Hamas has responded to the demands outlined by President Donald Trump in an effort to establish peace.
According to Reuters, Hamas said on Friday it will release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms outlined in the Gaza proposal.
They have not signed onto the plan, but it's a significant first step in the direction of ending the war.
An executive order signed by Donald Trump stating that any armed attack against Qatar would be considered "a threat to the peace and security of the United States" received fierce pushback from the editors of the conservative National Review.
The EO, dated Sept. 29, explicitly states: “In the event of such an attack, the United States shall take all lawful and appropriate measures — including diplomatic, economic, and, if necessary, military — to defend the interests of the United States and of the State of Qatar and to restore peace and stability.”
As explained in the scathing National Review editorial published on Friday, that mirrors the NATO Article 5 guarantee which states that an attack on one member of NATO is an attack on all members, which the editors called, in this case, “ridiculous."
As they noted, despite allowing a U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf country, Qatar was called by Trump in 2017 “a funder of terrorism at a very high level.”
The editors asked “what reasonable basis should the president ask Americans” to defend Qatar when the country is obviously attempting to “cozy up to both the United States and Islamist jihadis of all stripes.”
“Qatar materially supports Hamas (and the Taliban, which harbored al-Qaeda and made war on America for 20 years), and it is a principal proponent of the Muslim Brotherhood and its loathsome Sunni Islamist ideology. What’s more, it is an ally of the Shiite jihadist regime across the Persian Gulf in Iran,” the editors wrote.
Based upon that alone, they asked, “...can Americans at least ask that those countries to whom we would send our sons and daughters to defend be genuine friends of the United States?”
“A president of the United States has no unilateral authority to give another country a security guarantee — at least one that the U.S. must honor. Presidential executive orders can be reversed or ignored by the next president,” they noted.
You can read more here.
President Donald Trump issued an apocalyptic threat against Hamas to accept a "last chance" agreement or face annihilation.
The U.S. president posted a 329-word statement Friday morning on his Truth Social platform demanding Hamas accept the terms of a ceasefire proposal, three days after setting a deadline of “three or four days" to respond to a 20-point plan to end the two-year war in Gaza, and Trump said that Israel was waiting for him to approve another massive strike.
"Hamas has been a ruthless and violent threat, for many years, in the Middle East!" Trump posted. "They have killed (and made lives unbearably miserable), culminating with the October 7th MASSACRE, in Israel, babies, woman, children, old people, and many young men and women, boys and girls, getting ready to celebrate their future lives together."
"As retribution for the October 7th attack on civilization, more than 25,000 Hamas 'soldiers' have already been killed," he added. "Most of the rest are surrounded and MILITARILY TRAPPED, just waiting for me to give the word, 'GO,' for their lives to be quickly extinguished. As for the rest, we know where and who you are, and you will be hunted down, and killed."
Trump's statement echoed demands by Israel's defense minister ordering all remaining Palestinians to leave the famine-stricken Gaza City for the south or face the "full force" of its military.
"I am asking that all innocent Palestinians immediately leave this area of potentially great future death for safer parts of Gaza," Trump posted. "Everyone will be well cared for by those that are waiting to help. Fortunately for Hamas, however, they will be given one last chance! Great, powerful, and very rich Nations of the Middle East, and the surrounding areas beyond, together with the United States of America, have agreed, with Israel signing on, to PEACE, after 3000 years, in the Middle East."
"THIS DEAL ALSO SPARES THE LIVES OF ALL REMAINING HAMAS FIGHTERS!" Trump added. "The details of the document are known to the WORLD, and it is a great one for ALL! We will have PEACE in the Middle East one way or the other. The violence and bloodshed will stop. RELEASES THE HOSTAGES, ALL OF THEM, INCLUDING THE BODIES OF THOSE THAT ARE DEAD, NOW!"
Trump set another deadline for Hamas to accept the terms of the ceasefire before he gives Israel the green light to attack.
"An Agreement must be reached with Hamas by Sunday Evening at SIX (6) P.M., Washington, D.C. time," Trump posted. "Every Country has signed on! If this LAST CHANCE agreement is not reached, all HELL, like no one has ever seen before, will break out against Hamas. THERE WILL BE PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST ONE WAY OR THE OTHER. Thank you for your attention to this matter! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP"
A decision by First Lady Melania Trump on a gift for King Charles III contributed to the resignation of the director of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum and Boyhood Home, reports CBS News.
For their visit to the U.K. weeks ago, the first lady was handed a list of possible gifts by aides to bestow upon the monarch and her choice of a sword from the museum's collection caused a furor with Todd Arrington, a career historian, who balked at giving away the artifact from the collection.
According to the report, “Arrington's departure came after he resisted taking an original Eisenhower sword out of the library's collection,” adding, “Eisenhower possessed several swords, including a Sword of Honor given to him in 1947 by the city of London for his role as allied supreme commander during World War II, an honor saber gifted to him by the Netherlands in 1947, and his West Point officer saber.”
Despite Arrington’s suggestion that a replica could be found to use as a gift, the president’s wife held firm, which reportedly led to his departure.
The report notes, “Ultimately, West Point provided a faux version of Eisenhower's sword from the military academy,” but there was already tension between Arrington and the administration with CBS reporting, “One administration official said Arrington was believed to have spoken critically about the president and the administration.”
You can read more here.
Several world leaders made fun of President Donald Trump's boasts about ending a war between their countries.
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama was caught on video mocking the U.S. president Thursday with French President Emmanuel Macron and Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev at a European Political Community summit in Denmark, reported Politico.
“You should make an apology … to us because you didn’t congratulate us on the peace deal that President Trump made between Albania and Azerbaijan,” Rama told Macron in the video, and Aliyev burst out laughing.
"I'm sorry for that," Macron replied, drawing more laughter from bystanders.
"He worked very hard," Rama added.
Trump has repeatedly mixed up Armenia and Albania when claiming to have resolved long-standing tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan – the latter of which he has been unable to properly pronounce – to angle for a Nobel Peace Prize.
“I solved wars that was unsolvable. Azerbaijan and Albania," Trump told Fox News last month. "It was going on for many, many years, I had the prime ministers and presidents in my office."
The president did broker a deal at the White House in August between the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to end decades of fighting, and he frequently – and falsely – boasts to have ended at least six other conflicts.
President Donald Trump's speech to hundreds of the US' top generals on Tuesday hinted at plans to cancel the 2028 election, according to Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman of New York.
In an appearance on The Jim Acosta Show on Tuesday, Goldman said the speech appeared to be preparing the ground for an authoritarian power grab.
"It’s also, I think, really dangerous because it is trying to manufacture a crisis so that Donald Trump can continue to take more and more authoritarian actions and so that he can usurp more and power," said Goldman.
"And ultimately, my view is that he is looking ahead to 2028, where he will say that, for cockamamie made-up reasons like he’s talking to these generals about."
"That 'well, look, we’re being invaded from within from the enemy within and we’ve got to keep our border safe. And that’s what our focus has to be. We can’t possibly have an election under these circumstances.'”
"You really think that could happen?" said Acosta.
"Yeah, I think that’s where a lot of this is heading towards," said Goldman. "I think that's why he's floating a third term. That's why he's using this language of a war, of the enemy within, of securing our border."
Trump, in his speech to the generals at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, said the military's job was to help protect from the "enemy within," and discussed sending troops into Democratic run cities such as Chicago and Portland.
President Donald Trump's new letter to naturalised U.S. citizens hints at his disturbing agenda for America, according to Salon's Chauncey DeVega.
Trump's letter, released on Sept. 17, tells migrants they are taking an oath to "forge a sacred bond with our Nation, her traditions, her history, her culture and her values."
Whereas other presidents in their letters traditionally celebrated a "hopeful and inclusive vision" of what it means to be an American — premised on shared ideals, not creed and fixed attributes — Trump's letter strikes a very different tone, wrote DeVega.
"He is, symbolically and ideologically, the country’s first White president, and his understanding of what it means to be an American is very different from his predecessors," he said.
Trump’s letter reflects how he is "growing in power as the country’s first White President," wrote DeVega, with the president not celebrating the contributions migrants have made to America, but stressing their obligations to America, and what America has given them.
"The letter must be understood as part of a revolutionary right-wing political and social project: One where a real American is white and patriotism means loyalty to Trump and his MAGA movement. Nonwhite people can aspire to that identity, but their acceptance is conditional on aligning with Whiteness and its norms," writes DeVega.
DeVega pointed to other aspects of Trump's agenda that illustrate his commitment to xenophobic nationalism, such as his hardline migration policy, his attempts to "whitewash" American history to downplay the achievements of Black and Brown Americans, and the recent UN summit speech, where he railed against migration.
"In total, Trumpism models limited, circumscribed versions of citizenship and political belonging known as blood and soil nationalism, where 'racial stock' determines human worth, rights and citizenship," DeVega wrote.
DeVega argued that Trump's policies are part of a deeper history of racism, including slavery, violence and discrimination towards non-whites, and polices in the 1920s that banned non-white migrants and restricted citizenship to white people.
"Trump’s letter, his UN address and other policies are daily affirmations that he and his MAGA allies are seeking to return us to the country’s darkest past. In their eyes, being a real American means being the right kind of white American," wrote DeVega.
President Donald Trump stood with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and announced a new ceasefire proposal and peace plan, but critics couldn't help but notice it's missing some critical pieces — namely, that a key party is missing.
Steve Herman, executive director at the Jordan Center for Journalism Advocacy and Innovation, quoted Trump's comment, "Everyone else has accepted it."
"Except Hamas, according to President Trump, explaining his plan calls for a 'Board of Peace' to be headed by himself," said Herman.
It prompted national security lawyer Bradly P. Moss to remark, "So, you know, a peace plan missing a vital party."
"The new official Trump plan for Gaza. Quite a few things to parse out, including accountability mechanisms, who actually makes up the stabilisation force, and what mandate they would have," said Dr. H.A. Hellyer, a geopolitics and security expert on the Middle East and Europe at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies.
Even senior Washington Examiner writer David Harsanyi had questions: "This plan has been tried more than once. Palestinians have never been able to meet #1."
Bloomberg's Washington Correspondent Josh Wingrove couldn't help but notice that the plan, "previously described as a '21-point plan,'" now "includes 20 points and an image of proposed withdrawals."
"The points include a call for Gaza's governance to be supervised by a 'Board of Peace' - chaired by Trump himself," added Wingrove.
White House columnist Niall Stanage, at "The Hill," also questioned, "It runs to 20 points but how will point 1 — upon which all else may hinge — be defined or verified and by whom?"
"If Trump is to be the head of the newly established transitional administration in Gaza, it means Gaza is becoming a mandate of the USA. Blair is the Mandate Governor," observed Tuğçe Varol, an academic working on Russian and Turkish foreign policy.
Donald Trump on Sunday made a vague statement about "greatness in the Middle East."
The president took to his own social media site, Truth Social, at a time when Israel and Hamas are continuing to fight over the remaining hostages.
Without stating anything specific, Trump wrote, "We have a real chance for GREATNESS IN THE MIDDLE EAST."
"ALL ARE ON BOARD FOR SOMETHING SPECIAL, FIRST TIME EVER," the president then added. "WE WILL GET IT DONE!!! President DJT"
United States Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is revising a long-standing report aimed at gathering estimates of future threats to the United States. The reason, she said, is that those responsible for it failed to do their job and were too partisan.
The New York Times reported Friday that Gabbard won't have the report gathered every four years to predict the challenges the U.S. will face in the coming decades. Typically, the intelligence community focuses on immediate concerns rather than a long-term examination of what to keep an eye on in the next several years.
Gabbard's office claimed the National Intelligence Council’s Strategic Futures Group, which prepares the report, had “neglected to fulfill the purpose it was created for." Gabbard's statement said they were pursuing a partisan agenda in examining foreign threats.
“A draft of the 2025 Global Trends report was carefully reviewed by D.N.I. Gabbard’s team and found to violate professional analytic tradecraft standards in an effort to propagate a political agenda that ran counter to all of the current president’s national security priorities,” the office said.
Gabbard never worked in the intelligence field until she was confirmed in Feb. 2025.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence was established after the Sept. 11 attacks, when an independent congressional commission found that there were intelligence failures and that what intelligence was gathered wasn't integrated with the military and domestic agencies, the website explains.
President Donald Trump has corrupted the Department of Justice to target his political enemies as part of a "cynical ploy" borrowed from Vladimir Putin, according to a former federal prosecutor.
A federal grand jury indicted former FBI Director James Comey for making alleged false statements to Congress and obstruction of justice, both based on his denial that he had authorized leaks to the media about the 2016 investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails, and former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade published a column for Bloomberg examining the case on its merits.
"The indictment came a week after Trump posted a demand to Attorney General Pam Bondi to charge Comey and other perceived enemies, calling them 'guilty as hell,'" McQuade wrote. "Perhaps cognizant that the five-year statute of limitations would be expiring within days, Trump added, 'We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility.'"
That social media post made plain the DOJ was acting on Trump's orders, but he made that even more obvious by replacing the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia who questioned the case's strength with a former personal attorney of his who has never prosecuted a single case before presenting the Comey evidence to a grand jury.
"By directing his DOJ to charge Comey, Trump appears to be borrowing a tactic from the playbook of Vladimir Putin," McQuade wrote. "According to Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser, Putin doesn’t try to convince the Russian people that he is honest. Instead, he works to persuade them that everyone else is corrupt."
"It’s a cynical ploy meant to condition people to tolerate corruption," she added. "If voters believe that all public officials are crooks, then they will overlook the crooked leader who professes to share their values."
Trump, of course, is the only president who has ever been convicted of a felony – all 34 counts against him in the only criminal case out of four in which he faced trial – and McQuade suspects his vindictive prosecution of Comey, and the others he's threatened, shows he's playing the same game as the Russian president he admires.
"If Trump can make people believe that indictments like the one targeting Comey are meaningless, then the indictments against him can be dismissed just as easily," McQuade wrote. "Indeed, following the Comey indictment, New York Democratic Representative Dan Goldman said, 'The problem is how are you ever going to know whether an investigation by the FBI, an investigation by the Department of Justice, is legitimate or is corrupt.'"
"Exactly," she added. "When everyone is corrupt, then no one is."
A promise made by Donald Trump to desperate American farmers during a press availability may blow up on him if the Supreme Court disagrees with his administration on tariffs.
Appearing with Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump was asked about farmers facing ruin, in large part because of the trade war he is waging on the world.
Mistaking billions for millions, he initially replied by bragging about the money he claimed his trade tariffs were bringing in.
“The other day, it was very interesting, they found $31 billion. They said, ‘Sir, we’ve found 31.’ I said, ‘You mean positively, right?’ They said, ‘Yeah, $31 million more than we knew.’ And they said, ‘We don’t know where it came from.’”
He continued, “So what we’re going to be doing is we’re going to be taking some money from all of the tariff money we’ve taken and we’re going to distribute it to our farmers, until the tariffs kick in to their benefit.” He added that they would “be making a fortune” due to his policies.
This followed Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins stating on Wednesday that there is “potential” to distribute tariff money to beleaguered growers of crops like soybean, corn, wheat, sorghum, and cotton, who have complained that tariffs have decimated their businesses.
However, as the New Republic’s Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling pointed out moments after Trump concluded his press conference, the Supreme Court might have something to say about that.
“That plan could be completely upended, however, if the Supreme Court decides that Trump’s tariffs are illegal,” Houghtailing predicted.
According to USA Today, an adverse ruling on tariffs, with a hearing expected after a hearing in November, would make that money unavailable because the U.S. government would then be obligated to refund between $750 billion and $1 trillion to those directly impacted by the tariffs already.
The New Republic report added, “Of course, farmers may have avoided these difficult times altogether if Trump had never instituted his aggressive tariff plan to begin with. Tensions between the Trump administration and Beijing have practically halted trade with China, nixing a crucial market for American farmers.
"The end result, according to insiders, is a mandatory bailout — which will weigh heavily on the American taxpayer’s dime.”
Nearly two years into the war in Gaza, a Florida Republican proposes to ban state agencies from mentioning the West Bank, the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory, and enforce “Judea and Samaria” as the official name for the Middle Eastern battleground.
Rep. Chase Tramont, a Port Orange Republican, introduced HB 31 Tuesday in hopes of replacing the “West Bank” phrase with the biblical name for the regions north and south of Jerusalem and widely used by right-wing Israelis to describe the Jordan River territory.
The move comes amid strong Floridian support for Israel and an overall split in foreign politics on whether to back Israel in its campaign to eradicate Hamas, a designated terrorist organization backed by Iran, or recognize Palestine as a state following allegations that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is orchestrating a genocide.
“With this bill, Florida sends a clear message: we will stand with Israel, we’ll honor truth over revisionism, and defend the eternal bond between the Jewish people and their ancestral homeland,” Tramont told the Florida Phoenix in a statement, condemning other nations’ “egregious” decisions to recognize Palestinian statehood.
“I believe it’s appropriate for Florida to lead the way once again. Judea and Samaria was, is, and always will be recognized as Israeli sovereign land,” he added. His bill both declares the legislature’s “intent” to call that land Judea and Samaria, and bans state agencies from using the term “West Bank” on official government material.
It does create an exception for agency heads to waive the prohibition if they determine using “West Bank” is in Florida’s “best interest” and send a written explanation within a month of the realization to the Senate President and Speaker of the House, the bills says.
HB 31 is a near replica of a federal bill introduced in February by House and Senate Republicans, although the measure has yet to advance to a vote. It referenced Israel’s annexation of the territory from Jordan in 1967, citing its historical claim to the ancient “Judea and Samaria.” Since then, the Israeli military has occupied the area.
“The Jewish people’s legal and historic rights to Judea and Samaria goes back thousands of years,” Republican U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton said at the time, The New York Times reported. He asked for the U.S. to “stop using the politically charged term West Bank.”
Following Hamas’s ambush and murder of more than a thousand Israelis during music festival on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has launched a no-holds-barred counter-offensive deep into Palestinian-occupied areas in the Gaza Strip. Florida officials reacted quickly, passing resolutions strongly backing Israel and punishing businesses that boycott its government.
Gov. Ron DeSantis hosted a slew of press conferences statewide to decry pro-Palestinian protesters setting up encampments on university campuses, encouraging the U.S. government to revoke their student visas. Months later, Secretary of State Marco Rubio obliged.
Since then, Netanyahu has come under fire from prominent peace organizations including the United Nations. A UN commission of inquiry released a report last week claiming he’s led a genocide in Gaza. Despite this, top U.S. officials continue to tout their strong relationship with Israel, a leading Middle East ally for the United States, to the point that President Donald Trump in June dropped bunker-buster bombs in Iran in coordination with Israel.
Update: this story now reflects comments from Rep. Chase Tramont.
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