psychology and vulnerabilities” wherever they found them.

Of course, the converse is also true. The infiltration of Ukraine’s security services by Russian agents remains a big issue. In the estimation of some insiders, it is the largest single barrier to any attempts to create a Ukrainian Mossad.

The former head of SBU’s internal security has fled Ukraine under a cloud of suspicion, and is being investigated for treason in absentia. Trust remains an issue in the service, with all but the least sensitive operations conducted in small groups.

“People are always our weakest link,”

says the SBU counter-intelligence source.

“They are by far the most slippery part of our calculations.”

#Nightmare #Ukraine #Yunakov #Burluk #SSO

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Before the Peace:
Hezbollah Is Jonesing For Jews-Mass Killing

🔤🔤🔤🔤1️⃣

Hezbollah fired about 250 projectiles into Israel on Sunday, a day after an Israeli strike in the heart of the Lebanese capital killed more than 25 people.

The aerial attack was one of the largest Hezbollah has mounted against Israel since the Lebanese militant group started firing on Israel last year in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza.

It also coincided with a flurry of diplomacy aimed at halting the intensifying fighting in Lebanon.
More than 65 people were wounded in the attack on Saturday in Lebanon’s capital, Beirut.

As rescuers searched through the rubble, the death toll rose on Sunday to at least 29 people, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.

Three Israeli defense officials said the strike was an attempt to assassinate a top Hezbollah military commander, Mohammad Haidar. One of the Israeli defense officials, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations, later said that Haidar was not killed.

On Sunday, waves of air raid sirens blared throughout much of Israel, including in the Tel Aviv area and the hilltop town of Safed.

Israel’s military said that around 250 projectiles — a term usually referring to rockets — had been launched as of the evening, and that some were intercepted by air defense systems.

Magen David Adom, an Israeli emergency rescue service, said it had treated at least six people with injuries. It also shared images of cars engulfed by fires in central Israel.

Hezbollah said it had fired several salvos of rockets at Israel on Sunday.

The militant group said that one of the salvos — which it said had targeted a military installation in Tel Aviv around 6:30 a.m. — was in response to Israel’s targeting of Beirut.

The Israeli military did not report an attack aimed at Tel Aviv around that time, and The New York Times was not able to independently verify the claim by Hezbollah.

The exchange of fire came as the Israeli military said it struck what it described as militant infrastructure next to a border crossing between Syria and Lebanon.

It also ordered the evacuation of five villages in southern Lebanon and for at least a dozen parts of the Dahiya, an area just south of Beirut known as a Hezbollah stronghold.

Late on Sunday, the Israeli military conducted a heavy barrage of airstrikes on the southern outskirts in the Dahiya, with fighter jets racing across the skies above the Lebanese capital and deafening explosions ringing out for miles.

In a statement on Sunday, the Israeli military said its air force conducted strikes on what it said were Hezbollah “command centers” in the area.
The Lebanese Health Ministry didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Israel’s military has been intensifying operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon apparently in an attempt to put pressure on the militant group to reach a cease-fire deal.

As its troops push deeper into southern Lebanon, the Israeli military has been stepping up bombardment of the Dahiya, a cluster of neighborhoods on the southern outskirts of Beirut that are effectively governed by Hezbollah.

PART 2

#Jews #Hezbollah #Lebanon #Israel

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